he kept repeating, 'Thank God, thank God.'
His wife ordered a rather nicer and more ample dinner. Our landlady cooked for them herself. Our landlady is a good-natured woman in a way. And until dinner-time Gorshkov could not sit still in his seat. He went into the lodgers' rooms, without waiting to be invited. He just went in, smiled, sat down on the edge of a chair, said a word or two, or even said nothing, and went away again. At the naval man's he even took a hand at cards; they made up a game with him as fourth. He played a little, made a muddle of it, playe'd three or four rounds and threw down the cards. 'No,' he said, 'you see, I just looked in, I just looked in,' and he went away from them. He met me in the passage, took both my hands, looked me straight in the face, but so strangely; then shook hands with me and walked away, and kept smiling, but with a strange, painful smile like a dead man. His wife was crying with joy; everything was cheerful as though it were a hohday. They soon had dinner. After dinner he said to his wife: 'I tell you what,
my love, I'll lie down a little,' and he went to his bed. He called his little girl, put his hand on her head, and for a long time he was stroking the child's head. Then he turned to his wife again, 'And what of Petinka? our Petya!' he said. 'Petinka?' . . . His wife crossed herself and answered that he was dead. 'Yes, yes, I know all about it. Petinka is now in the Kingdom of Heaven.' His wife saw that he was not himself, that what had happened had completely upset him, and she said to him, 'You ought to have a nap, my love.' 'Yes, very well, I will directly . . . just a Uttle,' then he turned away, lay still for a bit, then turned round, tried to say something. His wife could not make out what he said, and asked him, 'What it is, my dear?' and he did not answer. She waited a httle, 'Well, he's asleep,' she thought, and went into the landlady's for an hour. An hour later she came back, she saw her husband had not woken up and was not stirring. She thought he was asleep, cind she sat down and began working at something. She said that for half an hour she was so lost in musing that she did not know what she was thinking about, all she can say is that she did not think of her husband. But suddenly she was roused by the feehng of uneasiness, and what struck her first of all was the death-like silence in the room. . . . She looked at the bed and saw that her husband was lying in the same position. She went up to him, pulled down the quilt and looked at him—and he was already cold^ he was dead, my darling. Gorshkov was dead, he had died suddenly, as though he had been killed by a thunder-bolt. And why he died, God only knows. It was such a shock to me, Varinka, that I can't get over it now. One can't beUeve that a man could die so easily. He was such a poor, unlucky fellow, that Gorshkov I And what a fate, what a fate! His wife was in tears and panic-stricken. The little girl crept away into a corner. There is such a hubbub going on, they will hold a post-mortem and inquest ... I can't tell you just what. But the pity of it, oh, the pity of it I It's sad to think that in reality one does not know the day or the hour . . . One dies so easily for no reason. . . .
Your
Makae Dyevushkdj.
September 19. Dear Vaevaea Alexyevna,
I hasten to infomi you, my dear, that Ratazyaev has found me work with a writer. Someone came to him, and brought him such a fat manuscript—^thank God, a lot of work. But it's so illegibly written that I don't know how to set to work on it: they want it in a hurry. It's all written in such a way that one does not understand it. . . . They have agreed to pay forty kopecks the sixteen pages. I write you all this, my own, because now I shall have extra money. And now, goodbye, my darling, I have come straight from work.
Your faithful friend,
Makar Dyevushkin.
September 23. My dear Friend, Makar Alexyevitch,
For three days I have not written you a word, and I have had a great many anxieties and worries.
