Федор Достоевский
Uncle's Dream; and The Permanent Husband
“Benefactor! – and I may spend the night at your house?” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, instantly consenting to the plan with the greatest cordiality, – “you are really too good! And where's their country house?”
“At the Liesnoy.”
“But look here, how about her dress? Such a house, you know, – a father's heart shrinks – ”
“Nonsense! – she's in mourning – what else could she wear but a black dress like this? it's exactly the thing; you couldn't imagine anything more so! – you might let her have some clean linen with her, and give her a cleaner neck-handkerchief.”
“Directly, directly. We'll get her linen together in a couple of minutes – it's just home from the wash!”
“Send for a carriage – can you? Tell them to let us have it at once, so as not to waste time.”
But now an unexpected obstacle arose: Liza absolutely rejected the plan; she had listened to it with terror, and if Velchaninoff had, in his excited argument with Pavel Pavlovitch, had time to glance at the child's face, he would have observed her expression of absolute despair at this moment.
“I won't go!” she said, quietly but firmly.
“There – look at that! Just like her mamma!”
“I'm not like mamma, I'm not like mamma!” cried Liza, wringing her little hands in despair. “Oh, papa – papa!” she added, “if you desert me – ” she suddenly threw herself upon the alarmed Velchaninoff – “If you take me away – ” she cried – “I'll – ”
But Liza had no time to finish her sentence, for Pavel Pavlovitch suddenly seized her by the arm and collar and hustled her into the next room with unconcealed rage. For several minutes Velchaninoff listened to the whispering going on there, – whisperings and seemingly subdued crying on the part of Liza. He was about to follow the pair, when suddenly out came Pavel Pavlovitch, and stated – with a disagreeable grin – that Liza would come directly.
Velchaninoff tried not to look at him and kept his eyes fixed on the other side of the room.
The elderly woman whom Velchaninoff had met on the stairs also made her appearance, and packed Liza's things into a neat little carpet bag.
“Is it you that are going to take the little lady away, sir?” she asked; “if so, you are doing a good deed! She's a nice quiet child, and you are saving her from goodness knows what, here!”
“Oh! come – Maria Sisevna,” – began Pavel Pavlovitch.
“Well? What? Isn't it true! Arn't you ashamed to let a girl of her intelligence see the things that you allow to go on here? The carriage has arrived for you, sir, —you ordered one for the Liesnoy, didn't you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, good luck to you!”
Liza came out, looking very pale and with downcast eyes; she took her bag, but never glanced in Velchaninoff's direction. She restrained herself and did not throw herself upon her father, as she had done before – not even to say good-bye. She evidently did not wish to look at him.
Her father kissed her and patted her head in correct form; her lip curled during the operation, the chin trembled a little, but she did not raise her eyes to her father's.
Pavel Pavlovitch looked pale, and his hands shook; Velchaninoff saw that plainly enough, although he did his best not to see the man at all. He (Velchaninoff) had but one thought, and that was how to get away at once!
Downstairs was old Maria Sisevna, waiting to say good-bye; and more kissing was done. Liza had just climbed into the carriage when suddenly she caught sight of her father's face; she gave a loud cry and wrung her hands, – in another minute she would have been out of the carriage and away, but luckily the vehicle went on and she was too late!
CHAPTER VI
“Are you feeling faint?” asked Velchaninoff of his companion, frightened out of his wits: “I'll tell him to stop and get you some water, shall I?”
She looked at him angrily and reproachfully.
“Where are you taking me to?” she asked coldly and abruptly.
“To a very beautiful house, Liza. There are plenty of children, – they'll all love you there, they are so kind! Don't be angry with me, Liza; I wish you well, you know!”
In truth, Velchaninoff would have looked strange at this moment to any acquaintance, if such had happened to see him!
“How – how – how – oh! how wicked you are!” said Liza, fighting with suppressed tears, and flashing her fine angry eyes at him.
“But Liza – I – ”
“You are bad – bad – and wicked!” cried Liza. She wrung her hands.
Velchaninoff was beside himself.
“Oh, Liza, Liza! if only you knew what despair you are causing me!” he said.
“Is it true that he is coming down to-morrow?” asked the child haughtily – “is it true or not?”
“Quite true – I shall bring him down myself, – I shall take him and bring him!”
“He will deceive you somehow!” cried the child, drooping her eyes.
“Doesn't he love you, then, Liza?”
