“I—I wished to try——,” began Pavel, with some confusion.
“Try what?”
“The effect, sir. You see, Alexey Ivanovitch, I have only been visiting there a week” (he grew more and more confused), “and yesterday, when I met you, I thought to myself that I had never seen her yet in society; that is, in the society of other men besides myself—a stupid idea, I know it is—I was very anxious to try—you know my wretchedly jealous nature.” He suddenly raised his head and blushed violently.
“He can’t be telling me the truth!” thought Velchaninoff; he was struck dumb with surprise.
“Well, go on!” he muttered at last.
“Well, I see it was all her pretty childish nature, sir—that and her friends together. You must forgive my stupid conduct towards yourself to-day, Alexey Ivanovitch. I will never do it again—never again, sir, I assure you!”
“I shall never be there to give you the opportunity,” replied Velchaninoff with a laugh.
“That’s partly why I say it,” said Pavel.
“Oh, come! I’m not the only man in the world you know!” said the other irritably.
“I am sorry to hear you say that, Alexey Ivanovitch. My esteem for Nadejda is such that I——”
“Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I meant nothing, I assure you! Only it surprises me that you should have expected so much of me—that you trusted me so completely.”
“I trusted you entirely, sir, solely on account of—all that has passed.”
“So that you still consider me the most honourable of men?” Velchaninoff paused, the naïve nature of his sudden question surprised even himself.
“I always did think you that, sir!” said Pavel, hanging his head.
“Of course, quite so—I didn’t mean quite that—I wanted to say, in spite of all prejudices you may have formed, you——”
“Yes, in spite of all prejudices!”
“And when you first came to Petersburg?” asked Velchaninoff, who himself felt the monstrosity of his own inquisitive questions, but could not resist putting them.
“I considered you the most honourable of men when I first came to Petersburg, sir; no less. I always respected you, Alexey Ivanovitch!”
Pavel Pavlovitch raised his eyes and looked at his companion without the smallest trace of confusion.
Velchaninoff suddenly felt cowed and afraid. He was anxious that nothing should result—nothing disagreeable—from this conversation, since he himself was responsible for having initiated it.
“I loved you, Alexey Ivanovitch; all that year at T—— I loved you—you did not observe it,” continued Pavel Pavlovitch, his voice trembling with emotion, to the great discomfiture of his companion. “You did not observe my affection, because I was too lowly a being to deserve any sort of notice; but it was unnecessary that you should observe my love. Well, sir, and all these nine years I have thought of you, for I have never known such a year of life as that year was.” (Pavel’s eyes seemed to have a special glare in them at this point.) “I remembered many of your sayings and expressions, sir, and I thought of you always as a man imbued with the loftiest sentiments, and gifted with knowledge and intellect, sir—of the highest order—a man of grand ideas. ‘Great ideas do not proceed so frequently from greatness of intellect, as from elevation of taste and feeling.’ You yourself said that, sir, once. I dare say you have forgotten the fact, but you did say it. Therefore I always thought of you, sir, as a man of taste and feeling; consequently I concluded—consequently I trusted you, in spite of everything.”
Pavel Pavlovitch’s chin suddenly began to tremble. Velchaninoff was frightened out of his wits. This unexpected tone must be put an end to at all hazards.
“Enough, Pavel Pavlovitch!” he said softly, blushing violently and with some show of irritation. “And why—why (Velchaninoff suddenly began to shout passionately)—why do you come hanging round the neck of a sick man, a worried man—a man who is almost out of his wits with fever and annoyance of all sorts, and drag him into this abyss of lies and mirage and vision and shame—and unnatural, disproportionate, distorted nonsense! Yes, sir, that’s the most shameful part of the whole business—the disproportionate nonsense of what you say! You know it’s all humbug; both of us are mean wretches—both of us; and if you like I’ll prove to you at once that not only you don’t love me, but that you loathe and hate me with all your heart, and that you are a liar, whether you know it or not! You took me down to see your bride, not—not a bit in the world to try how she would behave in the society of other men—absurd idea!—You simply saw me, yesterday, and your vile impulse led you to carry me off there in order that you might show me the girl, and say, as it were. There, look at that! She’s to be mine! Try your hand there if you can! It was nothing but your challenge to me! You may not have known it, but this was so, as I say; and you felt the impulse which I have described. Such a challenge could not be made without hatred; consequently you hate me.”
