“You’re not wounded, and … have not shed blood?” she asked, not answering his question.
“It was stupid. I didn’t kill anyone. Don’t be uneasy. However, you’ll hear all about it today from everyone. I’m not quite well.”
“I’m going. The announcement of the marriage won’t be today?” she added irresolutely.
“It won’t be today, and it won’t be tomorrow. I can’t say about the day after tomorrow. Perhaps we shall all be dead, and so much the better. Leave me alone, leave me alone, do.”
“You won’t ruin that other … mad girl?”
“I won’t ruin either of the mad creatures. It seems to be the sane I’m ruining. I’m so vile and loathsome, Dasha, that I might really send for you, ‘at the latter end,’ as you say. And in spite of your sanity you’ll come. Why will you be your own ruin?”
“I know that at the end I shall be the only one left you, and … I’m waiting for that.”
“And what if I don’t send for you after all, but run away from you?”
“That can’t be. You will send for me.”
“There’s a great deal of contempt for me in that.”
“You know that there’s not only contempt.”
“Then there is contempt, anyway?”
“I used the wrong word. God is my witness, it’s my greatest wish that you may never have need of me.”
“One phrase is as good as another. I should also have wished not to have ruined you.”
“You can never, anyhow, be my ruin; and you know that yourself, better than anyone,” Darya Pavlovna said, rapidly and resolutely. “If I don’t come to you I shall be a sister of mercy, a nurse, shall wait upon the sick, or go selling the gospel. I’ve made up my mind to that. I cannot be anyone’s wife. I can’t live in a house like this, either. That’s not what I want. … You know all that.”
“No, I never could tell what you want. It seems to me that you’re interested in me, as some veteran nurses get specially interested in some particular invalid in comparison with the others, or still more, like some pious old women who frequent funerals and find one corpse more attractive than another. Why do you look at me so strangely?”
“Are you very ill?” she asked sympathetically, looking at him in a peculiar way. “Good heavens! And this man wants to do without me!”
“Listen, Dasha, now I’m always seeing phantoms. One devil offered me yesterday, on the bridge, to murder Lebyadkin and Marya Timofyevna, to settle the marriage difficulty, and to cover up all traces. He asked me to give him three roubles on account, but gave me to understand that the whole operation wouldn’t cost less than fifteen hundred. Wasn’t he a calculating devil! A regular shopkeeper. Ha ha!”
“But you’re fully convinced that it was an hallucination?”
“Oh, no; not a bit an hallucination! It was simply Fedka the convict, the robber who escaped from prison. But that’s not the point. What do you suppose I did! I gave him all I had, everything in my purse, and now he’s sure I’ve given him that on account!”
“You met him at night, and he made such a suggestion? Surely you must see that you’re being caught in their nets on every side!”
“Well, let them be. But you’ve got some question at the tip of your tongue, you know. I see it by your eyes,” he added with a resentful and irritable smile.
Dasha was frightened.
“I’ve no question at all, and no doubt whatever; you’d better be quiet!” she cried in dismay, as though waving off his question.
“Then you’re convinced that I won’t go to Fedka’s little shop?”
“Oh, God!” she cried, clasping her hands. “Why do you torture me like this?”
“Oh, forgive me my stupid joke. I must be picking up bad manners from them. Do you know, ever since last night I feel awfully inclined to laugh, to go on laughing continually forever so long. It’s as though I must explode with laughter. It’s like an illness. … Oh! my mother’s coming in. I always know by the rumble when her carriage has stopped at the entrance.”
Dasha seized his hand.
“God save you from your demon, and … call me, call me quickly!”
“Oh! a fine demon! It’s simply a little nasty, scrofulous imp, with a cold in his head, one of the unsuccessful ones. But you have something you don’t dare to say again, Dasha?”
She looked at him with pain and reproach, and turned towards the door.
“Listen,” he called after her, with a malignant and distorted smile. “If … Yes, if, in one word, if … you understand, even if I did go to that little shop, and if I called you after that—would you come then?”
She went out, hiding her face in her hands, and neither turning nor answering.
“She will come even after the shop,” he whispered, thinking a moment, and an expression of scornful disdain came into his face. “A nurse! H’m! … but perhaps that’s what I want.”
IV
All in Expectation
I
The impression made on the whole neighbourhood by the story of the duel, which was rapidly noised abroad, was particularly remarkable from the unanimity with which everyone hastened to take up the cudgels for Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. Many of his former enemies declared themselves his friends. The chief reason for this change of front in public opinion was chiefly due to one person, who had hitherto not expressed her opinion, but who now very distinctly uttered a few words, which at once gave the event a significance exceedingly interesting to the vast majority. This was how it happened. On the day after the duel, all the town was assembled at the Marshal of Nobility’s in honour of his wife’s name day. Yulia Mihailovna was present, or, rather, presided, accompanied by Lizaveta Nikolaevna, radiant with beauty and peculiar gaiety, which struck many of our ladies at once as particularly suspicious at this time. And I may mention, by the way, her engagement to Mavriky Nikolaevitch was by now an
