“You . . . know it for certain?” the prince asked Nashchokin, visibly agitated and uttering his question with particular emphasis.
“I was told so; it seems people are already talking about it; however, I don’t know for certain.”
“Oh, it’s certain!” Darzan went over to them. “Dubasov told me yesterday; he’s always the first to know such news. And the prince ought to know . . .”
Nashchokin paused for Darzan and again addressed the prince:
“She rarely appears in society now.”
“Her father has been sick this last month,” the prince observed somehow drily.
“She seems to be an adventurous lady!” Darzan blurted out suddenly.
I raised my head and straightened up.
“I have the pleasure of knowing Katerina Nikolaevna personally and take upon myself the duty of assuring you that all the scandalous rumors are nothing but lies and infamy . . . and have been invented by those . . . who circled around but didn’t succeed.”
Having broken off so stupidly, I fell silent, still looking at them all with a flushed face and sitting bolt upright. They all turned to me, but suddenly Stebelkov tittered; Darzan was struck at first, but then grinned.
“Arkady Makarovich Dolgoruky,” the prince indicated me to Darzan.
“Ah, believe me, Prince,” Darzan addressed me frankly and goodnaturedly, “I’m not speaking for myself; if there was any gossip, it wasn’t I who spread it.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean you!” I answered quickly, but Stebelkov had already burst into inadmissible laughter, and that precisely, as became clear later, because Darzan had called me “prince.” My infernal last name mucked things up here as well. Even now I blush at the thought that I—from shame, of course—did not dare at that moment to pick up this stupidity and declare aloud that I was simply Dolgoruky. It was the first time in my life that this had happened. Darzan gazed in perplexity at me and at the laughing Stebelkov.
“Ah, yes! Who was that pretty thing I just met on your stairs, sharp-eyed and fair-haired?” he suddenly asked the prince.
“I really don’t know,” the latter answered quickly, blushing.
“Then who would know?” Darzan laughed.
“Though it . . . it might have been . . .” the prince somehow faltered.
“It . . . but it was precisely his sister, Lizaveta Makarovna!” Stebelkov suddenly pointed at me. “Because I also met her earlier . . .”
“Ah, indeed!” the prince picked up, but this time with an extremely solid and serious expression on his face. “It must have been Lizaveta Makarovna, a close friend of Anna Fyodorovna Stolbeev, whose apartment I’m now living in. She must have come calling today on Darya Onisimovna, who is also a good friend of Anna Fyodorovna’s and in charge of the house in her absence . . .”
That was all exactly how it was. This Darya Onisimovna was the mother of poor Olya, whose story I have already told and whom Tatyana Pavlovna finally sheltered with Mrs. Stolbeev. I knew perfectly well that Liza used to visit Mrs. Stolbeev and later occasionally visited poor Darya Onisimovna, whom they all came to love very much; but suddenly, after this, incidentally, extremely sensible statement from the prince, and especially after Stebelkov’s stupid outburst, or maybe because I had just been called “prince,” suddenly, owing to all that, I blushed all over. Fortunately, just then Nashchokin got up to leave; he offered his hand to Darzan as well. The moment Stebelkov and I were left alone, he suddenly started nodding to me towards Darzan, who was standing in the doorway with his back to us. I shook my fist at Stebelkov.
A minute later Darzan also left, having arranged with the prince to meet the next day without fail at some place they had already settled on—a gambling house, naturally. On his way out he shouted something to Stebelkov and bowed slightly to me. As soon as he went out, Stebelkov jumped up from his place and stood in the middle of the room with a raised finger:
“Last week that little squire pulled off the following stunt: he gave a promissory note and falsified Averyanov’s name on it. And the nice little note still exists in that guise, only one doesn’t do such things! It’s criminal. Eight thousand.”
“And surely it’s you who have this note?” I glanced at him ferociously.
“I have a bank, sir, I have a mont-de-piété, 36not promissory notes. Have you heard of such a mont-de-piétéin Paris? Bread and charity for the poor. I have a mont-de-piété. . .”
The prince stopped him rudely and spitefully:
“What are you doing here? Why did you stay?”
“Ah!” Stebelkov quickly began nodding with his eyes. “And that? What about that?”
“No, no, no, not that,” the prince shouted and stamped his foot, “I told you!”
“Ah, well, if so . . . then so . . . Only it’s not so . . .”
He turned sharply and, inclining his head and rounding his back, suddenly left. The prince called after him when he was already in the doorway:
“Be it known to you, sir, that I am not afraid of you in the least!”
He was highly vexed, made as if to sit down, but, having glanced at me, did not. It was as if his glance was also saying to me, “Why are you also sticking around?”
“Prince,” I tried to begin . . .
“I really have no time, Arkady Makarovich, I’m about to leave.”
“One moment, Prince, it’s very important to me; and, first of all, take back your three hundred.”
“What’s this now?”
He was pacing, but he paused.
“It’s this, that after all that’s happened . . . and what you said about Versilov, that he’s dishonorable, and, finally, your tone all the rest of the time . . . In short, I simply can’t accept.”
“You’ve been acceptingfor a whole month, though.”
He suddenly sat down on a chair. I stood by the table, flipping through Belinsky’s book with one hand and holding my hat with the other.
“The feelings were different, Prince . . . And, finally, I’d never have brought it as far as a certain figure . . . This gambling . . . In short, I can’t!”
“You simply haven’t distinguished yourself in anything, and so you’re frantic. I beg you to leave that book alone.”
“What does ‘haven’t distinguished yourself ’ mean? And, finally, you almost put me on a par with Stebelkov in front of your guests.”
“Ah, there’s the answer!” he grinned caustically. “Besides, you were embarrassed that Darzan called you ‘prince.’”
He laughed maliciously. I flared up:
“I don’t even understand . . . I wouldn’t take your princehood gratis . . .”
“I know your character. It was ridiculous the way you cried out in defense of Mme. Akhmakov . . . Leave the book alone!”
“What does that mean?” I also shouted.
“Le-e-eave the book alo-o-one!” he suddenly yelled, sitting up fiercely in his armchair, as if ready to charge.
“This goes beyond all limits,” I said and quickly left the room. But before I reached the end of the hall, he called out to me from the door of the study:
“Come back, Arkady Makarovich! Come ba-a-ack! Come ba-a-ack right now!”
I paid no attention and walked on. He quickly overtook me, seized my arm, and dragged me back to the study. I didn’t resist!
“Take it!” he said, pale with agitation, handing me the three hundred roubles I had left there. “You absolutely must take it . . . otherwise we . . . you absolutely must!”
“How can I take it, Prince?”
“Well, I’ll ask your forgiveness, shall I? Well, forgive me! . . .”
“Prince, I always loved you, and if you also . . .”
“I also; take it . . .”
I took it. His lips were trembling.
“I understand, Prince, that you were infuriated by this scoundrel . . . but I won’t take it, Prince, unless we kiss each other, as with previous quarrels . . .”
I was also trembling as I said it.
“Well, what softheartedness,” the prince murmured with an embarrassed smile, but he leaned over and kissed me. I shuddered: in his face, at the moment of the kiss, I could decidedly read disgust.
“Did he at least bring you the money? . . .”