I must beg the reader to remember again that I had a slight giddiness in my head; if it had not been for that I should have acted and spoken differently. In the shop, in a back room, one could indeed have eaten oysters, and we sat down to a table covered with a filthy cloth. Lambert ordered champagne; a glass of cold wine of a golden colour was set before me and seemed looking at me invitingly; but I felt annoyed.
“You see, Lambert, what annoys me most is that you think you can order me about now as you used to do at Touchard’s, while you are cringing upon everybody here.”
“You fool! Aie, let’s clink glasses.”
“You don’t even deign to keep up appearances with me: you might at least disguise the fact that you want to make me drunk.”
“You are talking rot and you’re drunk. You must drink some more, and you’ll be more cheerful. Take your glass, take it!”
“Why do you keep on ‘take it’? I am going and that’s the end of it.”
And I really did get up. He was awfully vexed:
“It was Trishatov whispered that to you: I saw you whispering. You are a fool for that. Alphonsine is really disgusted if he goes near her. . . . He’s a dirty beast, I’ll tell you what he’s like.”
“You’ve told me already. You can talk of nothing but your Alphonsine, you’re frightfully limited.”
“Limited?” he did not understand. “They’ve gone over now to that pock-marked fellow. That’s what it is! That’s why I sent them about their business. They’re dishonest. That fellow’s a blackguard and he’s corrupting them. I insisted that they should always behave decently.”
I sat still and as it were mechanically took my glass and drank a draught.
“I’m ever so far ahead of you in education,” I said. But he was only too delighted that I went on sitting there, and at once filled up my glass.
“And you know you’re afraid of them!” I went on taunting him, and no doubt I was even nastier than he was at that moment. “Andreyev knocked your hat off, and you gave him twenty-five roubles for it.”
“I did give it him, but he’ll pay me back. They are rebellious, but I’ll be quits with them.”
“You are awfully upset by that pock-marked man. And do you know it strikes me that I’m the only one left you. All your hopes now are resting on me — aren’t they?”
“Yes, Arkasha, that is so: you are the only friend left me; you are right in saying that!” he slapped me on the shoulder.
What could be done with a man so crude; he was utterly obtuse, and took irony for serious praise.
“You could save me from bad things if you would be a good comrade, Arkady,” he went on, looking at me caressingly.
“In what way could I save you?”
“You know yourself what it is. Without me, like a fool, you will certainly be stupid; but I’d get you thirty thousand and we would go halves and you know how. Why, think who you are; you’re nothing — no name, no position, and here you’d win first prize straight off: and having such a fortune, you’ll know how to make a career!”
I was simply astounded at this attack. I had taken for granted that he would dissemble, but he had begun upon it with such bluntness, such schoolboyish bluntness. I resolved to listen to him from a desire to be open- minded and . . . from intense curiosity.
“Look here, Lambert, you won’t understand this, but I’m consenting to listen to you because I’m open- minded,” I declared firmly, and again I took a gulp at my glass. Lambert at once filled it up.
“I’ll tell you what, Arkady: if a fellow like Buring had dared to abuse me and strike me in the presence of a lady I adored, I don’t know what I should have done! But you put up with it, I’m ashamed of you: you’re a poor creature!”
“How dare you say that Buring struck me!” I shouted, turning crimson. “It was more I struck him than he me.”
“No, it was he struck you, not you struck him.”
“You’re lying, I trod on his foot too!”
“But he shoved you back, and told the footman to drag you away . . . and she sat and looked on from her carriage and laughed at you; she knows that you have no father and that you can be insulted.”
“I don’t understand this schoolboyish conversation, Lambert, and I’m ashamed of it. You are saying this to irritate me, and as crudely and as openly as though I were a boy of sixteen. You’ve been plotting with Anna Andreyevna!” I cried, trembling with anger, and still mechanically sipping my wine.
“Anna Andreyevna’s a sly jade! She’s humbugging you and me and all the world! I have been waiting for you, because you can best finish off with that woman.”
“With what woman?”
“With Madame Ahmakov. I know all about it. You told me yourself that she is afraid of that letter you’ve got . . .”
“What letter . . . you’re talking nonsense. . . . Have you seen her?” I muttered in confusion.
“Yes, I saw her. She’s beautiful. Tres belle; and you’ve taste.”
“I know you’ve seen her but you did not dare speak to her, and I wish you did not dare to speak of her either.”
“You’re a boy, and she laughs at you — so there! We had a virtuous lady like that in Moscow. Ough, didn’t she turn up her nose! but she began to tremble when we threatened that we would tell all we knew and she knuckled under directly; and we got all we wanted both ways, money, and — you understand? Now she’s virtue unapproachable again in society — foo! my word, isn’t she high and mighty, and hasn’t she got a turn-out. Ah, you should have seen that little back room it happened in! You’ve not lived; if only you knew the little back rooms they don’t shrink from . . .”
“I’ve thought that,” I could not help muttering.
“They’re corrupt to their very finger-tips; you don’t know what they’re capable of! Alphonsine lived in a house like that, and she was disgusted.”
“I have thought of that,” I chimed in again.
“But they beat you, and you complain . . .”
“Lambert, you’re a blackguard, you’re a damned beast!” I cried, suddenly pulling myself together and beginning to tremble. “I have dreamed all this, you were in it and Anna Andreyevna. . . . Oh, you damned brute! Did you really think I was such a scoundrel? I dreamed it because I knew that you would say this. And besides, all this can’t be so simple that you can talk to me about it so simply and directly.”
“He is in a rage, tut, tut, tut!” Lambert drawled, laughing and triumphant. “Well, Arkasha, my boy, now I’ve found out all I wanted to know. That’s why I was so eager to see you. Listen, you love her I see, and want to revenge yourself on Buring. That’s what I wanted to find out. I’ve been suspecting it all this time while I’ve been waiting to see you. Ceci pose, cela change la question. And so much the better, for she loves you too. So you must marry her without a moment’s delay, that’s the best thing; you can’t do anything else, that’s your safest position. And then remember, Arkady, that you have a friend in me of whom you can make any use you like. And that friend will help you, and will marry you: I’ll move heaven and earth, Arkasha! And you can give your old friend thirty thousand for his trouble afterwards, eh? And I’ll help you, don’t doubt that. I know all the ins and outs of the business, and they shall give you the whole dowry, and you’ll be a wealthy man with a career before you!”
Though my head was in a whirl I looked at Lambert with wonder. He was in earnest, and not merely in earnest in what he said, but in believing in the possibility of my marrying; I could see that he thoroughly believed in it himself, and, in fact, caught at the idea with enthusiasm. I saw, of course, too, that he was entrapping me like a schoolboy (I certainly must have seen it even then); but the thought of marrying her so thrilled me that though I wondered how Lambert could believe in such a fantastic notion, yet, at the same time I tried violently to believe in it myself, though I did not for an instant lose consciousness of the fact that it could not possibly come to pass. All this was mingled together at the same time.
“But is it possible?” I faltered.
“Why not? you will show her the letter, she’ll be frightened and marry you to keep her money.”
I made up my mind not to stop Lambert in his vile suggestions, for he disclosed them to me with such simplicity and did not suspect that I might be revolted by them; I did mutter, however, that I should not like to marry her simply by force.
