“Then you’ll just perish right in front of her,” Liza laughed.
“Perish?” I cried. “No, I won’t perish. I don’t believe I’ll perish. If a woman stands across my path, then she must follow after me. You don’t block my path with impunity . . .”
Liza once said to me in passing, recalling it long afterwards, that I uttered this phrase then terribly strangely, seriously, and as if suddenly growing pensive; but at the same time “so ridiculously that it was impossible to control oneself.” Indeed, Anna Andreevna again burst out laughing.
“Laugh, laugh at me!” I exclaimed in intoxication, because I was terribly pleased with this whole conversation and the direction it had taken. “From you it only gives me pleasure. I love your laughter, Anna Andreevna! You have this feature: you keep silent and suddenly burst out laughing, instantly, so that even an instant earlier one couldn’t have guessed it by your face. I knew a lady in Moscow, distantly, I watched her from a corner. She was almost as beautiful as you are, but she couldn’t laugh the way you do, and her face, which was as attractive as yours—lost its attraction; but yours is terribly attractive . . . precisely for that ability . . . I’ve long been wanting to tell you.”
When I said of the lady that “she was as beautiful as you are,” I was being clever: I pretended that it had escaped me accidentally, as if I hadn’t even noticed; I knew very well that women value such “escaped” praise more highly than any polished compliment you like. And much as Anna Andreevna blushed, I knew it pleased her. And I invented the lady; I didn’t know any such lady in Moscow, it was only so as to praise Anna Andreevna and please her.
“One truly might think,” she said with a charming smile, “that you’ve been under the influence of some beautiful woman recently.”
It was as if I were flying off somewhere . . . I even wanted to reveal something to them . . . but I restrained myself.
“And by the way, not long ago you spoke of Katerina Nikolaevna quite hostilely.”
“If I ever said anything bad,” I flashed my eyes, “the blame for it goes to the monstrous slander against her that she was Andrei Petrovich’s enemy; the slander against him, too, that he was supposedly in love with her, had proposed to her, and similar absurdities. This idea is as outrageous as another slander against her, that, supposedly while her husband was still alive, she had promised Prince Sergei Petrovich that she would marry him when she was widowed, and then didn’t keep her word. But I know firsthand that all this wasn’t so, but was only a joke. I know it firsthand. Abroad there, once, in a joking moment, she indeed told the prince ‘maybe,’ in the future; but what could it have signified besides just a light word? I know only too well that the prince, for his part, cannot attach any value to such a promise, and he has no intentions anyway,” I added, catching myself. “He seems to have quite different ideas,” I put in slyly. “Today Nashchokin said at his place that Katerina Nikolaevna is supposedly going to marry Baron Bjoring: believe me, he bore this news in the best possible way, you may be sure.”
“Nashchokin was there?” Anna Andreevna suddenly asked weightily and as if in surprise.
“Oh, yes. He seems to be one of those respectable people . . .”
“And Nashchokin spoke with him about this marriage to Bjoring?” Anna Andreevna suddenly became very interested.
“Not about the marriage, but just so, of the possibility, as a rumor; he said there was supposedly such a rumor in society; as for me, I’m sure it’s nonsense.”
Anna Andreevna pondered, and bent over her sewing.
“I like Prince Sergei Petrovich,” I suddenly added warmly. “He has his shortcomings, indisputably, I’ve already told you—namely, a certain one-idea-ness—but his shortcomings also testify to a nobility of soul, isn’t it true? Today, for instance, he and I nearly quarreled over an idea: his conviction that if you speak about nobility, you should be noble yourself, otherwise all you say is a lie. Well, is that logical? And yet it testifies to the lofty demands of honor in his soul, of duty, of justice, isn’t it true? . . . Ah, my God, what time is it?” I suddenly cried, happening to glance at the face of the mantelpiece clock.
“Ten minutes to three,” she said calmly, glancing at the clock. All the while I spoke of the prince, she listened to me, looking down with a sort of sly but sweet smile: she knew why I was praising him so. Liza listened, her head bent over her work, and for some time had not interfered in the conversation.
I jumped up as if burnt.
“Are you late somewhere?”
“Yes . . . no . . . I am late, though, but I’ll go right now. Just one word, Anna Andreevna,” I began excitedly, “I can’t help telling you today! I want to confess to you that I’ve already blessed several times the kindness and delicacy with which you have invited me to visit you . . . Being acquainted with you has made a very strong impression on me. It’s as if here in your room my soul is purified and I go away better than I am. It’s really so. When I sit beside you, I not only can’t speak about bad things, but I can’t even have bad thoughts; they disappear in your presence, and if I remember something bad in your presence, I’m at once ashamed of this bad thing, grow timid, and blush in my soul. And, you know, it was especially pleasing to me to meet my sister here with you today . . . It testifies to such nobility of your . . . to such a beautiful attitude . . . In short, it speaks for something so brotherly, if you will allow me to break this ice, that I . . .”
As I spoke, she was rising from her seat, turning more and more red; but it was as if she was suddenly frightened by something, by some line that ought not to have been overleaped, and she quickly interrupted me:
“Believe me, I shall know how to appreciate your feelings with all my heart . . . I understood them without words . . . and already long ago . . .”
She paused in embarrassment, pressing my hand. Suddenly Liza tugged at my sleeve unobserved. I said good-bye and went out; but in the next room Liza caught up with me.
IV
“LIZA, WHY DID you tug at my sleeve?” I asked.
“She’s nasty, she’s cunning, she’s not worth . . . She keeps you in order to worm things out of you,” she whispered in a quick, spiteful whisper. I’d never seen her with such a face before.
“Liza, God help you, she’s such a lovely girl!”
“Well, then I’m nasty.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m very bad. She’s maybe the loveliest of girls, but I’m bad. Enough, drop it. Listen: mama asks you about something ‘that she doesn’t dare speak of,’ as she said. Arkady, darling! Stop gambling, dear, I beseech you . . . mama, too . . .”
“Liza, I know it myself, but . . . I know it’s a pathetic weakness, but . . . it’s only trifles and nothing more! You see, I got into debt, like a fool, and I want to win only so as to pay it back. It’s possible to win, because I played without calculation, off the cuff, like a fool, but now I’ll tremble over each rouble . . . I won’t be myself if I don’t win! I haven’t taken to it; it’s not the main thing, it’s just in passing, I assure you! I’m too strong not to stop when I want to. I’ll pay back the money, and then I’m yours undividedly, and tell mama that I’ll never leave you . . .”
“Those three hundred roubles today cost you something!”
“How do you know?” I gave a start.
“Darya Onisimovna heard everything . . .”
But at that moment Liza suddenly pushed me behind the curtain, and the two of us found ourselves in what’s known as a “lantern,” that is, a round, bay-windowed little room. Before I managed to come to my senses, I heard a familiar voice, the clank of spurs, and guessed at the familiar stride.
“Prince Seryozha,” I whispered.
“Himself,” she whispered.
“Why are you so frightened?”
“I just am. I don’t want him to meet me for anything . . .”
“Tiens, he’s not dangling after you, is he?” I grinned. “He’ll get it from me if he is. Where are you going?”
“Let’s leave. I’ll go with you.”