“No.”
“Has he ill-treated you, – has he?”
Liza looked gloomily at her questioner, and said nothing. She then turned away from him and sat still and depressed.
Velchaninoff commenced to talk: he tried to win her, – he spoke warmly – excitedly – feverishly.
Liza listened incredulously and with a hostile air, – but still she listened. Her attention delighted him beyond measure; – he went so far as to explain to her what it meant when a man took to drink. He said that he loved her and would himself look after her father.
At last Liza raised her eyes and gazed fixedly at him.
Then Velchaninoff began to speak of her mother and of how well he had known her; and he saw that his tales attracted her. Little by little she began to reply to his questions, but very cautiously and in an obstinately monosyllabic way.
She would answer nothing to his chief inquiries; as to her former relations with her father, for instance, she maintained an obstinate silence.
While speaking to her, Velchaninoff held the child's hand in his own, as before; and she did not try to take it away.
Liza said enough to make it apparent that she had loved her father more than her mother at first, because that her father had loved the child better than her mother did; but that when her mother had died and was lying dead, Liza wept over her and kissed her, and ever since then she had loved her mother more than all – all there was in the whole world – and that every night she thought of her and loved her.
But Liza was very proud, and suddenly recollecting herself and finding that she was saying a great deal more than she had meant to reveal, she paused, and relapsed into obstinate silence once more, and gazed at Velchaninoff with something like hatred in her eyes, considering that he had beguiled her into the revelations just made.
By the end of the journey, however, her hysterical condition was nearly over, but she was very silent and sat looking morosely about her, obstinately silent and gloomy, like a little wild animal.
The fact that she was being taken to a strange house where she had never been before did not seem so far to weigh upon her; Velchaninoff saw clearly enough that other things distressed her, and principally that she was ashamed – ashamed that her father should have let her go so easily – thrown her away, as it were – into Velchaninoff's arms.
“She's ill,” thought the latter, “and perhaps very ill; she has been bullied and ill-treated. Oh! that drunken, blackguardly wretch of a fellow!” He hurried on the coachman. Velchaninoff trusted greatly to the fresh air, to the garden, to the children, to the new life, now; as to the future, he was in no sort of doubt at all, his hopes were clear and defined. One thing he was quite sure of, and that was that he had never before felt what now swelled within his soul, and that the sensation would last for ever and ever.
“I have an object at last! this is Life!” he said to himself enthusiastically.
Many thoughts welled into his brain just now, but he would have none of them; he did not care to think of details at this moment, for without details the future was all so clear and so beautiful, and so safe and indestructible!
The basis of his plan was simple enough; it was simply this, in the language of his own thoughts:
“I shall so work upon that drunken little blackguard that he will leave Liza with the Pogoryeltseffs, and go away alone – at first, ‘for a time,’ of course! – and so Liza shall remain behind for me! what more do I want? The plan will suit him, too! – else why does he bully her like this?”
The carriage arrived at last.
It was certainly a very beautiful place. They were met first of all by a troop of noisy children, who overflowed on to the front-door steps. Velchaninoff had not been down for some time, and the delight of the little ones to see him was excessive – they were very fond of him.
The elder ones shouted, before he had left the carriage, by way of chaff:
“How's the lawsuit getting on, eh?” and the smaller gang took up the joke, and all clamoured the same question: it was a pet joke in this establishment to chaff Velchaninoff about his lawsuit. But when Liza climbed down the carriage steps, she was instantly surrounded and stared at with true juvenile curiosity. Then Claudia Petrovna and her husband came out, and both of them good-humouredly bantered Velchaninoff about his lawsuit.
Claudia Petrovna was a lady of some thirty-seven summers, stout and well-favoured, and with a sweet fresh-looking face. Her husband was a man of fifty-five, a clever and long-headed man of the world, but above all, a good and kind-hearted friend to anyone requiring kindness.
The Pogoryeltseffs' house was in the full sense of the word a “home” to Velchaninoff, as the latter had stated. There was rather more here, however; for, twenty years since Claudia had very nearly married young Velchaninoff almost a boy at that time, and a student at the university.
This had been his first experience of love – and very hot and fiery and funny – and sweet it was! The end of it was, however, that Claudia married Mr Pogoryeltseff. Five years later she and Velchaninoff had met again, and a quiet candid friendship had sprung up between them. Since then there had always been a warmth, a speciality about their friendship, a radiance which overspread it and glorified their relations one to the other. There was nothing here that Velchaninoff could remember with shame – all was pure and sweet; and this was perhaps the reason why the friendship was specially dear to Velchaninoff; he had not experienced many such platonic intimacies.