The day before yesterday Bykov was here. I was alone. Fedora had gone off somewhere. I opened the door to him, and was so frightened when I saw him that I could not move. I felt that I turned pale. He walked in as he always does, with a loud laugh, took a chair and sat down. For a long while I could not recover myself. At last I sat down in the comer to my work. He even left off laughing. I believe my appearance impressed him. I have grown so thin of late, my eyes and my cheeks are hollow, I was as white as a sheet ... it would TMdly be hard for anyone to recognise me who had known me a year ago. He looked long and intently at me; then at last he began to be lively again, said something or other; I don't know what I answered, and he lauded again. He stayed a whole hour with me; talked to me a long time; asked me some questions. At last just before leaving, he took me by the hand and said (I write you it word for word): 'Varvara Alexyevitch, between ourselves, be it said, your relation and my intimate friend, Anna Fyodorovna, is a very nasty woman' (then he used an unseemly word about her). 'She led your cousin astray, and ruined you. I behaved like a rascal in that case, too; but after all, it's a thing that happens every day.' Then he laughed heartily. Then he observed that he was not great at fine speeches, and that most of what he had to explain, about which the obligations of gentlemanly feeling forebade hijn to be silent, he had told me already, and that in brief words he would
come to the rest. Then he told me he was asking my hand in marriage, that he thought it his duty to restore my good name, that he was rich, that after the wedding he would take me away to his estates in the steppes, that he wanted to go coursing hares there; that he would never come back to Petersburg again, because it was horrid in Petersburg; that he had here in Petersburg—as he expressed it—a good-for-nothing nephew whom he had sworn to deprive of the estate, and it was just for that reason in the hope of having legitimate heirs that he ^ught my hand, that it was the chief cause of his courtship. Then he observed that I was living in a very poor way: and it was no wonder I was ill hving in such a slum; predicted that I should certainly die if I stayed there another month; said that lodgings in Petersburg were horrid, and finally asked me if I wanted an57thing.
I was so overcome at his offer that, I don't know why, I began crjdng. He took my tears for gratitude and told me he had always been sure I was a good, feeling, and educated girl, but that he had not been able to make up his mind to take this step till he had found out about my present behaviour in full detail. Then he asked me about you, said that he had heard all about it, that you were a man of good principles, that he did not want to be indebted to you and asked whether five hundred roubles would be enou^ for all that you had done for me. When I explained to him that what you had done for me no money could repay, he said that it was all nonsense, that that was all romantic stuff out of novels, that I was young and read poetry, that novels were the ruin of young girls, that books were destructive of moraJity emd that he could not bear books of any sort, he advised me to wait till I was his age and then talk about people. 'Then,' he added, 'you will know what men are like.' Then he said I was to think over his offer thproughly, that he would very much dislike it if I were to take such an important step thoughtiessly; he added that thoughtlessness and impulsiveness were the ruin of inexperienced youth, but that he quite hoped for a favourable answer from me, but that in the opposite event, he should be forced to marry some Moscow shopkeeper's daughter, 'because,' he said, 'I have sworn that good-for-nothing nephew shall not have the estate.'
He forced five hundred roubles into my hands, as he said,
'to buy sweetmeats'. He said that in the country I should
grow as round as a bun, that with him I diould be living on
the fat of the land, that he had a terrible number of things to
see to now, that he was dragging about all day on business, and that he had just sUpped in to see me between his engagements. Then he went away.
I thought for a long time, I pondered many things, I wore myseli out thinking, my friend; at last I made up my mind. My friend, I shall marry him. I ought to accept his offer. If anyone can rescue me from my shame, restore my good name, and ward off poverty, privation and misfortune from me in the future, it is he and no one else. What more can one expect from the future, what more can one expect from fate? Fedora says I must not throw away my good fortune; she says, if this isn't good fortune, what is? Anyway, I can find no other course for me, my precious friend. What am I to do? I have ruined my health with work as it is; I can't go on working continually. Go into a family? I should pine away with depression, besides I should be of no use to anyone. I am of a sickly constitution, and so I shall always be a burden on other people. Of course I am not going into a paradise, but what am I to do, my friend, what am I to do? What choice have I?
I have not asked your advice. I wanted to think it over alone. The decision you have just read is unalterable, and I shall immediately inform Bykov of it, he is pressing me to answer quickly. He said that his business would not wait, that he must be off, and that he couldn't put it off for nonsense. God knows whether I shall be happy, my fate is in His holy, inscrutable power, but I have made up my mind. They say Bykov is a kind-hearted man: he will respect me; perhaps I, too, shall respect him. What more can one expect from such a marriage?
