Aboguin stepped heavily towards the doctor, thrust his white soft fists before his face, and went on wailing, shaking his fists the while.
"She's gone off! She's deceived me! But why this lie? My God, my God! Why this dirty, foul trick, this devilish, serpent's game? What have I done to her? She's gone off."
Tears gushed from his eyes. He turned on his heel and began to pace the drawing-room. Now in his short jacket and his fashionable narrow trousers in which his legs seemed too thin for his body, he was extraordinarily like a lion. Curiosity kindled in the doctor's impassive face. He rose and eyed Aboguin.
"Well, where's the patient?"
"The patient, the patient," cried Aboguin, laughing, wei»p- ing, and still shaking his fists. "She's not ill, but accursed. Vile—dastardly. The Devil himself couldn't have planned a fouler trick. She sent me so that she could run away with a fool, an utter clown, an Alphonse! My God, far better she 10hould have died. I'll not bear it. I shall not bear it."
The doctor stood up straight. His eyes began to blink, tilled with tears; his thin beard began to move with his jaw right and left.
"What's this?" he asked, looking curiously about. "My child's dead. My wife in anguish, alone in all the house. . . . I can hardly stand on my feet, I haven't slept for three nights . . . and I'm made to play in a vulgar comedy, to play the part of a stage property! I don't . . . I don't under- stand it!"
Aboguin opened one fist, flung a crumpled note on the floor and trod on it, as upon an insect he wished to crush.
"And I didn't see . . . didn't understand," he said through his set teeth, brandishing one fist round his head, with an expression as though someone had trod on a corn. "I didn't notice how he came to see iis every day. I didn't notice that he came in a carriage to-day! What was the carriage for? And I didn't see! Innocent!"
"I don't ... I don't understand," the doctor murmured. "^^at's it all mean? It's jeering at a man, laughing at a man's suffering! That's impossible . . . . I've never seen it in my life before!"
With the dull bewilderment of a man who has just begun to understand that someone has bitterly offended him, the doctor shrugged his shoulders, waved his hands and not knowing what to say or do, dropped exhausted into a chair.
"Well, she didn't love me any more. She loved another man. Very well. But why the deceit, why this foul treachery?" Aboguin spoke with tears in his voice. "Why, why? What have I done to you? Listen, Doctor," he said passionately approaching Kirilov. "You were the unwilling witness of my
sfortune, and I am not going to hide the truth from you. •wear I loved this woman. I loved her with devotion, like slave. I sacrificed everything for her. I broke with my nily, I gave up the service and my music. I forgave her ngs I could not have forgiven my mother and sister . . . tever once gave her an angry look ... I never gave her V cause. Why this lie, then? I do not demand love, but y this abominable deceit? If you don't love any more then ;ak out honestly, above all when you know what I feel mt this matter. . . ."
IVith tears in his eyes and trembling in all his bones, oguin was pouring out his soul to the doctor. He spoke ;sionately, pressing both hands to his heart. He revealed the family secrets without hesitation, as though he were d that these secrets were being torn from his heart. Had spoken thus for an hour or two and poured out all his tl, he would surely have been easier. Vho can say whether, had the doctor listened and given 1 friendly sympathy, he would not, as so often happens. 'e been reconciled to his grief unprotesting, without turn to unprofitable follies? But it happened otherwise. Whilt oguin was speaking the offended doctor changed coun- ance visibly. The indifference and amazement in his face dually gave way to an expression of bitter outrage, in- nation, and anger. His features became still sharper, der, and more forbidding. When Aboguin put before his s the photograph of his young wife, with a pretty, but , inexpressive face like a nun's, and asked if it were pos- e to look at that face and grant that it could express a lie, doctor suddenly started away, with flashing eyes, and l, coarsely forging out each several word: Why do you tell me all this? I do not want to hear! I .'t want to," he cried and banged his fist upon the table. lon't want your trivial vulgar secrets—to Hell with them. i dare not tell me such trivialities. Or do you think I have not yet been insulted enough! That I'm a lackey to whom you can give the last insult? Yes?"
Aboguin drew back from Kirilov and stared at him in ŝurprise.
"Why did you bring me here?" the doctor went on, shak- ing his beard. "You marry out of high spirits, get angry out of high spirits, and make a melodrama—but where do I come in? What have I got to do with your romances? Leave me alone! Get on with your noble grabbing, parade your humane ideas, play"—the doctor gave a side-glance at the 'cello-case—"the double-bass and the trombone, stuff yourselves. like capons, but don't dare to jeer at a real man! If you can't respect him, then you can at least spare him your attentions."
"What does all this mean?" Aboguin asked, blushing.
"It means that it's vile and foul to play with a man! I'm a doctor. You consider doctors and all men who work and don't reek of scent and harlotry, your footmen, your mauvais tons. Very well, but no one gave you the right to turn a man who suffers into a property."
"How dare you say that?" Aboguin asked quietly. Again his face began to twist about, this time in visible anger.
"How dare you bring me here to listen to trivial rubbish, when you know that I'm in sorrow?" the doctor cried and banged his fists on the table once more. "Who gave you the right to jeer at another's grief?"
"You're mad," cried Aboguin. "You're ungenerous. I too am deeply unhappy and . . . and . . ."
"Unhappy"—the doctoi gave a sneering laugh—"don't touch the word, it's got nothing to do with you. Wasters who can't get money on a bill call themselves unhappy too. A capon's unhappy, oppressed with all its superfluous fat. You worthless lot! "
"Sir, you're forgetting yourself," Aboguin gave a piercing scream. "For words like those, people are beaten. Do you onderstand?"
Aboguin thrust his hand into his side pocket, took out a pocket-book, found two notes and flung them on the table.
"There's your fee," he said, and his nostrils trembled. "You're paid."
"You dare not offer me money," said the doctor, and brushed the notes from the table to the floor. "You don't settle an insult with money."
Aboguin and the doctor stood face to face, heaping each other with undeserved insults. Never in their lives, even in a frenzy, had they said so much that was unjust and cruel and absurd. In both the selfishness of the unhappy is violently manifest. Unhappy men are selfish, wicked, unjust, and less able to understand each other than fools. Unhappiness does not unite people, but separates them; and just where one would imagine that people should be united by the com- munity of grief, there is more injustice and cruelty done than among the comparatively contented.
"Send me home, please," the doctor cried, out of breath.
Aboguin rang the bell violently. Nobody came. He rang once more; then flung the bell angrily to the floor. It struck dully on the carpet and gave out a mournful sound like a death-moan. The footman appeared.
"Where have you been hiding, damn you?" The master sprang upon him with clenched fists. "Where have you been just now? Go away and tell them to send the carriage round for this gentleman, and get the brougham ready for me. Wait," he called out as the footman turned to go. "Not a single traitor remains to-morrow. Pack off all of you! I will engage new ones. . . . Rabble!"
While they waited Aboguin and the doctor were silent. Already the expression of satisfaction and the subtle elegance had returned to the former. He paced the drawing-room, shook his head elegantly and evidently was planning some- thing. His anger was not yet cool, but he tried to make as if he did not notice his enemy. . . . The doctor stood with one hand on the edge of the table, looking at Aboguin with that deep, rather cynical, ugly contempt with which only grief anci an unjust lot can look, when they see satiety and elegance before them.