In this house Velchaninoff was simple and happy, confessed his sins, played with the children and lectured them, and never bothered his head about outside matters; he had promised the Pogoryeltseffs that he would live a few more years alone in the world, and then move over to their household for good and all; and he looked forward to that good time coming with all seriousness.
Velchaninoff now gave all the information about Liza which he thought fit, though his simple request would have been amply sufficient here.
Claudia Petrovna kissed the little “orphan,” and promised to do all she possibly could for her; and the children carried Liza off to play in the garden. Half an hour passed in conversation, and then Velchaninoff rose to depart: he was in such a hurry, that his friends could not help remarking upon the fact. He had not been near them for three weeks, they said, and now he only stayed half an hour! Velchaninoff laughed and promised to come down to-morrow. Someone observed that Velchaninoff's state of agitation was remarkable, even for him! Whereupon the latter jumped up, seized Claudia Petrovna's hand, and, under pretence of having forgotten to tell her something most important about Liza, he led her into another room.
“Do you remember,” he began, “what I told you, and only you, – even your husband does not know of it – about my year of life down at T – ?”
“Oh yes! only too well! You have often spoken of it.”
“No – I did not ‘speak about it,’ I confessed, and only to yourself; but I never told you the lady's name. It was Trusotsky, the wife of this Trusotsky; it is she who has died, and this little Liza is her child —my child!”
“Is this certain? Are you quite sure there is no mistake?” asked Claudia Petrovna, with some agitation.
“Quite, quite certain!” said Velchaninoff enthusiastically. He then gave a short, hasty, and excited narrative of all that had occurred. Claudia had heard it all before, excepting the lady's name.
The fact is, Velchaninoff had always been so afraid that one of his friends might some fine day meet Madame Trusotsky at T – , and wonder how in the world he could have loved such a woman as that, that he had never revealed her name to a single soul; not even to Claudia Petrovna, his great friend.
“And does the ‘father’ know nothing of it?” asked Claudia, having heard the tale out.
“N – no; he knows – you see, that's just what is bothering me now. I haven't sifted the matter as yet,” resumed Velchaninoff hotly. “He must know – he does know. I remarked that fact both yesterday and to-day. But I wish to discover how much he knows. That's why I am hurrying back now; he is coming to-night. He knows all about Bagantoff; but how about myself? You know how such wives can deceive their husbands! If an angel from Heaven were to come down and convict a woman, her husband will still trust her, and give the angel the lie.
“Oh! don't nod your head at me, don't judge me! I have long since judged and convicted myself. You see, this morning I felt so sure that he knew all, that I compromised myself before him. Fancy, I was really ashamed of having been rude to him last night. He only called in to see me out of the pure unconquerably malicious desire to show me that he knew all the offence, and knew who was the offender! I behaved like a fool; I gave myself into his hands too easily; I was too heated; he came at such a feverish moment for me. I tell you, he has been bullying Liza, simply to ‘let off bile,’ – you understand. He needs a safety-valve for his offended feelings, and vents them upon anyone, even a little child!
“It is exasperation, and quite natural. We must treat him in a Christian spirit, my friend; and do you know, I wish to change my way of treating him, entirely; I wish to be particularly kind to him. That will be a good action on my part, for I am to blame before him, I know I am; there's no disguising the fact! Besides, once at T – , it so happened that I required four thousand roubles at a moment's notice. Well, the fellow gave me the money, without a receipt, at once, and with every manifestation of delight to be able to serve me! And I took the money from his hands, – I did, indeed! I took it as though he were a friend. Think of that!”
“Very well; only be careful!” said Claudia Petrovna. “You are so enthusiastic that I am really alarmed for you! Of course Liza shall now be no less than my own daughter to me; but there is so much to know and to settle yet! Above all, be very careful and observant! You are not nearly careful enough when you are happy! You are much too exalted an individual to be cautious, when you are happy!” she added with a smile.
The whole family went out to see Velchaninoff off. The children brought Liza along with them; they had been playing in the garden. They seemed to look at her now with even more perplexity then at first! The girl became dreadfully shy when Velchaninoff kissed her before all, and promised to come down next day and bring her father with him. To the last moment she did not say a single word, and never looked at him at all; but just before he was about to start she seized his hand and drew him away to one side, looking imploringly in his face: she evidently had something to say to him. Velchaninoff immediately took her into an adjoining room.
