A minute later Darzan also left, having arranged with the prince to meet the next day without fail at some place they had already settled on—a gambling house, naturally. On his way out he shouted something to Stebelkov and bowed slightly to me. As soon as he went out, Stebelkov jumped up from his place and stood in the middle of the room with a raised finger:
“Last week that little squire pulled off the following stunt: he gave a promissory note and falsified Averyanov’s name on it. And the nice little note still exists in that guise, only one doesn’t do such things! It’s criminal. Eight thousand.”
“And surely it’s you who have this note?” I glanced at him ferociously.
“I have a bank, sir, I have a mont-de-piété,36 not promissory notes. Have you heard of such a mont-de-piété in Paris? Bread and charity for the poor. I have a mont-de-piété . . .”
The prince stopped him rudely and spitefully:
“What are you doing here? Why did you stay?”
“Ah!” Stebelkov quickly began nodding with his eyes. “And that? What about that?”
“No, no, no, not that,” the prince shouted and stamped his foot, “I told you!”
“Ah, well, if so . . . then so . . . Only it’s not so . . .”
He turned sharply and, inclining his head and rounding his back, suddenly left. The prince called after him when he was already in the doorway:
“Be it known to you, sir, that I am not afraid of you in the least!”
He was highly vexed, made as if to sit down, but, having glanced at me, did not. It was as if his glance was also saying to me, “Why are you also sticking around?”
“Prince,” I tried to begin . . .
“I really have no time, Arkady Makarovich, I’m about to leave.”
“One moment, Prince, it’s very important to me; and, first of all, take back your three hundred.”
“What’s this now?”
He was pacing, but he paused.
“It’s this, that after all that’s happened . . . and what you said about Versilov, that he’s dishonorable, and, finally, your tone all the rest of the time . . . In short, I simply can’t accept.”
“You’ve been accepting for a whole month, though.”
He suddenly sat down on a chair. I stood by the table, flipping through Belinsky’s book with one hand and holding my hat with the other.
“The feelings were different, Prince . . . And, finally, I’d never have brought it as far as a certain figure . . . This gambling . . . In short, I can’t!”
“You simply haven’t distinguished yourself in anything, and so you’re frantic. I beg you to leave that book alone.”
“What does ‘haven’t distinguished yourself ’ mean? And, finally, you almost put me on a par with Stebelkov in front of your guests.”
“Ah, there’s the answer!” he grinned caustically. “Besides, you were embarrassed that Darzan called you ‘prince.’”
He laughed maliciously. I flared up:
“I don’t even understand . . . I wouldn’t take your princehood gratis . . .”
“I know your character. It was ridiculous the way you cried out in defense of Mme. Akhmakov . . . Leave the book alone!”
“What does that mean?” I also shouted.
“Le-e-eave the book alo-o-one!” he suddenly yelled, sitting up fiercely in his armchair, as if ready to charge.
“This goes beyond all limits,” I said and quickly left the room. But before I reached the end of the hall, he called out to me from the door of the study:
“Come back, Arkady Makarovich! Come ba-a-ack! Come ba-a-ack right now!”
I paid no attention and walked on. He quickly overtook me, seized my arm, and dragged me back to the study. I didn’t resist!
“Take it!” he said, pale with agitation, handing me the three hundred roubles I had left there. “You absolutely must take it . . . otherwise we . . . you absolutely must!”
“How can I take it, Prince?”
“Well, I’ll ask your forgiveness, shall I? Well, forgive me! . . .”
“Prince, I always loved you, and if you also . . .”
“I also; take it . . .”
I took it. His lips were trembling.
“I understand, Prince, that you were infuriated by this scoundrel . . . but I won’t take it, Prince, unless we kiss each other, as with previous quarrels . . .”
I was also trembling as I said it.
“Well, what softheartedness,” the prince murmured with an embarrassed smile, but he leaned over and kissed me. I shuddered: in his face, at the moment of the kiss, I could decidedly read disgust.
“Did he at least bring you the money? . . .”
“Eh, it makes no difference.”
“It’s for you that I . . .”
“He did, he did.”
“Prince, we used to be friends . . . and, finally, Versilov . . .”
“Well, yes, yes, all right!”
“And, finally, I really don’t know ultimately, this three hundred . . .”
I was holding it in my hands.
“Take it, ta-a-ake it!” he smiled again, but there was something very unkind in his smile.
I took it.
Chapter Three
I
I TOOK IT because I loved him. To whoever doesn’t believe it, I’ll reply that at least at the moment when I took this money from him, I was firmly convinced that, if I had wanted to, I could very well have gotten it from another source. And therefore it means that I took it not out of extremity, but out of delicacy, only so as not to offend him. Alas, that was how I reasoned then! But even so I felt very oppressed on leaving him: I had seen an extraordinary change towards me that morning; there had never yet been such a tone; and against Versilov there was positive rebellion. Stebelkov, of course, had vexed him greatly with something earlier, but he had started even before Stebelkov. I’ll repeat once more: it had been possible to notice a change compared with the beginning in all those recent days, but not like that, not to such a degree—that’s the main thing.
The stupid news about this imperial aide-de-camp Baron Bjoring might have had an influence as well . . . I also left in agitation, but . . . That’s just it, that something quite different was shining then, and I let so much pass before my eyes light-mindedly: I hastened to let it pass, I drove away all that was gloomy and turned to what was shining . . .
It was not yet one in the afternoon. From the prince, my Matvei drove me straight—will you believe to whom?—to Stebelkov! That’s just it, that earlier that day he had surprised me not so much by his calling on the prince (because he had promised him to come), as by the fact that, though he winked at me out of his stupid habit, it was not at all on the subject I had expected. The evening before, I had received from him, through the city mail, a note I found quite mysterious, in which he urgently requested that I visit him precisely today, between one and two o’clock, and “that he could inform me of things I was not expecting.” And yet just now, there at the prince’s, he hadn’t let anything show about the letter. What secrets could there be between Stebelkov and me? The idea was even ridiculous; but in view of everything that had happened, as I was going to him now, I even felt a little excited. Of course, I turned to him for money once a couple of weeks before, and he was about to give it, but for some reason we had a falling-out then, and I didn’t take it; he began muttering something vaguely then, as he usually does, and it seemed to me that he wanted to offer something, some special conditions; and since I treated him with decided condescension each time I met him at the prince’s, I proudly cut off any thought of special conditions and left, despite the fact that he chased after me to the door. That time I borrowed from the prince.
Stebelkov lived completely by himself, and lived prosperously: an apartment of four splendid rooms, fine furniture, male and female servants, and some sort of housekeeper, rather elderly, however. I came in wrathfully.