“Ah! You’ve been listening?”
“What were you saying just now about Mavriky Nikolaevitch? Has he been murdered?”
“Ah! Then you didn’t hear? Don’t distress yourself, Mavriky Nikolaevitch is alive and well, and you can satisfy yourself of it in an instant, for he is here by the wayside, by the garden fence … and I believe he’s been sitting there all night. He is drenched through in his greatcoat! He saw me as I drove past.”
“That’s not true. You said ‘murdered.’ … Who’s been murdered?” she insisted with agonising mistrust.
“The only people who have been murdered are my wife, her brother Lebyadkin, and their servant,” Stavrogin brought out firmly.
Liza trembled and turned terribly pale.
“A strange brutal outrage, Lizaveta Nikolaevna. A simple case of robbery,” Pyotr Stepanovitch rattled off at once “Simply robbery, under cover of the fire. The crime was committed by Fedka the convict, and it was all that fool Lebyadkin’s fault for showing every one his money.… I rushed here with the news … it fell on me like a thunderbolt. Stavrogin could hardly stand when I told him. We were deliberating here whether to tell you at once or not?”
“Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, is he telling the truth?” Liza articulated faintly.
“No; it’s false.”
“False?” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, starting. “What do you mean by that?”
“Heavens! I shall go mad!” cried Liza.
“Do you understand, anyway, that he is mad now!” Pyotr Stepanovitch cried at the top of his voice. “After all, his wife has just been murdered. You see how white he is.… Why, he has been with you the whole night. He hasn’t left your side a minute. How can you suspect him?”
“Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, tell me, as before God, are you guilty or not, and I swear I’ll believe your word as though it were God’s, and I’ll follow you to the end of the earth. Yes, I will. I’ll follow you like a dog.”
“Why are you tormenting her, you fantastic creature?” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch in exasperation. “Lizaveta Nikolaevna, upon my oath, you can crush me into powder, but he is not guilty. On the contrary, it has crushed him, and he is raving, you see that. He is not to blame in any way, not in any way, not even in thought!… It’s all the work of robbers who will probably be found within a week and flogged.… It’s all the work of Fedka the convict, and some Shpigulin men, all the town is agog with it. That’s why I say so too.”
“Is that right? Is that right?” Liza waited trembling for her final sentence.
“I did not kill them, and I was against it, but I knew they were going to be killed and I did not stop the murderers. Leave me, Liza,” Stavrogin brought out, and he walked into the drawing-room.
Liza hid her face in her hands and walked out of the house. Pyotr Stepanovitch was rushing after her, but at once hurried back and went into the drawing-room.
“So that’s your line? That’s your line? So there’s nothing you are afraid of?” He flew at Stavrogin in an absolute fury, muttering incoherently, scarcely able to find words and foaming at the mouth.
Stavrogin stood in the middle of the room and did not answer a word. He clutched a lock of his hair in his left hand and smiled helplessly. Pyotr Stepanovitch pulled him violently by the sleeve.
“Is it all over with you? So that’s the line you are taking? You’ll inform against all of us, and go to a monastery yourself, or to the devil.… But I’ll do for you, though you are not afraid of me!”
“Ah! That’s you chattering!” said Stavrogin, noticing him at last. “Run,” he said, coming to himself suddenly, “run after her, order the carriage, don’t leave her.… Run, run! Take her home so that no one may know … and that she mayn’t go there … to the bodies … to the bodies.… Force her to get into the carriage … Alexey Yegorytch! Alexey Yegorytch!”
“Stay, don’t shout! By now she is in Mavriky’s arms.… Mavriky won’t put her into your carriage.… Stay! There’s something more important than the carriage!”
He seized his revolver again. Stavrogin looked at him gravely.
“Very well, kill me,” he said softly, almost conciliatorily.
“Foo. Damn it! What a maze of false sentiment a man can get into!” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, shaking with rage. “Yes, really, you ought to be killed! She ought simply to spit at you! Fine sort of ‘magic boat,’ you are; you are a broken-down, leaky old hulk!… You ought to pull yourself together if only from spite! Ech! Why, what difference would it make to you since you ask for a bullet through your brains yourself?”
Stavrogin smiled strangely.
