CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER IV.At first sight you would not take this prince for an old man at all, and it is only when you come near and take a good look at him, that you see he is merely a dead man working on wires. All the resources of science are brought to bear upon this mummy, in order to give it the appearance of life and youth. A marvellous wig, glorious whiskers, moustache and napoleon—all of the most raven black—cover half his face. He is painted and powdered with very great skill, so much so that one can hardly detect any wrinkles. What has become of them, goodness only knows.He is dressed in the pink of fashion, just as though he had walked straight out of a tailor's fashion-page. His coat, his gloves, tie, his waistcoat, his linen, are all in perfect taste, and in the very last mode. The prince limps slightly, but so slightly that one would suppose he did it on purpose becausethatwas in fashion too. In his eye he wears a glass—in the eye which is itself glass already.He was soaked with scent. His speech and manner of pronouncing certain syllables was full of affectation; and this was, perhaps, all that he retained of the mannerisms and tricks of his younger days. For if the prince had not quite lost his wits as yet, he had certainly parted with nearly every vestige of his memory, which—alas!—is a thing which no amount of perfumeries and wigs and rouge and tight-lacing will renovate. He continually forgets words in the midst of conversation, and loses his way, which makes it a matter of some difficulty to carry on a conversation with him. However, Maria Alexandrovna has confidence in her inborn dexterity, and at sight of the prince she flies into a condition of unspeakable rapture.“Oh! but you've not changed, you've not changed abit!”she cries, seizing her guest by both hands, and popping him into a comfortable arm-chair.“Sit down, dear Prince, do sit down! Six years, prince, six whole long years since we saw each other, and not a letter, not a little tiny scrap of a note all the while.Oh, how naughty you have been, prince! Andhowangry I have been with you, my dear friend! But, tea! tea! Good Heavens, Nastasia Petrovna, tea for the prince, quick!”“Th—thanks, thanks; I'm very s—orry!”stammered the old man (I forgot to mention that he stammered a little, but he did even this as though it were the fashion to do it).“Very s—sorry; fancy, I—I wanted to co—come last year, but they t—told me there was cho—cho—cholera here.”“There was foot and mouth disease here, uncle,”put in Mosgliakoff, by way of distinguishing himself. Maria Alexandrovna gave him a severe look.“Ye—yes, foot and mouth disease, or something of that s—sort,”said the prince;“so I st—stayed at home. Well, and how's your h—husband, my dear Anna Nic—Nicolaevna? Still at his proc—procuror's work?”“No, prince!”said Maria Alexandrovna, a little disconcerted.“My husband is not a procurer.”“I'll bet anything that uncle has mixed you up with Anna Nicolaevna Antipova,”said Mosgliakoff, but stopped suddenly on observing the look on Maria Alexandrovna's face.“Ye—yes, of course, Anna Nicolaevna. A—An. What the deuce! I'm always f—forgetting; Antipova, Antipova, of course,”continued the prince.“No, prince, you have made a great mistake,”remarked Maria Alexandrovna, with a bitter smile.“I am not Anna Nicolaevna at all, and I confess I should never have believed that you would not recognise me. You have astonished me, prince. I am your old friend, Maria Alexandrovna Moskaloff. Don't you remember Maria Alexandrovna?”“M—Maria Alexandrovna! think of that; and I thought she was w—what's her name. Y—yes, Anna Vasilievna!C'est délicieux.W—why I thought you were going to take me to this A—Anna Matveyevna. Dear me!C'est ch—charmant!It often happens so w—with me. I get taken to the wrong house; but I'm v—very pleased, v—very pleased! So you're not Nastasia Va—silievna? How interesting.”“I'm Maria Alexandrovna, prince;Maria Alexandrovna! Oh! how naughty you are, Prince, to forget your best, best friend!”“Ye—es! ye—yes! best friend; best friend, for—forgive me!”stammered the old man, staring at Zina.“That's my daughter Zina. You are not acquainted yet, prince. She wasn't here when you were last in the town, in the year —— you know.”“Oh, th—this is your d—daughter!”muttered the old man, staring hungrily at Zina through his glasses.“Dear me, dear me.Ch—charmante, ch—armante!But what a lo—ovely girl,”he added, evidently impressed.“Tea! prince,”remarked Maria Alexandrovna, directing his attention to the page standing before him with the tray. The prince took a cup, and examined the boy, who had a nice fresh face of his own.“Ah! this is your l—little boy? Wh—what a charming little b—boy! and does he be—behave nicely?”“But, prince,”interrupted Maria Alexandrovna, impatiently,“what is this dreadful occurrence I hear of? I confess I was nearly beside myself with terror when I heard of it. Were you not hurt at all?Dotake care. One cannot make light of this sort of thing.”“Upset, upset; the c—coachman upset me!”cried the prince, with unwonted vivacity.“I thought it was the end of the world, and I was fri—frightened out of my wits. I didn't expect it; I didn't, indeed! and my co—oachman is to blame for it all. I trust you, my friend, to lo—ok into the matter well. I feel sure he was making an attempt on my life!”“All right, all right, uncle,”said Paul;“I'll see about it. But look here—forgive him, just this once, uncle; just this once, won't you?”“N—not I! Not for anything! I'm sure he wants my life, he and Lavrenty too. It's—it's the 'new ideas;' it's Com—Communism, in the fullest sense of the word. I daren't meet them anywhere.”“You are right, you are quite right, prince,”cried Maria Alexandrovna.“You don't know how I suffer myself from these wretched people. I've just been obliged to change two of my servants; and you've no idea howstupidthey are, prince.”“Ye—yes! quite so!”said the prince, delighted—as all old men are whose senile chatter is listened to with servility.“But I like a fl—flunky to look stupid; it gives them presence. There's my Terenty, now. You remember Terenty, my friend? Well, the f—first time I ever looked at him I said,‘You shall be my ha—hall porter.’He's stupid, phen—phen—omenally stupid, he looks like a she—sheep; but his dig—dignity and majesty are wonderful. When I look at him he seems to be composing some l—learned dis—sertation. He's just like the German philosopher, Kant, or like some fa—fat old turkey, and that's just what one wants in a serving-man.”Maria Alexandrovna laughed, and clapped her hands in the highest state of ecstasy; Paul supported her with all his might; Nastasia Petrovna laughed too; and even Zina smiled.“But, prince, how clever, how witty, howhumorousyou are!”cried Maria Alexandrovna.“What a wonderful gilt of remarking the smallest refinements of character. And for a man like you to eschew all society, and shut yourself up for five years! With such talents! Why, prince, you couldwrite, you could be an author. You could emulate Von Vezin, Gribojedoff, Gogol!”“Ye—yes! ye—yes!”said the delighted prince.“I can reproduce things I see, very well. And, do you know, I used to be a very wi—witty fellow indeed, some time ago. I even wrote a play once. There were some very smart couplets, I remember; but it was never acted.”“Oh! how nice it would be to read it over, especially justnow, eh, Zina? for we are thinking of getting up a play, you must know, prince, for the benefit of the‘martyrs of the Fatherland,’the wounded soldiers. There, now, how handy your play would come in!”“Certainly, certainly. I—I would even write you another. I think I've quite forgotten the old one. I remember there were two or three such epigrams that (here the prince kissed his own hand to convey an idea of the exquisite wit of his lines) I recollect when I was abroad I made a real furore. I remember Lord Byron well; we were great friends; you should have seen him dance the mazurka one day during the Vienna Congress.”“Lord Byron, uncle?—Surely not!”“Ye—yes, Lord Byron. Perhaps it was not Lord Byron, though, perhaps it was someone else; no, it wasn't Lord Byron, it was some Pole; I remember now. A won—der-ful fellow that Pole was! He said he was a C—Count, and he turned out to be a c—cook—shop man! But he danced the mazurka won—der—fully, and broke his leg at last. I recollect I wrote some lines at the time:—“Our little PoleDanced like blazes.”—How did it go on, now? Wait a minute! No, I can't remember.”“I'll tell you, uncle. It must have been like this,”said Paul, becoming more and more inspired:—“But he tripped in a hole,Which stopped his crazes.”“Ye—yes, that was it, I think, or something very like it. I don't know, though—perhaps it wasn't. Anyhow, the lines were very sm—art. I forget a good deal of what I have seen and done. I'm so b—busy now!”“But do let me hear how you have employed your time in your solitude, dear prince,”said Maria Alexandrovna.“I must confess that I have thought of you so often, and often, that I am burning with impatience to hear more about you and your doings.”“Employed my time? Oh, very busy; very busy, ge—generally. One rests, you see, part of the day; and then I imagine a good many things.”“I should think you have a very strong imagination, haven't you, uncle?”remarked Paul.“Exceptionally so, my dear fellow. I sometimes imagine things which amaze even myself! When I was at Kadueff,—by-the-by, you were vice-governor of Kadueff, weren't you?”“I, uncle! Why, what are you thinking of?”“No? Just fancy, my dear fellow! and I've been thinking all this time how f—funny that the vice-governor of Kadueff should be here with quite a different face: he had a fine intelligent, dig—dignified face, you know. A wo—wonderful fellow! Always writing verses, too; he was rather like the Ki—King of Diamonds from the side view, but—”“No, prince,”interrupted Maria Alexandrovna.“I assure you, you'll ruin yourself with the life you are leading! To make a hermit of oneself for five years, and see no one, and hear no one: you're a lost man, dear prince! Ask any one of those who love you, they'll all tell you the same; you're a lost man!”“No,”cried the prince,“really?”“Yes, I assure you of it! I am speaking to you as a sister—as a friend! I am telling you this because you are very dear to me, and because the memory of the past is sacred to me. No, no! You must change your way of living; otherwise you will fall ill, and break up, and die!”“Gracious heavens! Surely I shan't d—die so soon?”cried the old man.“You—you are right about being ill; I am ill now and then. I'll tell you all the sy—symptoms! I'll de—detail them to you. Firstly I—”“Uncle, don't you think you had better tell us all about it another day?”Paul interrupted hurriedly.“I think we had better be starting just now, don't you?”“Yes—yes, perhaps, perhaps. But remind me to tell you another time; it's a most interesting case, I assure you!”“But listen, my dear prince!”Maria Alexandrovna resumed,“why don't you try being doctored abroad?”“Ab—road? Yes, yes—I shall certainly go abroad. I remember when I was abroad, about '20; it was delightfully g—gay and jolly. I very nearly married a vi—viscountess, a French woman. I was fearfully in love, but som—somebody else married her, not I. It was a very s—strange thing. I had only gone away for a coup—couple of hours, and this Ger—German baron fellow came and carried her off! He went into a ma—madhouse afterwards!”“Yes, dear prince, you must look after your health. There are such good doctors abroad; and—besides, the mere change of life, what will not that alone do for you! Youmustdesert your dear Donchanovo, if only for a time!”“C—certainly, certainly! I've long meant to do it. I'm going to try hy—hydropathy!”“Hydropathy?”“Yes. I've tried it once before: I was abroad, you know, and they persuaded me to try drinking the wa—waters. There wasn't anything the matter with me, but I agreed, just out of deli—delicacy for their feelings; and I did seem to feel easier, somehow. So I drank, and drank, and dra—ank up a whole waterfall; and I assure you if I hadn't fallen ill just then I should have been quite well, th—thanks to the water! But, I confess, you've frightened me so about these ma—maladies and things, I feel quite put out. I'll come back d—directly!”“Why, prince, where are you off to?”asked Maria Alexandrovna in surprise.“Directly, directly. I'm just going to note down an i—idea!”“What sort of idea?”cried Paul, bursting with laughter.Maria Alexandrovna lost all patience.“I cannot understand what you find to laugh at!”she cried, as the old man disappeared;“to laugh at an honourable old man, and turn every word of his into ridicule—presuming on his angelic good nature. I assure you Iblushedfor you, Paul Alexandrovitch! Why, what do you see in him to laugh at? I never saw anything funny about him!”“Well, I laugh because he does not recognise people, and talks such nonsense!”“That's simply the result of his sad life, of his dreadful five years' captivity, under the guardianship of that she-devil! You shouldpity, not laugh at him! He did not even knowme; you saw it yourself. I tell you it's a crying shame; he must be saved, at all costs! I recommend him to go abroad so that he may get out of the clutches of that—beast of a woman!”“Do you know what—we must find him a wife!”cried Paul.“Oh, Mr. Mosgliakoff, you are too bad; you really are too bad!”“No, no, Maria Alexandrovna; I assure you, this time I'm speaking in all seriousness. Whynotmarry him off? Isn't it rather a brilliant idea? What harm can marriage do him? On the contrary, he is in that position that such a step alone can save him! In the first place, he will get rid of that fox of a woman; and, secondly, he may find some girl, or better still some widow—kind, good, wise and gentle, and poor, who will look after him as his own daughter would, and who will be sensible of the honour he does her in making her his wife! And what could be better for the old fellow than to have such a person about him, rather than the—woman he has now? Of course she must be nice-looking, for uncle appreciates good looks; didn't you observe how he stared at Miss Zina?”“But how will you find him such a bride?”asked Nastasia Petrovna, who had listened intently to Paul's suggestion.“What a question! Why, you yourself, if you pleased! and why not, pray? In the first place, you are good-looking, you are a widow, you are generous, you are poor (at least I don't think you are very rich). Then you are a very reasonable woman: you'll learn to love him, and take good care of him; you'll send that other woman to the deuce, and take your husband abroad, where you will feed him on pudding and lollipops till the moment of his quitting this wicked world, which will be in about a year, or in a couple of months perhaps. After that, you emerge a princess, a rich widow, and, as a prize for your goodness to the old gentleman, you'll marry a fine young marquis, or a governor-general, or somebody of the sort! There—that's a pretty enough prospect, isn't it?”“Tfu! Goodness me! I should fall in love with him at once, out of pure gratitude, if he only proposed to me!”said the widow, with her black eyes all ablaze;“but, of course, it's all nonsense!”“Nonsense, is it? Shall I make it sound sense, then, for you? Ask me prettily, and if I don't make you his betrothed by this evening, you may cut my little finger off! Why, there's nothing in the world easier than to talk uncle into anything you please! He'll only say,‘Ye—yes, ye—yes,’just as you heard him now! We'll marry him so that he doesn't know anything about it, if you like? We'll deceive him and marry him, if you please! Any way you like, it can be done! Why, it's for his own good; it's out of pity for himself! Don't you think, seriously, Nastasia Petrovna, that you had better put on some smart clothes in any case?”Paul's enthusiasm amounted by now to something like madness, while the widow's mouth watered at his idea, in spite of her better judgment.“I know, I know I look horridly untidy!”she said.“I go about anyhow, nowadays! There's nothing to dress for. Do I really look like a regular cook?”All this time Maria Alexandrovna sat still, with a strange expression on her face. I shall not be far wrong if I say that she listened to Paul's wild suggestion with a look of terror, almost: she was confused and startled; at last she recollected herself, and spoke.“All this is very nice, of course; but at the same time it is utter nonsense, and perfectly out of the question!”she observed cuttingly.“Why, why, my good Maria Alexandrovna? Why is it such nonsense, or why out of the question?”“For many reasons; and, principally because you are, as the prince is also, a guest in my house; and I cannot permit anyone to forget their respect towards my establishment! I shall consider your words as a joke, Paul Alexandrovitch, and nothing more! Here comes the prince—thank goodness!”“Here I am!”cried the old man as he entered.“It's a wo—wonderful thing how many good ideas of all s—sorts I'm having to-day! and another day I may spend the whole of it without a single one! As—tonishing? not one all day!”“Probably the result of your accident, to-day, uncle! Your nerves got shaken up, you see, and ——”“Ye—yes, I think so, I think so too; and I look on the accident as pro—fitable, on the whole; and therefore I'm going to excuse the coachman. I don't think it was an at—tempt on my life, after all, do you? Besides, he was punished a little while a—go, when his beard was sh—shaved off!”“Beard shaved off? Why, uncle, his beard is as big as a German state!”“Ye—yes, a German state, you are very happy in your ex—pressions, my boy! but it's a fa—false one. Fancy what happened: I sent for a price-current for false hair and beards, and found advertisements for splendid ser—vants' and coachmen's beards, very cheap—extraordinarily so! I sent for one, and it certainly was a be—auty. But when we wanted to clap it on the coachman, we found he had one of his own t—twice as big; so I thought, shall I cut off his, or let him wear it, and send this one b—back? and I decided to shave his off, and let him wear the f—false one!”“On the theory that art is higher than nature, I suppose uncle?”“Yes, yes! Just so—and I assure you, when we cut off his beard he suffered as much as though we were depriving him of all he held most dear! But we must be go—going, my boy!”“But I hope, dear prince, that you will only call upon the governor!”cried Maria Alexandrovna, in great agitation.“You areminenow, Prince; you belong tomyfamily for the whole of this day! Of course I will say nothing about the society of this place. Perhaps you are thinking of paying Anna Nicolaevna a visit? I will not say a word to dissuade you; but at the same time I am quite convinced that—time will show! Remember one thing, dear Prince, that I am your sister, your nurse, your guardian for to-day at least, and oh!—I tremble for you. You don't know these people, Prince, as I do! You don't know them fully: but time will teach you all you do not know.”“Trust me, Maria Alexandrovna!”said Paul,“it shall all be exactly as I have promised you!”“Oh—but you're such a weathercock! I can never trustyou! I shall wait for you at dinner time, Prince; we dine early. How sorry I am that my husband happens to be in the country on such an occasion! How happy he would have been to see you! He esteems you so highly, Prince; he is so sincerely attached to you!”“Your husband? dear me! So you have a h—husband, too!”observed the old man.“Oh, prince, prince! how forgetful you are! Why, you havequite, quite forgotten the past! My husband, Afanassy Matveyevitch, surely you must remember him? He is in the country: but you have seen him thousands of times before! Don't you remember—Afanassy Matveyevitch!”“Afanassy Matveyevitch. Dear me!—and in the co—country! how very charming! So you have a husband! dear me, I remember a vaudeville very like that, something about—“The husband's here,And his wife at Tvere.”Charming, charming—such a good rhyme too; and it's a most ri—diculous story! Charming, charming; the wife's away, you know, at Jaroslaf or Tv—— or somewhere, and the husband is——is——Dear me! I'm afraid I've forgotten what we were talking about! Yes, yes—we must be going, my boy!Au revoir, madame; adieu, ma charmante demoiselle”he added, turning to Zina, and putting the ends of her fingers to his lips.“Come back to dinner,—to dinner, prince! don't forget to come back here quick!”cried Maria Alexandrovna after them as they went out;“be back to dinner!”CHAPTER V.“Nastasia Petrovna, I think you had better go and see what is doing in the kitchen!”observed Maria Alexandrovna, as she returned from seeing the prince off.“I'm sure that rascal Nikitka will spoil the dinner! Probably he's drunk already!”The widow obeyed.As the latter left the room, she glanced suspiciously at Maria Alexandrovna, and observed that the latter was in a high state of agitation. Therefore, instead of going to look after Nikitka, she went through the“Salon,”along the passage to her own room, and through that to a dark box-room, where the old clothes of the establishment and such things were stored. There she approached the locked door on tiptoe; and stifling her breath, she bent to the keyhole, through which she peeped, and settled herself to listen intently. This door, which was always kept shut, was one of the three doors communicating with the room where Maria Alexandrovna and Zina were now left alone. Maria Alexandrovna always considered Nastasia an untrustworthy sort of woman, although extremely silly into the bargain. Of course she had suspected the widow—more than once—of eavesdropping; but it so happened that at the moment Madame Moskaleva was too agitated and excited to think of the usual precautions.She was sitting in her arm-chair and gazing at Zina. Zina felt that her mother was looking at her, and was conscious of an unpleasant sensation at her heart.“Zina!”Zina slowly turned her head towards the speaker, and lifted her splendid dark eyes to hers.“Zina, I wish to speak to you on a most important matter!”Zina adopted an attentive air, and sat still with folded hands, waiting for light. In her face there was an expression of annoyance as well as irony, which she did her best to hide.“I wish to ask you first, Zina, what you thought ofthatMosgliakoff, to-day?”“You have known my opinion of him for a long time!”replied Zina, surlily.“Yes, yes, of course! but I think he is getting just a littletootroublesome, with his continual bothering you—”“Oh, but he says he is in love with me, in which case his importunity is pardonable!”“Strange! You used not to be so ready to find his offences pardonable; you used to fly out at him if ever I mentioned his name!”“Strange, too, that you always defended him, and were so very anxious that I should marry him!—and now you are the first to attack him!”“Yes; I don't deny, Zina, that I did wish, then, to see you married to Mosgliakoff! It was painful to me to witness your continual grief, your sufferings, which I can well realize—whatever you may think to the contrary!—and which deprived me of my rest at night! I determined at last that there was but one great change of life that would ever save you from the sorrows of the past, and that change was matrimony! We are not rich; we cannot afford to go abroad. All the asses in the place prick their long ears, and wonder that you should be unmarried at twenty-three years old; and they must needs invent all sorts of stories to account for the fact! As if I would marry you to one of our wretched little town councillors, or to Ivan Ivanovitch, the family lawyer! There are no husbands foryouin this place, Zina! Of course Paul Mosgliakoff is a silly sort of a fellow, but he is better than these people here: he is fairly born, at least, and he has 150 serfs and landed property, all of which is better than living by bribes and corruption, and goodness knows what jobbery besides, as these do! and that is why I allowed my eyes to rest on him. But I give you my solemn word, I never had any real sympathy for him! and if Providence has sent you someone better now, oh, my dear girl, how fortunate that you have not given your word to Mosgliakoff! You didn't tell him anything for certain to-day, did you, Zina?”