child! And with such a playful mind!”
Nikolay Sergeyitch was particularly excited.
“I tell you what I’ve thought of, Vanya,” he said. “She’s very fond of flowers. Do you know what? Let us prepare for her tomorrow when she wakes up a welcome with towers such as she and that Heinrich prepared for her mother, as she described to-day…. She spoke of it with such emotion….”
“I dare say she did,” I said. “But emotion’s just what’s bad for her now.”
“Yes, but pleasant emotion is a different matter. Believe me, my boy, trust my experience; pleasurable emotion does no harm; it may even cure, it is conducive to health.”
The old man was, in fact, so fascinated by his own idea that he was in a perfect ecstasy about it. It was impossible to dissuade him, I questioned the doctor about it, but before the latter had time to consider the matter, Nikolay Sergeyitch had taken his cap and was running to make arrangements.
“You know,” he said to me as he went out, “there’s a hot-house near here, a magnificent shop. The nurserymen sell flowers; one can get them cheap. It’s surprising how cheap they are, really…. You impress that on Anna Andreyevna, or else she’ll be angry directly at the expense. So, I tell you what…. I tell you what, my dear boy, where are you off to now? You are free now, you’ve finished your work, so why need you hurry home? Sleep the night here, upstairs in the attic; where you slept before, do you remember. The bedstead’s there and the mattress just as it was before… nothing’s been touched. You’ll sleep like the King of France. Eh? Do stay. Tomorrow we’ll get up early. They’ll bring the flowers, and by eight o’clock we’ll arrange the whole room together. Natasha will help us. She’ll have more taste than you and I. Well, do you agree? Will you stay the night?”
It was settled that I should stay the night. Nikolay Sergeyitch went off to make his arrangements. The doctor and Masloboev said goodbye and went away. The Ichmenyevs went to bed early, at eleven o’clock. As he was going, Masloboev seemed hesitating and on the point of saying something, but he put it off. But when after saying goodnight to the old people I went up to my attic, to my surprise I found him there. He was sitting at the little table, turning over the leaves of a book and waiting for me.
“I turned back on the way, Vanya, because it’s better to tell you now. Sit down. It’s a stupid business, you see, vexatiously so, in fact.”
“Why, what’s the matter?”
“Why, your scoundrel of a prince flew into a rage a fortnight ago; and such a rage that I’m angry still.”
“Why, what’s the matter? Surely you’re not still on terms with the prince?”
“There you go with your ‘what’s the matter?’ as though something extraordinary had happened. You’re for all the world like my Alexandra Semyonovna and all these insufferable females! … I can’t endure females… If a crow calls, it’s ‘what’s the matter? ‘ with them.”
“Don’t be angry.”
“I’m not a bit angry; but every sort of affair ought to be looked at reasonably, and not exaggerated … that’s what I say.”
He paused a little, as though he were still feeling vexed with me. I did not interrupt him.
“You see, Vanya,” he began again, “I’ve come upon a clue. That’s to say, I’ve not really come upon it, and it’s not really a clue. But that’s how it struck me … that is, from certain considerations I gather that Nellie … perhaps … well, in fact, is the prince’s legitimate daughter.”
“What are you saying?”
“There you go roaring again, ‘what are you saying?’ So that one really can’t say anything to people like this!” he shouted, waving his hand frantically. Have I told you anything positive, you featherhead? Did I tell you she’s been proved to be the prince’s legitimate daughter? Did I, or did I not?”
“Listen, my dear fellow,” I said to him in great excitement. For God’s sake don’t shout, but explain things clearly and precisely.
I swear I shall understand you. You must realize how important the matter is, and what consequences….”
“Consequences, indeed, of what? Where are the proofs? Things aren’t done like that, and I’m telling you a secret now. And why I’m telling you I’ll explain later. You may be sure there’s a reason for it. Listen and hold your tongue and understand that all this is a secret…. This is how it was, you see. As soon as the prince came back from Warsaw in the winter, before Smith died, he began to go into this business. That is, he had begun it much earlier, during the previous year. But at that time he was on the lookout for one thing, and later he was on the lookout for something else. What mattered was that he’d lost the thread. It was thirteen years since he parted from Nellie’s mother in Paris and abandoned her, but all that time he had kept an incessant watch on her; he knew that she was living with Heinrich, whom Nellie was talking about to-day; he knew she had Nellie, he knew she was ill; he knew everything, in fact, but then he suddenly lost the thread. And this seems to have happened soon after the death of Heinrich, when she came to Petersburg. In Petersburg, of course, he would very soon have found her, whatever name she went by in Russia; but the thing was that his agents abroad misled him with false information, informing him that she was living in an out-of-the-way little town in South Germany. They deceived him through carelessness. They mistook another woman for her. So it went on for a year or more. But during the previous year the prince had begun to have doubts; certain facts had led him even earlier to suspect that it was not the right woman. Then the question arose: where was the real lady? And it occurred to him (though he’d nothing to go upon) to wonder whether she were not in Petersburg. Inquiries were being made meanwhile abroad, and he set other inquiries on foot here; but apparently he did not care to make use of the official channels, and he became acquainted with me. He was recommended to me: he was told this and that about me, that I took up detective work as an amateur, and so on, and so on… Well, so he explained the business to me; only vaguely, damn the fellow; he explained it vaguely and ambiguously. He made a lot of mistakes, repeated himself several times; he represented facts in different lights at the same time…. Well, as we all know, if you’re ever so cunning you can’t hide every track. Well, of course, I began, all obsequiousness and simplicity of heart, slavishly devoted, in fact. But I acted on a principle I’ve adopted once for all, and a law of nature, too (for it is a law of nature), and considered in the first place whether he had told me what he really wanted, and secondly whether, under what he had told me, there lay concealed something else he hadn’t told me. For in the latter case, as probably even you, dear son, with your poetical brain, can grasp, he was cheating me: for while one job is worth a rouble, say, another may be worth four times as much; so I should be a fool if I gave him for a rouble what was worth four. I began to look into it and make my conjectures, and bit by bit I began to come upon traces, one thing I’d get out of him, another out of some outsider, and I’d get at a third by my own wits. If you ask me what was my idea in so doing, I’ll answer, well, for one thing that the prince seemed somewhat too keen about it; he seemed in a great panic about something. For after all, what had he to be frightened of? He’d carried a girl off from her father, and when she was with child he had abandoned her. What was there remarkable in that? A charming, pleasant bit of mischief, and nothing more. That was nothing for a man like the prince to be afraid of! Yet he was afraid… And that made me suspicious. I came on some very interesting traces, my boy, through Heinrich, among other things. He was dead, of course, but from one of his cousins (now married to a baker here, in Petersburg) who had been passionately in love with him in old days, and had gone on loving him for fifteen years, regardless of the stout papa baker
