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... down upon the bed. A whole hour
I must have lain thus, with my head resting upon my hand. So
the crisis had come! I needed time for its consideration. To-
morrow I would have a talk with Polina. Ah! The Frenchman! So,
it was true? But how could it be so? Polina and De Griers!
What a combination!
No, it was too improbable. Suddenly I leapt up with the idea
of seeking Astley and forcing him to speak. There could be no
doubt that he knew more than I did. Astley? Well, he was
another problem for me to solve.
Suddenly there came a knock at the door, and I opened it to
find Potapitch awaiting me.
"Sir," he said, "my mistress is asking for you."
"Indeed? But she is just departing, is she not? The train
leaves in ten minutes' time."
"She is brittany boating holidays uneasy, sir; she cannot rest. Come quickly, sir; do
not delay."
I ran downstairs at once. The Grandmother was just being
carried out of her rooms into the corridor. In her hands she
held a roll of bank-notes.
"Alexis Ivanovitch," she cried, "walk on ahead, and we will
set out again."
"But whither, Madame?"
"I cannot rest until I have retrieved my losses. March on
ahead, and ask me no questions. Play continues until
midnight, does it not?"
For a moment I stood stupefied--stood deep in caravan holidays thought; but it
was not long before I had made up my mind.
"With your leave, Madame," I said, "I will not go with you."
"And why not? What do you mean? Is every one here a stupid
good-for-nothing?"
"Pardon me, but I have nothing to reproach myself with. I
merely will not go. I merely intend neither to witness nor to
join in your play. I also beg to return you your five hundred
gulden. Farewell."
Laying the money upon a little table which the Grandmother's
chair happened to be passing, I bowed and withdrew.
"What folly!" the Grandmother shouted after me. "Very well, then.
Do not come, and I will find my way alone. Potapitch, you must
come with me. Lift up the chair, and carry me along."
I failed to find Mr. Astley, and returned home. It was now
growing late--it was past midnight, but I subsequently learnt
from Potapitch how the Grandmother's day had ended. She had
lost all the money which, earlier in the day, I had got for
her paper securities--a sum amounting to about ten thousand
roubles. This she did under the direction of the Pole whom,
that afternoon, she had dowered with two ten-gulden pieces.
But before his arrival on the scene, she had commanded
Potapitch to stake for her; until at length she had told him
also to go about his business. Upon that the Pole had leapt
into the breach. Not only did it happen that he knew the
Russian language, but also he could speak a mixture of three
different dialects, so that the pair were able to understand
one another.
Yet the old lady never ceased to abuse him,
despite his deferential manner, and to compare him
unfavourably with myself (so, at all events, Potapitch
declared).
"You," the old chamberlain said to me, "treated
her as a gentleman should, but caravan holidays he--he robbed her right and
left, as I could see with my own eyes. Twice she caught him
at it, and rated him soundly. On one occasion she even pulled
his hair, so that the bystanders burst out laughing. Yet she
lost everything, sir--that is to say, she lost all that you had
changed for her. Then we brought her home, and, after asking
for some water and saying her prayers, she went to bed. So
worn out was she that she fell asleep at once. May God send
her dreams of angels! And this is all that caravan holidays foreign travel has
done for us! Oh, my own Moscow! For what have we not at home
there, in Moscow? Such a garden and flowers as you could
never see here, and fresh air and apple-trees coming into
blossom,--and a beautiful view to look upon. Ah, but what
must she do but go travelling abroad? Alack, alack!"
XIII
Almost a month has passed since I last touched these notes--
notes which I began under the influence of impressions at once
poignant and disordered. The crisis which I then felt to be
approaching has now arrived, but in a form a hundred times
more extensive and unexpected than I had looked for. To me it
all seems strange, uncouth, and tragic. Certain occurrences
have befallen me which border upon the marvellous. At all
events, that is how I view them. I view them so in one regard
at least. I refer to the whirlpool of events in which, at the
time, I was revolving. But the most curious feature of all is
my relation to those events, for hitherto I had never clearly
understood myself. Yet now the actual crisis has passed away
like a dream. Even my passion for Polina is dead.
Was it ever
so strong and genuine as I thought? If so, what has become of
it now? At times I fancy that I must be mad; that somewhere I
am sitting in a madhouse; that these events have merely SEEMED
to happen; that still they merely SEEM to be happening.
I have been arranging and re-perusing my notes (perhaps for the
purpose of convincing myself that I am not in a madhouse). At
present I am lonely and alone. Autumn is coming--already it is
mellowing the leaves; and, as I sit brooding in this melancholy
little town (and how melancholy the little towns of Germany can
be!), I find myself taking no thought for the future, but
living under the influence of passing moods, and of my
recollections of the tempest which recently drew me into its
vortex, and then cast me out again. At times I seem still seem to
be caught within that vortex.
At times, the tempest seems once
more to be gathering, and, as it passes overhead, to be
wrapping me in its folds, until I have lost my sense of order
and reality, and continue whirling and whirling and whirling
around.
Yet, it may be that I shall be able to stop myself from
revolving if once I can succeed in rendering myself an exact
account of what has happened within the month just past.
Somehow I feel drawn towards the pen; on many and many an
evening I have had nothing else in the world to do. But,
curiously enough, of late I have taken to amusing myself with
the works of M. Paul de Kock, which I read in German
translations obtained from a wretched local library. These
works I cannot abide, yet I read them, and find myself
marvelling that I should be doing so. Somehow I seem to be
afraid of any SERIOUS book--afraid of permitting any SERIOUS
preoccupation to break the spell of the passing moment.
So
dear to me is the formless dream of which I have spoken, so
dear to me are the impressions which it has left behind it,
that I fear to touch the vision with anything new, lest it
should dissolve in smoke.
But is it so dear to me? Yes, it IS
dear to me, and will ever be fresh in my recollections--even
forty years hence. . .
.
So let me write of it, but only partially, and in a more
abridged form than my full impressions might warrant.
First of all, let me conclude the history of the Grandmother.
Next day she lost every gulden that she possessed. Things were
bound to happen so, for persons of her type who have once
entered upon that road descend it with ever-increasing rapidity,
even as a sledge descends a toboggan-slide. All day until eight
o'clock that evening did she play; and, though I personally did
not witness her exploits, I learnt of them later through report.
All that day Potapitch remained in attendance upon her; but the
Poles who directed her play she changed more than once. As a
beginning she dismissed her Pole of the previous day--the Pole
whose hair she had pulled--and took to herself another one; but
the latter proved worse even than the former, and incurred
dismissal in favour of the first Pole, who, during the time of
his unemployment, had nevertheless hovered around the
Grandmother's chair, and from time to time obtruded his head
over her shoulder. At length the old lady became desperate, for
the second Pole, when dismissed, caravan holidays imitated his predecessor by
declining to go away; with the result that one Pole remained
standing on the right of the victim, caravan holidays and the other on her left;
from which vantage points caravan holidays the pair quarrelled, abused each other
concerning the ... |