“What is the use of beating about the bush, when the whole thing lies in a couple of words?”said Zina, with some show of annoyance.“Beating about the bush, Zina? Is that the way to speak to your mother? But what am I? You have long ceased to trust to your poor mother! You have long looked upon me as your enemy, and not as your mother at all!”“Oh, come mother! you and I are beyond quarrelling about an expression! Surely we understand one another by now? It is about time we did, anyhow!”“But you offend me, my child! you will not believe that I am ready to devoteall, allI can give, in order to establish your destiny on a safe and happy footing!”Zina looked angrily and sarcastically at her mother.“Would not you like to marry me to this old prince, now, in order to establish my destiny on a safe and happy footing?”“I have not said a word about it; but, as you mention the fact, I will say that if youwereto marry the prince it would be a very happy thing for you, and—”“Oh! Well, I consider the idea utter nonsense!”cried the girl passionately.“Nonsense, humbug! and what's more, I think you have a good deal too much poetical inspiration, mamma; you are a woman poet in the fullest sense of the term, and they call you by that name here! You are always full of projects; and the impracticability and absurdity of your ideas does not in the least discourage you. I felt, when the prince was sitting here, that you had that notion in your head. When Mosgliakoff was talking nonsense there about marrying the old man to somebody I read all your thoughts in your face. I am ready to bet any money that you are thinking of it now, and that you have come to me now about this very question! However, as your perpetual projects on my behalf are beginning to weary me to death, I must beg you not to say one word about it, notone word, mamma; do you hear me?not one word; and I beg you will remember what I say!”She was panting with rage.“You are a child, Zina; a poor sorrow-worn, sick child!”said Maria Alexandrovna in tearful accents.“You speak to your poor mother disrespectfully; you wound me deeply, my dear; there is not another mother in the world who would have borne what I have to bear from you every day! But you are suffering, you are sick, you are sorrowful, and I am your mother, and, first of all, I am a Christian woman! I must bear it all, and forgive it. But one word, Zina: if I had really thought of the union you suggest, why would you consider it so impracticable and absurd? In my opinion, Mosgliakoff has never said a wiser thing than he did to-day, when he declared that marriage was what alone could save the prince,—not, of course, marriage with that slovenly slut, Nastasia; there he certainlydidmake a fool of himself!”“Now look here, mamma; do you ask me this out of pure curiosity, or with design? Tell me the truth.”“All I ask is, why does it appear to you to be so absurd?”“Good heavens, mother, you'll drive me wild! What a fate!”cried Zina, stamping her foot with impatience.“I'll tell you why, if you can't see for yourself. Not to mention all the other evident absurdities of the plan, to take advantage of the weakened wits of a poor old man, and deceive him and marry him—an old cripple, in order to get hold of his money,—and then every day and every hour to wish for his death, is, in my opinion, not only nonsense, but so mean,somean, mamma, that I—I can't congratulate you on your brilliant idea; that's all I can say!”There was silence for one minute.“Zina, do you remember all that happened two years ago?”asked Maria Alexandrovna of a sudden.Zina trembled.“Mamma!”she said, severely,“you promised me solemnly never to mention that again.”“And I ask you now, as solemnly, my dear child, to allow me to break that promise, just once! I have never broken it before. Zina! the time has come for a full and clear understanding between us! These two years of silence have been terrible. We cannot go on like this. I am ready to pray you, on my knees, to let me speak. Listen, Zina, your own mother who bore you beseeches you, on her knees! And I promise you faithfully, Zina, and solemnly, on the word of an unhappy but adoring mother, that never, under any circumstances, not even to save my life, will I ever mention the subject again. This shall be the last time, but it is absolutely necessary!”Maria Alexandrovna counted upon the effect of her words, and with reason:“Speak, then!”said Zina, growing whiter every moment.“Thank you, Zina!——Two years ago there came to the house, to teach your little brother Mitya, since dead, a tutor——”“Why do you begin so solemnly, mamma? Why all this eloquence, all these quite unnecessary details, which are painful to me, and only too well known to both of us?”cried Zina with a sort of irritated disgust.“Because, my dear child, I, your mother, felt in some degree bound to justify myself before you; and also because I wish to present this whole question to you from an entirely new point of view, and not from that mistaken position which you are accustomed to take up with regard to it; and because, lastly, I think you will thus better understand the conclusion at which I shall arrive upon the whole question. Do not think, dear child, that I wish to trifle with your heart! No, Zina, you will find in me a real mother; and perhaps, with tears streaming from your eyes, you will ask and beseech at my feet—at the feet of the 'mean woman,' as you have just called me,—yes, and pray for that reconciliation which you have rejected so long! That's why I wish to recall all, Zina,allthat has happened, from the very beginning; and without this I shall not speak at all!”“Speak, then!”repeated Zina, cursing the necessity for her mother's eloquence from the very bottom of her heart.“I continue then, Zina!——This tutor, a master of the parish school, almost a boy, makes upon you what is, to me, a totally inexplicable impression. I built too much upon my confidence in your good sense, or your noble pride, and principally upon the fact of his insignificance—(I must speak out!)—to allow myself to harbour the slightest suspicion of you! And then you suddenly come to me, one fine day, and state that you intend to marry the man! Zina, it was putting a knife to my heart! I gave a shriek and lost consciousness.“But of course you remember all this. Of course I thought it my duty to use all my power over you, which power you called tyranny. Think for yourself—a boy, the son of a deacon, receiving a salary of twelve roubles a month—a writer of weak verses which are printed, out of pity, in the 'library of short readings.' A man, a boy, who could talk of nothing but that accursed Shakespeare,—this boy to be the husband of Zenaida Moskaloff! Forgive me, Zina, but the very thought of it all makes mewild!“I rejected him, of course. But no power would stopyou; your father only blinked his eyes, as usual, and could not even understand what I was telling him about. You continue your relations with this boy, even giving him rendezvous, and, worst of all, you allow yourself to correspond with him!“Rumours now begin to flit about town: I am assailed with hints; they blow their trumpets of joy and triumph; and suddenly all my fears and anticipations are verified! You and he quarrel over something or other; he shows himself to be a boy (I can't call him a man!), who is utterly unworthy of you, and threatens to show your letters all over the town! On hearing this threat, you, beside yourself with irritation, boxed his ears. Yes, Zina, I am aware of even that fact! I know all, all! But to continue—the wretched boy shows one of your letters the very same day to that ne'er-do-well Zanshin, and within an hour Natalie Dimitrievna holds it in her hands—my deadly enemy! The same evening the miserable fellow attempts to put an end to himself, in remorse. In a word, there is a fearful scandal stirred up. That slut, Nastasia, comes panting to me with the dreadful news; she tells me that Natalie Dimitrievna has had your letter for a whole hour. In a couple of hours the whole town will learn of your foolishness! I bore it all. I did not fall down in a swoon; but oh, the blows, the blows you dealt to my heart, Zina! That shameless scum of the earth, Nastasia, says she will get the letter back for two hundred roubles! I myself run over, in thin shoes, too, through the snow to the Jew Baumstein, and pledge my diamond clasps—a keepsake of my dear mother's! In a couple of hours the letter is in my hands! Nastasia had stolen it; she had broken open a desk, and your honour was safe!“But what a dreadful day you had sentenced me to live! I noticed some grey hairs among my raven locks for the first time, next morning! Zina, you have judged this boy's action yourself now! You can admit now, and perhaps smile a bitter smile over the admission, that it was beyond the limits of good sense to wish to entrust your fate to this youth.“But since that fatal time you are wretched, my child, you are miserable! You cannot forget him, or rather not him—for he was never worthy of you,—but you cannot forget the phantom of your past joy! This wretched young fellow is now on the point of death—consumption, they say; and you, angel of goodness that you are! you do not wish to marry while he is alive, because you fear to harass him in his last days; because to this day he is miserable with jealousy, though I am convinced that he never loved you in the best and highest sense of the word! I know well that, hearing of Mosgliakoff's proposal to you, he has been in a flutter of jealousy, and has spied upon you and your actions ever since; and you—you have been merciful to him, my child. And oh! God knows how I have watered my pillow with tears for you!”“Oh, mother, do drop all this sort of thing!”cried Zina, with inexpressible agony in her tone.“Surely we needn't hear all about your pillow!”she added, sharply.“Can't we get on without all this declamation and pirouetting?”“You do not believe me, Zina! Oh! do not look so unfriendly at me, my child! My eyes have not been dry these two years. I have hidden my tears from you; but I am changed, Zina mine, much changed and in many ways! I have long known of your feelings, Zina, but I admit I have only lately realized the depth of your mental anguish. Can you blame me, my child, if I looked upon this attachment of yours as romanticism—called into being by that accursed Shakespeare, who shoves his nose in everywhere where he isn't wanted?“What mother would blame me for my fears of that kind, for my measures, for the severity of my judgment? But now, understanding as I do, and realizing your two years' sufferings, I can estimate the depth of your real feelings. Believe me, I understand you far better than you understand yourself! I am convinced that you love not him—not this unnatural boy,—but your lost happiness, your broken hopes, your cracked idol!“I have loved too—perhaps more deeply than yourself; I, too, have suffered, I, too, have lost my exalted ideals and seen them levelled with the earth; and therefore who can blame me now—and, above all, canyoublame me now,—if I consider a marriage with the prince to be the one saving, the oneessentialmove left to you in your present position”?Zina listened to this long declamation with surprise. She knew well that her mother never adopted this tone without good reason. However this last and unexpected conclusion fairly amazed her.“You don't mean to say you seriously entertain the idea of marrying me to this prince?”she cried bewildered, and gazing at her mother almost with alarm;“that this is no mere idea, no project, no flighty inspiration, but your deliberate intention? Ihaveguessed right, then? And pray,howis this marriage going to save me? andwhyis it essential to me in my present position? And—and what has all this to do with what you have been talking about?——I cannot understand you, mother,—not a bit!”“AndIcan't understand, angel mine, how youcannotsee the connection of it all!”cried Maria Alexandrovna, in her turn.“In the first place, you would pass into new society, into a new world. You would leave for ever this loathsome little town, so full of sad memories for you; where you meet neither friends nor kindness; where they have bullied and maligned you; where all these—thesemagpieshate you because you are good looking! You could go abroad this very spring, to Italy, Switzerland, Spain!—to Spain, Zina, where the Alhambra is, and where the Guadalquiver flows—no wretched little stream like this of ours!”“But, one moment, mother; you talk as though I were married already, or at least as if the prince had made me an offer!”“Oh, no—oh dear, no! don't bother yourself about that, my angel! I know what I'm talking about! Let me proceed. I've said my‘firstly;’now, then, for my‘secondly!’I understand, dear child, with what loathing you would give your hand to that Mosgliakoff!——”“I know, without your telling me so, that I shall never behiswife!”cried Zina, angrily, and with flashing eyes.“If only you knew, my angel, how I understand and enter into your loathing for him! It is dreadful to vow before the altar that you will love a man whom youcannotlove—how dreadful to belong to one whom you cannot esteem! And he insists on yourlove—he only marries you for love. I can see it by the way he looks at you! Why deceive ourselves? I have suffered from the same thing for twenty-five years; your father ruined me—he, so to speak, sucked up my youth! You have seen my tears many a time!——”“Father's away in the country, don't touchhim, please!”said Zina.“I know you always take his part! Oh, Zina, my very heart trembled within me when I thought to arrange your marriage with Mosgliakoff for financial reasons! I trembled for the consequences. But with the prince it is different, you need not deceive him; you cannot be expected to give him yourlove, not yourlove—oh, no! and he is not in a state to ask it of you!”“Good heavens, what nonsense! I do assure you you are in error from the very first step—from the first and most important step! Understand, that I do not care to make a martyr of myself for some unknown reason! Know, also, that I shall not marry anyone at all; I shall remain a maid. You have bitten my head off for the last two years because I would not marry. Well, you must accept the fact, and make the best of it; that's all I can say, and so it shall be!”“But Zina, darling—my Zina, don't be so cross before you have heard me out! What a hot-headed little person you are, to be sure! Let me show you the matter from my point of view, and you'll agree with me—you really will! The prince will live a year—two at most; and surely it is better to be a young widow than a decayed old maid! Not to mention the fact that you will be a princess—free, rich, independent! I dare say you look with contempt upon all these calculations—founded upon his death; but I am a mother, and what mother will blame me for my foresight?“And if you, my angel of kindness, are unwilling to marry, even now, out of tenderness for that wretched boy's feelings, oh, think, think how, by marrying this prince, you will rejoice his heart and soothe and comfort his soul! For if he has a single particle of commonsense, he must understand that jealousy of this old man weretooabsurd—tooridiculous! He will understand that you marry him—for money, for convenience; that stern necessity compels you to it!“And lastly, he will understand that—that,—well I simply wish to say, that, upon the prince's death, you will be at liberty to marry whomsoever you please.”“That's a truly simple arrangement! All I have to do is to marry this prince, rob him of his money, and then count upon his death in order to marry my lover! You are a clever arithmetician, mamma; you do your sums and get your totals nicely. You wish to seduce me by offering me this! Oh, I understand you, mamma—I understand you well! You cannot resist the expression of your noble sentiments and exalted ideas, even in the manufacture of a nasty business. Why can't you say simply and straightforwardly,‘Zina, this is a dirty affair, but it will pay us, so please agree with me?’at all events, that would be candid and frank on your part.”“But, my dear child, why,whylook at it from this point of view? Why look at it under the light of suspicion asdeceit, and low cunning, and covetousness? You consider my calculations as meanness, as deceit; but, by all that is good and true, where is the meanness? Show me the deceit. Look at yourself in the glass: you are so beautiful, that a kingdom would be a fair price for you! And suddenly you, you, the possessor of this divine beauty, sacrifice yourself, in order to soothe the last years of an old man's life! You would be like a beautiful star, shedding your light over the evening of his days. You would be like the fresh green ivy, twining in and about his old age; not the stinging nettle that this wretched woman at his place is, fastening herself upon him, and thirstily sucking his blood! Surely his money, his rank are not worthy of being put in the scales besideyou? Where is the meanness of it; where is the deceit of all this? You don't know what you are saying, Zina.”“I suppose theyareworthy of being weighed against me, if I am to marry a cripple for them! No, mother, however you look at it, it is deceit, and you can't get out ofthat!”“On the contrary, my dear child, I can look at it from a high, almost from an exalted—nay, Christian—point of view. You, yourself, told me once, in a fit of temporary insanity of some sort, that you wished to be a sister of charity. You had suffered; you said your heart could love no more. If, then, you cannot love, turn your thoughts to the higher aspect of the case. This poor old man has also suffered—he is unhappy. I have known him, and felt the deepest sympathy towards him—akin to love,—for many a year. Be his friend, his daughter, be his plaything, even, if you like; but warm his old heart, and you are doing a good work—a virtuous, kind, noble work of love.“He may be funny to look at; don't think of that. He's but half a man—pity him! You are a Christian girl—do whatever is right by him; and this will be medicine for your own heart-wounds; employment, action, all this will heal you too, and where is the deceit here? But you do not believe me. Perhaps you think that I am deceiving myself when I thus talk of duty and of action. You think that I, a woman of the world, have no right to good feeling and the promptings of duty and virtue. Very well, do not trust me, if you like: insult me, do what you please to your poor mother; but you will have to admit that her words carry the stamp of good sense,—they are saving words! Imagine that someone else is talking to you, not I. Shut your eyes, and fancy that some invisible being is speaking. What is worrying you is the idea that all this is for money—a sort of sale or purchase. Very well, thenrefusethe money, if it is so loathsome to your eyes. Leave just as much as is absolutely necessary for yourself, and give the rest to the poor. Helphim, if you like, the poor fellow who lies there a-dying!”“He would never accept my help!”muttered Zina, as though to herself.“He would not, but his mother would!”said Maria Alexandrovna.“She would take it, and keep her secret. You sold your ear-rings, a present from your aunt, half a year or so ago, and helped her;Iknow all about it! I know, too, that the woman washes linen in order to support her unfortunate son!”“He will soon be where he requires no more help!”“I know, I understand your hints.”Maria Alexandrovna sighed a real sigh.“They say he is in a consumption, and must die.“Butwhosays so?“I asked the doctor the other day, because, having a tender heart, Zina, I felt interested in the poor fellow. The doctor said that he was convinced the malady wasnotconsumption; that it was dangerous, no doubt, but stillnotconsumption, only some severe affection of the lungs. Ask him yourself! He certainly told me that under different conditions—change of climate and of his style of living,—the sick man might well recover. He said—and I have read it too, somewhere, that off Spain there is a wonderful island, called Malaga—I think it was Malaga; anyhow, the name was like some wine, where, not only ordinary sufferers from chest maladies, but even consumptive patients, recover entirely, solely by virtue of the climate, and that sick people go there on purpose to be cured.“Oh, but Spain—the Alhambra alone—and the lemons, and the riding on mules. All this is enough in itself to impress a poetical nature. You think he would not accept your help, your money—for such a journey? Very well—deceit is permissible where it may save a man's life.“Give him hope, too! Promise him your love; promise to marry him when you are a widow! Anything in the world can be said with care and tact! Your own mother would not counsel you to an ignoble deed, Zina. You will do as I say, to save this boy's life; and with this object, everything is permissible! You will revive his hope; he will himself begin to think of his health, and listen to what the doctor says to him. He will do his best to resuscitate his dead happiness; and if he gets well again, even if you never marry him, you will have saved him—raised him from the dead!“I can look at him with some sympathy. I admit I can, now! Perhaps sorrow has changed him for the better; and I say frankly, if he should be worthy of you when you become a widow, marry him, by all means! You will be rich then, and independent. You can not only cure him, but, having done so, you can give him position in the world—a career! Your marriage to him will then be possible and pardonable, not, as now, an absolute impossibility!“For what would become of both of you were you to be capable of such madnessnow? Universal contempt, beggary; smacking little boys, which is part of his duty; the reading of Shakespeare; perpetual, hopeless life in Mordasoff; and lastly his certain death, which will undoubtedly take place before long unless he is taken away from here!“While, if you resuscitate him—if you raise him from the dead, as it were, you raise him to a good, useful, and virtuous life! He may then enter public life—make himself rank, and a name! At the least, even if he must die, he will die happy, at peace with himself, in your arms—for he will be by then assured of your love and forgiveness of the past, and lying beneath the scent of myrtles and lemons, beneath the tropical sky of the South. Oh, Zina, all this is within your grasp, and all—all isgain. Yes, and all to be had by merely marrying this prince.”Maria Alexandrovna broke off, and for several minutes there was silence; not a word was said on either side: Zina was in a state of indescribable agitation. I say indescribable because I will not attempt to describe Zina's feelings: I cannot guess at them; but Ithinkthat Maria Alexandrovna had found the road to her heart.Not knowing how her words had sped with her daughter, Maria Alexandrovna now began to work her busy brain to imagine and prepare herself for every possible humour that Zina might prove to be in; but at last she concluded that she had happened upon the right track after all. Her rude hand had touched the sorest place in Zina's heart, but her crude and absurd sentimental twaddle had not blinded her daughter.“However, that doesn't matter”—thought the mother.“All I care to do is to make herthink; I wish my ideas to stick!”So she reflected, and she gained her end; the effect was made—the arrow reached the mark. Zina had listened hungrily as her mother spoke; her cheeks were burning, her breast heaved.“Listen, mother,”she said at last, with decision; though the sudden pallor of her face showed clearly what the decision had cost her.“Listen mother——”But at this moment a sudden noise in the entrance hall, and a shrill female voice, asking for Maria Alexandrovna, interrupted Zina, while her mother jumped up from her chair.“Oh! the devil fly away with this magpie of a woman!”cried the latter furiously.“Why, I nearly drove her out by force only a fortnight ago!”she added, almost in despair.“I can't, I can't receive her now. Zina, this question is too important to be put off: she must have news for me or she never would have dared to come. I won't receive the old —— Oh!howglad I am to see you, dear Sophia Petrovna. What lucky chance broughtyouto see me? What acharmingsurprise!”said Maria Alexandrovna, advancing to receive her guest.Zina escaped out of the room.

