“Fougue is just it,” he assented. “She may be a woman of genius, a literary woman, but she would scare our sparrows. She wouldn’t be able to keep quiet for six hours, let alone six days. Ech, Andrey Antonovitch, don’t attempt to tie a woman down for six days! You do admit that I have some experience—in this sort of thing, I mean; I know something about it, and you know that I may very well know something about it. I am not asking for six days for fun but with an object.”
“I have heard …” (Lembke hesitated to utter his thought) “I have heard that on your return from abroad you made some expression … as it were of repentance, in the proper quarter?”
“Well, that’s as it may be.”
“And, of course, I don’t want to go into it.… But it has seemed to me all along that you’ve talked in quite a different style—about the Christian faith, for instance, about social institutions, about the government even.…”
“I’ve said lots of things, no doubt, I am saying them still; but such ideas mustn’t be applied as those fools do it, that’s the point. What’s the good of biting his superior’s shoulder! You agreed with me yourself, only you said it was premature.”
“I didn’t mean that when I agreed and said it was premature.”
“You weigh every word you utter, though. He he! You are a careful man!” Pyotr Stepanovitch observed gaily all of a sudden. “Listen, old friend. I had to get to know you; that’s why I talked in my own style. You are not the only one I get to know like that. Maybe I needed to find out your character.”
“What’s my character to you?”
“How can I tell what it may be to me?” He laughed again. “You see, my dear and highly respected Andrey Antonovitch, you are cunning, but it’s not come to that yet and it certainly never will come to it, you understand? Perhaps you do understand. Though I did make an explanation in the proper quarter when I came back from abroad, and I really don’t know why a man of certain convictions should not be able to work for the advancement of his sincere convictions … but nobody there has yet instructed me to investigate your character and I’ve not undertaken any such job from them. Consider: I need not have given those two names to you. I might have gone straight there; that is where I made my first explanations. And if I’d been acting with a view to financial profit or my own interest in any way, it would have been a bad speculation on my part, for now they’ll be grateful to you and not to me at headquarters. I’ve done it solely for Shatov’s sake,” Pyotr Stepanovitch added generously, “for Shatov’s sake, because of our old friendship.… But when you take up your pen to write to headquarters, you may put in a word for me, if you like.… I’ll make no objection, he he! Adieu, though; I’ve stayed too long and there was no need to gossip so much!” he added with some amiability, and he got up from the sofa.
“On the contrary, I am very glad that the position has been defined, so to speak.” Von Lembke too got up and he too looked pleasant, obviously affected by the last words. “I accept your services and acknowledge my obligation, and you may be sure that anything I can do by way of reporting your zeal …”
“Six days—the great thing is to put it off for six days, and that you shouldn’t stir for those six days, that’s what I want.”
“So be it.”
“Of course, I don’t tie your hands and shouldn’t venture to. You are bound to keep watch, only don’t flutter the nest too soon; I rely on your sense and experience for that. But I should think you’ve plenty of bloodhounds and trackers of your own in reserve, ha ha!” Pyotr Stepanovitch blurted out with the gaiety and irresponsibility of youth.
“Not quite so.” Lembke parried amiably. “Young people are apt to suppose that there is a great deal in the background.… But, by the way, allow me one little word: if this Kirillov was Stavrogin’s second, then Mr. Stavrogin too …”
“What about Stavrogin?”
“I mean, if they are such friends?”
“Oh, no, no, no! There you are quite out of it, though you are cunning. You really surprise me. I thought that you had some information about it.… H’m … Stavrogin—it’s quite the opposite, quite.… Avis au lecteur.”
“Do you mean it? And can it be so?” Lembke articulated mistrustfully. “Yulia Mihailovna told me that from what she heard from Petersburg he is a man acting on some sort of instructions, so to speak.…”
“I know nothing about it; I know nothing, absolutely nothing. Adieu. Avis au lecteur!” Abruptly and obviously Pyotr Stepanovitch declined to discuss it.
He hurried to the door.
“Stay, Pyotr Stepanovitch, stay,” cried Lembke. “One other tiny matter and I won’t detain you.”
He drew an envelope out of a table drawer.
“Here is a little specimen of the same kind of thing, and I let you see it to show how completely I trust you. Here, and tell me your opinion.”
In the envelope was a letter, a strange anonymous letter addressed to Lembke and only received by him the day before. With intense vexation Pyotr Stepanovitch read as follows:
“Your excellency,—For such you are by rank. Herewith I make known that there is an attempt to be made on the life of personages of general’s rank and on the Fatherland. For it’s working up straight for that. I myself have been disseminating unceasingly for a number of years. There’s infidelity too. There’s a rebellion being got up and there are some thousands of manifestoes, and for every one of them there will be a hundred running with their tongues out, unless they’ve been taken away beforehand by the police. For they’ve been promised a mighty lot of benefits, and the simple people are foolish, and there’s vodka too. The people will attack one after another, taking them to be guilty, and, fearing both sides, I repent of what I had no share in, my circumstances being what they are. If you want information to save the Fatherland, and also the Church and the ikons, I am the only one that can do it. But only on condition that I get a pardon from the Secret Police by telegram at once, me alone, but the rest may answer for it. Put a candle every evening at seven o’clock in the porter’s window for a signal. Seeing it, I shall believe and come to kiss the merciful hand from Petersburg. But on condition there’s a pension for me, for else how am I to live? You won’t regret it for it will mean a star for you. You must go secretly or they’ll wring your neck. Your excellency’s desperate servant falls at your feet.
“Repentant free-thinker incognito.”
Von Lembke explained that the letter had made its appearance in the porter’s room when it was left empty the day before.
“So what do you think?” Pyotr Stepanovitch asked almost rudely.
“I think it’s an anonymous skit by way of a hoax.”
“Most likely it is. There’s no taking you in.”
“What makes me think that is that it’s so stupid.”
“Have you received such documents here before?”
“Once or twice, anonymous letters.”
“Oh, of course they wouldn’t be signed. In a different style? In different handwritings?”
“Yes.”
“And were they buffoonery like this one?”
“Yes, and you know … very disgusting.”
“Well, if you had them before, it must be the same thing now.”
“Especially because it’s so stupid. Because these people are educated and wouldn’t write so stupidly.”
“Of course, of course.”
“But what if this is someone who really wants to turn informer?”
“It’s not very likely,” Pyotr Stepanovitch rapped out dryly. “What does he mean by a telegram from the Secret Police and a pension? It’s obviously a hoax.”
“Yes, yes,” Lembke admitted, abashed.
“I tell you what: you leave this with me. I can certainly find out for you before I track out the others.”
“Take it,” Lembke assented, though with some hesitation.
“Have you shown it to anyone?”
“Is it likely! No.”
“Not to Yulia Mihailovna?”
“Oh, Heaven forbid! And for God’s sake don’t you show it her!” Lembke cried in alarm. “She’ll be so upset … and will be dreadfully angry with me.”
“Yes, you’ll be the first to catch it; she’d say you brought it on yourself if people write like that to you. I know what women’s logic is. Well, good-bye. I dare say I shall bring you the writer in a couple of days or so. Above all, our compact!”
IV
Though Pyotr Stepanovitch was perhaps far from being a stupid man, Fedka the convict had said of him truly “that he would make up a man himself and go on living with him too.” He came away from Lembke fully persuaded that for the next six days, anyway, he had put his mind at rest, and this interval was absolutely necessary for his own purposes. But it was a false idea and founded entirely on the fact that he had made up for himself once for all an Andrey Antonovitch who was a perfect simpleton.
Like every morbidly suspicious man, Andrey Antonovitch was always exceedingly and joyfully trustful
