conversation with Mr. Astley, I met Polina and the children, her face reflected the most untroubled calm, as if all the family storms had passed by her alone. In response to my bow she nodded her head. I came to my room totally angry.
Of course, after the incident with the Wurmerhelms, I avoided talking with her and never once got together with her. In that I was partly showing off and posturing; but as time went on, real indignation seethed in me more and more. Even if she didn’t love me in the least, it still seemed wrong to trample on my feelings that way and receive my declarations with such contempt. She does know that I truly love her; she herself has allowed, has permitted me to speak that way with her! True, it began somehow strangely with us. Sometime long ago now, a good two months back, I began to notice that she wanted to make me her friend, a confidant, and she was even partly testing me. But for some reason it didn’t get going between us then; and instead it has remained in these present strange relations; that was why I began to speak that way with her. But if she’s repulsed by my love, why not forbid me outright to speak of it?
She doesn’t forbid me; she herself even occasionally initiated a conversation with me, and…of course, did it to make fun of me. I know for certain, I firmly noted it—it was a pleasure for her to listen to me and exacerbate me painfully, to stun me suddenly with a show of the greatest contempt and negligence. And she knows that I can’t live without her. It’s three days now since the story with the baron, and I can no longer bear our
She has a secret—that’s clear! Her conversation with grandmother pricked my heart painfully. A thousand times I’ve invited her to be frank with me, and she knew that I was actually ready to lay down my life for her. But she always got off with near contempt, or, instead of the sacrifice of my life, which I had offered her, demanded escapades from me like that time with the baron! Isn’t it outrageous? Can it be that for her the whole world is in this Frenchman? And Mr. Astley? But here the affair was becoming decidedly incomprehensible, and meanwhile— God, how I suffered!
Having come home, in a fit of rage I seized a pen and scribbled the following:
Polina Alexandrovna, I see clearly that the denouement has come, which will, of course, affect you as well. I repeat for the last time: do you need my life or not? If you need me
I sealed this note and sent it with the floorboy, with orders that he put it directly into her hands. I didn’t expect an answer, but three minutes later the floorboy came back, saying that “the lady sends her greetings.”
Sometime after six I was summoned to the general.
He was in his study and dressed as if he was about to go out. His hat and stick lay on the sofa. I fancied, as I came in, that he was standing in the middle of the room, his legs straddled, his head bowed, saying something aloud to himself. But as soon as he saw me, he rushed to me all but with a shout, so that I involuntarily drew back and was about to run away; but he seized me by both hands and pulled me to the sofa; he sat down on the sofa himself, seated me directly opposite him in an armchair, and, without letting go of my hands, with trembling lips, with tears suddenly glistening on his eyelashes, said to me in a pleading voice:
“Alexei Ivanovich, save me, save me, spare me!”
For a long time I could understand nothing; he kept talking, talking, talking, and kept repeating: “Spare me, spare me!” I finally realized that he expected something like advice from me; or, better to say, abandoned by everybody, anguished and anxious, he had remembered me and summoned me in order to talk, talk, talk.
He had gone crazy, or at any rate was bewildered in the highest degree. He clasped his hands and was ready to throw himself on his knees before me to persuade me to—what do you think?—to go at once to Mlle Blanche and beg her, exhort her to return to him and marry him.
“For pity’s sake, General,” I cried, “it may well be that Mlle Blanche hasn’t noticed me up to now! What can I do?”
But it was useless to object: he didn’t understand what was said to him. He began talking about grandmother as well, only it was terribly incoherent; he still stood by the notion of sending for the police.
“With us, with us,” he began, suddenly boiling over with indignation, “in short, with us, in our well-organized state, where authorities do exist, such old women would immediately be taken into custody! Yes, my dear sir, yes,” he went on, suddenly lapsing into a scolding tone, jumping up and pacing the room, “you still don’t know that, my dear sir,” he turned to some imaginary dear sir in the corner, “so now you’ll learn…yes, sir…with us such old women get tied in a knot, yes, a knot, a knot, sir…oh, devil take it!”
And he threw himself down on the sofa again, but a minute later, all but spluttering, breathless, he hastened to tell me that Mlle Blanche wouldn’t marry him because grandmother had come instead of a telegram, and it was now clear that he would get no inheritance. He thought I still didn’t know any of it. I tried to mention des Grieux; he waved his hand: “Gone! Everything I own is mortgaged to him; I’m naked as a worm! That money you brought… that money—I don’t know how much is left, I think about seven hundred francs, and—enough, sir, that’s it, and beyond that I don’t know, I don’t know, sir!…”
“How are you going to pay for the hotel?” I cried in alarm, “and…then what?”
He glanced around pensively, but didn’t seem to understand, and maybe hadn’t even heard me. I tried to start talking about Polina Alexandrovna, about the children; he hurriedly answered, “Yes! yes!” but at once began talking about the prince again, about the fact that Blanche was now going off with him, and then…“and then…what am I to do, Alexei Ivanovich?” he suddenly turned to me. “I swear to God! What am I to do?—tell me, that’s really ungrateful! isn’t it ungrateful?”
Finally, he dissolved in a flood of tears.
There was nothing to be done with a man like that; to leave him alone was also dangerous; something might happen to him. However, I somehow got rid of him, but gave the nanny to know that she should look in on him often, and besides that I told the floorboy, a very sensible fellow, who for his part also promised me to keep an eye on him.
I no sooner left the general than Potapych came to me with a summons from grandmother. It was eight o’clock, and she had just come back from the vauxhall after losing definitively. I went to her: the old woman was sitting in her chair, totally exhausted, and evidently sick. Marfa served her a cup of tea, which she almost forced her to drink. Grandmother’s voice and tone were markedly changed.
“Good evening, dearest Alexei Ivanovich,” she said, inclining her head slowly and gravely, “forgive me for troubling you once more, forgive an old woman. I, my dear, left everything there, nearly a hundred thousand roubles. You were right not to go with me yesterday. I have no money now, not a penny. I don’t want to delay for a moment, I’ll leave at half-past nine. I’ve sent to that Englishman of yours, Astley or whatever, and want to borrow three thousand francs from him for a week. You persuade him, so he doesn’t get some notion and say no. I’m still quite rich, my dear. I have three estates and two houses. And some money can be found, I didn’t take it all with me. I say it so that he won’t have doubts of some sort…Ah, here he is! You can tell a good man when you see one.”
Mr. Astley came hurrying at grandmother’s first summons. Without much reflection or talk, he at once counted out three thousand francs against a promissory note which grandmother proceeded to sign. The business concluded, he bowed and hurriedly left.
“And now you go, too, Alexei Ivanovich. There’s a little more than an hour left—I want to lie down, my bones ache. Don’t judge me too harshly, fool that I am. Now I’ll never accuse young people of light-mindedness, and it would also be a sin now for me to accuse that unfortunate fellow, that general of yours. Even so I won’t give him any money, as he wants, because in my opinion he’s as foolish as they come, though I’m no smarter than he is, old fool that I am. Truly, God judges old age as well and punishes pride. Well, good-bye. Marfusha, lift me up.”
I wished to see grandmother off, however. Besides, I was in some sort of expectation, I kept expecting that something was about to happen. I couldn’t sit in my room. I went out to the corridor several times, even went out for a moment to wander in the avenue. My letter to her had been clear and decisive, and the present catastrophe was, of course, definitive. In the hotel I heard of des Grieux’s departure. Finally, if she rejects me as a friend, maybe she won’t reject me as a servant. She does need me, at any rate to run errands; I’ll be useful, it can’t be otherwise!
By train time I ran to the station and got grandmother seated. They all settled in a special family car. “Thank
