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“What’s this Stupendiev, devil take it!” Velchaninov shouted and even stamped his foot, being completely put out at the word Stupendiev, owing to a certain uneasy remembrance that flashed in him at this word.

“Stupendiev is a role, sir, a theatrical role, the role of ‘the husband’ in the play The Provincial Lady,” Pavel Pavlovich squeaked in the sweetest little voice, “but that belongs to another category of our dear and beautiful memories, already after your departure, when Stepan Mikhailovich Bagautov graced us with his friendship, just as you did, sir, and for a whole five years.”

“Bagautov? What’s that? Which Bagautov?” Velchaninov suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

“Bagautov, Stepan Mikhailovich, who graced us with his friendship precisely a year after you and… like you, sir.”

“Ah, my God, but that I know!” Velchaninov cried, finally figuring it out. “Bagautov! but he served with you…”

“He did, he did! at the governor’s! From Petersburg, a most elegant young man of the highest society!” Pavel Pavlovich cried out, decidedly enraptured.

“Yes, yes, yes! How could I! And so he, too…”

“And he, too! And he, too!” Pavel Pavlovich, having picked up his host’s imprudent phrase, echoed with the same rapture. “And he, too! It was then that we produced The Provincial Lady in His Excellency the most hospitable Semyon Semyonovich’s home theater—Stepan Mikhailovich was ‘the count,’ I was ‘the husband,’ and my late wife was ‘the provincial lady’—only the role of ‘the husband,’ was taken from me at the insistence of my late wife, so I didn’t play ‘the husband,’ being supposedly unable to, sir…”

“No, the devil you’re Stupendiev! You’re Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky first of all, and not Stupendiev!” Velchaninov said rudely, unceremoniously, and all but trembling with vexation. “Only, excuse me, this Bagautov is here in Petersburg; I saw him myself, in the spring! Why don’t you go to him, too?”

“I’ve called on him every blessed day for three weeks now, sir. He won’t receive me! He’s ill, he can’t receive me! And, imagine, I found out from the foremost sources that he really is extremely dangerously ill! Such a friend for six years! Ah, Alexei Ivanovich, I’m telling you and I repeat that in this mood one sometimes wishes simply to fall through the earth, even in reality, sir; and at other moments it seems I could just up and embrace precisely some one of these former, so to speak, witnesses and partakers, and with the sole purpose of weeping—that is, absolutely for no other purpose than weeping!…”

“Well, anyhow, you’ve had enough for today, right?” Velchaninov said sharply.

“More, more than enough!” Pavel Pavlovich rose at once from his place. “It’s four o’clock and, above all, I’ve disturbed you so egoistically…”

“Listen, now: I’ll call on you myself, without fail, and then I do hope… Tell me directly, frankly tell me: you’re not drunk today?”

“Drunk? Not a whit…”

“You didn’t drink before coming, or earlier?”

“You know, Alexei Ivanovich, you’re completely feverish, sir.”

“I’ll call on you by tomorrow, in the morning, before one…”

“And I’ve long been noticing that you’re as if delirious, sir.” Pavel Pavlovich interfered delightedly, pressing the point. “I really am so ashamed that I, in my awkwardness… but I’m leaving, I’m leaving! And you go to bed and sleep!”

“And why didn’t you tell me where you live?” Velchaninov, recollecting himself, shouted after him.

“Didn’t I, sir? In the Pokrovsky Hotel…”

“What Pokrovsky Hotel?”

“Why, right next to the Pokrov church, there in the lane, sir—only I forget which lane, and the number as well, but it’s right next to the Pokrov church…”

“I’ll find it!”

“You’ll be a most welcome guest.”

He was already going out to the stairs.

“Wait!” Velchaninov cried again, “you’re not going to give me the slip?”

“How do you mean, ‘give you the slip’?” Pavel Pavlovich goggled his eyes at him, turning and smiling from the third step.

Instead of an answer, Velchaninov noisily slammed the door, locked it carefully, and put the hook into the eye. Going back to his room, he spat as if he had been befouled by something.

After standing motionlessly for five minutes in the middle of the room, he threw himself down on the bed, without undressing at all, and instantly fell asleep. The forgotten candle burned all the way down on the table.

IV

WIFE, HUSBAND, AND LOVER

He slept very soundly and woke up at exactly half past nine; rose instantly, sat on his bed, and at once began thinking about the death of “that woman.”

Yesterday’s staggering impression from the unexpected news of this death had left him in some bewilderment and even pain. This bewilderment and pain had only been stifled in him for a time yesterday, in Pavel Pavlovich’s presence, by one strange idea. But now, on awakening, all that had happened nine years earlier suddenly stood before him with extreme vividness.

He had loved and been the lover of this woman, the late Natalia Vassilievna, the wife of “this Trusotsky,” when, on his own business (and also on the occasion of a lawsuit about an inheritance), he had spent a whole year in T———, though the business itself had not called for such long-term presence; the real reason had been this liaison. This liaison and love had possessed him so strongly that he had been as if the slave of Natalia Vassilievna and, indeed, would have ventured at once upon anything even of the most monstrous and senseless sort if it had been demanded only by the merest caprice of this woman. Never, either before or afterward, had anything similar happened to him. At the end of the year, when parting was already imminent, Velchaninov had been in such despair as the fatal hour drew near—in despair, despite the fact that the parting was supposed to be for the shortest time—that he suggested to Natalia Vassilievna that he carry her off, take her away from her husband, drop everything, and go abroad with him forever. Only the mockery and firm persistence of this lady (who at first fully approved of the project, but probably only out of boredom or else to make fun of it) could have stopped him and forced him to leave alone. And what then? Two months had not passed since their parting, and he, in Petersburg, was already asking himself that question which remained forever unresolved for him: did he really love this woman, or had it all been only a certain “bedevilment”? And it was not at all out of light-mindedness or under the influence of a new passion starting in him that the question was born in him: for those first two months in Petersburg he was in some sort of frenzy and was unlikely to notice any woman, though he at once took up with his former society and had occasion to see hundreds of women. Nevertheless, he knew very well that if he found himself at once back in T———, he would immediately fall again under all the oppressive charm of this woman, despite all the questions that had been born in him. Even five years later he was still of the same conviction. But five years later he had already admitted it to himself with indignation and even remembered “that woman” herself with hatred. He was ashamed of his T———year; he could not understand how such a “stupid” passion had even been possible for him, Velchaninov! All memories of this passion turned to disgrace for him; he blushed to the point of tears and suffered remorse. True, after another few years, he managed to calm himself down somewhat; he tried to forget it all—and nearly succeeded. And now all at once, nine years later, it all suddenly and strangely rose up again before him after yesterday’s news about Natalia Vassilievna’s death.