"riffraff" that I was by no means the coward I made myself out to be. More than that: in the strongest paroxysm of cowardly fever, I dreamed of getting the best of them, winning them over, carrying them away, making them love me - if only for my "lofty mind and indubitable wit." They would drop Zverkov, he would sit on the sidelines, silent and ashamed, and I would crush him. Afterwards I would perhaps make peace with him, and we would pledge eternal friendship, yet the most bitter and offensive thing for me was that I knew even then, knew fully and certainly, that in fact I needed none of that, and in fact I had no wish to crush, subject, or attract them, and would be the first not to give a penny for the whole outcome, even if I achieved it. Oh, how I prayed to God for that day to pass more quickly! In inexpressible anguish I kept going to the window, opening the vent, and peering into the dull darkness of thickly falling wet snow…
At last my wretched little wall clock hissed five. I grabbed my hat and, trying not to glance at Apollon - who since morning had been waiting to receive his wages from me, but in his pride refused to speak first - slipped past him out the door, and in a coach hired for the purpose with my last fifty kopecks, drove up like a grand gentleman to the Hotel de Paris.
IV
I had already known the evening before that I would be the first to arrive. But primacy was no longer the point. Not only were none of them there, but I even had difficulty finding our room. The table was not quite laid yet. What did it mean? After much questioning, I finally got out of the waiters that the dinner had been ordered for six o'clock, not five. This was confirmed in the bar. I was even ashamed to be asking. It was only five twenty-five. If they had changed the time, they ought in any case to have informed me; that's what the city mail is for; and not to have subjected me to "disgrace" both in my own and… be it only the waiters' eyes. I sat down; a waiter began laying the table; in his presence it felt somehow still more offensive. By six o'clock, in addition to the lighted lamps, candles were brought into the room. It had not occurred to the waiter, however, to bring them when I arrived. In the next room two customers, gloomy, angry-looking, and silent, were having dinner at separate tables. In one of the farther rooms it was very noisy; there was even shouting; the guffaws of a whole bunch of people could be heard; some nasty French squeals could be heard: it was a dinner with ladies. Quite nauseating, in short. Rarely have I spent a nastier moment, so that when, at exactly six o'clock, they all came in together, I was glad of them for the first moment as of some sort of deliverers, and almost forgot that I ought to look offended.
Zverkov came at the head of them, obviously the leader. Both he and they were laughing; but on seeing me Zverkov assumed a dignified air, approached unhurriedly, bending slightly, as if coquettishly, at the waist, and gave me his hand benignly, but not very, with a certain cautious, almost senatorial politeness, as if by offering me his hand he were protecting himself from something. I had been imagining, on the contrary, that as soon as he walked in he would start laughing his former laugh, shrill, punctuated by little shrieks, and from the first there would be his flat jokes and witticisms. I had been preparing myself for them since the previous evening, but I by no means expected such down-the-nose, such excellential benignity. So he now fully considered himself immeasurably superior to me in all respects? If he simply wanted to offend me with this senatorial air, it was not so bad, I thought; I'd be able to get back at him somehow. But what if indeed, without any wish to offend me, the little idea had seriously crept into his sheep's noddle that he was immeasurably superior to me, and could look at me in no other way than patronizingly? The supposition alone left me breathless.
"I learned with surprise of your wish to participate with us," he began, lisping and simpering and drawing the words out, something that had never happened with him before. "We somehow keep missing each other. You shy away from us.
More's the pity. We're not so terrible as you think. Well, sir, in any case I'm gla-a-ad to rene-e-ew…"
And he casually turned to place his hat on the windowsill.
"Have you been waiting long?" asked Trudolyubov.
"I arrived at exactly five o'clock, as I was appointed yesterday," I answered loudly and with an irritation that promised an imminent explosion.
"Didn't you inform him that the time had been changed?" Trudolyubov turned to Simonov.
"I didn't. I forgot," the latter answered, but without any repentance, and, not even apologizing to me, went to make arrangements for the hors d'oeuvres.
"So you've been here for an hour already, ah, poor fellow!" Zverkov exclaimed derisively, because according to his notions it must indeed have been terribly funny. Following him, the scoundrel Ferfichkin broke up, in his scoundrelly voice, yelping like a little mutt. He, too, thought my situation terribly funny and embarrassing.
"It's not funny in the least!" I cried to Ferfichkin, growing more and more irritated. "It's other people's fault, not mine. They neglected to inform me. It - it - it's… simply absurd."
"Not only absurd, but something else as well," Trudolyubov grumbled, naively interceding for me. "You're too mild. Sheer discourtesy. Not deliberate, of course. But how is it that Simonov… hm!"
"If that had been played on me," observed Ferfichkin,
"I'd…"
"But you should have ordered yourself something," Zverkov interrupted, "or just asked to have dinner without waiting."
"You must agree that I could have done so without any permission," I snapped. "If I waited, it was…"
"Let's be seated, gentlemen," cried the entering Simonov, "everything's ready; I can answer for the champagne, it's perfectly chilled…I didn't know your address, how was one to find you?" he suddenly turned to me, but again somehow without looking at me. He obviously had something against me. He must have changed his mind since yesterday.