“But I beg you,” he began in a thoroughly pleading voice, “drop it all! It is as if you are pleased that a whole story will come of it! It is not satisfaction you want, but a story! I told you, it will come out amusing and even clever—which is maybe what you are after—but, in short,” he concluded, seeing that I had stood up and was taking my hat, “I have come to convey to you these few words from a certain person. Read them. I was told to wait for an answer.”
So saying, he took from his pocket a little note, folded and sealed with wax, and handed it to me.
It was written in Polina’s hand:
I have the impression that you intend to go on with this story. You’re angry and are beginning to behave like a schoolboy. But there are certain special circumstances here, and later maybe I will explain them to you; so please stop it and calm yourself. How stupid this all is! I have need of you, and you have promised to obey. Remember the Schlangenberg. I beg you to be obedient, and, if need be, I order it.
Your P.
P.S. If you are angry with me about yesterday, forgive me.
Everything seemed to turn upside down as I read these lines. My lips went white, and I began to tremble. The cursed Frenchman looked on with an exaggeratedly modest air and averted his eyes from me, as if in order not to see my confusion. It would have been better if he had burst out laughing at me.
“Very well,” I said, “tell mademoiselle not to worry. Allow me, however, to ask you,” I added sharply, “why you took so long to give me this note? Instead of talking about trifles, it seems to me, you ought to have begun with it…since you came precisely on that errand.”
“Oh, I wanted…generally this is all so strange that you must pardon my natural impatience. I wanted the sooner to learn your intentions for myself, from you personally. However, I do not know what is in this note, and thought I would always have time to give it to you.”
“I see, you were simply told to give it to me as a last resort, and not to give it if you could settle it verbally. Right? Talk straight, M. des Grieux!”
“Peut-être,”*20 he said, assuming an air of some special restraint and giving me some sort of special look.
I took my hat; he inclined his head and left. I fancied there was a mocking smile on his lips. And how could it be otherwise?
“We’ll settle accounts, Frenchy, we’ll measure forces!” I muttered, going down the stairs. I still couldn’t grasp anything, as if I’d been hit on the head. The fresh air revived me a little.
After a couple of minutes, when I just began to grasp things clearly, two thoughts distinctly presented themselves to me: first, that from such trifles, from a few prankish, improbable threats from a mere boy, uttered the day before in passing, such a general alarm had arisen! and the second thought—what influence, anyhow, does this Frenchman have on Polina? One word from him, and she does everything he wants, writes a note, and even begs me.
Of course, their relations had always been an enigma to me from the very beginning, ever since I got to know them; however, in these last few days I’d noticed in her a decided loathing and even contempt for him, while he didn’t even look at her, was even simply impolite to her. I’d noticed that. Polina herself spoke to me of her loathing; extremely significant confessions have burst from her…That means he’s simply got her in his power, he keeps her in some sort of chains…
Chapter VIII
ON THE PROMENADE, as they call it here, that is, the chestnut avenue, I met my Englishman.
“Oho!” he began when he saw me, “I’m going to you, and you to me. So you’ve already parted from your people?”
“Tell me, first of all, how you know about all this,” I asked in surprise. “Can it be that everybody knows all about it?”
“Oh, no, everybody does not know; and it’s better if they don’t. Nobody’s talking about it.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I know because I chanced to learn. Now where are you going to go from here? I like you, that’s why I was coming to see you.”
“You’re a nice man, Mr. Astley,” I said (though I was terribly struck: where did he find out?), “and since I haven’t had my coffee yet, and you probably did a poor job on yours, let’s go to the vauxhall café, sit there, have a smoke, and I’ll tell you everything, and…you’ll also tell me.”
The café was a hundred paces away. Coffee was brought, we sat down, I lit a cigarette, Mr. Astley didn’t light anything and, fixing his eyes on me, prepared to listen.
“I’m not going to go anywhere, I’m staying here,” I began.
“I was just sure you’d stay,” Mr. Astley said approvingly.
On my way to see Mr. Astley, I had had no intention and even purposely did not want to tell him anything about my love for Polina. In all those days I had scarcely said a single word to him about it. Besides, he was very shy.
I had noticed from the first that Polina had made a great impression on him, but he never mentioned her name. But, strangely, suddenly, now, as soon as he sat down and fixed me with his intent, tinny gaze, an urge came over me, I don’t know why, to tell him everything, that is, all my love and with all its nuances.
I spent a whole half-hour telling him, and I found it extremely pleasant to be telling about it for the first time! Noticing that in some especially ardent places he became embarrassed, I deliberately increased the ardor of my story. One thing I regret: I may have said some unnecessary things about the Frenchman…
Mr. Astley listened, sitting opposite me, without moving, without uttering a word or a sound, and looking me in the eye; but when I started speaking of the Frenchman, he suddenly cut me short and asked sternly whether I had the right to mention this extraneous circumstance. Mr. Astley always put his questions in a very strange way.
“You’re right: I’m afraid I don’t,” I replied.
“You can say nothing precise about this marquis and Miss Polina, apart from mere surmises?”
Again I was surprised at such a categorical question from such a shy man as Mr. Astley.
“No, nothing precise,” I replied, “of course not.”
“If so, you have done a wrong thing not only in talking about it with me, but even in thinking about it to yourself.”
“All right, all right! I acknowledge it; but that’s not the point now,” I interrupted, surprised in myself. Here I told him the whole of yesterday’s story in all its details, Polina’s escapade, my adventure with the baron, my dismissal, the general’s extraordinary cowardice, and finally I gave him a detailed account of today’s visit from des Grieux, with all its nuances; in conclusion, I showed him the note.
“What do you make of it?” I asked. “I was precisely coming to learn your thoughts. As for me, I think I could kill that little Frenchman, and maybe I will.”
“And I, too,” said Mr. Astley. “As for Miss Polina…you know, we enter into relations even with people we hate, if necessity demands it of us. Here there may be relations unknown to you, which depend on extraneous circumstances.
I think you can rest easy—in part, to be sure. As for her action yesterday, it is, of course, strange—not because she wanted to get rid of you and sent you under the baron’s stick (which he didn’t use, though I don’t understand why, since he had it in his hand), but because such an escapade from such a…from such an excellent miss…is improper. Naturally, she couldn’t have foreseen that you would literally carry out her jesting wish…”
“You know what?” I cried suddenly, peering intently at Mr. Astley. “I have the feeling that you’ve already heard about all this, and do you know from whom?—from Miss Polina herself!”
Mr. Astley looked at me in surprise.
“Your eyes flash, and I read suspicion in them,” he said, recovering his former equanimity at once, “but you haven’t the least right to reveal your suspicions. I cannot acknowledge that right, and I totally refuse to answer your question.”
“Well, enough! And you needn’t!” I cried, strangely agitated and not understanding why that had popped into my mind! And when, where, how could Mr. Astley have been chosen by Polina as a confidant? Lately, however, I had partially let Mr. Astley slip from sight, and Polina had always been an enigma to me—so much an enigma that now, for instance, in setting out to tell Mr. Astley the whole history of my love, I was suddenly struck, during the telling, by the fact that I could say almost nothing precise and positive about my relations with her. On the contrary, everything was fantastic, strange, insubstantial, and even bore no resemblance to anything.
“Well, all right, all right; I’m confused, and now there are still many things I can’t grasp,” I replied as if breathlessly. “However, you’re a good man. Now it’s a different matter, and I ask your—not advice, but opinion.”
I paused and began:
“Why do you think the general got so scared? Why did they make such a story out of my most