“If you were not such a buffoon I might perhaps have said yes now.… If you had only a grain of sense …”
“I am a buffoon, but I don’t want you, my better half, to be one! Do you understand me?”
Stavrogin did understand, though perhaps no one else did. Shatov, for instance, was astonished when Stavrogin told him that Pyotr Stepanovitch had enthusiasm.
“Go to the devil now, and to-morrow perhaps I may wring something out of myself. Come to-morrow.”
“Yes? Yes?”
“How can I tell?… Go to hell. Go to hell.” And he walked out of the room.
“Perhaps, after all, it may be for the best,” Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered to himself as he hid the revolver.
III
He rushed off to overtake Lizaveta Nikolaevna. She had not got far away, only a few steps, from the house. She had been detained by Alexey Yegorytch, who was following a step behind her, in a tail coat, and without a hat; his head was bowed respectfully. He was persistently entreating her to wait for a carriage; the old man was alarmed and almost in tears.
“Go along. Your master is asking for tea, and there’s no one to give it to him,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, pushing him away. He took Liza’s arm.
She did not pull her arm away, but she seemed hardly to know what she was doing; she was still dazed.
“To begin with, you are going the wrong way,” babbled Pyotr Stepanovitch. “We ought to go this way, and not by the garden, and, secondly, walking is impossible in any case. It’s over two miles, and you are not properly dressed. If you would wait a second, I came in a droshky; the horse is in the yard. I’ll get it instantly, put you in, and get you home so that no one sees you.”
“How kind you are,” said Liza graciously.
“Oh, not at all. Any humane man in my position would do the same.…”
Liza looked at him, and was surprised.
“Good heavens! Why I thought it was that old man here still.”
“Listen. I am awfully glad that you take it like this, because it’s all such a frightfully stupid convention, and since it’s come to that, hadn’t I better tell the old man to get the carriage at once. It’s only a matter of ten minutes and we’ll turn back and wait in the porch, eh?”
“I want first … where are those murdered people?”
“Ah! What next? That was what I was afraid of.… No, we’d better leave those wretched creatures alone; it’s no use your looking at them.”
“I know where they are. I know that house.”
“Well? What if you do know it? Come; it’s raining, and there’s a fog. (A nice job this sacred duty I’ve taken upon myself.) Listen, Lizaveta Nikolaevna! It’s one of two alternatives. Either you come with me in the droshky—in that case wait here, and don’t take another step, for if we go another twenty steps we must be seen by Mavriky Nikolaevitch.”
“Mavriky Nikolaevitch! Where? Where?”
“Well, if you want to go with him, I’ll take you a little farther, if you like, and show you where he sits, but I don’t care to go up to him just now. No, thank you.”
“He is waiting for me. Good God!” she suddenly stopped, and a flush of colour flooded her face.
“Oh! Come now. If he is an unconventional man! You know, Lizaveta Nikolaevna, it’s none of my business. I am a complete outsider, and you know that yourself. But, still, I wish you well.… If your ‘fairy boat’ has failed you, if it has turned out to be nothing more than a rotten old hulk, only fit to be chopped up …”
“Ah! That’s fine, that’s lovely,” cried Liza.
“Lovely, and yet your tears are falling. You must have spirit. You must be as good as a man in every way. In our age, when woman.… Foo, hang it,” Pyotr Stepanovitch was on the point of spitting. “And the chief point is that there is nothing to regret. It may all turn out for the best. Mavriky Nikolaevitch is a man.… In fact, he is a man of feeling though not talkative, but that’s a good thing, too, as long as he has no conventional notions, of course.…”
“Lovely, lovely!” Liza laughed hysterically.
“Well, hang it all … Lizaveta Nikolaevna,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch suddenly piqued. “I am simply here on your account.… It’s nothing to me.… I helped you yesterday when you wanted it yourself. To-day … well, you can see Mavriky Nikolaevitch from here; there he’s sitting; he doesn’t see us. I say, Lizaveta Nikolaevna, have you ever read ‘Polenka Saxe’?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s the name of a novel, ‘Polenka Saxe.’ I read it when I was a student.… In it a very wealthy official of some sort, Saxe, arrested his wife at a summer villa for infidelity.… But, hang it; it’s no consequence! You’ll see, Mavriky Nikolaevitch will make you an offer