CHAPTER IV.At first sight you would not take this prince for an old man at all, and it is only when you come near and take a good look at him, that you see he is merely a dead man working on wires. All the resources of science are brought to bear upon this mummy, in order to give it the appearance of life and youth. A marvellous wig, glorious whiskers, moustache and napoleon—all of the most raven black—cover half his face. He is painted and powdered with very great skill, so much so that one can hardly detect any wrinkles. What has become of them, goodness only knows.He is dressed in the pink of fashion, just as though he had walked straight out of a tailor's fashion-page. His coat, his gloves, tie, his waistcoat, his linen, are all in perfect taste, and in the very last mode. The prince limps slightly, but so slightly that one would suppose he did it on purpose becausethatwas in fashion too. In his eye he wears a glass—in the eye which is itself glass already.He was soaked with scent. His speech and manner of pronouncing certain syllables was full of affectation; and this was, perhaps, all that he retained of the mannerisms and tricks of his younger days. For if the prince had not quite lost his wits as yet, he had certainly parted with nearly every vestige of his memory, which—alas!—is a thing which no amount of perfumeries and wigs and rouge and tight-lacing will renovate. He continually forgets words in the midst of conversation, and loses his way, which makes it a matter of some difficulty to carry on a conversation with him. However, Maria Alexandrovna has confidence in her inborn dexterity, and at sight of the prince she flies into a condition of unspeakable rapture.“Oh! but you've not changed, you've not changed abit!”she cries, seizing her guest by both hands, and popping him into a comfortable arm-chair.“Sit down, dear Prince, do sit down! Six years, prince, six whole long years since we saw each other, and not a letter, not a little tiny scrap of a note all the while.Oh, how naughty you have been, prince! Andhowangry I have been with you, my dear friend! But, tea! tea! Good Heavens, Nastasia Petrovna, tea for the prince, quick!”“Th—thanks, thanks; I'm very s—orry!”stammered the old man (I forgot to mention that he stammered a little, but he did even this as though it were the fashion to do it).“Very s—sorry; fancy, I—I wanted to co—come last year, but they t—told me there was cho—cho—cholera here.”“There was foot and mouth disease here, uncle,”put in Mosgliakoff, by way of distinguishing himself. Maria Alexandrovna gave him a severe look.“Ye—yes, foot and mouth disease, or something of that s—sort,”said the prince;“so I st—stayed at home. Well, and how's your h—husband, my dear Anna Nic—Nicolaevna? Still at his proc—procuror's work?”“No, prince!”said Maria Alexandrovna, a little disconcerted.“My husband is not a procurer.”“I'll bet anything that uncle has mixed you up with Anna Nicolaevna Antipova,”said Mosgliakoff, but stopped suddenly on observing the look on Maria Alexandrovna's face.“Ye—yes, of course, Anna Nicolaevna. A—An. What the deuce! I'm always f—forgetting; Antipova, Antipova, of course,”continued the prince.“No, prince, you have made a great mistake,”remarked Maria Alexandrovna, with a bitter smile.“I am not Anna Nicolaevna at all, and I confess I should never have believed that you would not recognise me. You have astonished me, prince. I am your old friend, Maria Alexandrovna Moskaloff. Don't you remember Maria Alexandrovna?”“M—Maria Alexandrovna! think of that; and I thought she was w—what's her name. Y—yes, Anna Vasilievna!C'est délicieux.W—why I thought you were going to take me to this A—Anna Matveyevna. Dear me!C'est ch—charmant!It often happens so w—with me. I get taken to the wrong house; but I'm v—very pleased, v—very pleased! So you're not Nastasia Va—silievna? How interesting.”“I'm Maria Alexandrovna, prince;Maria Alexandrovna! Oh! how naughty you are, Prince, to forget your best, best friend!”“Ye—es! ye—yes! best friend; best friend, for—forgive me!”stammered the old man, staring at Zina.“That's my daughter Zina. You are not acquainted yet, prince. She wasn't here when you were last in the town, in the year —— you know.”“Oh, th—this is your d—daughter!”muttered the old man, staring hungrily at Zina through his glasses.“Dear me, dear me.Ch—charmante, ch—armante!But what a lo—ovely girl,”he added, evidently impressed.“Tea! prince,”remarked Maria Alexandrovna, directing his attention to the page standing before him with the tray. The prince took a cup, and examined the boy, who had a nice fresh face of his own.“Ah! this is your l—little boy? Wh—what a charming little b—boy! and does he be—behave nicely?”“But, prince,”interrupted Maria Alexandrovna, impatiently,“what is this dreadful occurrence I hear of? I confess I was nearly beside myself with terror when I heard of it. Were you not hurt at all?Dotake care. One cannot make light of this sort of thing.”“Upset, upset; the c—coachman upset me!”cried the prince, with unwonted vivacity.“I thought it was the end of the world, and I was fri—frightened out of my wits. I didn't expect it; I didn't, indeed! and my co—oachman is to blame for it all. I trust you, my friend, to lo—ok into the matter well. I feel sure he was making an attempt on my life!”“All right, all right, uncle,”said Paul;“I'll see about it. But look here—forgive him, just this once, uncle; just this once, won't you?”“N—not I! Not for anything! I'm sure he wants my life, he and Lavrenty too. It's—it's the 'new ideas;' it's Com—Communism, in the fullest sense of the word. I daren't meet them anywhere.”“You are right, you are quite right, prince,”cried Maria Alexandrovna.“You don't know how I suffer myself from these wretched people. I've just been obliged to change two of my servants; and you've no idea howstupidthey are, prince.”“Ye—yes! quite so!”said the prince, delighted—as all old men are whose senile chatter is listened to with servility.“But I like a fl—flunky to look stupid; it gives them presence. There's my Terenty, now. You remember Terenty, my friend? Well, the f—first time I ever looked at him I said,‘You shall be my ha—hall porter.’He's stupid, phen—phen—omenally stupid, he looks like a she—sheep; but his dig—dignity and majesty are wonderful. When I look at him he seems to be composing some l—learned dis—sertation. He's just like the German philosopher, Kant, or like some fa—fat old turkey, and that's just what one wants in a serving-man.”Maria Alexandrovna laughed, and clapped her hands in the highest state of ecstasy; Paul supported her with all his might; Nastasia Petrovna laughed too; and even Zina smiled.“But, prince, how clever, how witty, howhumorousyou are!”cried Maria Alexandrovna.“What a wonderful gilt of remarking the smallest refinements of character. And for a man like you to eschew all society, and shut yourself up for five years! With such talents! Why, prince, you couldwrite, you could be an author. You could emulate Von Vezin, Gribojedoff, Gogol!”“Ye—yes! ye—yes!”said the delighted prince.“I can reproduce things I see, very well. And, do you know, I used to be a very wi—witty fellow indeed, some time ago. I even wrote a play once. There were some very smart couplets, I remember; but it was never acted.”“Oh! how nice it would be to read it over, especially justnow, eh, Zina? for we are thinking of getting up a play, you must know, prince, for the benefit of the‘martyrs of the Fatherland,’the wounded soldiers. There, now, how handy your play would come in!”“Certainly, certainly. I—I would even write you another. I think I've quite forgotten the old one. I remember there were two or three such epigrams that (here the prince kissed his own hand to convey an idea of the exquisite wit of his lines) I recollect when I was abroad I made a real furore. I remember Lord Byron well; we were great friends; you should have seen him dance the mazurka one day during the Vienna Congress.”“Lord Byron, uncle?—Surely not!”“Ye—yes, Lord Byron. Perhaps it was not Lord Byron, though, perhaps it was someone else; no, it wasn't Lord Byron, it was some Pole; I remember now. A won—der-ful fellow that Pole was! He said he was a C—Count, and he turned out to be a c—cook—shop man! But he danced the mazurka won—der—fully, and broke his leg at last. I recollect I wrote some lines at the time:—“Our little PoleDanced like blazes.”—How did it go on, now? Wait a minute! No, I can't remember.”“I'll tell you, uncle. It must have been like this,”said Paul, becoming more and more inspired:—“But he tripped in a hole,Which stopped his crazes.”“Ye—yes, that was it, I think, or something very like it. I don't know, though—perhaps it wasn't. Anyhow, the lines were very sm—art. I forget a good deal of what I have seen and done. I'm so b—busy now!”“But do let me hear how you have employed your time in your solitude, dear prince,”said Maria Alexandrovna.“I must confess that I have thought of you so often, and often, that I am burning with impatience to hear more about you and your doings.”“Employed my time? Oh, very busy; very busy, ge—generally. One rests, you see, part of the day; and then I imagine a good many things.”“I should think you have a very strong imagination, haven't you, uncle?”remarked Paul.“Exceptionally so, my dear fellow. I sometimes imagine things which amaze even myself! When I was at Kadueff,—by-the-by, you were vice-governor of Kadueff, weren't you?”“I, uncle! Why, what are you thinking of?”“No? Just fancy, my dear fellow! and I've been thinking all this time how f—funny that the vice-governor of Kadueff should be here with quite a different face: he had a fine intelligent, dig—dignified face, you know. A wo—wonderful fellow! Always writing verses, too; he was rather like the Ki—King of Diamonds from the side view, but—”“No, prince,”interrupted Maria Alexandrovna.“I assure you, you'll ruin yourself with the life you are leading! To make a hermit of oneself for five years, and see no one, and hear no one: you're a lost man, dear prince! Ask any one of those who love you, they'll all tell you the same; you're a lost man!”“No,”cried the prince,“really?”“Yes, I assure you of it! I am speaking to you as a sister—as a friend! I am telling you this because you are very dear to me, and because the memory of the past is sacred to me. No, no! You must change your way of living; otherwise you will fall ill, and break up, and die!”“Gracious heavens! Surely I shan't d—die so soon?”cried the old man.“You—you are right about being ill; I am ill now and then. I'll tell you all the sy—symptoms! I'll de—detail them to you. Firstly I—”“Uncle, don't you think you had better tell us all about it another day?”Paul interrupted hurriedly.“I think we had better be starting just now, don't you?”“Yes—yes, perhaps, perhaps. But remind me to tell you another time; it's a most interesting case, I assure you!”“But listen, my dear prince!”Maria Alexandrovna resumed,“why don't you try being doctored abroad?”“Ab—road? Yes, yes—I shall certainly go abroad. I remember when I was abroad, about '20; it was delightfully g—gay and jolly. I very nearly married a vi—viscountess, a French woman. I was fearfully in love, but som—somebody else married her, not I. It was a very s—strange thing. I had only gone away for a coup—couple of hours, and this Ger—German baron fellow came and carried her off! He went into a ma—madhouse afterwards!”“Yes, dear prince, you must look after your health. There are such good doctors abroad; and—besides, the mere change of life, what will not that alone do for you! Youmustdesert your dear Donchanovo, if only for a time!”“C—certainly, certainly! I've long meant to do it. I'm going to try hy—hydropathy!”“Hydropathy?”“Yes. I've tried it once before: I was abroad, you know, and they persuaded me to try drinking the wa—waters. There wasn't anything the matter with me, but I agreed, just out of deli—delicacy for their feelings; and I did seem to feel easier, somehow. So I drank, and drank, and dra—ank up a whole waterfall; and I assure you if I hadn't fallen ill just then I should have been quite well, th—thanks to the water! But, I confess, you've frightened me so about these ma—maladies and things, I feel quite put out. I'll come back d—directly!”“Why, prince, where are you off to?”asked Maria Alexandrovna in surprise.“Directly, directly. I'm just going to note down an i—idea!”“What sort of idea?”cried Paul, bursting with laughter.Maria Alexandrovna lost all patience.“I cannot understand what you find to laugh at!”she cried, as the old man disappeared;“to laugh at an honourable old man, and turn every word of his into ridicule—presuming on his angelic good nature. I assure you Iblushedfor you, Paul Alexandrovitch! Why, what do you see in him to laugh at? I never saw anything funny about him!”“Well, I laugh because he does not recognise people, and talks such nonsense!”“That's simply the result of his sad life, of his dreadful five years' captivity, under the guardianship of that she-devil! You shouldpity, not laugh at him! He did not even knowme; you saw it yourself. I tell you it's a crying shame; he must be saved, at all costs! I recommend him to go abroad so that he may get out of the clutches of that—beast of a woman!”“Do you know what—we must find him a wife!”cried Paul.“Oh, Mr. Mosgliakoff, you are too bad; you really are too bad!”“No, no, Maria Alexandrovna; I assure you, this time I'm speaking in all seriousness. Whynotmarry him off? Isn't it rather a brilliant idea? What harm can marriage do him? On the contrary, he is in that position that such a step alone can save him! In the first place, he will get rid of that fox of a woman; and, secondly, he may find some girl, or better still some widow—kind, good, wise and gentle, and poor, who will look after him as his own daughter would, and who will be sensible of the honour he does her in making her his wife! And what could be better for the old fellow than to have such a person about him, rather than the—woman he has now? Of course she must be nice-looking, for uncle appreciates good looks; didn't you observe how he stared at Miss Zina?”“But how will you find him such a bride?”asked Nastasia Petrovna, who had listened intently to Paul's suggestion.“What a question! Why, you yourself, if you pleased! and why not, pray? In the first place, you are good-looking, you are a widow, you are generous, you are poor (at least I don't think you are very rich). Then you are a very reasonable woman: you'll learn to love him, and take good care of him; you'll send that other woman to the deuce, and take your husband abroad, where you will feed him on pudding and lollipops till the moment of his quitting this wicked world, which will be in about a year, or in a couple of months perhaps. After that, you emerge a princess, a rich widow, and, as a prize for your goodness to the old gentleman, you'll marry a fine young marquis, or a governor-general, or somebody of the sort! There—that's a pretty enough prospect, isn't it?”“Tfu! Goodness me! I should fall in love with him at once, out of pure gratitude, if he only proposed to me!”said the widow, with her black eyes all ablaze;“but, of course, it's all nonsense!”“Nonsense, is it? Shall I make it sound sense, then, for you? Ask me prettily, and if I don't make you his betrothed by this evening, you may cut my little finger off! Why, there's nothing in the world easier than to talk uncle into anything you please! He'll only say,‘Ye—yes, ye—yes,’just as you heard him now! We'll marry him so that he doesn't know anything about it, if you like? We'll deceive him and marry him, if you please! Any way you like, it can be done! Why, it's for his own good; it's out of pity for himself! Don't you think, seriously, Nastasia Petrovna, that you had better put on some smart clothes in any case?”Paul's enthusiasm amounted by now to something like madness, while the widow's mouth watered at his idea, in spite of her better judgment.“I know, I know I look horridly untidy!”she said.“I go about anyhow, nowadays! There's nothing to dress for. Do I really look like a regular cook?”All this time Maria Alexandrovna sat still, with a strange expression on her face. I shall not be far wrong if I say that she listened to Paul's wild suggestion with a look of terror, almost: she was confused and startled; at last she recollected herself, and spoke.“All this is very nice, of course; but at the same time it is utter nonsense, and perfectly out of the question!”she observed cuttingly.“Why, why, my good Maria Alexandrovna? Why is it such nonsense, or why out of the question?”“For many reasons; and, principally because you are, as the prince is also, a guest in my house; and I cannot permit anyone to forget their respect towards my establishment! I shall consider your words as a joke, Paul Alexandrovitch, and nothing more! Here comes the prince—thank goodness!”“Here I am!”cried the old man as he entered.“It's a wo—wonderful thing how many good ideas of all s—sorts I'm having to-day! and another day I may spend the whole of it without a single one! As—tonishing? not one all day!”“Probably the result of your accident, to-day, uncle! Your nerves got shaken up, you see, and ——”“Ye—yes, I think so, I think so too; and I look on the accident as pro—fitable, on the whole; and therefore I'm going to excuse the coachman. I don't think it was an at—tempt on my life, after all, do you? Besides, he was punished a little while a—go, when his beard was sh—shaved off!”“Beard shaved off? Why, uncle, his beard is as big as a German state!”“Ye—yes, a German state, you are very happy in your ex—pressions, my boy! but it's a fa—false one. Fancy what happened: I sent for a price-current for false hair and beards, and found advertisements for splendid ser—vants' and coachmen's beards, very cheap—extraordinarily so! I sent for one, and it certainly was a be—auty. But when we wanted to clap it on the coachman, we found he had one of his own t—twice as big; so I thought, shall I cut off his, or let him wear it, and send this one b—back? and I decided to shave his off, and let him wear the f—false one!”“On the theory that art is higher than nature, I suppose uncle?”“Yes, yes! Just so—and I assure you, when we cut off his beard he suffered as much as though we were depriving him of all he held most dear! But we must be go—going, my boy!”“But I hope, dear prince, that you will only call upon the governor!”cried Maria Alexandrovna, in great agitation.“You areminenow, Prince; you belong tomyfamily for the whole of this day! Of course I will say nothing about the society of this place. Perhaps you are thinking of paying Anna Nicolaevna a visit? I will not say a word to dissuade you; but at the same time I am quite convinced that—time will show! Remember one thing, dear Prince, that I am your sister, your nurse, your guardian for to-day at least, and oh!—I tremble for you. You don't know these people, Prince, as I do! You don't know them fully: but time will teach you all you do not know.”“Trust me, Maria Alexandrovna!”said Paul,“it shall all be exactly as I have promised you!”“Oh—but you're such a weathercock! I can never trustyou! I shall wait for you at dinner time, Prince; we dine early. How sorry I am that my husband happens to be in the country on such an occasion! How happy he would have been to see you! He esteems you so highly, Prince; he is so sincerely attached to you!”“Your husband? dear me! So you have a h—husband, too!”observed the old man.“Oh, prince, prince! how forgetful you are! Why, you havequite, quite forgotten the past! My husband, Afanassy Matveyevitch, surely you must remember him? He is in the country: but you have seen him thousands of times before! Don't you remember—Afanassy Matveyevitch!”“Afanassy Matveyevitch. Dear me!—and in the co—country! how very charming! So you have a husband! dear me, I remember a vaudeville very like that, something about—“The husband's here,And his wife at Tvere.”Charming, charming—such a good rhyme too; and it's a most ri—diculous story! Charming, charming; the wife's away, you know, at Jaroslaf or Tv—— or somewhere, and the husband is——is——Dear me! I'm afraid I've forgotten what we were talking about! Yes, yes—we must be going, my boy!Au revoir, madame; adieu, ma charmante demoiselle”he added, turning to Zina, and putting the ends of her fingers to his lips.“Come back to dinner,—to dinner, prince! don't forget to come back here quick!”cried Maria Alexandrovna after them as they went out;“be back to dinner!”CHAPTER V.“Nastasia Petrovna, I think you had better go and see what is doing in the kitchen!”observed Maria Alexandrovna, as she returned from seeing the prince off.“I'm sure that rascal Nikitka will spoil the dinner! Probably he's drunk already!”The widow obeyed.As the latter left the room, she glanced suspiciously at Maria Alexandrovna, and observed that the latter was in a high state of agitation. Therefore, instead of going to look after Nikitka, she went through the“Salon,”along the passage to her own room, and through that to a dark box-room, where the old clothes of the establishment and such things were stored. There she approached the locked door on tiptoe; and stifling her breath, she bent to the keyhole, through which she peeped, and settled herself to listen intently. This door, which was always kept shut, was one of the three doors communicating with the room where Maria Alexandrovna and Zina were now left alone. Maria Alexandrovna always considered Nastasia an untrustworthy sort of woman, although extremely silly into the bargain. Of course she had suspected the widow—more than once—of eavesdropping; but it so happened that at the moment Madame Moskaleva was too agitated and excited to think of the usual precautions.She was sitting in her arm-chair and gazing at Zina. Zina felt that her mother was looking at her, and was conscious of an unpleasant sensation at her heart.“Zina!”Zina slowly turned her head towards the speaker, and lifted her splendid dark eyes to hers.“Zina, I wish to speak to you on a most important matter!”Zina adopted an attentive air, and sat still with folded hands, waiting for light. In her face there was an expression of annoyance as well as irony, which she did her best to hide.“I wish to ask you first, Zina, what you thought ofthatMosgliakoff, to-day?”“You have known my opinion of him for a long time!”replied Zina, surlily.“Yes, yes, of course! but I think he is getting just a littletootroublesome, with his continual bothering you—”“Oh, but he says he is in love with me, in which case his importunity is pardonable!”“Strange! You used not to be so ready to find his offences pardonable; you used to fly out at him if ever I mentioned his name!”“Strange, too, that you always defended him, and were so very anxious that I should marry him!—and now you are the first to attack him!”“Yes; I don't deny, Zina, that I did wish, then, to see you married to Mosgliakoff! It was painful to me to witness your continual grief, your sufferings, which I can well realize—whatever you may think to the contrary!—and which deprived me of my rest at night! I determined at last that there was but one great change of life that would ever save you from the sorrows of the past, and that change was matrimony! We are not rich; we cannot afford to go abroad. All the asses in the place prick their long ears, and wonder that you should be unmarried at twenty-three years old; and they must needs invent all sorts of stories to account for the fact! As if I would marry you to one of our wretched little town councillors, or to Ivan Ivanovitch, the family lawyer! There are no husbands foryouin this place, Zina! Of course Paul Mosgliakoff is a silly sort of a fellow, but he is better than these people here: he is fairly born, at least, and he has 150 serfs and landed property, all of which is better than living by bribes and corruption, and goodness knows what jobbery besides, as these do! and that is why I allowed my eyes to rest on him. But I give you my solemn word, I never had any real sympathy for him! and if Providence has sent you someone better now, oh, my dear girl, how fortunate that you have not given your word to Mosgliakoff! You didn't tell him anything for certain to-day, did you, Zina?”“What is the use of beating about the bush, when the whole thing lies in a couple of words?”said Zina, with some show of annoyance.