Velchaninoff almost rushed up and down the room as he shouted the above words; and with every syllable the humiliating consciousness that he was allowing himself to descend to the level of Pavel Pavlovitch afflicted him and tormented him more and more!
“I was only anxious to be at peace with you, Alexey Ivanovitch!” said Pavel sadly, his chin and lips working again.
Velchaninoff flew into a violent rage, as if he had been insulted in the most unexampled manner.
“I tell you once more, sir,” he cried, “that you have attached yourself to a sick and irritated man, in order that you may surprise him into saying something unseemly in his madness! We are, I tell you, man, we are men of different worlds. Understand me! between us two there is a grave,” he hissed in his fury, and stopped.
“And how do you know,—sir,” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, his face suddenly becoming all twisted, and deadly white to look at, as he strode up to Velchaninoff, “how do you know what that grave means to me, sir, here!” (He beat his breast with terrible earnestness, droll though he looked.) “Yes, sir, we both stand on the brink of the grave, but on my side there is more, sir, than on yours—yes, more, more, more!” he hissed, beating his breast without pause—“more than on yours—the grave means more to me than to you!”
But at this moment a loud ring at the bell brought both men to their senses. Someone was ringing so loud that the bell-wire was in danger of snapping.
“People don’t ring like that for me, observed Velchaninoff angrily.”
“No more they do for me, sir! I assure you they don’t!” said Pavel Pavlovitch anxiously. He had become the quiet timid Pavel again in a moment. Velchaninoff frowned and went to open the door.
“Mr. Velchaninoff, if I am not mistaken?” said a strange voice, apparently belonging to some young and very self-satisfied person, at the door.
“What is it?”
“I have been informed that Mr. Trusotsky is at this moment in your rooms. I must see him at once.”
Velchaninoff felt inclined to send this self-satisfied looking young gentleman flying downstairs again; but he reflected—refrained, stood aside and let him in.
“Here is Mr. Trusotsky. Come in.”
CHAPTER XIV: Sashenka and Nadenka
A young fellow of some nineteen summers entered the room; he might have been even younger, to judge by his handsome but self-satisfied and very juvenile face.
He was not badly dressed, at all events his clothes fitted him well; in stature he was a little above the middle height; he had thick black hair, and dark, bold eyes—and these were the striking features of his face. Unfortunately his nose was a little too broad and tip-tilted, otherwise he would have been a really remarkably good-looking young fellow.—He came in with some pretension.
“I believe I have the opportunity of speaking to Mr. Trusotsky?” he observed deliberately, and bringing out the word opportunity with much apparent satisfaction, as though he wished to accentuate the fact that he could not possibly be supposed to feel either honour or pleasure in meeting Mr. Trusotsky. Velchaninoff thought he knew what all this meant; Pavel Pavlovitch seemed to have an inkling of the state of affairs, too. His expression was one of anxiety, but he did not show the white feather.
“Not having the honour of your acquaintance,” he said with dignity, “I do not understand what sort of business you can have with me.”
“Kindly listen to me first, and you can then let me know your ideas on the subject,” observed the young gentleman, pulling out his tortoiseshell glasses, and focusing the champagne bottle with them. Having deliberately inspected that object, he put up his glasses again, and fixing his attention once more upon Pavel Pavlovitch, remarked:
“Alexander Loboff.”
“What about Alexander Loboff?”
“That’s my name. You’ve not heard of me?”
“No.”
“H’m! Well, I don’t know when you should have, now I think of it; but I’ve come on important business concerning yourself. I suppose I can sit down? I’m tired.”
“Oh, pray sit down,” said Velchaninoff, but not before the young man had taken a chair. In spite of the pain at his heart Velchaninoff could not help being interested in this impudent youngling.
There seemed to be something in his good-looking, fresh young face that reminded him of Nadia.
“You can sit down too,” observed Loboff, indicating an empty seat to Pavel Pavlovitch, with a careless nod of his head.
“Thank you; I shall stand.”
“Very
