'What are you giving me?' she said. 'I am not asking for charity, but for what does not belong to you . . . what you have taken advantage of your position to squeeze out of my husband . . . that weak, unhappy man. . . . On Thursday, when I saw you with my husband at the harbour you were wearing expensive brooches and bracelets. So it's no use your playing the innocent lamb to me! I ask you for the last time: will you give me the things, or not?'
'You are a queer one, upon my word,' said Pasha, beginning to feel offended. 'I assure you that, except the bracelet and this little ring, I've never seen a thing from your Nikolay Petrovitch. He brings me nothing but sweet cakes.'
'Sweet cakes!' laughed the stranger. 'At home the children have nothing to eat, and here you have sweet cakes. You absolutely refuse to restore the presents?'
Receiving no answer, the lady sat, down and stared into space, pondering.
'What's to be done now?' she said. 'If I don't get nine hundred roubles, he is ruined, and the children and I am ruined, too. Shall I kill this low woman or go down on my knees to her?'
The lady pressed her handkerchief to her face and broke into sobs.
'I beg you!' Pasha heard through the stranger's sobs. 'You see you have plundered and ruined my husband. Save him. . . . You have no feeling for him, but the children . . . the children . . . What have the children done?'
Pasha imagined little children standing in the street, crying with hunger, and she, too, sobbed.
'What can I do, madam?' she said. 'You say that I am a low woman and that I have ruined Nikolay Petrovitch, and I assure you . . . before God Almighty, I have had nothing from him whatever. . . . There is only one girl in our chorus who has a rich admirer; all the rest of us live from hand to mouth on bread and kvass. Nikolay Petrovitch is a highly educated, refined gentleman, so I've made him welcome. We are bound to make gentlemen welcome.'
'I ask you for the things! Give me the things! I am crying. . . . I am humiliating myself. . . . If you like I will go down on my knees! If you wish it!'
Pasha shrieked with horror and waved her hands. She felt that this pale, beautiful lady who expressed herself so grandly, as though she were on the stage, really might go down on her knees to her, simply from pride, from grandeur, to exalt herself and humiliate the chorus girl.
'Very well, I will give you things!' said Pasha, wiping her eyes and bustling about. 'By all means. Only they are not from Nikolay Petrovitch. . . . I got these from other gentlemen. As you please. . . .'
Pasha pulled out the upper drawer of the chest, took out a diamond brooch, a coral necklace, some rings and bracelets, and gave them all to the lady.
'Take them if you like, only I've never had anything from your husband. Take them and grow rich,' Pasha went on, offended at the threat to go down on her knees. 'And if you are a lady . . . his lawful wife, you should keep him to yourself. I should think so! I did not ask him to come; he came of himself.'
Through her tears the lady scrutinized the articles given her and said:
'This isn't everything. . . . There won't be five hundred roubles' worth here.'
Pasha impulsively flung out of the chest a gold watch, a cigar-case and studs, and said, flinging up her hands:
'I've nothing else left. . . . You can search!'
The visitor gave a sigh, with trembling hands twisted the things up in her handkerchief, and went out without uttering a word, without even nodding her head.
The door from the next room opened and Kolpakov walked in. He was pale and kept shaking his head nervously, as though he had swallowed something very bitter; tears were glistening in his eyes.
'What presents did you make me?' Pasha asked, pouncing upon him.
'When did you, allow me to ask you?'
'Presents . . . that's no matter!' said Kolpakov, and he tossed his head. 'My God! She cried before you, she humbled herself. . . .'
'I am asking you, what presents did you make me?' Pasha cried.
'My God! She, a lady, so proud, so pure. . . . She was ready to go down on her knees to . . . to this wench! And I've brought her to this! I've allowed it!'
He clutched his head in his hands and moaned.
'No, I shall never forgive myself for this! I shall never forgive myself! Get away from me . . . you low creature!' he cried with repulsion, backing away from Pasha, and thrusting her off with trembling hands. 'She would have gone down on her knees, and . . . and to you! Oh, my God!'
He rapidly dressed, and pushing Pasha aside contemptuously, made for the door and went out.
Pasha lay down and began wailing aloud. She was already regretting her things which she had given away so impulsively, and her feelings were hurt. She remembered how three years ago a merchant had beaten her for no sort of reason, and she wailed more loudly than ever.
VEROTCHKA
IVAN ALEXEYITCH OGNEV remembers how on that August evening he opened the glass door with a rattle and went out on to the verandah. He was wearing a light Inverness cape and a wide-brimmed straw hat, the very one that was lying with his top-boots in the dust under his bed. In one hand he had a big bundle of books and notebooks, in the other a thick knotted stick.
Behind the door, holding the lamp to show the way, stood the master of the house, Kuznetsov, a bald old man with a long grey beard, in a snow-white pique jacket. The old man was smiling cordially and nodding his head.
'Good-bye, old fellow!' said Ognev.
Kuznetsov put the lamp on a little table and went out to the verandah. Two long narrow shadows moved down the steps towards the flower-beds, swayed to and fro, and leaned their heads on the trunks of the lime- trees.
'Good-bye and once more thank you, my dear fellow!' said Ivan Alexeyitch. 'Thank you for your welcome, for your kindness, for your affection. . . . I shall never forget your hospitality as long as I live. You are so good, and your daughter is so good, and everyone here is so kind, so good-humoured and friendly . . . Such a splendid set of people that I don't know how to say what I feel!'
From excess of feeling and under the influence of the home-made wine he had just drunk, Ognev talked in a singing voice like a divinity student, and was so touched that he expressed his feelings not so much by words as by the blinking of his eyes and the twitching of his shoulders. Kuznetsov, who had also drunk a good deal and was touched, craned forward to the young man and kissed him.
'I've grown as fond of you as if I were your dog,' Ognev went on. 'I've been turning up here almost every day; I've stayed the night a dozen times. It's dreadful to think of all the home-made wine I've drunk. And thank you most of all for your co-operation and help. Without you I should have been busy here over my statistics till October. I shall put in my preface: 'I think it my duty to express my gratitude to the President of the District Zemstvo of N——, Kuznetsov, for his kind co-operation.' There is a brilliant future before statistics! My humble respects to Vera Gavrilovna, and tell the doctors, both the lawyers and your secretary, that I shall never forget their help! And now, old fellow, let us embrace one another and kiss for the last time!'
Ognev, limp with emotion, kissed the old man once more and began going down the steps. On the last step he looked round and asked: 'Shall we meet again some day?'
'God knows!' said the old man. 'Most likely not!'
'Yes, that's true! Nothing will tempt you to Petersburg and I am never likely to turn up in this district again. Well, good-bye!'
'You had better leave the books behind!' Kuznetsov called after him. 'You don't want to drag such a weight with you. I would send them by a servant to-morrow!'
But Ognev was rapidly walking away from the house and was not listening. His heart, warmed by the wine, was brimming over with good-humour, friendliness, and sadness. He walked along thinking how frequently one met with good people, and what a pity it was that nothing was left of those meetings but memories. At times one catches a glimpse of cranes on the horizon, and a faint gust of wind brings their plaintive, ecstatic cry, and a minute later, however greedily one scans the blue distance, one cannot see a speck nor catch a sound; and like that,