“Beating about the bush, Zina? Is that the way to speak to your mother? But what am I? You have long ceased to trust to your poor mother! You have long looked upon me as your enemy, and not as your mother at all!”“Oh, come mother! you and I are beyond quarrelling about an expression! Surely we understand one another by now? It is about time we did, anyhow!”“But you offend me, my child! you will not believe that I am ready to devoteall, allI can give, in order to establish your destiny on a safe and happy footing!”Zina looked angrily and sarcastically at her mother.“Would not you like to marry me to this old prince, now, in order to establish my destiny on a safe and happy footing?”“I have not said a word about it; but, as you mention the fact, I will say that if youwereto marry the prince it would be a very happy thing for you, and—”“Oh! Well, I consider the idea utter nonsense!”cried the girl passionately.“Nonsense, humbug! and what's more, I think you have a good deal too much poetical inspiration, mamma; you are a woman poet in the fullest sense of the term, and they call you by that name here! You are always full of projects; and the impracticability and absurdity of your ideas does not in the least discourage you. I felt, when the prince was sitting here, that you had that notion in your head. When Mosgliakoff was talking nonsense there about marrying the old man to somebody I read all your thoughts in your face. I am ready to bet any money that you are thinking of it now, and that you have come to me now about this very question! However, as your perpetual projects on my behalf are beginning to weary me to death, I must beg you not to say one word about it, notone word, mamma; do you hear me?not one word; and I beg you will remember what I say!”She was panting with rage.“You are a child, Zina; a poor sorrow-worn, sick child!”said Maria Alexandrovna in tearful accents.“You speak to your poor mother disrespectfully; you wound me deeply, my dear; there is not another mother in the world who would have borne what I have to bear from you every day! But you are suffering, you are sick, you are sorrowful, and I am your mother, and, first of all, I am a Christian woman! I must bear it all, and forgive it. But one word, Zina: if I had really thought of the union you suggest, why would you consider it so impracticable and absurd? In my opinion, Mosgliakoff has never said a wiser thing than he did to-day, when he declared that marriage was what alone could save the prince,—not, of course, marriage with that slovenly slut, Nastasia; there he certainlydidmake a fool of himself!”“Now look here, mamma; do you ask me this out of pure curiosity, or with design? Tell me the truth.”“All I ask is, why does it appear to you to be so absurd?”“Good heavens, mother, you'll drive me wild! What a fate!”cried Zina, stamping her foot with impatience.“I'll tell you why, if you can't see for yourself. Not to mention all the other evident absurdities of the plan, to take advantage of the weakened wits of a poor old man, and deceive him and marry him—an old cripple, in order to get hold of his money,—and then every day and every hour to wish for his death, is, in my opinion, not only nonsense, but so mean,somean, mamma, that I—I can't congratulate you on your brilliant idea; that's all I can say!”There was silence for one minute.“Zina, do you remember all that happened two years ago?”asked Maria Alexandrovna of a sudden.Zina trembled.“Mamma!”she said, severely,“you promised me solemnly never to mention that again.”“And I ask you now, as solemnly, my dear child, to allow me to break that promise, just once! I have never broken it before. Zina! the time has come for a full and clear understanding between us! These two years of silence have been terrible. We cannot go on like this. I am ready to pray you, on my knees, to let me speak. Listen, Zina, your own mother who bore you beseeches you, on her knees! And I promise you faithfully, Zina, and solemnly, on the word of an unhappy but adoring mother, that never, under any circumstances, not even to save my life, will I ever mention the subject again. This shall be the last time, but it is absolutely necessary!”Maria Alexandrovna counted upon the effect of her words, and with reason:“Speak, then!”said Zina, growing whiter every moment.“Thank you, Zina!——Two years ago there came to the house, to teach your little brother Mitya, since dead, a tutor——”“Why do you begin so solemnly, mamma? Why all this eloquence, all these quite unnecessary details, which are painful to me, and only too well known to both of us?”cried Zina with a sort of irritated disgust.“Because, my dear child, I, your mother, felt in some degree bound to justify myself before you; and also because I wish to present this whole question to you from an entirely new point of view, and not from that mistaken position which you are accustomed to take up with regard to it; and because, lastly, I think you will thus better understand the conclusion at which I shall arrive upon the whole question. Do not think, dear child, that I wish to trifle with your heart! No, Zina, you will find in me a real mother; and perhaps, with tears streaming from your eyes, you will ask and beseech at my feet—at the feet of the 'mean woman,' as you have just called me,—yes, and pray for that reconciliation which you have rejected so long! That's why I wish to recall all, Zina,allthat has happened, from the very beginning; and without this I shall not speak at all!”“Speak, then!”repeated Zina, cursing the necessity for her mother's eloquence from the very bottom of her heart.“I continue then, Zina!——This tutor, a master of the parish school, almost a boy, makes upon you what is, to me, a totally inexplicable impression. I built too much upon my confidence in your good sense, or your noble pride, and principally upon the fact of his insignificance—(I must speak out!)—to allow myself to harbour the slightest suspicion of you! And then you suddenly come to me, one fine day, and state that you intend to marry the man! Zina, it was putting a knife to my heart! I gave a shriek and lost consciousness.“But of course you remember all this. Of course I thought it my duty to use all my power over you, which power you called tyranny. Think for yourself—a boy, the son of a deacon, receiving a salary of twelve roubles a month—a writer of weak verses which are printed, out of pity, in the 'library of short readings.' A man, a boy, who could talk of nothing but that accursed Shakespeare,—this boy to be the husband of Zenaida Moskaloff! Forgive me, Zina, but the very thought of it all makes mewild!“I rejected him, of course. But no power would stopyou; your father only blinked his eyes, as usual, and could not even understand what I was telling him about. You continue your relations with this boy, even giving him rendezvous, and, worst of all, you allow yourself to correspond with him!“Rumours now begin to flit about town: I am assailed with hints; they blow their trumpets of joy and triumph; and suddenly all my fears and anticipations are verified! You and he quarrel over something or other; he shows himself to be a boy (I can't call him a man!), who is utterly unworthy of you, and threatens to show your letters all over the town! On hearing this threat, you, beside yourself with irritation, boxed his ears. Yes, Zina, I am aware of even that fact! I know all, all! But to continue—the wretched boy shows one of your letters the very same day to that ne'er-do-well Zanshin, and within an hour Natalie Dimitrievna holds it in her hands—my deadly enemy! The same evening the miserable fellow attempts to put an end to himself, in remorse. In a word, there is a fearful scandal stirred up. That slut, Nastasia, comes panting to me with the dreadful news; she tells me that Natalie Dimitrievna has had your letter for a whole hour. In a couple of hours the whole town will learn of your foolishness! I bore it all. I did not fall down in a swoon; but oh, the blows, the blows you dealt to my heart, Zina! That shameless scum of the earth, Nastasia, says she will get the letter back for two hundred roubles! I myself run over, in thin shoes, too, through the snow to the Jew Baumstein, and pledge my diamond clasps—a keepsake of my dear mother's! In a couple of hours the letter is in my hands! Nastasia had stolen it; she had broken open a desk, and your honour was safe!“But what a dreadful day you had sentenced me to live! I noticed some grey hairs among my raven locks for the first time, next morning! Zina, you have judged this boy's action yourself now! You can admit now, and perhaps smile a bitter smile over the admission, that it was beyond the limits of good sense to wish to entrust your fate to this youth.“But since that fatal time you are wretched, my child, you are miserable! You cannot forget him, or rather not him—for he was never worthy of you,—but you cannot forget the phantom of your past joy! This wretched young fellow is now on the point of death—consumption, they say; and you, angel of goodness that you are! you do not wish to marry while he is alive, because you fear to harass him in his last days; because to this day he is miserable with jealousy, though I am convinced that he never loved you in the best and highest sense of the word! I know well that, hearing of Mosgliakoff's proposal to you, he has been in a flutter of jealousy, and has spied upon you and your actions ever since; and you—you have been merciful to him, my child. And oh! God knows how I have watered my pillow with tears for you!”“Oh, mother, do drop all this sort of thing!”cried Zina, with inexpressible agony in her tone.“Surely we needn't hear all about your pillow!”she added, sharply.“Can't we get on without all this declamation and pirouetting?”“You do not believe me, Zina! Oh! do not look so unfriendly at me, my child! My eyes have not been dry these two years. I have hidden my tears from you; but I am changed, Zina mine, much changed and in many ways! I have long known of your feelings, Zina, but I admit I have only lately realized the depth of your mental anguish. Can you blame me, my child, if I looked upon this attachment of yours as romanticism—called into being by that accursed Shakespeare, who shoves his nose in everywhere where he isn't wanted?“What mother would blame me for my fears of that kind, for my measures, for the severity of my judgment? But now, understanding as I do, and realizing your two years' sufferings, I can estimate the depth of your real feelings. Believe me, I understand you far better than you understand yourself! I am convinced that you love not him—not this unnatural boy,—but your lost happiness, your broken hopes, your cracked idol!“I have loved too—perhaps more deeply than yourself; I, too, have suffered, I, too, have lost my exalted ideals and seen them levelled with the earth; and therefore who can blame me now—and, above all, canyoublame me now,—if I consider a marriage with the prince to be the one saving, the oneessentialmove left to you in your present position”?Zina listened to this long declamation with surprise. She knew well that her mother never adopted this tone without good reason. However this last and unexpected conclusion fairly amazed her.“You don't mean to say you seriously entertain the idea of marrying me to this prince?”she cried bewildered, and gazing at her mother almost with alarm;“that this is no mere idea, no project, no flighty inspiration, but your deliberate intention? Ihaveguessed right, then? And pray,howis this marriage going to save me? andwhyis it essential to me in my present position? And—and what has all this to do with what you have been talking about?——I cannot understand you, mother,—not a bit!”“AndIcan't understand, angel mine, how youcannotsee the connection of it all!”cried Maria Alexandrovna, in her turn.“In the first place, you would pass into new society, into a new world. You would leave for ever this loathsome little town, so full of sad memories for you; where you meet neither friends nor kindness; where they have bullied and maligned you; where all these—thesemagpieshate you because you are good looking! You could go abroad this very spring, to Italy, Switzerland, Spain!—to Spain, Zina, where the Alhambra is, and where the Guadalquiver flows—no wretched little stream like this of ours!”“But, one moment, mother; you talk as though I were married already, or at least as if the prince had made me an offer!”“Oh, no—oh dear, no! don't bother yourself about that, my angel! I know what I'm talking about! Let me proceed. I've said my‘firstly;’now, then, for my‘secondly!’I understand, dear child, with what loathing you would give your hand to that Mosgliakoff!——”“I know, without your telling me so, that I shall never behiswife!”cried Zina, angrily, and with flashing eyes.“If only you knew, my angel, how I understand and enter into your loathing for him! It is dreadful to vow before the altar that you will love a man whom youcannotlove—how dreadful to belong to one whom you cannot esteem! And he insists on yourlove—he only marries you for love. I can see it by the way he looks at you! Why deceive ourselves? I have suffered from the same thing for twenty-five years; your father ruined me—he, so to speak, sucked up my youth! You have seen my tears many a time!——”“Father's away in the country, don't touchhim, please!”said Zina.“I know you always take his part! Oh, Zina, my very heart trembled within me when I thought to arrange your marriage with Mosgliakoff for financial reasons! I trembled for the consequences. But with the prince it is different, you need not deceive him; you cannot be expected to give him yourlove, not yourlove—oh, no! and he is not in a state to ask it of you!”“Good heavens, what nonsense! I do assure you you are in error from the very first step—from the first and most important step! Understand, that I do not care to make a martyr of myself for some unknown reason! Know, also, that I shall not marry anyone at all; I shall remain a maid. You have bitten my head off for the last two years because I would not marry. Well, you must accept the fact, and make the best of it; that's all I can say, and so it shall be!”“But Zina, darling—my Zina, don't be so cross before you have heard me out! What a hot-headed little person you are, to be sure! Let me show you the matter from my point of view, and you'll agree with me—you really will! The prince will live a year—two at most; and surely it is better to be a young widow than a decayed old maid! Not to mention the fact that you will be a princess—free, rich, independent! I dare say you look with contempt upon all these calculations—founded upon his death; but I am a mother, and what mother will blame me for my foresight?“And if you, my angel of kindness, are unwilling to marry, even now, out of tenderness for that wretched boy's feelings, oh, think, think how, by marrying this prince, you will rejoice his heart and soothe and comfort his soul! For if he has a single particle of commonsense, he must understand that jealousy of this old man weretooabsurd—tooridiculous! He will understand that you marry him—for money, for convenience; that stern necessity compels you to it!“And lastly, he will understand that—that,—well I simply wish to say, that, upon the prince's death, you will be at liberty to marry whomsoever you please.”“That's a truly simple arrangement! All I have to do is to marry this prince, rob him of his money, and then count upon his death in order to marry my lover! You are a clever arithmetician, mamma; you do your sums and get your totals nicely. You wish to seduce me by offering me this! Oh, I understand you, mamma—I understand you well! You cannot resist the expression of your noble sentiments and exalted ideas, even in the manufacture of a nasty business. Why can't you say simply and straightforwardly,‘Zina, this is a dirty affair, but it will pay us, so please agree with me?’at all events, that would be candid and frank on your part.”“But, my dear child, why,whylook at it from this point of view? Why look at it under the light of suspicion asdeceit, and low cunning, and covetousness? You consider my calculations as meanness, as deceit; but, by all that is good and true, where is the meanness? Show me the deceit. Look at yourself in the glass: you are so beautiful, that a kingdom would be a fair price for you! And suddenly you, you, the possessor of this divine beauty, sacrifice yourself, in order to soothe the last years of an old man's life! You would be like a beautiful star, shedding your light over the evening of his days. You would be like the fresh green ivy, twining in and about his old age; not the stinging nettle that this wretched woman at his place is, fastening herself upon him, and thirstily sucking his blood! Surely his money, his rank are not worthy of being put in the scales besideyou? Where is the meanness of it; where is the deceit of all this? You don't know what you are saying, Zina.”“I suppose theyareworthy of being weighed against me, if I am to marry a cripple for them! No, mother, however you look at it, it is deceit, and you can't get out ofthat!”“On the contrary, my dear child, I can look at it from a high, almost from an exalted—nay, Christian—point of view. You, yourself, told me once, in a fit of temporary insanity of some sort, that you wished to be a sister of charity. You had suffered; you said your heart could love no more. If, then, you cannot love, turn your thoughts to the higher aspect of the case. This poor old man has also suffered—he is unhappy. I have known him, and felt the deepest sympathy towards him—akin to love,—for many a year. Be his friend, his daughter, be his plaything, even, if you like; but warm his old heart, and you are doing a good work—a virtuous, kind, noble work of love.“He may be funny to look at; don't think of that. He's but half a man—pity him! You are a Christian girl—do whatever is right by him; and this will be medicine for your own heart-wounds; employment, action, all this will heal you too, and where is the deceit here? But you do not believe me. Perhaps you think that I am deceiving myself when I thus talk of duty and of action. You think that I, a woman of the world, have no right to good feeling and the promptings of duty and virtue. Very well, do not trust me, if you like: insult me, do what you please to your poor mother; but you will have to admit that her words carry the stamp of good sense,—they are saving words! Imagine that someone else is talking to you, not I. Shut your eyes, and fancy that some invisible being is speaking. What is worrying you is the idea that all this is for money—a sort of sale or purchase. Very well, thenrefusethe money, if it is so loathsome to your eyes. Leave just as much as is absolutely necessary for yourself, and give the rest to the poor. Helphim, if you like, the poor fellow who lies there a-dying!”“He would never accept my help!”muttered Zina, as though to herself.“He would not, but his mother would!”said Maria Alexandrovna.“She would take it, and keep her secret. You sold your ear-rings, a present from your aunt, half a year or so ago, and helped her;Iknow all about it! I know, too, that the woman washes linen in order to support her unfortunate son!”“He will soon be where he requires no more help!”“I know, I understand your hints.”Maria Alexandrovna sighed a real sigh.“They say he is in a consumption, and must die.“Butwhosays so?“I asked the doctor the other day, because, having a tender heart, Zina, I felt interested in the poor fellow. The doctor said that he was convinced the malady wasnotconsumption; that it was dangerous, no doubt, but stillnotconsumption, only some severe affection of the lungs. Ask him yourself! He certainly told me that under different conditions—change of climate and of his style of living,—the sick man might well recover. He said—and I have read it too, somewhere, that off Spain there is a wonderful island, called Malaga—I think it was Malaga; anyhow, the name was like some wine, where, not only ordinary sufferers from chest maladies, but even consumptive patients, recover entirely, solely by virtue of the climate, and that sick people go there on purpose to be cured.“Oh, but Spain—the Alhambra alone—and the lemons, and the riding on mules. All this is enough in itself to impress a poetical nature. You think he would not accept your help, your money—for such a journey? Very well—deceit is permissible where it may save a man's life.“Give him hope, too! Promise him your love; promise to marry him when you are a widow! Anything in the world can be said with care and tact! Your own mother would not counsel you to an ignoble deed, Zina. You will do as I say, to save this boy's life; and with this object, everything is permissible! You will revive his hope; he will himself begin to think of his health, and listen to what the doctor says to him. He will do his best to resuscitate his dead happiness; and if he gets well again, even if you never marry him, you will have saved him—raised him from the dead!“I can look at him with some sympathy. I admit I can, now! Perhaps sorrow has changed him for the better; and I say frankly, if he should be worthy of you when you become a widow, marry him, by all means! You will be rich then, and independent. You can not only cure him, but, having done so, you can give him position in the world—a career! Your marriage to him will then be possible and pardonable, not, as now, an absolute impossibility!“For what would become of both of you were you to be capable of such madnessnow? Universal contempt, beggary; smacking little boys, which is part of his duty; the reading of Shakespeare; perpetual, hopeless life in Mordasoff; and lastly his certain death, which will undoubtedly take place before long unless he is taken away from here!“While, if you resuscitate him—if you raise him from the dead, as it were, you raise him to a good, useful, and virtuous life! He may then enter public life—make himself rank, and a name! At the least, even if he must die, he will die happy, at peace with himself, in your arms—for he will be by then assured of your love and forgiveness of the past, and lying beneath the scent of myrtles and lemons, beneath the tropical sky of the South. Oh, Zina, all this is within your grasp, and all—all isgain. Yes, and all to be had by merely marrying this prince.”Maria Alexandrovna broke off, and for several minutes there was silence; not a word was said on either side: Zina was in a state of indescribable agitation. I say indescribable because I will not attempt to describe Zina's feelings: I cannot guess at them; but Ithinkthat Maria Alexandrovna had found the road to her heart.Not knowing how her words had sped with her daughter, Maria Alexandrovna now began to work her busy brain to imagine and prepare herself for every possible humour that Zina might prove to be in; but at last she concluded that she had happened upon the right track after all. Her rude hand had touched the sorest place in Zina's heart, but her crude and absurd sentimental twaddle had not blinded her daughter.“However, that doesn't matter”—thought the mother.“All I care to do is to make herthink; I wish my ideas to stick!”So she reflected, and she gained her end; the effect was made—the arrow reached the mark. Zina had listened hungrily as her mother spoke; her cheeks were burning, her breast heaved.“Listen, mother,”she said at last, with decision; though the sudden pallor of her face showed clearly what the decision had cost her.“Listen mother——”But at this moment a sudden noise in the entrance hall, and a shrill female voice, asking for Maria Alexandrovna, interrupted Zina, while her mother jumped up from her chair.“Oh! the devil fly away with this magpie of a woman!”cried the latter furiously.“Why, I nearly drove her out by force only a fortnight ago!”she added, almost in despair.“I can't, I can't receive her now. Zina, this question is too important to be put off: she must have news for me or she never would have dared to come. I won't receive the old —— Oh!howglad I am to see you, dear Sophia Petrovna. What lucky chance broughtyouto see me? What acharmingsurprise!”said Maria Alexandrovna, advancing to receive her guest.Zina escaped out of the room.

