he promptly counted out three thousand francs for an lOU which Granny signed. When this business was settled he made haste to take his leave and go away.
'And now you can go, too, Alexey Ivanovitch. I have oiJy a Httie over an hour left. I want to he down: my bones ache. Don't be hard on an old fool like me. Henceforward I won't blame yoimg people for being flighty, and it would be a sin for me now to blame that luckless fellow, your General, either. I won't give him any money, though, as he wants me to, because —to my thinking he is utterly silly; only, old fool as I am, I've no more sense than he. Verily God seeks out and punishes pride, even in old age. Well, good-bye. Marfa, lift me up!'
I wanted to see Granny off, however. What's more, I was in a state of suspense; I kept expecting that in another minute something would happen. I could not sit quietly in my room. I went out into the corridor, even for a moment went for a saunter along the avenue. My letter to her had been clear and decisive and the present catastrophe was, of course, a final one. I heard in the hotel that De Grieux had left. If she rejected me as a friend, j>erhap)s she would not reject me as a servant. I was necessary to her, I was of use to her, if only to run her errands, it was boimd to be so!
When the train was due to start I ran to the station and saw Granny into the train. Her whole party were together, in a special reserved compartment. 'Thank you, my good friend, for your disinterested sympathy,' she said, at parting from me; 'and tell Praskovya, in reference to what we were discussing yesterday, I shall expect her.'
I went home. Passing the General's rooms I met the old nurse and inquired after the General. 'Oh, he's all right, sir,' she answered me dolefully. I went in, however, but stood still in positive amazement. MUe. Blanche and the General were both laughing heartily. Madame de Cominges was sitting on
the sofa dose by. The General was evidently beside himself with delight. He was murmuring incoherently and going ofE into prolonged fits of nervous laughter, during which his face was puckered with innumerable wrinkles and his eyes disappeared from sight. Afterwards I learnt from Blanche herself that, having dismissed the Prince and having heard how the General was weeping, she had taken it into her head to comfort him by going to see him for a minute. But the poor General did not know that at that time his fate was decided, and that Mile. Blanche had already packed to set off for Paris by the first train next morning.
Stopping in the doorway of the General's study, I changed my mind and went away unnoticed. Going up to my own room and opening the door, I suddenly noticed a figure in the half-darkness sittiag on a chair in the comer by the window. She did not get up when I went in. I went up quickly, looked, and—^my heart stood still: it was PoUna.
CHAPTER XIV
I POSITIVELY cried out aloud. 'What is it? What is it?' she asked me strangely. She was pale cind looked gloomy.
'You ask what is it? You? Here in my room!'
'li 1 come, then I come tdtoigether. That's my way. You'll see that directly; light the candle.'
I lighted a candle. She got up, went up to the table, and put before me an open letter.
'Read it,' she ordered me.
'It's—^it's De Grieux's handwriting,' I cried, taking the letter. My hands trembled and the hues danced before my eyes. I have forgotten the exact wording of the letter, but here is the main drift of it, if not the actual words.
'Mademoiselle,' wrote De Grieux, 'an unfortunate circumstance compels me to go away at once. You have, no doubt, observed that I have purposely avoided a final explanation with you until such time as the whole position might he cleared up. The arrival of your old relation {de la vieiUe dame) and her absurd behaviour have put sin end to my doubts. The unsettled state of my own affairs forbids me to cherish further
the SAAreet hopes which I permitted myself to indulge for some time. I regret the past, but I trust that you will not detect in my behaviour anything unworthy of a gentleman and an honest man (genMhomme et hormete homme). Having lost almost all my money in loems to your stepfather, I find myself compelled to make tiie utmost use of what is left to me; I have already sent word to my friend in Petersburg to arrange at once for the sale of the estates he has mortgaged to me; knowing, however, that your frivolous stepfather has squandered your private fortune I have determined to forgive him fifty thousand francs, and I am returning him part of my claims on his property equivalent to that sum, so that you are now put in a position to regain all you have lost by demanding the property from him by legal process. I hope. Mademoiselle, that in the present position of affairs my action will be very advantageous to you. I hope, too, that by this action I am fully performing the duty of a man and a gentleman. Rest assured that your memory is imprinted upon my heart for ever.'
'Well, that's all clear,' I said, turning to Polina; 'surely you coiJd have expected nothing else,' I added, with indignation.
'I expected nothing,' she answered, with apparent composure, though there was a tremor in her voice; 'I had made up my mind long ago; I read his mind and knew what he was thinking. He thought that I was trying—^that I should insist ...' (She broke off without finishing her sentence, bit her lips emd was silent.) 'I purposely doubled my scorn towards him,' she began again. 'I waited to see what was coming from him. If a telegram had come telling of the inheritance I'd have flung him the money borrowed from that idiot, my stepfather, and would have sent him about his business. He has been hateful to me for ages and ages. Oh! he was not the same man! a thousand times over, I tell you, he was different 1 but now, now . . . Oh, with what happiness I could fling that fifty thousand in his nasty face and spit and stamp ...'
'But the security, the lOU for that fifty thousand, is in the General's hands. Take it and return it to De Grieux.'
'Oh, that's not the same thing, that's not the same thing ...'
'Yes, that's true, it's not the same thing. Besides, what is the General capable of now? And Granny!' I cried suddenly.
Polina looked at me, as it were absent-mindedly and impatiently. ^^
'Why Granny?' asked Polina, with vexation. 'I can't go to her . . . And I don't want to ask anyone's pardon,' she added irritably.
'What's to be done!' I cried, 'and how, oh, how could you love De Grieux! Oh, the scoundrel, the scoundrel! If you like I will kill him in a duel 1 Where is he now?'
'He's at Frankfurt, and will be there three days.'
'One word from you and I'll set off to-morrow by the first train,' I said, with stupid enthusiasm.
She laughed.
'Why, he'll say, maybe: 'Give me back the fifty thousand francs first.' Besides, what should you fight him for? . . . What nonsense it is!'
'But where, where is one to get that fifty thousand francs?' I repeated, grinding my teeth as though it had been possible to pick them up from the floor. 'I say—Mr. Astley,' I suggested, turning to her with a strange idea dawning upon me.
Her eyes flashed.
'What, do you mean to say you yoturself want me to turn from you to that Englishman!' she said, looking in my face with a searching glance and smiling bitterly. For the first time in her life she addressed me in the second person singular.
I beUeve she was giddy with emotion at the moment, and all at once she sat down on the sofa as though she were exhausted.
It was as though I had been struck by a flash of Ughtning.. I stood up and could not believe my eyes, could not believe my ears! Why, then she loved me! She had come to me and not to Mr. Astley!
She, she, a yoimg girl, had come to my room in a hotel, so she had utterly compromised herself by her own act, and I, I was standing before her and still did not understand.
One wild idea flashed through my mind.
'Polina, give me only one hour. Stay here only one hour and . . . I'U come back. That's . . . that's essential! You shall see! Be here, be here!'
And I ran out of the room, not responding to her amazed and questioning look; she called something after me but I did not turn back.
Sometimes the wildest idea, the most apparently impossible thought, takes possession of one's mind so strongly that one accepts it at last as something substantial . . . more than that, if the idea is associated with a
