The familiar sounds shocked Stepan Trofimovich. He trembled. But she had already come behind the partition. Flashing her eyes, she drew up a chair with her foot and, sitting back in it, shouted to Dasha:
"Go out for a while, stay with the proprietors. What is this curiosity? And do close the door tightly behind you."
For some time she peered silently and with a sort of predatory look into his frightened face.
"Well, how are you doing, Stepan Trofimovich? Had a nice little spree?" suddenly burst from her with furious irony.
''Chère, " Stepan Trofimovich babbled, hardly aware of himself, "I've come to know Russian real life ... Et je prêcherai l'Évangile ... "[ccxv]
"Oh, shameless, ignoble man!" she suddenly cried out, clasping her hands. "It wasn't enough for you to disgrace me, you had to get mixed up with... Oh, you old, shameless profligate!"
"Chère ..."
His voice broke off, and he was unable to utter a sound, but only stared, his eyes popping with terror.
"What is she?"
"C'est un ange... C'était plus qu'un ange pour moi,[ccxvi] all night she... Oh, don't shout, don't frighten her, chère, chère ..."
Varvara Petrovna suddenly jumped up from her chair with a clatter; her frightened cry rang out: "Water, water!" Though he came to, she was still trembling from fear and, pale, was looking at his distorted face: only here for the first time did she get some idea of the extent of his illness.
"Darya," she suddenly started whispering to Darya Pavlovna, "send immediately for the doctor, for Salzfisch; let Yegorych go at once; let him hire horses here, and take another coach from town. They must be here by nighttime."
Dasha rushed to carry out the order. Stepan Trofimovich went on staring with the same popping, frightened eyes; his white lips were trembling.
"Wait, Stepan Trofimovich, wait, my dearest," she was coaxing him like a child, "just wait, wait, Darya will come back and... Ah, my God, mistress, mistress, you come at least, my dear!"
In her impatience she ran to the mistress herself.
"Right now, this minute, that woman must come back. Bring her back, bring her back!"
Fortunately, Sofya Matveevna had not yet had time to get far from the house and was just going out the gate with her bag and bundle. They brought her back. She was so frightened that her legs and hands even shook. Varvara Petrovna seized her by the hand, like a hawk seizing a chicken, and dragged her impetuously to Stepan Trofimovich.
"Well, here she is for you. I didn't eat her. You must have thought I'd simply eaten her."
Stepan Trofimovich seized Varvara Petrovna by the hand, brought it to his eyes, and dissolved in tears, sobbing morbidly, fitfully.
"Well, calm yourself, calm yourself, my dear, my dearest. Ah, my God, but do ca-a-alm yourself!" she cried furiously. "Oh, tormentor, tormentor, my eternal tormentor!"
"Dear," Stepan Trofimovich finally murmured, addressing Sofya Matveevna, "stay out there, dear, I want to say something here..."
Sofya Matveevna hastened out at once.
"Chérie, chérie ..." he was suffocating.
"Wait before you talk, Stepan Trofimovich, wait a little and rest meanwhile. Here's water. Wa-a-ait, I said!"
She sat down on the chair again. Stepan Trofimovich held her firmly by the hand. For a long time she would not let him talk. He brought her hand to his lips and began to kiss it. She clenched her teeth, looking off into a corner.
"Je vous aimais!"[ccxvii] escaped him finally. She had never heard such a word from him, spoken in such a way.
"Hm," she grunted in reply.
"je vous aimais toute ma vie... vingt ans!"[ccxviii]
She remained silent—two minutes, three. "And sprayed yourself with perfume, getting ready for Dasha..." she suddenly said in a terrible whisper. Stepan Trofimovich simply froze.
"Put on a new tie..." Again about two minutes of silence.
"Remember the little cigar?"
"My friend," he began mumbling in terror.
"The little cigar, in the evening, by the window ... in the moonlight... after the gazebo ... in Skvoreshniki? Do you remember? Do you remember?" she jumped up from her place, seizing his pillow by two corners and shaking his head together with it. "Do you remember, you empty, empty, inglorious, fainthearted, eternally, eternally empty man!" she spat out in her furious whisper, keeping herself from shouting. Finally she dropped him and fell onto the chair, covering her face with her hands. "Enough!" she snapped, straightening up. "Twenty years are gone, there's no bringing them back; I'm a fool, too."
"Je vous aimais, " he again clasped his hands.
"Why keep at me with your aimais, aimais! Enough!" she jumped up again. "And if you don't go to sleep right now, I'll... You need rest; go to sleep, go to sleep right now, close your eyes. Ah, my God, maybe he wants to have lunch! What do you eat? What does he eat? Ah, my God, where's that woman? Where is she?"
A hubbub began. But Stepan Trofimovich murmured in a weak voice that he would indeed like to sleep for une heure, and then—un bouillon, un thé... enfin, il est si heureux.[ccxix] He lay back and indeed seemed to fall asleep (he was probably pretending). Varvara Petrovna waited a little and then tiptoed out from behind the partition.
She sat down in the proprietors' room, chased the proprietors out, and ordered Dasha to bring her that woman. A serious interrogation began.
"Now, my girl, tell me all the details; sit beside me, so. Well?"
"I met Stepan Trofimovich..."
"Wait, stop. I warn you that if you lie or hold anything back, I'll dig you up out of the ground. Well?"
"Stepan Trofimovich and I ... as soon as I came to Khatovo, ma'am..." Sofya Matveevna was almost suffocating...
"Wait, stop, be quiet; what's all this stammering? First of all, what sort of bird are you?"
The woman told her haphazardly, though in the briefest terms, about herself, beginning with Sebastopol. Varvara Petrovna listened silently, sitting straight-backed on her chair, looking sternly and steadily straight into the narrator's eyes.
"Why are you so cowed? Why do you look at the ground? I like people who look straight and argue with me. Go on."
She finished telling about their meeting, about the books, about how Stepan Trofimovich treated the peasant woman to vodka...
"Right, right, don't leave out the smallest detail," Varvara Petrovna encouraged her. Finally, she told of how they had set off and how Stepan Trofimovich had kept talking, "already completely sick, ma'am," and even spent several hours here telling her his whole life from the very first beginning.
"Tell me about the life."
Sofya Matveevna suddenly faltered and was completely nonplussed.
"I couldn't say anything about that, ma'am," she spoke all but in tears, "and, besides, I hardly understood anything."
"Lies—it's impossible that you understood nothing at all."
"He was telling for a long time about some black-haired noble lady, ma'am," Sofya Matveevna blushed terribly, incidentally noticing Varvara Petrovna's fair hair and her total lack of resemblance to the "brunette."