“That’s not a bad saying, but don’t persecute me.”
“But let me ask,” I insisted expansively, “what’s the meaning of ‘gaining the right to judge?’ Anyone who is honest may be a judge, that’s my idea.”
“You won’t find many judges in that case.”
“I know one anyway.”
“Who’s that?”
“He is sitting and talking to me now.”
Versilov laughed strangely, he stooped down to my ear, and taking me by the shoulder whispered, “He is always lying to you.”
I don’t know to this day what was in his mind, but evidently he was in some agitation at the time (in consequence of something he had learned, as I found out later). But those words, “he is always lying to you,” were so unexpected and uttered so earnestly, and with such a strange and far from playful expression, that it gave me a nervous shudder. I was almost alarmed and looked at him wildly; but Versilov made haste to laugh.
“Well, thank God!” murmured my mother, who was uneasy at seeing him whisper to me, “I was almost thinking. . . . Don’t be angry with us, Arkasha; you’ll have clever friends apart from us, but who is going to love you, if we don’t love one another?”
“The love of one’s relations is immoral, mother, just because it’s undeserved; love ought to be earned.”
“You’ll earn it later on, but here you are loved without.”
Every one suddenly laughed.
“Well, mother, you may not have meant to shoot, but you hit your bird!” I cried, laughing, too.
“And you actually imagined that there’s something to love you for,” cried Tatyana Pavlovna, falling upon me again: “You are not simply loved for nothing, you are loved in spite of loathing.”
“Oh not a bit of it,” I cried gaily; “do you know, perhaps, some one told me to-day I was loved.”
“Said it laughing at you!” Tatyana Pavlovna said suddenly with a sort of unnatural malignity, as though she had just been waiting for me to say that, “yes, a person of delicacy, especially a woman, would be moved to disgust by the uncleanness of your soul. Your hair is done with a smart parting, you have fine linen, and a suit made by a French tailor, but it’s all uncleanness really! Who’s paid your tailor’s bill, who keeps you, and gives you money to play roulette with? Think who it is you’ve been so shameless as to sponge on!”
My mother flushed painfully, and I had never seen a look of such shame on her face before. Everything seemed to be giving way within me.
“If I am spending money it’s my own, and I am not bound to give an account of it to anyone,” I blurted out, turning crimson.
“Whose own? What money’s your own?”
“If it’s not mine, it’s Andrey Petrovitch’s. He won’t refuse it me. . . . I borrowed from what Prince Sergay owes Andrey Petrovitch. . . .”
“My dear boy,” Versilov said firmly, all of a sudden, “not a farthing of that money is mine.”
The phrase was horribly significant. I was dumbfoundered. Oh, of course, considering my paradoxical and careless attitude at that time, I might quite well have turned it off with some outburst of “generous” feeling, or high-sounding phrase, or something, but I suddenly caught on Liza’s face a resentful accusing expression, an expression I had not deserved, almost a sneer, and a devil seemed to prompt me.
“You seem,” I said, turning to her suddenly, “to visit Darya Onisimovna very often at Prince Sergay’s flat, miss, so will you be pleased to give her this three hundred roubles, which you’ve given me such a nagging about already to-day?”
I took out the money and held it out to her. But will it be believed that those mean words were uttered entirely without motive, that is, without the faintest allusion to anything. And indeed there could have been no such allusion, for at that moment I knew absolutely nothing. Perhaps I had just a desire to vex her by something comparatively most innocent, by way of a gibe, “Since you are such an interfering young lady, wouldn’t you like to return the money yourself to the prince, a charming young man and a Petersburg officer, as you are so anxious to meddle in young men’s business.” But what was my amazement when my mother got up, and, with a menacing gesture, cried:
“How dare you! How dare you!”
I could never have conceived of anything like it from her, and I too jumped up from my seat, not exactly in alarm, but with a sort of anguish, a poignant wound in my heart, suddenly realizing that something dreadful had happened. But unable to control herself, mother hid her face in her hands and ran out of the room. Liza followed her out without so much as a glance at me. Tatyana Pavlovna gazed at me for half a minute in silence.
“Can you really have meant to jeer?” she exclaimed enigmatically, looking at me in profound astonishment, but without waiting for me to answer, she, too, ran out to join them. With an unsympathetic, almost angry expression, Versilov got up from the table, and took his hat from the corner.
“I imagine that you are not so much a fool as an innocent,” he mumbled to me ironically. “If they come back, tell them to have their pudding without waiting for me. I am going out for a little.”
I remained alone; at first I felt bewildered, then I felt resentful, but afterwards I saw clearly that I was to blame. However, I did not know exactly how I was to blame, I simply had a feeling of it. I sat in the window and waited. After waiting ten minutes, I, too, took my hat, and went upstairs to the attic, which had been mine. I knew that they, that is my mother and Liza, were there, and that Tatyana Pavlovna had gone away. And so I found them on my sofa, whispering together about something. They left off whispering at once, when I appeared; to my amazement they were not angry with me; mother anyway smiled at me.
“I am sorry, mother,” I began.
“Never mind!” mother cut me short, “only love each other and never quarrel and God will send you happiness.”
“He is never nasty to me, mother, I assure you,” Liza said with conviction and feeling.
“If it hadn’t been for that Tatyana Pavlovna nothing would have happened,” I cried; “she’s horrid!”
“You see, mother? You hear?” said Liza with a motion towards me.
“What I want to tell you both is this,” I declared: “if there is anything nasty in the world, it’s I that am nasty, and all the rest is delightful!”
“Arkasha, don’t be angry, darling, but if you really would give up . . .”
“Gambling, you mean, gambling? I will give it up, mother. I am going there for the last time to-day — especially since Andrey Petrovitch himself has declared that not a farthing of that money is his, you can’t imagine how I blush. . . . I must go into it with him, though . . . Mother darling, last time I was here I said something clumsy . . . it was nonsense, darling; I truly want to believe, it was only swagger, I love Christ. . . .”
On my last visit there had been a conversation about religion. Mother had been much grieved and upset. When she heard my words now, she smiled at me as though I were a little child.
“Christ forgives everything, Arkasha; he forgives your wrongdoing and worse than yours. Christ is our Father, Christ never fails us, and will give light in the blackest night. . . .”
I said good-bye to them, and went away, thinking over the chances of seeing Versilov that day; I had a great deal to talk over with him, and it had been impossible that afternoon. I had a strong suspicion that he would be waiting for me at my lodging. I walked there on foot; it had turned colder and begun to freeze and walking was very pleasant.
2
I lived near the Voznesenky Bridge, in a huge block of flats overlooking the courtyard. Almost as I went into the gate I ran into Versilov coming out.
“As usual when I go for a walk, I only get as far as your lodging, and I’ve been to Pyotr Ippolitovitch’s, but I got tired of waiting for you; your people there are for ever quarrelling, and to-day his wife is even a little tearful; I looked in and came away.”
For some reason I felt annoyed.