clambered into the carriage.
“We are going, we are going,” cried my uncle.
“It’s all for the best, uncle,” I whispered to him. “You see how splendidly it has all turned out?”
“Hush, my boy, don’t be sinful... Ah, my dear! They will simply drive her away now, to punish her for their failure, you understand. It’s fearful, the prospect I see before me!”
“Well, Yegor Ilyitch, are you going on whispering or starting?” Mr. Bahtcheyev cried out a second time. “Or shall we unharness the horses and have a snack of something? What do you say; shall we have a drink of vodka?”
These words were uttered with such furious sarcasm that it was impossible not to satisfy Bahtcheyev at once. We all promptly got into the carriage, and the horses set off at a gallop.
For some time we were all silent. My uncle kept looking at me significantly, but did not care to speak to me before the others. He often sank into thought; then as though waking up, started and looked about him in agitation. Mizintchikov was apparently calm, he smoked a cigar, and his looks expressed the indignation of an unjustly treated man. But Bahtcheyev had excitement enough for all of us. He grumbled to himself, looked at everyone and everything with absolute indignation, flushed crimson, fumed, continually spat aside, and could not recover himself.
“Are you sure, Stepan Alexyevitch, that they have gone to Mishino?” my uncle asked suddenly. “It’s fifteen miles from here, my boy,” he added, addressing me. “It’s a little village of thirty souls, lately purchased from the former owners by a provincial official. The most pettifogging fellow in the world. So at least they say about him, perhaps mistakenly. Stepan Alexyevitch declares that that is where Obnoskin has gone, and that that official will be helping him now.”
“To be sure,” cried Bahtcheyev, starting. “I tell you, it is Mishino. Only by now maybe there is no trace of him left at Mishino. I should think not, we have wasted three hours chattering in the yard!”
“Don’t be uneasy,” observed Mizintchikov. “We shall find them.”
“Find them, indeed! I dare say he will wait for you. The treasure is in his hands. You may be sure we have seen the last of him!”
“Calm yourself, Stepan Alexyevitch, calm yourself, we shall overtake them,” said my uncle. “They have not had time to take any steps yet, you will see that is so.”
“Not had time!” Mr. Bahtcheyev brought out angrily. “She’s had time for any mischief, for all she’s such a quiet one! ‘She’s a quiet one,’ they say, ‘a quiet one,’ he added in a mincing voice, as though he were mimicking someone. ‘She has had troubles.’ Well, now, she has shown us her heels, for all her troubles. Now you have to chase after her along the high roads with your tongue out before you can see where you are going! They won’t let a man go to church for the holy saint’s day. Tfoo!”
“But she is not under age,” I observed; “she is not under guardianship. We can’t bring her back if she doesn’t want to come. What are we going to do?”
“Of course,” answered my uncle; “but she will want to—I assure you. What she is doing now means nothing. As soon as she sees us she will want to come back—I’ll answer for it. We can’t leave her like this, my boy, at the mercy of fate, to be sacrificed; it’s a duty, so to say....”
“She’s not under guardianship!” cried Bahtcheyev, pouncing on me at once. “She is a fool, my dear sir, a perfect fool—it’s not a case of her being under guardianship. I didn’t care to talk to you about her yesterday, but the other day I went by mistake into her room and what did I see, there she was before the looking-glass with her arms akimbo dancing a schottische! And dressed up to the nines: a fashion-plate, a regular fashion-plate! I simply spat in disgust and walked away. Then I foresaw all this, as clear as though it were written in a book!”
“Why abuse her so?” I observed with some timidity. “We know that Tatyana Ivanovna... is not in perfect health... or rather she has a mania.... It seems to me that Obnoskin is the one to blame, not she.”
“Not in perfect health! Come, you get along,” put in the fat man, turning crimson with wrath. “Why, he has taken an oath to drive a man to fury! Since yesterday he has taken an oath to! She is a fool, my dear sir, I tell you, an absolute fool. It’s not that she’s not in perfect health; from early youth she has been mad on Cupid. And now Cupid has brought her to this pass. As for that fellow with the beard, it’s no use talking about him. I dare say by now he is racing off double quick with the money in his pocket and a grin on his face.
“Do you really think, then, that he’ll cast her off at once?”
“What else should he do? Is he going to drag such a treasure about with him? And what good is she to him? He’ll fleece her of everything and then sit her down somewhere under a bush on the high road—and make off. While she can sit there under the bush and sniff the flowers.”
“Well, you are too hasty there, Stepan, it won’t be like that!” cried my uncle. “But why are you so cross? I wonder at you, Stepan. What’s the matter with you?”
“Why, am I a man or not? It does make one cross, though it’s no business of mine. Why, I am saying it perhaps in kindness to her... Ech, damnation take it all! Why, what have I come here for? Why, what did I turn back for? What is it to do with me? What is it to do with me?”
So grumbled Mr. Bahtcheyev, but I left off listening to him and mused on the woman whom we were now in pursuit of— Tatyana Ivanovna. Here is a brief biography of her which I gathered later on from the most trustworthy sources, and which is essential to the explanation of her adventures.
A poor orphan child who grew up in a strange unfriendly house, then a poor girl, then a poor young woman, and at last a poor old maid, Tatyana Ivanovna in the course of her poor life had drained the over-full cup of sorrow, friendlessness, humiliation and reproach, and had tasted to the full the bitterness of the bread of others. Naturally of a gay, highly susceptible and frivolous temperament, she had at first endured her bitter lot in one way or another and had even been capable at times of the gayest careless laughter; but with years destiny at last got the upper hand of her. Little by little Tatyana Ivanovna grew thin and sallow, became irritable and morbidly susceptible, and sank into the most unrestrained, unbounded dreaminess, often interrupted by hysterical tears and convulsive sobbing. The fewer earthly blessings real life left to her lot, the more she comforted and deluded herself in imagination. The more certainly, the more irretrievably her last hopes in real life were passing and at last were lost, the more seductive grew her dreams, never to be realised. Fabulous wealth, unheard-of beauty, rich, elegant, distinguished suitors, always princes and sons of generals, who for her sake had kept their hearts in virginal purity and were dying at her feet from infinite love; and finally, he — he, the ideal of beauty combining in himself every possible perfection, passionate and loving, an artist, a poet, the son of a general — all at once or all by turns — began to appear to her not only in her dreams but almost in reality. Her reason was already beginning to fail, unable to stand the strain of this opiate of secret incessant dreaming.... And all at once destiny played a last fatal jest at her expense. Living in the last extreme of humiliation, in melancholy surroundings that crushed the heart, a companion to a toothless old lady, the most peevish in the world, scolded for everything, reproached for every crust she ate, for every threadbare rag she wore, insulted with impunity by anyone, protected by no one, worn out by her miserable existence and secretly plunged in the luxury of the maddest and most fervid dreams — she suddenly heard the news of the death of a distant relation, all of whose family had died long before (though
