Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch heard it all with curiosity.
“A great deal of that I had heard nothing of,” he said. “Of course, anything may have happened to you. … Listen,” he said, after a minute’s thought. “If you like, you can tell them, you know whom, that Liputin was lying, and that you were only pretending to give information to frighten me, supposing that I, too, was compromised, and that you might get more money out of me that way. … Do you understand?”
“Dear Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, is it possible that there’s such a danger hanging over me? I’ve been longing for you to come, to ask you.”
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch laughed.
“They certainly wouldn’t let you go to Petersburg, even if I were to give you money for the journey. … But it’s time for me to see Marya Timofyevna.” And he got up from his chair.
“Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, but how about Marya Timofyevna?”
“Why, as I told you.”
“Can it be true?”
“You still don’t believe it?”
“Will you really cast me off like an old worn-out shoe?”
“I’ll see,” laughed Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. “Come, let me go.”
“Wouldn’t you like me to stand on the steps … for fear I might by chance overhear something … for the rooms are small?”
“That’s as well. Stand on the steps. Take my umbrella.”
“Your umbrella. … Am I worth it?” said the captain over-sweetly.
“Anyone is worthy of an umbrella.”
“At one stroke you define the minimum of human rights. …”
But he was by now muttering mechanically. He was too much crushed by what he had learned, and was completely thrown out of his reckoning. And yet almost as soon as he had gone out on to the steps and had put up the umbrella, there his shallow and cunning brain caught again the ever-present, comforting idea that he was being cheated and deceived, and if so they were afraid of him, and there was no need for him to be afraid.
“If they’re lying and deceiving me, what’s at the bottom of it?” was the thought that gnawed at his mind. The public announcement of the marriage seemed to him absurd. “It’s true that with such a wonder-worker anything may come to pass; he lives to do harm. But what if he’s afraid himself, since the insult of Sunday, and afraid as he’s never been before? And so he’s in a hurry to declare that he’ll announce it himself, from fear that I should announce it. Eh, don’t blunder, Lebyadkin! And why does he come on the sly, at night, if he means to make it public himself? And if he’s afraid, it means that he’s afraid now, at this moment, for these few days. … Eh, don’t make a mistake, Lebyadkin!
“He scares me with Pyotr Stepanovitch. Oy, I’m frightened, I’m frightened! Yes, this is what’s so frightening! And what induced me to blab to Liputin. Goodness knows what these devils are up to. I never can make head or tail of it. Now they are all astir again as they were five years ago. To whom could I give information, indeed? ‘Haven’t I written to anyone in my foolishness?’ H’m! So then I might write as though through foolishness? Isn’t he giving me a hint? ‘You’re going to Petersburg on purpose.’ The sly rogue. I’ve scarcely dreamed of it, and he guesses my dreams. As though he were putting me up to going himself. It’s one or the other of two games he’s up to. Either he’s afraid because he’s been up to some pranks himself … or he’s not afraid for himself, but is simply egging me on to give them all away! Ach, it’s terrible, Lebyadkin! Ach, you must not make a blunder!”
He was so absorbed in thought that he forgot to listen. It was not easy to hear either. The door was a solid one, and they were talking in a very low voice. Nothing reached the captain but indistinct sounds. He positively spat in disgust, and went out again, lost in thought, to whistle on the steps.
III
Marya Timofyevna’s room was twice as large as the one occupied by the captain, and furnished in the same rough style; but the table in front of the sofa was covered with a gay-coloured tablecloth, and on it a lamp was burning. There was a handsome carpet on the floor. The bed was screened off by a green curtain, which ran the length of the room, and besides the sofa there stood by the table a large, soft easy chair, in which Marya Timofyevna never sat, however. In the corner there was an icon as there had been in her old room, and a little lamp was burning before it, and on the table were all her indispensable properties. The pack of cards, the little looking-glass, the songbook, even a milk loaf. Besides these there were two books with coloured pictures—one, extracts from a popular book of travels, published for juvenile reading, the other a collection of very light, edifying tales, for the most part about the days of chivalry, intended for Christmas presents or school reading. She had, too, an album of photographs of various sorts.
Marya Timofyevna was, of course, expecting the visitor, as the captain had announced. But when