“What is it, Liza?” he asked, kindly and encouragingly; but she drew him farther away, – into the very farthest corner of the room, anxious to get well out of sight and hearing of the rest.
“What is it, Liza? What is it?”
But she was still silent, and could not make up her mind to speak; she stared with her motionless, large blue eyes, into his face, and in every lineament of her little face was betrayed the wildest terror and anxiety.
“He'll – hang himself!” she whispered at last, as though she were talking in her sleep.
“Who will hang himself?” asked Velchaninoff, in alarm.
“He will —he! He tried to hang himself to a hook last night!” said the child, panting with haste and excitement; “I saw it myself! To-day he tried it again, – he wishes to hang himself; he told me so! – he told me so! He wanted to, long ago; he has always wanted to do it! I saw it myself – in the night!”
“Impossible!” muttered Velchaninoff, incredulously.
Liza suddenly threw herself into his arms, kissed his hands, and cried. She could hardly breathe for sobbing; she was begging and imploring Velchaninoff, but he could not understand what she was trying to say.
Velchaninoff never afterwards forgot the terrible look of this distressed child; he thought of it waking and thought of it sleeping – how she had come to him in her despair as to her last hope, and hysterically begged and prayed him to help her! “And to think of her being so deeply attached to him!” he reflected jealously, as he drove, impatient and feverish, towards town. “She said herself that she loved her mother better; – perhaps she hates him, and doesn't love him at all! And what's all that nonsense about ‘hanging himself!’ What did she mean by that? As if he would hang himself, the fool! I must sift the matter – the whole matter. I must settle this business once and for ever – and quickly!”
CHAPTER VII
He was in a great hurry to “know all.” In order to lose no time about finding out what he felt he must know at once, he told the coachman to drive him straight to Trusotsky's rooms. On the way he changed his mind; “let him come to me, himself,” he thought, “and meanwhile I can attend to my cursed law business.”
But to-day he really felt that he was too absent to attend to anything at all; and at five o'clock he set out with the intention of dining. And at this moment, for the first time, an amusing idea struck him. What if he really only hindered his law business by meddling as he did, and hunting his wretched lawyer about the place, when the latter plainly avoided meeting him? Velchaninoff laughed merrily over this idea. “And yet,” he thought; “if this notion had struck me in the evening instead of now, how angry I should have been!” He laughed again, more merrily than before. But in spite of his merriness he grew more and more thoughtful and impatient, and could settle to nothing, nor could he think out what he most wanted to reflect upon.
“I must have that fellow here!” he said at length; “I must read the mystery of him first of all, and then I can settle what to do next. There's a duel in this business!”
Returning home at seven o'clock he did not find Pavel Pavlovitch there, which fact first surprised him, then angered him, then depressed him, and at last, frightened him.
“God knows, God knows how it will all end!” he cried; first trying to settle himself on a sofa, and then marching up and down the room, and all the while looking at his watch every other minute.
At length – at about nine o'clock – Pavel Pavlovitch appeared.
“If this man was cunning enough to mean it he could not have managed better in order to put me into a state of nervousness!” thought Velchaninoff, though his heart bounded for joy to see his guest arrive.
To Velchaninoff's cordial inquiry as to why he was so late, Pavel Pavlovitch smiled disagreeably – took a seat with easy familiarity, carelessly threw his crapebound hat on a chair, – and made himself perfectly at home. Velchaninoff observed and took stock of the careless manner adopted by his visitor; it was not like yesterday. Velchaninoff then quietly, and in a few words, gave Pavel Pavlovitch an account of what he had done with Liza, of how kindly she had been received, of how good it would be for the child down there; then he led the conversation to the topic of the Pogoryeltseffs, leaving Liza out of the talking altogether, and spoke of how kind the whole family were, of how long he had known them, and so on.
Pavel Pavlovitch listened absently, occasionally looking ironically at his host from under his eyelashes.
“What an enthusiast you are!” he muttered at last, smiling very unpleasantly.
“Hum, you seem in a bad humour to-day!” remarked Velchaninoff with annoyance.
