“And no doubt that IOU is in your hands?” I cried, glaring at him savagely.
“I have a bank, I have a mont-de-piété, I am not a broker. Have you heard that there is a mont-de-piété in Paris? Bread and benevolence for the poor; I have a mont-de-piété. . . .”
Prince Sergay rudely and angrily cut him short.
“What are you doing here? What are you staying for?”
“But,” Stebelkov blinked rapidly, “what about that? Won’t it do?”
“No, no, no,” Prince Sergay shouted, stamping; “I’ve said so.”
“Well, if so . . . that’s so. . . . But that’s a mistake. . . .”
He turned abruptly and with bowed head and bent spine went quickly out of the room. Prince Sergay called after him when he was in the doorway:
“You may as well know, sir, that I am not in the least afraid of you.”
He was very much irritated, he was about to sit down, but glancing at me, remained standing. His eyes seemed to say to me also, “Why are you hanging about here too?”
“Prince, I . . .” I was beginning.
“I’ve really no time to listen, Arkady Makarovitch, I’m just going out.”
“One minute, prince, it’s very important; and, to begin with, take back your three hundred.”
“What’s this now?”
He was walking up and down, but he stopped short.
“This now is that after all that has passed . . . and what you’ve said about Versilov . . . that he was dishonourable, and in fact your tone all the time. . . . In short, I can’t possibly take it.”
“You’ve been TAKING it for the last month, though.”
He suddenly sat down on the chair. I was standing at the table, and with one hand I patted the volume of Byelinsky, while I held my hat in the other.
“I had different feelings, prince . . . and, in fact, I would never have brought it to such a sum . . . it was the gambling . . . in short, I can’t!”
“You have not distinguished yourself to-day, and so you are in a rage; I’ll ask you to leave that book alone.”
“What does that mean: ‘not distinguished myself’? And, in fact, before your visitors you almost put me on a level with Stebelkov.”
“So that’s the key to the riddle!” he said with a biting smile. “You were abashed by Darzan’s calling you prince, too.”
He laughed spitefully. I flared up.
“I simply don’t understand; I wouldn’t take your title as a gift.”
“I know your character. How absurdly you cried out in defence of Mme. Ahmakov . . . let that book alone!”
“What’s the meaning of it?” I cried.
“L-l-let the book alone!” he yelled suddenly, drawing himself up in the low chair, with a ferocious movement, as though about to spring at me.
“This is beyond all limits,” I said, and I walked quickly out of the room, but before I had reached the end of the drawing-room, he shouted to me from the study:
“Arkady Makarovitch, come back! Co-ome ba-ack! Co-ome ba-ack!”
I went on without heeding. He hastily overtook me, seized me by the arm, and dragged me back into the study. I did not resist.
“Take it,” he said, pale with excitement, handing me the three hundred roubles I had thrown on the table. “You must take it . . . or else we . . . you must!”
“Prince, how can I take it?”
“Oh, I’ll beg your pardon . . . if you like . . . all right, forgive me! . . .”
“I have always liked you, prince, and if you feel the same . . .”
“I do; take it. . . .”
I took the money. His lips were trembling.
“I can understand, prince, that you are exasperated by that scoundrel . . . but I won’t take it, prince, unless we kiss each other, as we have done when we’ve quarrelled before.”
I was trembling, too, as I said this.
“Now for sentimentality,” muttered Prince Sergay, with an embarrassed smile, but he bent down and kissed me. I shuddered; at the instant he kissed me I caught on his face an unmistakable look of aversion.
“Did he bring you the money, anyway? . . .”
“Aië, never mind.”
“I was asking on your account. . . .”
“Yes he did, he did.”
“Prince, we have been friends . . . and in fact, Versilov. . . .”
“Yes, yes. That’s all right!”
“And in fact . . . I really don’t know . . . about this three hundred. . . .”
I was holding the money in my hand.
“Take it, ta-ake it!” he smiled again, but there was something very vicious in his smile.
I took the money.
Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:26:22 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.
A Raw Youth, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Chapter III
1
I took the money because I loved him. If anyone disbelieves this I must inform him that at the moment when I took the money I was firmly convinced that I could have obtained it from another source. And so I really took it, not because I was in desperate straits, but from delicacy, not to hurt his feelings. Alas, that was how I reasoned at the time! But yet my heart was very heavy as I went out from him. I had seen that morning an extraordinary change in his attitude to me; he had never taken such a tone before, and, as regards Versilov, it was a case of positive mutiny. Stebelkov had no doubt annoyed him very much that morning, but he had begun to be the same before seeing Stebelkov. I repeat once more; the change from his original manner might indeed have been noticed for some days past, but not in the same way, not in the same degree, that was the point.
The stupid gossip about that major, Baron Büring, might have some effect on him. . . . I too had been disturbed by it, but . . . the fact is, I had something else in my heart at that time that shone so resplendent that I heedlessly let many things pass unnoticed, made haste to let them pass, to get rid of them, and to go back to that resplendence. . . .
It was not yet one o’clock. From Prince Sergay’s I drove with my Matvey straight off to — it will hardly be believed to whom — to Stebelkov! The fact is that he had surprised me that morning, not so much by turning up at Prince Sergay’s (for he had promised to be there) as by the way he had winked at me; he had a stupid habit of doing so, but that morning it had been apropos of a different subject from what I had expected. The evening before, a note had come from him by post, which had rather puzzled me. In it he begged me to go to him between two and three to-day, and that “he might inform me of facts that would be a surprise to me.”
And in reference to that letter he had that morning, at Prince Sergay’s, made no sign whatever. What sort of secrets could there be between Stebelkov and me? Such an idea was positively ridiculous; but, after all that had happened, I felt a slight excitement as I drove off to him. I had, of course, a fortnight before applied to him for money, and he was ready to lend it, but for some reason we did not come to terms, and I did not take the money: on that occasion, too, he had muttered something vague, as his habit was, and I had fancied he wanted to make me some offer, to suggest some special conditions; and as I had treated him disdainfully every time I had met him at Prince Sergay’s, I proudly cut short any idea of special terms, though he pursued me to the door. I borrowed the money afterwards from Prince Sergay.
Stebelkov lived in a very comfortable style. He had his own establishment, a flat of four rooms, with handsome furniture, men and women servants, and a housekeeper, who was, however, by no means young. I went in angrily.
“Listen, my good man,” I began from the door; “to begin with, what’s the meaning of that letter? I don’t care for letters to be passing between us. And why did you not make any statement you wanted to make at Prince Sergay’s this morning? I was at your service.”
“And why did you hold your tongue, too, this morning, instead of questioning me?” he said with a broad grin of intense self-satisfaction.
“Because it’s not I want something of you, but you want something of me,” I cried, suddenly growing hot.
“Why have you come to see me, if that’s so?” he cried, almost jumping out of his chair with glee. I turned instantly, and would have gone out, but he seized me by the shoulder.