Towards the hour of the train’s departure I hastened to the station, and put the Grandmother into her compartment—she and her party occupying a reserved family saloon.
“Thanks for your disinterested assistance,” she said at parting. “Oh, and please remind Prascovia of what I said to her last night. I expect soon to see her.”
Then I returned home. As I was passing the door of the General’s suite, I met the nursemaid, and inquired after her master. “There is nothing new to report, sir,” she replied quietly. Nevertheless I decided to enter, and was just doing so when I halted thunderstruck on the threshold. For before me I beheld the General and Mlle. Blanche—laughing gaily at one another!—while beside them, on the sofa, there was seated her mother. Clearly the General was almost out of his mind with joy, for he was talking all sorts of nonsense, and bubbling over with a long-drawn, nervous laugh—a laugh which twisted his face into innumerable wrinkles, and caused his eyes almost to disappear.
Afterwards I learnt from Mlle. Blanche herself that, after dismissing the Prince and hearing of the General’s tears, she bethought her of going to comfort the old man, and had just arrived for the purpose when I entered. Fortunately, the poor General did not know that his fate had been decided—that Mlle. had long ago packed her trunks in readiness for the first morning train to Paris!
Hesitating a moment on the threshold I changed my mind as to entering, and departed unnoticed. Ascending to my own room, and opening the door, I perceived in the semi-darkness a figure seated on a chair in the corner by the window. The figure did not rise when I entered, so I approached it swiftly, peered at it closely, and felt my heart almost stop beating. The figure was Polina!
XIV
The shock made me utter an exclamation.
“What is the matter? What is the matter?” she asked in a strange voice. She was looking pale, and her eyes were dim.
“What is the matter?” I re-echoed. “Why, the fact that you are here!”
“If I am here, I have come with all that I have to bring,” she said. “Such has always been my way, as you shall presently see. Please light a candle.”
I did so; whereupon she rose, approached the table, and laid upon it an open letter.
“Read it,” she added.
“It is De Griers’ handwriting!” I cried as I seized the document. My hands were so tremulous that the lines on the pages danced before my eyes. Although, at this distance of time, I have forgotten the exact phraseology of the missive, I append, if not the precise words, at all events the general sense.
“Mademoiselle,” the document ran, “certain untoward circumstances compel me to depart in haste. Of course, you have of yourself remarked that hitherto I have always refrained from having any final explanation with you, for the reason that I could not well state the whole circumstances; and now to my difficulties the advent of the aged Grandmother, coupled with her subsequent proceedings, has put the final touch. Also, the involved state of my affairs forbids me to write with any finality concerning those hopes of ultimate bliss upon which, for a long while past, I have permitted myself to feed. I regret the past, but at the same time hope that in my conduct you have never been able to detect anything that was unworthy of a gentleman and a man of honour. Having lost, however, almost the whole of my money in debts incurred by your stepfather, I find myself driven to the necessity of saving the remainder; wherefore, I have instructed certain friends of mine in St. Petersburg to arrange for the sale of all the property which has been mortgaged to myself. At the same time, knowing that, in addition, your frivolous stepfather has squandered money which is exclusively yours, I have decided to absolve him from a certain moiety of the mortgages on his property, in order that you may be in a position to recover of him what you have lost, by suing him in legal fashion. I trust, therefore, that, as matters now stand, this action of mine may bring you some advantage. I trust also that this same action leaves me in the position of having fulfilled every obligation which is incumbent upon a man of honour and refinement. Rest assured that your memory will for ever remain graven in my heart.”
“All this is clear enough,” I commented. “Surely you did not expect aught else from him?” Somehow I was feeling annoyed.
“I expected nothing at all from him,” she replied—quietly enough, to all outward seeming, yet with a note of irritation in her tone. “Long ago I made up my mind on the subject, for I could read his thoughts, and knew what he was thinking. He thought that possibly I should sue him—that one day I might become a nuisance.” Here Polina halted for a moment, and stood biting her lips. “So of set purpose I redoubled my contemptuous treatment of him, and waited to see what he would do. If a telegram to say that we had become legatees had arrived from, St. Petersburg, I should have flung at him a quittance for my foolish stepfather’s debts, and then dismissed him. For a long time I have hated him. Even in earlier days he was not a man; and now!—Oh, how gladly I could throw those fifty thousand roubles in his face, and spit in it, and then rub the spittle in!”
“But the document returning the fifty-thousand rouble mortgage—has the General got it? If so, possess yourself of it, and send it to De Griers.”
“No, no; the General has not got it.”
“Just as I expected! Well, what is the General going to do?” Then an idea suddenly occurred to me. “What about the Grandmother?” I asked.
Polina looked at me with impatience and bewilderment.
“What makes you speak of her?” was her irritable inquiry. “I cannot go and live with her. Nor,” she added hotly, “will I go down upon my knees to any one.”
“Why should you?” I cried. “Yet to think that you should have loved De Griers! The villain, the villain! But I will kill him in a duel. Where is he now?”
“In Frankfort, where he will be staying for the next three days.”
“Well, bid me do so, and I will go to him by the first train tomorrow,” I exclaimed with enthusiasm.
She smiled.
“If you were to do that,” she said, “he would merely tell you to be so good as first to return him the fifty thousand francs. What, then, would be the use of having a quarrel with him? You talk sheer nonsense.”
I ground my teeth.
“The question,” I went on, “is how to raise the fifty thousand francs. We cannot expect to find them lying about on the floor. Listen. What of Mr. Astley?” Even as I spoke a new and strange idea formed itself in my brain.
Her eyes flashed fire.
“What? you yourself wish me to leave you for him?” she cried with a scornful look and a proud smile. Never before had she addressed me thus.
Then her head must have turned dizzy with emotion, for suddenly she seated herself upon the sofa, as though she were powerless any longer to stand.
A flash of lightning seemed to strike me as I stood there. I could scarcely believe my eyes or my ears. She did love me, then! It was to me, and not to Mr. Astley, that she had turned! Although she, an unprotected girl, had come to me in my room—in an hotel room—and had probably compromised herself thereby, I had not understood!
Then a second mad idea flashed into my brain.
“Polina,” I said, “give me but an hour. Wait here just one hour until I return. Yes, you MUST do so. Do you not see what I mean? Just stay here for that time.”
And I rushed from the room without so much as answering her look of inquiry. She called something after me, but I did not return.
Sometimes it happens that the most insane thought, the most impossible conception, will become so fixed in one’s head that at length one believes the thought or the conception to be reality. Moreover, if with the thought or the conception there is combined a strong, a passionate, desire, one will come to look upon the said thought or conception as something fated, inevitable, and foreordained—something bound to happen. Whether by this there is connoted something in the nature of a combination of presentiments, or a great effort of will, or a self-annulment of one’s true expectations, and so on, I do not know; but, at all events that night saw happen to me (a night which I shall never forget) something in the nature of the miraculous. Although the occurrence can easily be explained by arithmetic, I still believe it to have been a miracle. Yet why did this conviction take such a hold upon me at the time, and remain with me ever since? Previously, I had thought of the idea, not as an occurrence which was ever likely to come about,