“And why shouldn't I be as wicked as my neighbours?” cried Pavel Pavlovitch suddenly! He said this so abruptly that he gave one the idea that he had pounced out of a corner where he had been lurking, on purpose to make a dash at the first opportunity.
“Oh dear me! do as you like, pray!” laughed Velchaninoff; “I only thought something had put you out, perhaps!”
“So it has,” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, as though proud of the fact.
“Well, what was it?”
Pavel Pavlovitch waited a moment or two before he replied.
“Why it's that Stepan Michailovitch Bagantoff of ours – up to his tricks again; he's a shining light among the highest circles of society – he is!”
“Wouldn't he receive you again – or what?”
“N – no! not quite that, this time; on the contrary I was allowed to go in for the first time on record, and I had the honour of musing over his features, too! – but he happened to be a corpse, that's all!”
“What! Bagantoff dead?” cried Velchaninoff, in the greatest astonishment; though there was no particular reason why he should be surprised.
“Yes – my unalterable – six-years-standing friend is dead! – died yesterday at about mid-day, and I knew nothing of it! Perhaps he died just when I called there – who knows? To-morrow is the funeral! he's in his coffin at this moment! Died of nervous fever; and they let me in to see him – they did indeed! – to contemplate his features! I told them I was a great friend – and therefore they allowed me in! A pretty trick he has played me – this dear friend of six years' standing! why – perhaps I came to St. Petersburg specially for him!”
“Well – it's hardly worth your while to be angry with him about it, is it – he didn't die on purpose!” said Velchaninoff laughing.
“Oh, but I'm speaking out of pure sympathy – he was a dear friend to me! oh a very dear friend!”
Pavel Pavlovitch gave a smile of detestable irony and cunning.
“Do you know what, Alexey Ivanovitch,” he resumed, “I think you ought to treat me to something, – I have often treated you; I used to be your host every blessed day, sir, at T – , for a whole year! Send for a bottle of wine, do – my throat is so dry!”
“With pleasure – why didn't you say so before! what would you like?”
“Don't say ‘you!’ say ‘we’! we'll drink together of course!” said Pavel Pavlovitch defiantly, but at the same time looking into Velchaninoff's eyes with some concern.
“Shall it be champagne?”
“Of course! it isn't time for vodki yet!”
Velchaninoff rose slowly – rang the bell and gave Mavra the necessary orders.
“We'll drink to this happy meeting of friends after nine years' parting!” said Pavel Pavlovitch, with a very inappropriate and unnecessary giggle. “Why, you are the only real, true friend left to me now! Bagantoff is no more! it quite reminds one of the great poet:
“Great Patroclus is no more,
Mean Thersites liveth yet!”
– and so on, – don't you know!”
At the name “Thersites” Pavel Pavlovitch touched his own breast.
“I wish you would speak plainly, you pig of a fellow!” said Velchaninoff to himself, “I hate hints!” His own anger was on the rise, and he had long been struggling with his self-restraint.
“Look here, – tell me this, since you consider Bagantoff to have been guilty before you (as I see you do) surely you must be glad that your betrayer is dead? What are you so angry about?”
“Glad! Why should I be glad?”
“I judge by what I should imagine your feelings to be.”
“Ha-ha! well, this time you are a little bit in error as to my feelings, for once! A certain sage has said 'my good enemy is dead, but I have a still better one alive! ha-ha!”
“Well but you saw him alive for five years at a stretch, – I should have thought that was enough to contemplate his features in!” said Velchaninoff angrily and contemptuously.
“Yes, but how was I to know then, sir?” snapped Pavel Pavlovitch – jumping out of an ambush once more, as it were, – delighted to be asked a question which he had long awaited; “why, what do you take me for, Alexey Ivanovitch?” at this moment there was in the speaker's face a new expression altogether, transfiguring entirely the hitherto merely disagreeably malicious look upon it.
“Do you mean to say you knew nothing of it?” said Velchaninoff in astonishment.
“How! Didn't know? As if I could have known it and – Oh, you race of Jupiters! you reckon a man to be no better than a dog, and judge of him by your own sentiments. Look here, sir, – there, look at that.” So saying, he brought his fist madly down upon the table with a resounding bang, and immediately afterwards looked frightened at his own act.
Velchaninoff's face beamed.
“Listen, Pavel Pavlovitch,” he said; “it is entirely the same thing to me whether you knew or did not know all about it. If you did not know, so much the more honourable is it for you; but – I can't understand why you should have selected me for your confidant.”