CHAPTER IV.At first sight you would not take this prince for an old man at all, and it is only when you come near and take a good look at him, that you see he is merely a dead man working on wires. All the resources of science are brought to bear upon this mummy, in order to give it the appearance of life and youth. A marvellous wig, glorious whiskers, moustache and napoleon—all of the most raven black—cover half his face. He is painted and powdered with very great skill, so much so that one can hardly detect any wrinkles. What has become of them, goodness only knows.He is dressed in the pink of fashion, just as though he had walked straight out of a tailor's fashion-page. His coat, his gloves, tie, his waistcoat, his linen, are all in perfect taste, and in the very last mode. The prince limps slightly, but so slightly that one would suppose he did it on purpose becausethatwas in fashion too. In his eye he wears a glass—in the eye which is itself glass already.He was soaked with scent. His speech and manner of pronouncing certain syllables was full of affectation; and this was, perhaps, all that he retained of the mannerisms and tricks of his younger days. For if the prince had not quite lost his wits as yet, he had certainly parted with nearly every vestige of his memory, which—alas!—is a thing which no amount of perfumeries and wigs and rouge and tight-lacing will renovate. He continually forgets words in the midst of conversation, and loses his way, which makes it a matter of some difficulty to carry on a conversation with him. However, Maria Alexandrovna has confidence in her inborn dexterity, and at sight of the prince she flies into a condition of unspeakable rapture.“Oh! but you've not changed, you've not changed abit!”she cries, seizing her guest by both hands, and popping him into a comfortable arm-chair.“Sit down, dear Prince, do sit down! Six years, prince, six whole long years since we saw each other, and not a letter, not a little tiny scrap of a note all the while.Oh, how naughty you have been, prince! Andhowangry I have been with you, my dear friend! But, tea! tea! Good Heavens, Nastasia Petrovna, tea for the prince, quick!”“Th—thanks, thanks; I'm very s—orry!”stammered the old man (I forgot to mention that he stammered a little, but he did even this as though it were the fashion to do it).“Very s—sorry; fancy, I—I wanted to co—come last year, but they t—told me there was cho—cho—cholera here.”“There was foot and mouth disease here, uncle,”put in Mosgliakoff, by way of distinguishing himself. Maria Alexandrovna gave him a severe look.“Ye—yes, foot and mouth disease, or something of that s—sort,”said the prince;“so I st—stayed at home. Well, and how's your h—husband, my dear Anna Nic—Nicolaevna? Still at his proc—procuror's work?”“No, prince!”said Maria Alexandrovna, a little disconcerted.“My husband is not a procurer.”“I'll bet anything that uncle has mixed you up with Anna Nicolaevna Antipova,”said Mosgliakoff, but stopped suddenly on observing the look on Maria Alexandrovna's face.“Ye—yes, of course, Anna Nicolaevna. A—An. What the deuce! I'm always f—forgetting; Antipova, Antipova, of course,”continued the prince.“No, prince, you have made a great mistake,”remarked Maria Alexandrovna, with a bitter smile.“I am not Anna Nicolaevna at all, and I confess I should never have believed that you would not recognise me. You have astonished me, prince. I am your old friend, Maria Alexandrovna Moskaloff. Don't you remember Maria Alexandrovna?”“M—Maria Alexandrovna! think of that; and I thought she was w—what's her name. Y—yes, Anna Vasilievna!C'est délicieux.W—why I thought you were going to take me to this A—Anna Matveyevna. Dear me!C'est ch—charmant!It often happens so w—with me. I get taken to the wrong house; but I'm v—very pleased, v—very pleased! So you're not Nastasia Va—silievna? How interesting.”“I'm Maria Alexandrovna, prince;Maria Alexandrovna! Oh! how naughty you are, Prince, to forget your best, best friend!”“Ye—es! ye—yes! best friend; best friend, for—forgive me!”stammered the old man, staring at Zina.“That's my daughter Zina. You are not acquainted yet, prince. She wasn't here when you were last in the town, in the year —— you know.”“Oh, th—this is your d—daughter!”muttered the old man, staring hungrily at Zina through his glasses.“Dear me, dear me.Ch—charmante, ch—armante!But what a lo—ovely girl,”he added, evidently impressed.“Tea! prince,”remarked Maria Alexandrovna, directing his attention to the page standing before him with the tray. The prince took a cup, and examined the boy, who had a nice fresh face of his own.“Ah! this is your l—little boy? Wh—what a charming little b—boy! and does he be—behave nicely?”“But, prince,”interrupted Maria Alexandrovna, impatiently,“what is this dreadful occurrence I hear of? I confess I was nearly beside myself with terror when I heard of it. Were you not hurt at all?Dotake care. One cannot make light of this sort of thing.”“Upset, upset; the c—coachman upset me!”cried the prince, with unwonted vivacity.“I thought it was the end of the world, and I was fri—frightened out of my wits. I didn't expect it; I didn't, indeed! and my co—oachman is to blame for it all. I trust you, my friend, to lo—ok into the matter well. I feel sure he was making an attempt on my life!”“All right, all right, uncle,”said Paul;“I'll see about it. But look here—forgive him, just this once, uncle; just this once, won't you?”“N—not I! Not for anything! I'm sure he wants my life, he and Lavrenty too. It's—it's the 'new ideas;' it's Com—Communism, in the fullest sense of the word. I daren't meet them anywhere.”“You are right, you are quite right, prince,”cried Maria Alexandrovna.“You don't know how I suffer myself from these wretched people. I've just been obliged to change two of my servants; and you've no idea howstupidthey are, prince.”“Ye—yes! quite so!”said the prince, delighted—as all old men are whose senile chatter is listened to with servility.“But I like a fl—flunky to look stupid; it gives them presence. There's my Terenty, now. You remember Terenty, my friend? Well, the f—first time I ever looked at him I said,‘You shall be my ha—hall porter.’He's stupid, phen—phen—omenally stupid, he looks like a she—sheep; but his dig—dignity and majesty are wonderful. When I look at him he seems to be composing some l—learned dis—sertation. He's just like the German philosopher, Kant, or like some fa—fat old turkey, and that's just what one wants in a serving-man.”Maria Alexandrovna laughed, and clapped her hands in the highest state of ecstasy; Paul supported her with all his might; Nastasia Petrovna laughed too; and even Zina smiled.“But, prince, how clever, how witty, howhumorousyou are!”cried Maria Alexandrovna.“What a wonderful gilt of remarking the smallest refinements of character. And for a man like you to eschew all society, and shut yourself up for five years! With such talents! Why, prince, you couldwrite, you could be an author. You could emulate Von Vezin, Gribojedoff, Gogol!”“Ye—yes! ye—yes!”said the delighted prince.“I can reproduce things I see, very well. And, do you know, I used to be a very wi—witty fellow indeed, some time ago. I even wrote a play once. There were some very smart couplets, I remember; but it was never acted.”“Oh! how nice it would be to read it over, especially justnow, eh, Zina? for we are thinking of getting up a play, you must know, prince, for the benefit of the‘martyrs of the Fatherland,’the wounded soldiers. There, now, how handy your play would come in!”“Certainly, certainly. I—I would even write you another. I think I've quite forgotten the old one. I remember there were two or three such epigrams that (here the prince kissed his own hand to convey an idea of the exquisite wit of his lines) I recollect when I was abroad I made a real furore. I remember Lord Byron well; we were great friends; you should have seen him dance the mazurka one day during the Vienna Congress.”“Lord Byron, uncle?—Surely not!”“Ye—yes, Lord Byron. Perhaps it was not Lord Byron, though, perhaps it was someone else; no, it wasn't Lord Byron, it was some Pole; I remember now. A won—der-ful fellow that Pole was! He said he was a C—Count, and he turned out to be a c—cook—shop man! But he danced the mazurka won—der—fully, and broke his leg at last. I recollect I wrote some lines at the time:—“Our little PoleDanced like blazes.”—How did it go on, now? Wait a minute! No, I can't remember.”“I'll tell you, uncle. It must have been like this,”said Paul, becoming more and more inspired:—“But he tripped in a hole,Which stopped his crazes.”“Ye—yes, that was it, I think, or something very like it. I don't know, though—perhaps it wasn't. Anyhow, the lines were very sm—art. I forget a good deal of what I have seen and done. I'm so b—busy now!”“But do let me hear how you have employed your time in your solitude, dear prince,”said Maria Alexandrovna.“I must confess that I have thought of you so often, and often, that I am burning with impatience to hear more about you and your doings.”“Employed my time? Oh, very busy; very busy, ge—generally. One rests, you see, part of the day; and then I imagine a good many things.”“I should think you have a very strong imagination, haven't you, uncle?”remarked Paul.“Exceptionally so, my dear fellow. I sometimes imagine things which amaze even myself! When I was at Kadueff,—by-the-by, you were vice-governor of Kadueff, weren't you?”“I, uncle! Why, what are you thinking of?”“No? Just fancy, my dear fellow! and I've been thinking all this time how f—funny that the vice-governor of Kadueff should be here with quite a different face: he had a fine intelligent, dig—dignified face, you know. A wo—wonderful fellow! Always writing verses, too; he was rather like the Ki—King of Diamonds from the side view, but—”“No, prince,”interrupted Maria Alexandrovna.“I assure you, you'll ruin yourself with the life you are leading! To make a hermit of oneself for five years, and see no one, and hear no one: you're a lost man, dear prince! Ask any one of those who love you, they'll all tell you the same; you're a lost man!”“No,”cried the prince,“really?”“Yes, I assure you of it! I am speaking to you as a sister—as a friend! I am telling you this because you are very dear to me, and because the memory of the past is sacred to me. No, no! You must change your way of living; otherwise you will fall ill, and break up, and die!”“Gracious heavens! Surely I shan't d—die so soon?”cried the old man.“You—you are right about being ill; I am ill now and then. I'll tell you all the sy—symptoms! I'll de—detail them to you. Firstly I—”“Uncle, don't you think you had better tell us all about it another day?”Paul interrupted hurriedly.“I think we had better be starting just now, don't you?”“Yes—yes, perhaps, perhaps. But remind me to tell you another time; it's a most interesting case, I assure you!”“But listen, my dear prince!”Maria Alexandrovna resumed,“why don't you try being doctored abroad?”“Ab—road? Yes, yes—I shall certainly go abroad. I remember when I was abroad, about '20; it was delightfully g—gay and jolly. I very nearly married a vi—viscountess, a French woman. I was fearfully in love, but som—somebody else married her, not I. It was a very s—strange thing. I had only gone away for a coup—couple of hours, and this Ger—German baron fellow came and carried her off! He went into a ma—madhouse afterwards!”“Yes, dear prince, you must look after your health. There are such good doctors abroad; and—besides, the mere change of life, what will not that alone do for you! Youmustdesert your dear Donchanovo, if only for a time!”“C—certainly, certainly! I've long meant to do it. I'm going to try hy—hydropathy!”“Hydropathy?”“Yes. I've tried it once before: I was abroad, you know, and they persuaded me to try drinking the wa—waters. There wasn't anything the matter with me, but I agreed, just out of deli—delicacy for their feelings; and I did seem to feel easier, somehow. So I drank, and drank, and dra—ank up a whole waterfall; and I assure you if I hadn't fallen ill just then I should have been quite well, th—thanks to the water! But, I confess, you've frightened me so about these ma—maladies and things, I feel quite put out. I'll come back d—directly!”“Why, prince, where are you off to?”asked Maria Alexandrovna in surprise.“Directly, directly. I'm just going to note down an i—idea!”“What sort of idea?”cried Paul, bursting with laughter.Maria Alexandrovna lost all patience.“I cannot understand what you find to laugh at!”she cried, as the old man disappeared;“to laugh at an honourable old man, and turn every word of his into ridicule—presuming on his angelic good nature. I assure you Iblushedfor you, Paul Alexandrovitch! Why, what do you see in him to laugh at? I never saw anything funny about him!”“Well, I laugh because he does not recognise people, and talks such nonsense!”“That's simply the result of his sad life, of his dreadful five years' captivity, under the guardianship of that she-devil! You shouldpity, not laugh at him! He did not even knowme; you saw it yourself. I tell you it's a crying shame; he must be saved, at all costs! I recommend him to go abroad so that he may get out of the clutches of that—beast of a woman!”“Do you know what—we must find him a wife!”cried Paul.“Oh, Mr. Mosgliakoff, you are too bad; you really are too bad!”“No, no, Maria Alexandrovna; I assure you, this time I'm speaking in all seriousness. Whynotmarry him off? Isn't it rather a brilliant idea? What harm can marriage do him? On the contrary, he is in that position that such a step alone can save him! In the first place, he will get rid of that fox of a woman; and, secondly, he may find some girl, or better still some widow—kind, good, wise and gentle, and poor, who will look after him as his own daughter would, and who will be sensible of the honour he does her in making her his wife! And what could be better for the old fellow than to have such a person about him, rather than the—woman he has now? Of course she must be nice-looking, for uncle appreciates good looks; didn't you observe how he stared at Miss Zina?”“But how will you find him such a bride?”asked Nastasia Petrovna, who had listened intently to Paul's suggestion.“What a question! Why, you yourself, if you pleased! and why not, pray? In the first place, you are good-looking, you are a widow, you are generous, you are poor (at least I don't think you are very rich). Then you are a very reasonable woman: you'll learn to love him, and take good care of him; you'll send that other woman to the deuce, and take your husband abroad, where you will feed him on pudding and lollipops till the moment of his quitting this wicked world, which will be in about a year, or in a couple of months perhaps. After that, you emerge a princess, a rich widow, and, as a prize for your goodness to the old gentleman, you'll marry a fine young marquis, or a governor-general, or somebody of the sort! There—that's a pretty enough prospect, isn't it?”“Tfu! Goodness me! I should fall in love with him at once, out of pure gratitude, if he only proposed to me!”said the widow, with her black eyes all ablaze;“but, of course, it's all nonsense!”“Nonsense, is it? Shall I make it sound sense, then, for you? Ask me prettily, and if I don't make you his betrothed by this evening, you may cut my little finger off! Why, there's nothing in the world easier than to talk uncle into anything you please! He'll only say,‘Ye—yes, ye—yes,’just as you heard him now! We'll marry him so that he doesn't know anything about it, if you like? We'll deceive him and marry him, if you please! Any way you like, it can be done! Why, it's for his own good; it's out of pity for himself! Don't you think, seriously, Nastasia Petrovna, that you had better put on some smart clothes in any case?”Paul's enthusiasm amounted by now to something like madness, while the widow's mouth watered at his idea, in spite of her better judgment.“I know, I know I look horridly untidy!”she said.“I go about anyhow, nowadays! There's nothing to dress for. Do I really look like a regular cook?”All this time Maria Alexandrovna sat still, with a strange expression on her face. I shall not be far wrong if I say that she listened to Paul's wild suggestion with a look of terror, almost: she was confused and startled; at last she recollected herself, and spoke.“All this is very nice, of course; but at the same time it is utter nonsense, and perfectly out of the question!”she observed cuttingly.“Why, why, my good Maria Alexandrovna? Why is it such nonsense, or why out of the question?”“For many reasons; and, principally because you are, as the prince is also, a guest in my house; and I cannot permit anyone to forget their respect towards my establishment! I shall consider your words as a joke, Paul Alexandrovitch, and nothing more! Here comes the prince—thank goodness!”“Here I am!”cried the old man as he entered.“It's a wo—wonderful thing how many good ideas of all s—sorts I'm having to-day! and another day I may spend the whole of it without a single one! As—tonishing? not one all day!”“Probably the result of your accident, to-day, uncle! Your nerves got shaken up, you see, and ——”“Ye—yes, I think so, I think so too; and I look on the accident as pro—fitable, on the whole; and therefore I'm going to excuse the coachman. I don't think it was an at—tempt on my life, after all, do you? Besides, he was punished a little while a—go, when his beard was sh—shaved off!”“Beard shaved off? Why, uncle, his beard is as big as a German state!”“Ye—yes, a German state, you are very happy in your ex—pressions, my boy! but it's a fa—false one. Fancy what happened: I sent for a price-current for false hair and beards, and found advertisements for splendid ser—vants' and coachmen's beards, very cheap—extraordinarily so! I sent for one, and it certainly was a be—auty. But when we wanted to clap it on the coachman, we found he had one of his own t—twice as big; so I thought, shall I cut off his, or let him wear it, and send this one b—back? and I decided to shave his off, and let him wear the f—false one!”“On the theory that art is higher than nature, I suppose uncle?”“Yes, yes! Just so—and I assure you, when we cut off his beard he suffered as much as though we were depriving him of all he held most dear! But we must be go—going, my boy!”“But I hope, dear prince, that you will only call upon the governor!”cried Maria Alexandrovna, in great agitation.“You areminenow, Prince; you belong tomyfamily for the whole of this day! Of course I will say nothing about the society of this place. Perhaps you are thinking of paying Anna Nicolaevna a visit? I will not say a word to dissuade you; but at the same time I am quite convinced that—time will show! Remember one thing, dear Prince, that I am your sister, your nurse, your guardian for to-day at least, and oh!—I tremble for you. You don't know these people, Prince, as I do! You don't know them fully: but time will teach you all you do not know.”“Trust me, Maria Alexandrovna!”said Paul,“it shall all be exactly as I have promised you!”“Oh—but you're such a weathercock! I can never trustyou! I shall wait for you at dinner time, Prince; we dine early. How sorry I am that my husband happens to be in the country on such an occasion! How happy he would have been to see you! He esteems you so highly, Prince; he is so sincerely attached to you!”“Your husband? dear me! So you have a h—husband, too!”observed the old man.“Oh, prince, prince! how forgetful you are! Why, you havequite, quite forgotten the past! My husband, Afanassy Matveyevitch, surely you must remember him? He is in the country: but you have seen him thousands of times before! Don't you remember—Afanassy Matveyevitch!”“Afanassy Matveyevitch. Dear me!—and in the co—country! how very charming! So you have a husband! dear me, I remember a vaudeville very like that, something about—“The husband's here,And his wife at Tvere.”Charming, charming—such a good rhyme too; and it's a most ri—diculous story! Charming, charming; the wife's away, you know, at Jaroslaf or Tv—— or somewhere, and the husband is——is——Dear me! I'm afraid I've forgotten what we were talking about! Yes, yes—we must be going, my boy!Au revoir, madame; adieu, ma charmante demoiselle”he added, turning to Zina, and putting the ends of her fingers to his lips.“Come back to dinner,—to dinner, prince! don't forget to come back here quick!”cried Maria Alexandrovna after them as they went out;“be back to dinner!”

