On the Eve

and you... Be off, fool!'

The terrified servant was rushing to the door.

'Stop!' cried Nikolai Artemyevitch. 'What did the doorkeeper say to you?'

'Oh no—nothing—he said nothing—He told me—a stu—student——'

'Silence, scoundrel! Listen, you dirty beast; if you ever breathe a word in your dreams even——'

'Mercy on us——'

'Silence! if you blab—if any one—if I find out—you shall find no hiding-place even underground! Do you hear? You can go!'

The man vanished.

'Good Heavens, merciful powers! what does it mean?' thought Nikolai Artemyevitch when he was left alone. 'What did that idiot tell me? Eh? I shall have to find out, though, what house it is, and who lives there. I must go myself. Has it come to this!... Un laquais! Quelle humiliation!'

And repeating aloud: 'Un laquais!' Nikolai Artemyevitch shut the dressing-case up in the bureau, and went up to Anna Vassilyevna. He found her in bed with her face tied up. But the sight of her sufferings only irritated him, and he very soon reduced her to tears.

XXX

Meanwhile the storm gathering in the East was breaking. Turkey had declared war on Russia; the time fixed for the evacuation of the Principalities had already expired, the day of the disaster of Sinope was not far off. The last letters received by Insarov summoned him urgently to his country. His health was not yet restored; he coughed, suffered from weakness and slight attacks of fever, but he was scarcely ever at home. His heart was fired, he no longer thought of his illness. He was for ever rushing about Moscow, having secret interviews with various persons, writing for whole nights, disappearing for whole days; he had informed his landlord that he was going away shortly, and had presented him already with his scanty furniture. Elena too on her side was getting ready for departure. One wet evening she was sitting in her room, and listening with involuntary depression to the sighing of the wind, while she hemmed handkerchiefs. Her maid came in and told her that her father was in her mother's room and sent for her there. 'Your mamma is crying,' she whispered after the retreating Elena, 'and your papa is angry.'

Elena gave a slight shrug and went into Anna Vassflyevna's room. Nikolai Artemyevitch's kind-hearted spouse was half lying on a reclining chair, sniffing a handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne; he himself was standing at the hearth, every button buttoned up, in a high, hard cravat, with a stiffly starched collar; his deportment had a vague suggestion of some parliamentary orator. With an orator's wave of the arm he motioned his daughter to a chair, and when she, not understanding his gesture, looked inquiringly at him, he brought out with dignity, without turning his head: 'I beg you to be seated.' Nikolai Artemyevitch always used the formal plural in addressing his wife, but only on extraordinary occasions in addressing his daughter.

Elena sat down.

Anna Vassilyevna blew her nose tearfully. Nikolai Artemyevitch thrust his fingers between his coat- buttons.

'I sent for you, Elena Nikolaevna,' he began after a protracted silence, 'in order to have an explanation with you, or rather in order to ask you for an explanation. I am displeased with you—or no—that is too little to say: your behaviour is a pain and an outrage to me—to me and to your mother—your mother whom you see here.'

Nikolai Artemyevitch was giving vent only to the few bass notes in his voice. Elena gazed in silence at him, then at Anna Vassilyevna and turned pale.

'There was a time,' Nikolai Artemyevitch resumed, 'when daughters did not allow themselves to look down on their parents—when the parental authority forced the disobedient to tremble. That time has passed, unhappily: so at least many persons imagine; but let me tell you, there are still laws which do not permit—do not permit—in fact there are still laws. I beg you to mark that: there are still laws——'

'But, papa,' Elena was beginning.

'I beg you not to interrupt me. Let us turn in thought to the past. I and Anna Vassilyevna have performed our duty. I and Anna Vassilyevna have spared nothing in your education: neither care nor expense. What you have gained from our care—is a different question; but I had the right to expect—I and Anna Vassilyevna had the right to expect that you would at least hold sacred the principles of morality which we have—que nous avons inculques, which we have instilled into you, our only daughter. We had the right to expect that no new 'ideas' could touch that, so to speak, holy shrine. And what do we find? I am not now speaking of frivolities characteristic of your sex, and age, but who could have anticipated that you could so far forget yourself——'

'Papa,' said Elena, 'I know what you are going to say———'

'No, you don't know what I am going to say!' cried Nikolai Artemyevitch in a falsetto shriek, suddenly losing the majesty of his oratorical pose, the smooth dignity of his speech, and his bass notes. 'You don't know, vile hussy!'

'For mercy's sake, Nicolas,' murmured Anna Vassilyevna, 'vous me faites mourir?'

'Don't tell me que je vous fais mourir, Anna Vassilyevna! You can't conceive what you will hear directly! Prepare yourself for the worst, I warn you!'

Anna Vassilyevna seemed stupefied.

'No,' resumed Nikolai Artemyevitch, turning to Elena, 'you don't know what I am going to say!'

'I am to blame towards you——' she began.

'Ah, at last!'

'I am to blame towards you,' pursued Elena, 'for not having long ago confessed——'

'But do you know,' Nikolai Artemyevitch interrupted, 'that I can crush you with one word?'

Elena raised her eyes to look at him.

'Yes, madam, with one word! It's useless to look at me!' (He crossed his arms on his breast.) 'Allow me to ask you, do you know a certain house near Povarsky? Have you visited that house?' (He stamped.) 'Answer me, worthless girl, and don't try to hide the truth. People, people, servants, madam, de vils laquais have seen you, as you went in there, to your——'

Elena was crimson, her eyes were blazing.

'I have no need to hide anything,' she declared. 'Yes, I have visited that house.'

'Exactly! Do you hear, do you hear, Anna Vassilyevna? And you know, I presume, who lives there?'

'Yes, I know; my husband.'

Nikolai Artemyevitch's eyes were starting out of his head.

'Your——'

'My husband,' repeated Elena; 'I am married to Dmitri Nikanorovitch Insarov.'

'You?—married?'—was all Anna Vassilyevna could articulate.

'Yes, mamma.... Forgive me. A fortnight ago, we were secretly married.'

Anna Vassilyevna fell back in her chair; Nikolai Artemyevitch stepped two paces back.

'Married! To that vagrant, that Montenegrin! the daughter of Nikolai Stahov of the higher nobility married to a vagrant, a nobody, without her parents' sanction! And you imagine I shall let the matter rest, that I shall not make a complaint, that I will allow you—that you—that——To the nunnery with you, and he shall go to prison, to hard labour! Anna Vassilyevna, inform her at once that you will cut off her inheritance!'

'Nikolai Artemyevitch, for God's sake,' moaned Anna Vassilyevna.

'And when and how was this done? Who married you? where? how? Good God! what will all our friends think, what will the world say! And you, shameless hypocrite, could go on living under your parents' roof after such an act! Had you no fear of—the wrath of heaven?'

'Papa' said Elena (she was trembling from head to foot but her voice was steady), 'you are at liberty to do with me as you please, but you need not accuse me of shamelessness, and hypocrisy. I did not want—to give you pain before, but I should have had to tell you all myself in a few days, because we are going away—my husband and I—from here next week.'