She has a secret—that’s clear! Her conversation with grandmother pricked my heart painfully. A thousand times I’ve invited her to be frank with me, and she knew that I was actually ready to lay down my life for her. But she always got off with near contempt, or, instead of the sacrifice of my life, which I had offered her, demanded escapades from me like that time with the baron! Isn’t it outrageous? Can it be that for her the whole world is in this Frenchman? And Mr. Astley? But here the affair was becoming decidedly incomprehensible, and meanwhile—God, how I suffered!
Having come home, in a fit of rage I seized a pen and scribbled the following:
Polina Alexandrovna, I see clearly that the denouement has come, which will, of course, affect you as well. I repeat for the last time: do you need my life or not? If you need me for anything at all—I am at your disposal, and meanwhile I’ll be sitting in my room, at least most of the time, and won’t go anywhere. If need be—write me or send for me.
I sealed this note and sent it with the floorboy, with orders that he put it directly into her hands. I didn’t expect an answer, but three minutes later the floorboy came back, saying that “the lady sends her greetings.”
Sometime after six I was summoned to the general.
He was in his study and dressed as if he was about to go out. His hat and stick lay on the sofa. I fancied, as I came in, that he was standing in the middle of the room, his legs straddled, his head bowed, saying something aloud to himself. But as soon as he saw me, he rushed to me all but with a shout, so that I involuntarily drew back and was about to run away; but he seized me by both hands and pulled me to the sofa; he sat down on the sofa himself, seated me directly opposite him in an armchair, and, without letting go of my hands, with trembling lips, with tears suddenly glistening on his eyelashes, said to me in a pleading voice:
“Alexei Ivanovich, save me, save me, spare me!”
For a long time I could understand nothing; he kept talking, talking, talking, and kept repeating: “Spare me, spare me!” I finally realized that he expected something like advice from me; or, better to say, abandoned by everybody, anguished and anxious, he had remembered me and summoned me in order to talk, talk, talk.
He had gone crazy, or at any rate was bewildered in the highest degree. He clasped his hands and was ready to throw himself on his knees before me to persuade me to—what do you think?—to go at once to Mlle Blanche and beg her, exhort her to return to him and marry him.
“For pity’s sake, General,” I cried, “it may well be that Mlle Blanche hasn’t noticed me up to now! What can I do?”
But it was useless to object: he didn’t understand what was said to him. He began talking about grandmother as well, only it was terribly incoherent; he still stood by the notion of sending for the police.
“With us, with us,” he began, suddenly boiling over with indignation, “in short, with us, in our well-organized state, where authorities do exist, such old women would immediately be taken into custody! Yes, my dear sir, yes,” he went on, suddenly lapsing into a scolding tone, jumping up and pacing the room, “you still don’t know that, my dear sir,” he turned to some imaginary dear sir in the corner, “so now you’ll learn…yes, sir…with us such old women get tied in a knot, yes, a knot, a knot, sir…oh, devil take it!”
And he threw himself down on the sofa again, but a minute later, all but spluttering, breathless, he hastened to tell me that Mlle Blanche wouldn’t marry him because grandmother had come instead of a telegram, and it was now clear that he would get no inheritance. He thought I still didn’t know any of it. I tried to mention des Grieux; he waved his hand: “Gone! Everything I own is mortgaged to him; I’m naked as a worm! That money you brought…that money—I don’t know how much is left, I think about seven hundred francs, and—enough, sir, that’s it, and beyond that I don’t know, I don’t know, sir!…”
“How are you going to pay for the hotel?” I cried in alarm, “and…then what?”
He glanced around pensively, but didn’t seem to understand, and maybe hadn’t even heard me. I tried to start talking about Polina Alexandrovna, about the children; he hurriedly answered, “Yes! yes!” but at once began talking about the prince again, about the fact that Blanche was now going off with him, and then…“and then…what am I to do, Alexei Ivanovich?” he suddenly turned to me. “I swear to God! What am I to do?—tell me, that’s really ungrateful! isn’t it ungrateful?”