At first sight you would not take this prince for an old man at all, and it is only when you come near and take a good look at him, that you see he is merely a dead man working on wires. All the resources of science are brought to bear upon this mummy, in order to give it the appearance of life and youth. A marvellous wig, glorious whiskers, moustache and napoleon—all of the most raven black—cover half his face. He is painted and powdered with very great skill, so much so that one can hardly detect any wrinkles. What has become of them, goodness only knows.

He is dressed in the pink of fashion, just as though he had walked straight out of a tailor's fashion-page. His coat, his gloves, tie, his waistcoat, his linen, are all in perfect taste, and in the very last mode. The prince limps slightly, but so slightly that one would suppose he did it on purpose becausethatwas in fashion too. In his eye he wears a glass—in the eye which is itself glass already.

He was soaked with scent. His speech and manner of pronouncing certain syllables was full of affectation; and this was, perhaps, all that he retained of the mannerisms and tricks of his younger days. For if the prince had not quite lost his wits as yet, he had certainly parted with nearly every vestige of his memory, which—alas!—is a thing which no amount of perfumeries and wigs and rouge and tight-lacing will renovate. He continually forgets words in the midst of conversation, and loses his way, which makes it a matter of some difficulty to carry on a conversation with him. However, Maria Alexandrovna has confidence in her inborn dexterity, and at sight of the prince she flies into a condition of unspeakable rapture.

