"Let me ask you first: do you really mean to set off at once?"
"Do you suppose I'm joking, my good girl! I've said I'm going and I'm going. I've wasted fifteen thousand roubles today over your damned roulette. Five years ago I promised to rebuild a wooden church with stone on my estate near Moscow, and instead of that I've thrown away my money here. Now, my girl, I'm going home to build the ehurch."
"And the waters. Granny? You came to drink the waters?"
"Bother you and the waters, too. Don't irritate me, Praskovya; are you doing it on purpose? TeU me, will you come or not?"
"I thank you very, very much," Polina began, with feeling, "for the home you offer me. You have guessed my position to some extent. I am so grateful to you that I shall perhaps come to you soon; but now there are reasons . . . important reasons . . . and I can't decide at once, on the spur of the moment. If you were staying only a fortnight . . ."
"You mean you won't?"
"I mean I can't. Besides, in any case I can't leave my brother and sister, as ... as ... as it may actually happen that they may be left abandoned, so ... if you would take me with the children. Granny, I certainly would come, and, believe me, I would repay you for it!" she added warmly; "but without the children I can't come. Granny."
"Well, don't whimper" (Polina had no intention of whimpering—^indeed, I had never seen her cry). "Some place will be foimd for the chickens, my henhouse is big enough. Besides, it is time they were at school. Well, so you are not coming now! Well, Praskovya, mind! I wished for your good, but
I know why you won't come! I know all about it, Praskovya. That Frenchman will bring you no good."
Polina flushed crimson. I positively shuddered. (Everyone knows cdl about it. I am the only one to know nothing!)
"Come, come, don't frown. I am not going to say anything more. Only take care no harm comes of it, understand. You are a clever wench; I shall be sorry for you. Well, that's enough. I should not like to look on you as on the others 1 Go along, good-bye!"
"I'll come to see you off," said Polina.
"There's no need, don't you interfere; I am sick of you all."
Polina was kissing Granny's hand, but the latter pulled it away and kissed her on the cheek.
As she passed me, Polina looked at me quickly and immediately turned away her eyes.
"Well, good-bye to you, too, Alexey Ivanovitch, there's only an hour before tiie train starts, and I think you must be tired out with me. Here, take these fifty pieces of gold."
"I thank you very much. Granny; I'm ashamed . . ."
"Come, come!" cried Graimy, but so vigorously and angrily that I dared say no more and took it.
"When you are running about Moscow without a job come to me: I will give you some introductions. Now, get along with you!"
I went to my room and lay down on my bed. I lay there for half an hour on my back, with my hands clasped behind my head. The catastrophe had come at last, I had something to think about. I made up my mind to talk earnestly to Polina. The nasty Frenchman! So it was true then! But what could there be at the bottom of it? Polina and De Grieux! Heavens! what a pair!
It was all simply incredible. I suddenly jumped up, beside myself, to look for Mr. Astley, and at aU costs to make him speak out. No doubt in this matter, too, he knew more than I did. Mr. Astley? He was another riddle to me!
But suddenly there was a tap at my door. I looked up. It was Potapitch.
"Alexey Ivanovitch, you are wanted to come to my lady!"
"What's the matter? Is she setting off? The train does not start for twenty minutes."
"She's uneasy, she can't sit still. 'Make haste, make haste!' she says, meaning to fetch you, sir. For Christ's sake, don't delay."
I ran downstairs at once. Granny was being wheeled ovrt. into the passage, her pocket-book was in her hand.
"Alexey Ivanovitch, go on ahead; we're coining,"
"Where, Granny?"
"As sure as I'm aiive, I'll win it back. Come, march, don't ask questions I Does the play go on there till midnight?"
I was thunderstruck. I thought a moment, but at once made up my mind.
"Do as you please, Antonida Vassilyevna, I'm not coming."
"What's that for? What now? Have you all eaten too many pancakes, or what?"
"Do as you please, I should blame myself for it afterwards; I won't. I won't take part in it or look on at it; spare me, Antonida Vassilyevna. Here are your fifty friedrichs d'or back; good-bye!" And, laying the fifty friedrichs d'or on the Uttle table near which Graimy's chair was standing, I bowed and went out.
"What nonsense!" Granny shouted after me. "Don't come if you don't want to, I can find the way by myself! Potapitch, come with me! Come, hft me up, carry me!"
I did not find Mr. Astley and returned home. It was late, after midnight, when I learned from Potapitch how Granny's day ended. She lost all that I had changed for her that evening —^that is, in Russian money, another ten thousand roubles. The little Pole, to whom she had given two friedrichs d'or the day before, had attached himself to her and had directed her play the whole time. At first, before the Pole came, she had made Potapitch put down the stakes, but soon she dismissed him; it was at that moment the Pole turned up. As ill-luck would have it, he understood Russian and babbled away in a mixture of three languages, so that they understood each other after a fashion. Granny abused him mercilessly the whole time; and though he incessantly "laid himself at his lady's feet," "yet he couldn't be compared with you, Alexey Ivanovitch," said Potapitch. "She treated you Mke a gemiieman, while the other—I saw it with my own eyes, God strike me dead—stole her money oflE the table. She caught him at it herself twice. She did give it to him with all sorts of names, sir, even pulled his hair once, upon my word she did, so that folks were laughing round about. She's lost everything, sir, everything, all you changed for her; we brought her back here—she only asked for a drink of water, crossed herself and went to bed. She's worn out, to be sure; she fell asleep at once. God send her heavenly
dreams. Ochl these foreign parts!" Potapitch wound up. "I said it would lead to no good. If only we could soon be back in Moscow! We'd everything we wanted at home in Moscow: a garden, flowers such as you don't have here, fragrance, the apples are swelUng, plenty of room everywhere. No, we had to come abroad. Oh, oh, oh , . ."
CHAPTER XIII
NOW almost a whole month has passed since I touched these notes of mine, which were begun under the influence of confused but intense impressions. The catastrophe which I felt to be approaching has actually come, but in a form a hundred times more violent and startling than I had expected. It has aU been something strange, grotesque and even tragic— at least for me. Several things have happ>ened to me that were almost miraculous; that is, at least, how I look upon them to this day—^though from another point of view, particularly in the whirl of events in which I was involved at that time, they were only somewhat out of the confunon. But what is most marvellous to me is my own attitude to all these events. To this day I cannot understand myself, and it has all floated by like a dream—even my passion—it was violent and sincere, but . . . what has become of it now? It is true that sometimes the thought flashes through my brain: "Wasn't I out of my mind then, and wasn't I all that time somewhere in a madhouse and perhaps I'm there now, so that was all my fancy and still is my fancy . . ." I put my notes together and read them over. (Who knows—perhaps to convince myself that I did not write them in a madhouse.) Now I am entirely alone. Autumn is coming on and the leaves are turning yellow. I'm still in this dismal little town (oh, how dismal the httle German towns are!), and instead of considering what to do next, I go on living under the influence of the sensations I have just passed toough, under the influence of memories still fresh, under the influence of the whirl of events which caught me up and flung me aside again. At times I fancy that I am still caught up in that whirlwind, that that storm is still raging, canying me along with it, and again I lose sight of all order and measure and I whirl round and round again. . . .