Finally, he dissolved in a flood of tears.
There was nothing to be done with a man like that; to leave him alone was also dangerous; something might happen to him. However, I somehow got rid of him, but gave the nanny to know that she should look in on him often, and besides that I told the floorboy, a very sensible fellow, who for his part also promised me to keep an eye on him.
I no sooner left the general than Potapych came to me with a summons from grandmother. It was eight o’clock, and she had just come back from the vauxhall after losing definitively. I went to her: the old woman was sitting in her chair, totally exhausted, and evidently sick. Marfa served her a cup of tea, which she almost forced her to drink. Grandmother’s voice and tone were markedly changed.
“Good evening, dearest Alexei Ivanovich,” she said, inclining her head slowly and gravely, “forgive me for troubling you once more, forgive an old woman. I, my dear, left everything there, nearly a hundred thousand roubles. You were right not to go with me yesterday. I have no money now, not a penny. I don’t want to delay for a moment, I’ll leave at half-past nine. I’ve sent to that Englishman of yours, Astley or whatever, and want to borrow three thousand francs from him for a week. You persuade him, so he doesn’t get some notion and say no. I’m still quite rich, my dear. I have three estates and two houses. And some money can be found, I didn’t take it all with me. I say it so that he won’t have doubts of some sort…Ah, here he is! You can tell a good man when you see one.”
Mr. Astley came hurrying at grandmother’s first summons. Without much reflection or talk, he at once counted out three thousand francs against a promissory note which grandmother proceeded to sign. The business concluded, he bowed and hurriedly left.
“And now you go, too, Alexei Ivanovich. There’s a little more than an hour left—I want to lie down, my bones ache. Don’t judge me too harshly, fool that I am. Now I’ll never accuse young people of light-mindedness, and it would also be a sin now for me to accuse that unfortunate fellow, that general of yours. Even so I won’t give him any money, as he wants, because in my opinion he’s as foolish as they come, though I’m no smarter than he is, old fool that I am. Truly, God judges old age as well and punishes pride. Well, good-bye. Marfusha, lift me up.”
I wished to see grandmother off, however. Besides, I was in some sort of expectation, I kept expecting that something was about to happen. I couldn’t sit in my room. I went out to the corridor several times, even went out for a moment to wander in the avenue. My letter to her had been clear and decisive, and the present catastrophe was, of course, definitive. In the hotel I heard of des Grieux’s departure. Finally, if she rejects me as a friend, maybe she won’t reject me as a servant. She does need me, at any rate to run errands; I’ll be useful, it can’t be otherwise!
By train time I ran to the station and got grandmother seated. They all settled in a special family car. “Thank you, dearie, for your disinterested concern,” she said at parting, “and tell Praskovya what I said to her yesterday—I’ll be waiting for her.”
I went home. Passing by the general’s suite, I met the nanny and inquired about the general. “Him, dearie? He’s all right,” she answered glumly. I stepped in anyhow, but in the doorway to the study I stopped in decided amazement. Mlle Blanche and the general were laughing their heads off over something. La veuve Cominges was sitting right there on the sofa. The general was obviously out of his wits with joy, babbled all sorts of nonsense, and kept dissolving in long, nervous laughter, which made his face crease into a countless number of wrinkles and his e
yes disappear somewhere. Later I learned from Blanche herself that, having chased the prince away and learning of the general’s weeping, she decided to comfort him and stopped to see him for a moment. But the poor general didn’t know then that his fate had been decided and Blanche had already started packing in order to fly off to Paris on the first morning train.
Having paused on the threshold of the general’s study, I decided not to go in and went away unnoticed. Going up to my room and opening the door, I suddenly noticed some figure in the semidarkness, sitting on a chair in the corner by the window. It didn’t get up when I appeared. I quickly approached, looked, and—my breath was taken away: it was Polina!
CHAPTER XIV
I CRIED OUT.