“Oh! but you've not changed, you've not changed abit!”she cries, seizing her guest by both hands, and popping him into a comfortable arm-chair.“Sit down, dear Prince, do sit down! Six years, prince, six whole long years since we saw each other, and not a letter, not a little tiny scrap of a note all the while.Oh, how naughty you have been, prince! Andhowangry I have been with you, my dear friend! But, tea! tea! Good Heavens, Nastasia Petrovna, tea for the prince, quick!”

“Th—thanks, thanks; I'm very s—orry!”stammered the old man (I forgot to mention that he stammered a little, but he did even this as though it were the fashion to do it).“Very s—sorry; fancy, I—I wanted to co—come last year, but they t—told me there was cho—cho—cholera here.”

“There was foot and mouth disease here, uncle,”put in Mosgliakoff, by way of distinguishing himself. Maria Alexandrovna gave him a severe look.

“Ye—yes, foot and mouth disease, or something of that s—sort,”said the prince;“so I st—stayed at home. Well, and how's your h—husband, my dear Anna Nic—Nicolaevna? Still at his proc—procuror's work?”

“No, prince!”said Maria Alexandrovna, a little disconcerted.“My husband is not a procurer.”

“I'll bet anything that uncle has mixed you up with Anna Nicolaevna Antipova,”said Mosgliakoff, but stopped suddenly on observing the look on Maria Alexandrovna's face.

“Ye—yes, of course, Anna Nicolaevna. A—An. What the deuce! I'm always f—forgetting; Antipova, Antipova, of course,”continued the prince.

“No, prince, you have made a great mistake,”remarked Maria Alexandrovna, with a bitter smile.“I am not Anna Nicolaevna at all, and I confess I should never have believed that you would not recognise me. You have astonished me, prince. I am your old friend, Maria Alexandrovna Moskaloff. Don't you remember Maria Alexandrovna?”

“M—Maria Alexandrovna! think of that; and I thought she was w—what's her name. Y—yes, Anna Vasilievna!C'est délicieux.W—why I thought you were going to take me to this A—Anna Matveyevna. Dear me!C'est ch—charmant!It often happens so w—with me. I get taken to the wrong house; but I'm v—very pleased, v—very pleased! So you're not Nastasia Va—silievna? How interesting.”

“I'm Maria Alexandrovna, prince;Maria Alexandrovna! Oh! how naughty you are, Prince, to forget your best, best friend!”

“Ye—es! ye—yes! best friend; best friend, for—forgive me!”stammered the old man, staring at Zina.

“That's my daughter Zina. You are not acquainted yet, prince. She wasn't here when you were last in the town, in the year —— you know.”

“Oh, th—this is your d—daughter!”muttered the old man, staring hungrily at Zina through his glasses.“Dear me, dear me.Ch—charmante, ch—armante!But what a lo—ovely girl,”he added, evidently impressed.

“Tea! prince,”remarked Maria Alexandrovna, directing his attention to the page standing before him with the tray. The prince took a cup, and examined the boy, who had a nice fresh face of his own.

“Ah! this is your l—little boy? Wh—what a charming little b—boy! and does he be—behave nicely?”

“But, prince,”interrupted Maria Alexandrovna, impatiently,“what is this dreadful occurrence I hear of? I confess I was nearly beside myself with terror when I heard of it. Were you not hurt at all?Dotake care. One cannot make light of this sort of thing.”

“Upset, upset; the c—coachman upset me!”cried the prince, with unwonted vivacity.“I thought it was the end of the world, and I was fri—frightened out of my wits. I didn't expect it; I didn't, indeed! and my co—oachman is to blame for it all. I trust you, my friend, to lo—ok into the matter well. I feel sure he was making an attempt on my life!”

“All right, all right, uncle,”said Paul;“I'll see about it. But look here—forgive him, just this once, uncle; just this once, won't you?”

“N—not I! Not for anything! I'm sure he wants my life, he and Lavrenty too. It's—it's the 'new ideas;' it's Com—Communism, in the fullest sense of the word. I daren't meet them anywhere.”

“You are right, you are quite right, prince,”cried Maria Alexandrovna.“You don't know how I suffer myself from these wretched people. I've just been obliged to change two of my servants; and you've no idea howstupidthey are, prince.”

“Ye—yes! quite so!”said the prince, delighted—as all old men are whose senile chatter is listened to with servility.“But I like a fl—flunky to look stupid; it gives them presence. There's my Terenty, now. You remember Terenty, my friend? Well, the f—first time I ever looked at him I said,‘You shall be my ha—hall porter.’He's stupid, phen—phen—omenally stupid, he looks like a she—sheep; but his dig—dignity and majesty are wonderful. When I look at him he seems to be composing some l—learned dis—sertation. He's just like the German philosopher, Kant, or like some fa—fat old turkey, and that's just what one wants in a serving-man.”

Maria Alexandrovna laughed, and clapped her hands in the highest state of ecstasy; Paul supported her with all his might; Nastasia Petrovna laughed too; and even Zina smiled.

“But, prince, how clever, how witty, howhumorousyou are!”cried Maria Alexandrovna.“What a wonderful gilt of remarking the smallest refinements of character. And for a man like you to eschew all society, and shut yourself up for five years! With such talents! Why, prince, you couldwrite, you could be an author. You could emulate Von Vezin, Gribojedoff, Gogol!”

“Ye—yes! ye—yes!”said the delighted prince.“I can reproduce things I see, very well. And, do you know, I used to be a very wi—witty fellow indeed, some time ago. I even wrote a play once. There were some very smart couplets, I remember; but it was never acted.”

“Oh! how nice it would be to read it over, especially justnow, eh, Zina? for we are thinking of getting up a play, you must know, prince, for the benefit of the‘martyrs of the Fatherland,’the wounded soldiers. There, now, how handy your play would come in!”

