“When from your merry lips
Tenderness flows,” &c.
Velchaninoff seemed to address the words to Nadia exclusively, but the whole party stood around him. His voice had long since gone the way of all flesh, but it was clear that he must have had a good one once, and it so happened that Velchaninoff had heard this particular song many years ago, from Glinkes’ own lips, when a student at the university, and remembered the great effect that it had made upon him when he first heard it. The song was full of the most intense passion of expression, and Velchaninoff sang it well, with his eyes fixed upon Nadia.
Amid the applause that followed the completion of the performance, Pavel Pavlovitch came forward, seized Nadia’s hand and drew her away from the proximity of Velchaninoff; he then returned to the latter at the piano, and, with every evidence of frantic rage, whispered to him, his lips all of a tremble,
“One moment with you!”
Velchaninoff, seeing that the man was capable of worse things in his then frame of mind, took Pavel’s hand and led him out through the balcony into the garden—quite dark now.
“Do you understand, sir, that you must come away at once—this very minute?” said Pavel Pavlovitch.
“No, sir, I do not!”
“Do you remember,” continued Pavel in his frenzied whisper, “do you remember that you begged me to tell you all, everything—down to the smallest details? Well, the time has come for telling you all—come!”
Velchaninoff considered a moment, glanced once more at Pavel Pavlovitch, and consented to go.
“Oh! stay and have another cup of tea!” said Mrs. Zachlebnikoff, when this decision was announced.
“Pavel Pavlovitch, why are you taking Alexey Ivanovitch away?” cried the girls, with angry looks. As for Nadia, she looked so cross with Pavel, that the latter felt absolutely uncomfortable; but he did not give in.
“Oh, but I am very much obliged to Pavel Pavlovitch,” said Velchaninoff, “for reminding me of some most important business which I must attend to this very evening, and which I might have forgotten,” laughed Velchaninoff, as he shook hands with his host and made his bow to the ladies, especially to Katia, as the family thought.
“You must come again soon!” said the host; “we have been so glad to see you; it was so good of you to come!”
“Yes, so glad!” said the lady of the house.
“Do come again soon!” cried the girls, as Pavel Pavlovitch and Velchaninoff took their seats in the carriage; “Alexey Ivanovitch, do come back soon!” And with these voices in their ears they drove away.
CHAPTER XIII: On Whose Side Most?
In spite of Velchaninoff’s apparently happy day, the feeling of annoyance and suffering at his heart had hardly actually left him for a single moment. Before he sang the song he had not known what to do with himself, or suppressed anger and melancholy—perhaps that was the reason why he had sung with so much feeling and passion.
“To think that I could so have lowered myself as to forget everything!” he thought—and then despised himself for thinking it; “it is more humiliating still to cry over what is done,” he continued. “Far better to fly into a passion with someone instead.”
“Fool!” he muttered—looking askance at Pavel Pavlovitch, who sat beside him as still as a mouse. Pavel Pavlovitch preserved a most obstinate silence—probably concentrating and ranging his energies. He occasionally took his hat off, impatiently, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
Once—and once only—Pavel spoke, to the coachman, he asked whether there was going to be a thunder-storm.
“Wheugh!” said the man, “I should think so! It’s been a steamy day—just the day for it!”
By the time town was reached—half-past ten—the whole sky was overcast.
“I am coming to your house,” said Pavel to Velchaninoff, when almost at the door.
“Quite so; but I warn you, I feel very unwell to-night!”
“All right—I won’t stay too long.”
When the two men passed under the gateway, Pavel Pavlovitch disappeared into the ‘dvornik’s’ room for a minute, to speak to Mavra.
“What did you go in there for?” asked Velchaninoff severely as they mounted the stairs and reached his own door.
“Oh—nothing—nothing at all,—just to tell them about the coachman.——”
“Very well. Mind, I shall not allow you to drink!”
Pavel Pavlovitch did not answer.
Velchaninoff lit a candle, while Pavel threw himself into a chair;—then the former came and stood menacingly before him.
“I may have told you I should have my last word to say to-night, as well as you!” he said with suppressed anger in his voice and manner: “Here it is. I consider conscientiously that things are square between you and me, now; and therefore there is no more to be said, understand me, about anything. Since this is so, had you not better go, and let me close the door after you?”
