“I’m coming with you, Prince, to your place!” I cried, seized the flap and flung it open so as to get into his sledge; but Darzan suddenly jumped into the sledge past me, and the driver, tearing the flap from my hands, covered the two gentlemen.
“Devil take it!” I cried in frenzy. It came out as if I had unfastened the flap for Darzan, like a lackey.
“Home!” cried the prince.
“Stop!” I bellowed, clutching at the sledge, but the horse pulled, and I tumbled into the snow. It even seemed to me that they laughed. Jumping up, I instantly grabbed the first cab that came along and raced to the prince’s, urging my nag on every second.
IV
AS IF ON PURPOSE, the nag crawled on for an unnaturally long time, though I had promised a whole rouble. The driver kept whipping her up and, of course, whipped her enough for a rouble. My heart was sinking; I tried to start talking with the driver, but I couldn’t even get the words out, and mumbled some sort of nonsense. That was the state I was in when I ran up to the prince’s. He had just returned; he had taken Darzan home and was alone. Pale and angry, he was pacing his study. I repeat once more: he had lost terribly. He looked at me with some sort of distracted perplexity.
“You again!” he said, frowning.
“So as to have done with you, sir!” I said breathlessly. “How dared you act that way with me?”
He looked at me questioningly.
“If you were going with Darzan, you might just have told me you were going with Darzan, instead of which you started the horse, and I . . .”
“Ah, yes, it seems you fell in the snow,” and he laughed in my face.
“The response to that is a challenge, and therefore we shall first finish with our accounts . . .”
And with a trembling hand I began taking my money out and placing it on the sofa, on a little marble table, and even into some open book, in piles, handfuls, wads; several coins rolled onto the carpet.
“Ah, yes, it seems you won? . . . One can tell it by your tone.”
Never before had he spoken so impudently with me. I was very pale.
“Here . . . I don’t know how much . . . has to be counted. I owe you up to three thousand . . . or how much? . . . more or less?”
“I don’t believe I’m forcing you to pay.”
“No, sir, I myself want to pay, and you should know why. I know there’s a thousand roubles in this wad—here!” And I started counting with trembling hands, but stopped. “Never mind, I know it’s a thousand. So I’m taking this thousand for myself, and all the rest, these piles, you can take for my debt, part of my debt. I think there’s as much as two thousand here, or maybe more!”
“But you’re still keeping a thousand for yourself ?” the prince bared his teeth.
“Do you need it? In that case . . . I wanted . . . I thought you wouldn’t want . . . but if you need it—here . . .”
“No, no need,” he turned away from me contemptuously and again began pacing the room.
“And devil knows what makes you pay it back,” he suddenly turned to me with a frightful challenge in his face.
“I’m paying it back in order to demand an accounting from you!” I yelled in my turn.
“Get out of here with your eternal words and gestures!” He suddenly stamped his feet at me as if in frenzy. “I wanted to throw you out long ago, you and your Versilov.”
“You’re out of your mind!” I cried. And it did look like it.
“The two of you have worn me out with your catchy phrases, nothing but phrases, phrases, phrases! About honor, for instance! Pah! I’ve long wanted to break . . . I’m glad, glad that the moment has come. I considered myself bound, and I blushed at being obliged to receive you . . . both! But now I don’t consider myself bound by anything, not by anything, know that! Your Versilov set me on to attack Mme. Akhmakov and disgrace her . . . Don’t you dare speak to me about honor after that. Because you’re dishonorable people . . . both, both! And weren’t you ashamed to take money from me?”
Everything went dark in my eyes.
“I took it from you as a comrade,” I began terribly softly. “You yourself offered, and I trusted in your goodwill . . .”
“I’m not your comrade! I didn’t give you money for that, and you yourself know what it was for.”
“I took it against Versilov’s money; of course, it was stupid, but I . . .”
“You couldn’t have taken it against Versilov’s money without his permission, and I couldn’t have given you his money without his permission . . . I gave you my own, and you knew it—knew it and took it—and I suffered this hateful comedy in my own house!”
“What did I know? What comedy? Why did you give me the money?”
“Pour vos beaux yeux, mon cousin!”43 he guffawed right in my face.
“Ah, the devil!” I yelled, “take all of it, here’s the thousand for you! We’re quits now, and tomorrow . . .”
And I hurled the wad of banknotes at him that I had been keeping for my further needs. The wad hit him right in the waistcoat and dropped to the floor. In three huge strides, he quickly came up close to me.
“Do you dare to tell me,” he said ferociously and distinctly, syllable by syllable, “that while you were taking my money all this month, you didn’t know that your sister is pregnant by me?”