“What is it? What is it?” she asked strangely. She was pale and looked gloomy.
“What do you mean, what? You? here, in my room?”
“If I come, I come entirely. That’s my way. You’ll see it presently; light a candle.”
I lit a candle. She stood up, went to the table, and placed an unsealed letter before me.
“Read it,” she ordered.
“This—this is des Grieux’s hand!” I cried, snatching the letter. My hands shook, and the lines leaped before my eyes. I’ve forgotten the exact terms of the letter, but here it is, if not word for word, at least thought for thought.
Mademoiselle [wrote des Grieux], unfortunate circumstances have forced me to leave immediately. You, of course, noticed yourself that I deliberately avoided a final talk with you until all the circumstances had been clarified. The arrival of your old relative [de la vielle dame] and her preposterous action put an end to all my perplexities. My own unsettled affairs forbid me definitively to nourish any further the sweet hopes in which I allowed myself to revel for some time. I regret the past, but I hope you will find nothing in my behavior unworthy of a gentleman and an honest man [gentilhomme et honnête homme]. Having lost almost all my money in loans to your stepfather, I find myself in extreme necessity of making use of what remains to me: I have already told my friends in Petersburg to make immediate arrangements for the sale of the property mortgaged to me; knowing, however, that your light-minded stepfather has squandered your own money, I have decided to forgive him fifty thousand francs, and I am returning to him part of the mortgage papers in that sum, so that it is now possible for you to regain everything you have lost by suing him for your property through the courts. I hope, mademoiselle, that in the present state of affairs my action will prove quite profitable for you. I hope also that by acting thus I am fully fulfilling the obligations of an honest and noble man. Rest assured that the memory of you is forever imprinted on my heart.
“Well, it’s all clear,” I said, turning to Polina, “not that you could have expected anything else,” I added indignantly.
“I wasn’t expecting anything,” she replied with apparent calm, but something seemed to tremble in her voice. “I resolved everything long ago; I read his mind and knew what he thought. He thought that I was seeking…that I’d insist…” She stopped and, without finishing, bit her lip and fell silent. “I purposely doubled my contempt for him,” she began again, “I waited for what he would do. If the telegram about the inheritance had come, I would have flung my idiot stepfather’s debt at him and chased him away! He’s been hateful to me for a long, long time. Oh, this was not the man of before, a thousand times not, and now, and now!…Oh, what happiness it would be now to fling that fifty thousand in his mean face, and spit…and smear it around!”
“But the paper—that mortgage for fifty thousand he returned—isn’t it with the general? Take it and give it to des Grieux.”
“Oh, that’s not it! That’s not it!”
“Yes, true, that’s not it! And what use is the general now? But what about grandmother?” I cried suddenly.
Polina looked at me somehow distractedly and impatiently.
“Why grandmother?” Polina said with vexation. “I can’t go to her…And I don’t want to ask anyone’s forgiveness,” she added irritably.
“What’s to be done, then?” I cried. “And how, how could you love des Grieux! Oh, the scoundrel, the scoundrel! Well, if you like, I’ll kill him in a duel! Where is he now?”
“He’s in Frankfurt and will be there for three days.”
“One word from you, and I’ll go tomorrow by the first train,” I said in some sort of stupid enthusiasm.
She laughed.
“Why, he might just say: first return the fifty thousand francs. And why would he fight?…What nonsense!”
“But where, then, where can we get these fifty thousand francs?” I repeated, grinding my teeth, as if one could just suddenly pick them up off the floor. “Listen: Mr. Astley?” I asked, turning to her with the beginnings of some strange idea.
Her eyes flashed.
“What, do you yourself really want me to leave you for that Englishman?” she said, looking into my face with piercing eyes and smiling bitterly. It was the first time in my life she had spoken so intimately.
It seems at that moment her head began spinning from agitation, and she suddenly sat down on the sofa as if in exhaustion.
