face. Only two or three persons knew the story fully, so far as that was possible. The one who had known most of all was the deceased, Andronikov, who had for many years had business relations with the Ahmakovs, and had had to do with Katerina Nikolaevna particularly in one case. But he kept all these secrets even from his own family and had only told part of the story to Kraft and Marie Ivanovna, and that from necessity.
“The chief point is that there is a document in existence,” concluded Kraft, “which Mme. Ahmakov is very much afraid of.”
And this was what he told me about that. When the old prince, Katerina Nikolaevna’s father, was abroad, beginning to recover from his attack, she was so indiscreet as to write to Andronikov in dead secret (Katerina Nikolaevna put implicit faith in him) an extremely compromising letter. During his convalescence the old prince actually did, it was said, display a propensity to waste his money — almost to fling it away, in fact; he began buying, when he was abroad, quite useless but expensive objects, pictures, vases, making donations and subscriptions of large sums to various institutions out there, and goodness knows what. He almost bought, on the sly, for an immense sum, a ruined and encumbered estate from a fashionable Russian spendthrift; and, finally, began even dreaming of matrimony. And in view of all this, Katerina Nikolaevna, who had never left her father’s side during his illness, wrote to Andronikov, as a “lawyer” and “an old friend,” inquiring whether “it would be legally possible to put the old prince under guardianship or to declare him incompetent to manage his own affairs, and, if so, how it could best be done without scandal, that no one might blame her and that her father’s feelings might be spared, etc. etc.” It was said that Andronikov advised her against this and dissuaded her; and later on, when the old prince had completely recovered, it was impossible to return to the idea: but the letter remained in Andronikov’s hands. And now he had died, and Katerina Nikolaevna had at once remembered the letter: if it turned up among the deceased’s papers and fell into the old prince’s hands, he would, no doubt, have cast her off for ever, cut her out of his will and not have given her another farthing during his lifetime. The thought that his own daughter did not believe in his sanity, and even wanted to have him certified as a lunatic would change the lamb into a wild beast. Her husband’s gambling habits had left her at his death without a farthing, and she had only her father to look to. She fully hoped to receive from him a second dowry as ample as the first.
Kraft did not quite know what had become of the letter, but observed that Andronikov never tore up papers of consequence, and he was, besides, a man of “broad principles” as well as “broad intelligence.” (I was positively surprised at the independence of Kraft’s criticism of Andronikov, whom he had loved and respected so much.) But Kraft felt convinced that Versilov had obtained possession of the compromising document through his close relations with Andronikov’s widow and daughters; it was known, indeed, that they had at once, of necessity, handed over all the deceased’s papers to Versilov. He knew, too, that Katerina Nikolaevna was already aware that the letter was in Versilov’s possession and that she was frightened on account of it, imagining that Versilov would take the letter straight to her old father; that on her return from abroad she had searched for the document in Petersburg, had been at the Andronikovs’, and was still hunting for it now, so that she must still have some hope that the letter was not in Versilov’s hands; and, finally, that she had gone to Moscow simply with the same object, and had entreated Marie Ivanovna to look for it among the papers that had remained with her. She had only recently, since her return to Petersburg, heard of the existence of Marie Ivanovna, and of the footing on which the latter had stood with Andronikov.
“You don’t think she found it at Marie Ivanovna’s?” I asked. “I have my own ideas.”
“If Marie Ivanovna has not told even you about it, probably she hasn’t got it.”
“Then you suppose the document is in Versilov’s hands?”
“Most likely it is. I don’t know, though. Anything is possible,” he answered with evident weariness.
I gave up questioning him, and indeed there was no object in doing so. All that mattered most had been made clear to me, in spite of all this sordid tangle; all that I feared most was confirmed.
“It’s all like a delirious nightmare,” I said, deeply dejected, as I took up my hat.
“Is the man so dear to you?” asked Kraft. I read his deep sympathy on his face at that minute.
“I felt I shouldn’t learn the whole story from you,” said I. “Mme. Ahmakov is the only hope left me. I was resting my hopes on her. Perhaps I shall go to her and perhaps not.”
Kraft looked at me with some surprise.
“Good-bye, Kraft,” I said. “Why force oneself on people who don’t want to see one? Isn’t it better to break with everything, eh?”
“And what then?” he asked almost sullenly, keeping his eyes on the ground.
“Retreat within oneself! Break with everything and withdraw within oneself!”
“To America?”
“To America! Within oneself, simply within oneself! That’s my whole idea, Kraft!” I said enthusiastically.
He looked at me with some curiosity.
“Have you such a place ‘within yourself’?”
“Yes. Good-bye, Kraft; thank you. I am sorry to have troubled you. If I were in your place and had that sort of Russia in my head I’d send them all to hell; I’d say: ‘Get out with you; keep your fretting and intriguing to yourselves — it’s nothing to do with me.’”
“Stay a little longer,” he said suddenly when he was already with me at the front door.
I was a little surprised. I went back and sat down again. Kraft sat opposite. We looked at each other with a sort of smile. I can see it all now. I remember that I felt a sort of wonder at him.
“What I like in you is that you’re so — courteous,” I said suddenly.
“Yes?”
“I feel that, because I don’t often succeed in being courteous myself, though I should like to. And yet perhaps it’s better for people to be rude to one; at least they save one from the misfortune of liking them.”
“What hour of the day do you like best?” he asked, evidently not listening to me.
“What hour? I don’t know. I don’t like sunset.”
“No?” he brought out with a peculiar curiosity.
“Are you going away again?”
“Yes. I’m going away.”
“Soon?”
“Yes.”
“Surely you don’t want a revolver to get to Vilna?” I asked, without the faintest hidden meaning in my words — and indeed there was no meaning at all! I asked the question simply because I happened to glance at the revolver and I was at a loss for something to say.
He turned and looked intently at the revolver.
“No, I take it simply from habit.”
“If I had a revolver I should keep it hidden somewhere, locked up. It really is a temptation, you know. I may not believe in an epidemic of suicide, but if it’s always catching my eye, there really are moments, you know, when it might tempt one.”
“Don’t talk about it,” he said, and suddenly got up from his chair.
“I wasn’t thinking of myself,” I said, standing up too. “I’m not going to use it. If you were to give me three lives it wouldn’t be enough for me.”
“Long life to you,” broke from him.
He gave me an absent-minded smile and, strange to say, walked straight into the passage as though to show me out, probably not noticing what he was doing.
“I wish you every sort of success, Kraft,” I said, as I went out on to the stairs.
“That’s as it may be,” he answered firmly.
“Till we meet again.”
“That’s as it may be, too.”
I remember his last glance at me.
3
And this was the man for whom my heart had been beating all those years! And what had I expected from Kraft, what new information?
As I came away from Kraft’s I felt very hungry. It was evening and I had had no dinner. I went to a little restaurant in Great Prospect that I might not have to spend more than twenty, or at most twenty-five, kopecks — I would not have allowed myself to spend more at that time. I took some soup for myself, and as I ate it I sat looking