“Let’s cry ‘quits’ first, Alexey Ivanovitch,” said Pavel Pavlovitch, gazing into Velchaninoff’s eyes with great sweetness.
“Quits?” cried the latter, in amazement; “you strange man, what are we to cry quits about? Are you harping upon your promise of a ‘last word’?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, well, we have nothing more to cry quits for. We have been quits long since,” said Velchaninoff.
“Dear me, do you really think so?” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, in a shrill, sharp voice, pressing his two hands tightly together, finger to finger, as he held them up before his breast.
Velchaninoff said nothing. He rose from his seat and began to walk up and down the room. The word “Liza” resounded through and through his soul like the voice of a bell.
“Well, what is there that you still consider unsettled between us?” he asked at last, looking angrily at Pavel, who had never ceased to follow him with his eyes—always holding his hands before his breast, finger tip to finger tip.
“Don’t go down there any more,” said Pavel, almost in a whisper, and rising from his seat with every indication of humble entreaty.
“What! is that all?” cried Velchaninoff, bursting into an angry laugh; “good heavens, man, you have done nothing but surprise me all day.” He had begun in a tone of exasperation, but he now abruptly changed both voice and expression, and continued with an air of deep feeling. “Listen,” he said, “listen to me. I don’t think I have ever felt so deeply humiliated as I am feeling now, in consequence of the events of to-day. In the first place, that I should have condescended to go down with you at all, and in the second place, all that happened there. It has been such a day of pettifogging—pitiful pettifogging. I have profaned and lowered myself by taking a share in it all, and forgetting——Well, it’s done now. But look here—you fell upon me to-day, unawares—upon a sick man. Oh, you needn’t excuse yourself; at all events I shall certainly not go there again. I have not the slightest interest in so doing,” he concluded, with an air of decision.
“No, really!” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, making no secret of his delight and exultation.
Velchaninoff glanced contemptuously at him, and recommenced his march up and down the room.
“You have determined to be happy under any circumstances, I suppose?” he observed, after a pause. He could not resist making the remark disdainfully.
“Yes, I have,” said Pavel, quietly.
“It’s no business of mine that he’s a fool and a knave, out of pure idiocy!” thought Velchaninoff. “I can’t help hating him, though I feel that he is not even worth hating.”
“I’m a permanent husband,” said Pavel Pavlovitch, with the most exquisitely servile irony, at his own expense. “I remember you using that expression, Alexey Ivanovitch, long ago, when you were with us at T——. I remember many of your original phrases of that time, and when you spoke of ‘permanent husbands,’ the other day, I recollected the expression.”
At this point Mavra entered the room with a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
“Forgive me, Alexey Ivanovitch,” said Pavel, “you know I can’t get on without it. Don’t consider it an audacity on my part—think of it as a mere bit of by-play unworthy your notice.”
“Well,” consented Velchaninoff, with a look of disgust, “but I must remind you that I don’t feel well, and that—”
“One little moment—I’ll go at once, I really will—I must just drink one glass, my throat is so——”
He seized the bottle eagerly, and poured himself out a glass, drank it greedily at a gulp, and sat down. He looked at Velchaninoff almost tenderly.
“What a nasty looking beast!” muttered the latter to himself.
“It’s all her friends that make her like that,” said Pavel, suddenly, with animation.
“What? Oh, you refer to the lady. I——”
“And, besides, she is so very young still, you see,” resumed Pavel. “I shall be her slave—she shall see a little society, and a bit of the world. She will change, sir, entirely.”
“I mustn’t forget to give him back the bracelet, by-the-bye,” thought Velchaninoff, frowning, as he felt for the case in his coat pocket.
“You said just now that I am determined to be happy, Alexey Ivanovitch,” continued Pavel, confidentially, and with almost touching earnestness. “I must marry, else what will become of me? You see for yourself” (he pointed to the bottle), “and that’s only a hundredth part of what I demean myself to nowadays. I cannot get on without marrying again, sir; I must have a new faith. If I can but believe in some one again, sir, I shall rise—I shall be saved.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” exclaimed Velchaninoff, very nearly laughing in his face; it seemed so absurdly inconsistent.
“Look here,” he continued, roaring the words out, “let me know