“I wasn't talking of you; don't be angry, it wasn't about you,” muttered Pavel Pavlovitch, with his eyes fixed on the ground.
At this moment, Mavra entered with the champagne.
“Here it is!” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, immensely delighted at the appearance of the wine. “Now then, tumblers my good girl, tumblers quick! Capital! Thank you, we don't require you any more, my good Mavra. What! you've drawn the cork? Excellent creature. Well, ta-ta! off with you.”
Mavra's advent with the bottle so encouraged him that he again looked at Velchaninoff with some defiance.
“Now confess,” he giggled suddenly, “confess that you are very curious indeed to hear about all this, and that it is by no means ‘entirely the same to you,’ as you declared! Confess that you would be miserable if I were to get up and go away this very minute without telling you anything more.”
“Not the least in the world, I assure you!”
Pavel Pavlovitch smiled; and his smile said, as plainly as words could, “That's a lie!”
“Well, let's to business,” he said, and poured out two glasses of champagne.
“Here's a toast,” he continued, raising his goblet, “to the health in Paradise of our dear departed friend Bagantoff.”
He raised his glass and drank.
“I won't drink such a toast as that!” said Velchaninoff; and put his glass down on the table.
“Why not? It's a very pretty toast.”
“Look here, were you drunk when you came here?”
“A little; why?”
“Oh – nothing particular. Only it appeared to me that yesterday, and especially this morning, you were sincerely sorry for the loss of Natalia Vasilievna.”
“And who says I am not sorry now?” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, as if somebody had pulled a string and made him snap the words out, like a doll.
“No, I don't mean that; but you must admit you may be in error about Bagantoff; and that's a serious matter!”
Pavel Pavlovitch grinned and gave a wink.
“Hey! Wouldn't you just like to know how I found out about Bagantoff, eh?”
Velchaninoff blushed.
“I repeat, it's all the same to me,” he said; and added to himself, “Hadn't I better pitch him and the bottle out of the window together.” He was blushing more and more now.
Pavel Pavlovitch poured himself out another glass.
“I'll tell you directly how I found out all about Mr. Bagantoff, and your burning wish shall be satisfied. For you are a fiery sort of man, you know, Alexey Ivanovitch, oh, dreadfully so! Ha-ha-ha. Just give me a cigarette first, will you, for ever since March – ”
“Here's a cigarette for you.”
“Ever since March I have been a depraved man, sir, and this is how it all came about. Listen. Consumption, as you know, my dear friend” (Pavel Pavlovitch was growing more and more familiar!), “is an interesting malady. One sees a man dying of consumption without a suspicion that to-morrow is to be his last day. Well, I told you how Natalia Vasilievna, up to five hours before her death, talked about going to visit her aunt, who lived thirty miles or so away, and starting in a fortnight. You know how some ladies – and gentlemen, too, I daresay – have the bad habit of keeping a lot of old rubbish by them, in the way of love-letters and so on. It would be much safer to stick them all into the fire, wouldn't it? But no, they must keep every little scrap of paper in drawers and desks, and endorse it and classify it, and tie it up in bundles, for each year and month and class! I don't know whether they find this consoling to their feelings afterwards, or what. Well, since she was arranging a visit to her aunt just five hours before her death, Natalia Vasilievna naturally did not expect to die so soon; in fact, she was expecting old Doctor Koch down till the last; and so, when Natalia Vasilievna did die, she left behind her a beautiful little black desk all inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and bound with silver, in her bureau; oh, a lovely little box, an heirloom left her by her grandmother, with a lock and key all complete. Well, sir, in this box everything – I mean everything, you know, for every day and hour for the last twenty years – was disclosed; and since Mr. Bagantoff had a decided taste for literature (indeed, he had published a passionate novel once, I am told, in a newspaper!) – consequently there were about a hundred examples of his genius in the desk, ranging over a period of five years. Some of these talented effusions were covered with pencilled remarks by Natalia Vasilievna herself! Pleasant, that, for a fond husband's feelings, sir, eh?”
Velchaninoff quickly cast his thoughts back over the past, and remembered that he had never written a single letter or a single note to Natalia Vasilievna.
He had written a couple of letters from St. Petersburg, but, according to a previous arrangement, he had addressed them to both Mr. and Mrs. Trusotsky together. He had not answered Natalia Vasilievna's last letter – which had contained his dismissal – at all.
