|
...
"With your leave, Madame," I cdrws 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. cdrws 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. cdrws 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 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 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 cdrws 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 SERIO ... |