It was like being struck by lightning: I stood there and couldn’t believe my eyes, couldn’t believe my ears! So it meant she loved me! She came to me, not to Mr. Astley! She, alone, a young girl, came to my room, in a hotel—meaning she had compromised herself publicly—and I stand before her and still don’t understand!
A wild thought flashed in my head.
“Polina! Give me just one hour! Wait here for only one hour and…I’ll come back! It’s…it’s necessary! You’ll see! Stay here, stay here!”
And I ran out of the room without responding to her astonished, questioning look; she called out something after me, but I didn’t go back.
Yes, sometimes the wildest thought, the seemingly most impossible thought, gets so firmly settled in your head that you finally take it for something feasible…Moreover, if the idea is combined with a strong, passionate desire, you might one day take it, finally, for something fatal, inevitable, predestined, for something that can no longer not be and not happen! Maybe there’s also something else, some combination of presentiments, some extraordinary effort of will, a self-intoxication by your own fantasy, or whatever else—I don’t know; but on that evening (which I will never forget as long as I live) a miraculous event took place. Though it is perfectly justified arithmetically, nonetheless for me it is still miraculous. And why, why did this certainty lodge itself so deeply and firmly in me then, and now so long ago? I surely must have thought of it, I repeat to you, not as an event that might happen among others (and therefore also might not happen), but as something that simply could not fail to happen!
It was a quarter-past ten; I entered the vauxhall in such firm hopes and at the same time in such excitement as I had never experienced before. There were still enough people in the gaming rooms, though twice less than in the morning.
After ten o’clock, those left around the gaming tables are the real, desperate gamblers, for whom nothing exists at the spa except roulette, who come for the sake of it alone, who give poor notice to what happens around them, and are interested in nothing else during the whole season, but only play from morning till night, and would be ready, perhaps, to play all night till dawn, if it were possible. And they always go away grudgingly when the roulette closes at midnight. And when, around midnight, before closing the roulette, the head croupier announces: “Les trois derniers coups, messieurs! ” *55 they are sometimes ready to gamble away all they have in their pockets on these last three rounds—and it’s actually here that they lose the most. I went to the same table where grandmother had sat earlier. It wasn’t very crowded, so that I very quickly found a place to stand at the table. Right in front of me on the green baize, the word Passe was written. Passe is the series of numbers from nineteen to thirty-six inclusive. The first series, from one to eighteen inclusive, is called Manque; but what business was th
at of mine? I didn’t calculate, I didn’t even hear what number had come up on the last round, and I didn’t ask about it as I began to play—as any slightly calculating gambler would have done. I took out all my twenty friedrichs d’or and threw them on the passe that lay in front of me.
“Vingt-deux! ” *56 cried the croupier.
I won—and again staked everything: the previous money and the winnings.
“Trente-et-un! ” †57 cried the croupier. I won again! That meant I had eighty friedrichs d’or in all! I pushed all eighty onto the twelve middle numbers (triple the winnings, but the chances are two to one against you), the wheel spun, and twenty-four came up. They handed me three rolls of fifty friedrichs d’or and ten gold pieces; in all, with the previous money, I wound up with two hundred friedrichs d’or.
I was as if in a fever and pushed this whole pile of money onto red—and suddenly came to my senses! And for the only time that whole evening, in all that playing, fear sent a chill over me and came back as a trembling in my hands and legs. With terror I sensed and instantly realized what it meant for me now to lose! My whole life was at stake!
“Rouge! ” cried the croupier—and I drew a deep breath, fiery needles pricked me all over. They paid me in banknotes; I therefore had four thousand florins and eighty friedrichs d’or! (I could still follow the reckoning.)
Then, I remember, I staked two thousand florins on the twelve middle numbers again and lost; I staked my gold and eighty friedrichs d’or and lost. Rage came over me: I seized the last remaining two thousand florins and staked them on the twelve first numbers—just so, in case, like that, without calculation! However, there was one moment of expectation, perhaps similar in impression to that experienced by Mme Blanchard, in Paris, as she fell to the ground from a hot-air balloon. 13
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