tawdry trappings! And if you feel guilty, if you are conscious of some wrongdoing on your part (it is not for me to remind you of it, madam), if you, in fact, like the idea of leaving my house… there is nothing left for me to say, but that you made a mistake in not carrying out your design when it was the fitting moment.
If you have forgotten how many years ago, I will help you….”
I glanced at Alexandra Mihalovna, she was leaning on me and clutching convulsively at me, helpless with inward agony, half closing her eyes in intense misery. Another minute and she would have been ready to drop.
“Oh, for God’s sake, if only this once, spare her! Don’t say the last word,” I cried, flinging myself on my knees before Pyotr Alexandrovitch, and forgetting that I was betraying myself; but it was too late. A faint scream greeted my words, and the poor woman fell senseless on the floor.
“It is all over! You have killed her,” I said. “Call the servants, save her! I will wait for you in your study. I must speak to you; I will tell you all….”
“But what? But what?”
“Afterwards !”
The fainting and hysterics lasted two hours. The whole household was alarmed. The doctor shook his head dubiously. Two hours later I went into Pyotr Alexandrovitch’s study. He had only just come back from his wife, and was walking up and down the room, pale and distracted, biting his nails fill they bled. I had never seen him in such a state.
“What do you want to say to me?” he said in a harsh coarse voice. “You wanted to say something?”
“Here is the letter you found in my possession. Do you recognise it?”
“Yes.”
“Take it.”
He took the letter and raised it to the light. I watched him attentively. A few minutes later, he turned quickly to the fourth page and read the signature. I saw the blood rush to his head.
“What’s this?” he asked me, petrified with amazement.
“It’s three years ago that I found that letter in a book. I guessed that it was forgotten, I read it and learned everything. From that time forth it has been in my possession because I had no one to whom to give it. I could not give it to her. Could I to you? But you must have known the contents of this letter, and all the sorrowful story in it…. What your pretending is for, I don’t know. That is for the present dark to me. I cannot yet see clearly into your dark soul. You wanted to keep up your superiority over her, and have done so. But for what object? To triumph over a phantom, over a sick woman’s unhinged imagination, to prove to her that she has erred and you are more sinless than she! And you have attained your aim, for this suspicion of hers is the fixed idea of a failing brain, perhaps, the last plaint of a heart broken against the injustice of men’s verdict, with which you were at one. ‘What does it matter if you have fallen in love with her?’ That is what she said, that is what she wanted to show you. Your vanity, your jealous egoism have been merciless. Goodbye! No need to explain! But mind, I know you, I see through you. Don’t forget that!”
I went to my own room, scarcely knowing what was happening to me. At the door I was stopped by Ovrov, Pyotr Alexandrovich’s secretary.
“I should like to have a word with you,” he said with a respectful bow.
I looked at him, scarcely understanding what he said to me.
“Afterwards. Excuse me, I am not well,” I answered at last, passing him.
“Tomorrow then,” he said, bowing with an ambiguous smile.
But perhaps that was my fancy. All this seemed to flit before my eyes.
THE END OF THE FRAGMENT
The Village of Stepanchikovo
PART I
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