“Certainly, certainly. I—I would even write you another. I think I've quite forgotten the old one. I remember there were two or three such epigrams that (here the prince kissed his own hand to convey an idea of the exquisite wit of his lines) I recollect when I was abroad I made a real furore. I remember Lord Byron well; we were great friends; you should have seen him dance the mazurka one day during the Vienna Congress.”

“Lord Byron, uncle?—Surely not!”

“Ye—yes, Lord Byron. Perhaps it was not Lord Byron, though, perhaps it was someone else; no, it wasn't Lord Byron, it was some Pole; I remember now. A won—der-ful fellow that Pole was! He said he was a C—Count, and he turned out to be a c—cook—shop man! But he danced the mazurka won—der—fully, and broke his leg at last. I recollect I wrote some lines at the time:—

“Our little PoleDanced like blazes.”

“Our little Pole

Danced like blazes.”

—How did it go on, now? Wait a minute! No, I can't remember.”

“I'll tell you, uncle. It must have been like this,”said Paul, becoming more and more inspired:—

“But he tripped in a hole,Which stopped his crazes.”

“But he tripped in a hole,

Which stopped his crazes.”

“Ye—yes, that was it, I think, or something very like it. I don't know, though—perhaps it wasn't. Anyhow, the lines were very sm—art. I forget a good deal of what I have seen and done. I'm so b—busy now!”

“But do let me hear how you have employed your time in your solitude, dear prince,”said Maria Alexandrovna.“I must confess that I have thought of you so often, and often, that I am burning with impatience to hear more about you and your doings.”

“Employed my time? Oh, very busy; very busy, ge—generally. One rests, you see, part of the day; and then I imagine a good many things.”

“I should think you have a very strong imagination, haven't you, uncle?”remarked Paul.

“Exceptionally so, my dear fellow. I sometimes imagine things which amaze even myself! When I was at Kadueff,—by-the-by, you were vice-governor of Kadueff, weren't you?”

“I, uncle! Why, what are you thinking of?”

“No? Just fancy, my dear fellow! and I've been thinking all this time how f—funny that the vice-governor of Kadueff should be here with quite a different face: he had a fine intelligent, dig—dignified face, you know. A wo—wonderful fellow! Always writing verses, too; he was rather like the Ki—King of Diamonds from the side view, but—”

“No, prince,”interrupted Maria Alexandrovna.“I assure you, you'll ruin yourself with the life you are leading! To make a hermit of oneself for five years, and see no one, and hear no one: you're a lost man, dear prince! Ask any one of those who love you, they'll all tell you the same; you're a lost man!”

“No,”cried the prince,“really?”

“Yes, I assure you of it! I am speaking to you as a sister—as a friend! I am telling you this because you are very dear to me, and because the memory of the past is sacred to me. No, no! You must change your way of living; otherwise you will fall ill, and break up, and die!”

“Gracious heavens! Surely I shan't d—die so soon?”cried the old man.“You—you are right about being ill; I am ill now and then. I'll tell you all the sy—symptoms! I'll de—detail them to you. Firstly I—”

“Uncle, don't you think you had better tell us all about it another day?”Paul interrupted hurriedly.“I think we had better be starting just now, don't you?”

“Yes—yes, perhaps, perhaps. But remind me to tell you another time; it's a most interesting case, I assure you!”

“But listen, my dear prince!”Maria Alexandrovna resumed,“why don't you try being doctored abroad?”

“Ab—road? Yes, yes—I shall certainly go abroad. I remember when I was abroad, about '20; it was delightfully g—gay and jolly. I very nearly married a vi—viscountess, a French woman. I was fearfully in love, but som—somebody else married her, not I. It was a very s—strange thing. I had only gone away for a coup—couple of hours, and this Ger—German baron fellow came and carried her off! He went into a ma—madhouse afterwards!”

“Yes, dear prince, you must look after your health. There are such good doctors abroad; and—besides, the mere change of life, what will not that alone do for you! Youmustdesert your dear Donchanovo, if only for a time!”

“C—certainly, certainly! I've long meant to do it. I'm going to try hy—hydropathy!”

“Hydropathy?”

“Yes. I've tried it once before: I was abroad, you know, and they persuaded me to try drinking the wa—waters. There wasn't anything the matter with me, but I agreed, just out of deli—delicacy for their feelings; and I did seem to feel easier, somehow. So I drank, and drank, and dra—ank up a whole waterfall; and I assure you if I hadn't fallen ill just then I should have been quite well, th—thanks to the water! But, I confess, you've frightened me so about these ma—maladies and things, I feel quite put out. I'll come back d—directly!”

“Why, prince, where are you off to?”asked Maria Alexandrovna in surprise.

“Directly, directly. I'm just going to note down an i—idea!”

“What sort of idea?”cried Paul, bursting with laughter.

Maria Alexandrovna lost all patience.

“I cannot understand what you find to laugh at!”she cried, as the old man disappeared;“to laugh at an honourable old man, and turn every word of his into ridicule—presuming on his angelic good nature. I assure you Iblushedfor you, Paul Alexandrovitch! Why, what do you see in him to laugh at? I never saw anything funny about him!”

“Well, I laugh because he does not recognise people, and talks such nonsense!”

“That's simply the result of his sad life, of his dreadful five years' captivity, under the guardianship of that she-devil! You shouldpity, not laugh at him! He did not even knowme; you saw it yourself. I tell you it's a crying shame; he must be saved, at all costs! I recommend him to go abroad so that he may get out of the clutches of that—beast of a woman!”

“Do you know what—we must find him a wife!”cried Paul.

“Oh, Mr. Mosgliakoff, you are too bad; you really are too bad!”

“No, no, Maria Alexandrovna; I assure you, this time I'm speaking in all seriousness. Whynotmarry him off? Isn't it rather a brilliant idea? What harm can marriage do him? On the contrary, he is in that position that such a step alone can save him! In the first place, he will get rid of that fox of a woman; and, secondly, he may find some girl, or better still some widow—kind, good, wise and gentle, and poor, who will look after him as his own daughter would, and who will be sensible of the honour he does her in making her his wife! And what could be better for the old fellow than to have such a person about him, rather than the—woman he has now? Of course she must be nice-looking, for uncle appreciates good looks; didn't you observe how he stared at Miss Zina?”

“But how will you find him such a bride?”asked Nastasia Petrovna, who had listened intently to Paul's suggestion.

“What a question! Why, you yourself, if you pleased! and why not, pray? In the first place, you are good-looking, you are a widow, you are generous, you are poor (at least I don't think you are very rich). Then you are a very reasonable woman: you'll learn to love him, and take good care of him; you'll send that other woman to the deuce, and take your husband abroad, where you will feed him on pudding and lollipops till the moment of his quitting this wicked world, which will be in about a year, or in a couple of months perhaps. After that, you emerge a princess, a rich widow, and, as a prize for your goodness to the old gentleman, you'll marry a fine young marquis, or a governor-general, or somebody of the sort! There—that's a pretty enough prospect, isn't it?”

“Tfu! Goodness me! I should fall in love with him at once, out of pure gratitude, if he only proposed to me!”said the widow, with her black eyes all ablaze;“but, of course, it's all nonsense!”

“Nonsense, is it? Shall I make it sound sense, then, for you? Ask me prettily, and if I don't make you his betrothed by this evening, you may cut my little finger off! Why, there's nothing in the world easier than to talk uncle into anything you please! He'll only say,‘Ye—yes, ye—yes,’just as you heard him now! We'll marry him so that he doesn't know anything about it, if you like? We'll deceive him and marry him, if you please! Any way you like, it can be done! Why, it's for his own good; it's out of pity for himself! Don't you think, seriously, Nastasia Petrovna, that you had better put on some smart clothes in any case?”

Paul's enthusiasm amounted by now to something like madness, while the widow's mouth watered at his idea, in spite of her better judgment.

“I know, I know I look horridly untidy!”she said.“I go about anyhow, nowadays! There's nothing to dress for. Do I really look like a regular cook?”

All this time Maria Alexandrovna sat still, with a strange expression on her face. I shall not be far wrong if I say that she listened to Paul's wild suggestion with a look of terror, almost: she was confused and startled; at last she recollected herself, and spoke.

“All this is very nice, of course; but at the same time it is utter nonsense, and perfectly out of the question!”she observed cuttingly.

“Why, why, my good Maria Alexandrovna? Why is it such nonsense, or why out of the question?”

“For many reasons; and, principally because you are, as the prince is also, a guest in my house; and I cannot permit anyone to forget their respect towards my establishment! I shall consider your words as a joke, Paul Alexandrovitch, and nothing more! Here comes the prince—thank goodness!”

“Here I am!”cried the old man as he entered.“It's a wo—wonderful thing how many good ideas of all s—sorts I'm having to-day! and another day I may spend the whole of it without a single one! As—tonishing? not one all day!”

“Probably the result of your accident, to-day, uncle! Your nerves got shaken up, you see, and ——”

“Ye—yes, I think so, I think so too; and I look on the accident as pro—fitable, on the whole; and therefore I'm going to excuse the coachman. I don't think it was an at—tempt on my life, after all, do you? Besides, he was punished a little while a—go, when his beard was sh—shaved off!”

“Beard shaved off? Why, uncle, his beard is as big as a German state!”

“Ye—yes, a German state, you are very happy in your ex—pressions, my boy! but it's a fa—false one. Fancy what happened: I sent for a price-current for false hair and beards, and found advertisements for splendid ser—vants' and coachmen's beards, very cheap—extraordinarily so! I sent for one, and it certainly was a be—auty. But when we wanted to clap it on the coachman, we found he had one of his own t—twice as big; so I thought, shall I cut off his, or let him wear it, and send this one b—back? and I decided to shave his off, and let him wear the f—false one!”

“On the theory that art is higher than nature, I suppose uncle?”

“Yes, yes! Just so—and I assure you, when we cut off his beard he suffered as much as though we were depriving him of all he held most dear! But we must be go—going, my boy!”

“But I hope, dear prince, that you will only call upon the governor!”cried Maria Alexandrovna, in great agitation.“You areminenow, Prince; you belong tomyfamily for the whole of this day! Of course I will say nothing about the society of this place. Perhaps you are thinking of paying Anna Nicolaevna a visit? I will not say a word to dissuade you; but at the same time I am quite convinced that—time will show! Remember one thing, dear Prince, that I am your sister, your nurse, your guardian for to-day at least, and oh!—I tremble for you. You don't know these people, Prince, as I do! You don't know them fully: but time will teach you all you do not know.”

“Trust me, Maria Alexandrovna!”said Paul,“it shall all be exactly as I have promised you!”

“Oh—but you're such a weathercock! I can never trustyou! I shall wait for you at dinner time, Prince; we dine early. How sorry I am that my husband happens to be in the country on such an occasion! How happy he would have been to see you! He esteems you so highly, Prince; he is so sincerely attached to you!”

“Your husband? dear me! So you have a h—husband, too!”observed the old man.

“Oh, prince, prince! how forgetful you are! Why, you havequite, quite forgotten the past! My husband, Afanassy Matveyevitch, surely you must remember him? He is in the country: but you have seen him thousands of times before! Don't you remember—Afanassy Matveyevitch!”

“Afanassy Matveyevitch. Dear me!—and in the co—country! how very charming! So you have a husband! dear me, I remember a vaudeville very like that, something about—

“The husband's here,And his wife at Tvere.”

“The husband's here,

And his wife at Tvere.”

Charming, charming—such a good rhyme too; and it's a most ri—diculous story! Charming, charming; the wife's away, you know, at Jaroslaf or Tv—— or somewhere, and the husband is——is——Dear me! I'm afraid I've forgotten what we were talking about! Yes, yes—we must be going, my boy!Au revoir, madame; adieu, ma charmante demoiselle”he added, turning to Zina, and putting the ends of her fingers to his lips.

“Come back to dinner,—to dinner, prince! don't forget to come back here quick!”cried Maria Alexandrovna after them as they went out;“be back to dinner!”

CHAPTER V.“Nastasia Petrovna, I think you had better go and see what is doing in the kitchen!”observed Maria Alexandrovna, as she returned from seeing the prince off.“I'm sure that rascal Nikitka will spoil the dinner! Probably he's drunk already!”The widow obeyed.As the latter left the room, she glanced suspiciously at Maria Alexandrovna, and observed that the latter was in a high state of agitation. Therefore, instead of going to look after Nikitka, she went through the“Salon,”along the passage to her own room, and through that to a dark box-room, where the old clothes of the establishment and such things were stored. There she approached the locked door on tiptoe; and stifling her breath, she bent to the keyhole, through which she peeped, and settled herself to listen intently. This door, which was always kept shut, was one of the three doors communicating with the room where Maria Alexandrovna and Zina were now left alone. Maria Alexandrovna always considered Nastasia an untrustworthy sort of woman, although extremely silly into the bargain. Of course she had suspected the widow—more than once—of eavesdropping; but it so happened that at the moment Madame Moskaleva was too agitated and excited to think of the usual precautions.She was sitting in her arm-chair and gazing at Zina. Zina felt that her mother was looking at her, and was conscious of an unpleasant sensation at her heart.“Zina!”Zina slowly turned her head towards the speaker, and lifted her splendid dark eyes to hers.“Zina, I wish to speak to you on a most important matter!”Zina adopted an attentive air, and sat still with folded hands, waiting for light. In her face there was an expression of annoyance as well as irony, which she did her best to hide.“I wish to ask you first, Zina, what you thought ofthatMosgliakoff, to-day?”“You have known my opinion of him for a long time!”replied Zina, surlily.“Yes, yes, of course! but I think he is getting just a littletootroublesome, with his continual bothering you—”“Oh, but he says he is in love with me, in which case his importunity is pardonable!”“Strange! You used not to be so ready to find his offences pardonable; you used to fly out at him if ever I mentioned his name!”“Strange, too, that you always defended him, and were so very anxious that I should marry him!—and now you are the first to attack him!”“Yes; I don't deny, Zina, that I did wish, then, to see you married to Mosgliakoff! It was painful to me to witness your continual grief, your sufferings, which I can well realize—whatever you may think to the contrary!—and which deprived me of my rest at night! I determined at last that there was but one great change of life that would ever save you from the sorrows of the past, and that change was matrimony! We are not rich; we cannot afford to go abroad. All the asses in the place prick their long ears, and wonder that you should be unmarried at twenty-three years old; and they must needs invent all sorts of stories to account for the fact! As if I would marry you to one of our wretched little town councillors, or to Ivan Ivanovitch, the family lawyer! There are no husbands foryouin this place, Zina! Of course Paul Mosgliakoff is a silly sort of a fellow, but he is better than these people here: he is fairly born, at least, and he has 150 serfs and landed property, all of which is better than living by bribes and corruption, and goodness knows what jobbery besides, as these do! and that is why I allowed my eyes to rest on him. But I give you my solemn word, I never had any real sympathy for him! and if Providence has sent you someone better now, oh, my dear girl, how fortunate that you have not given your word to Mosgliakoff! You didn't tell him anything for certain to-day, did you, Zina?”“What is the use of beating about the bush, when the whole thing lies in a couple of words?”said Zina, with some show of annoyance.“Beating about the bush, Zina? Is that the way to speak to your mother? But what am I? You have long ceased to trust to your poor mother! You have long looked upon me as your enemy, and not as your mother at all!”“Oh, come mother! you and I are beyond quarrelling about an expression! Surely we understand one another by now? It is about time we did, anyhow!”“But you offend me, my child! you will not believe that I am ready to devoteall, allI can give, in order to establish your destiny on a safe and happy footing!”Zina looked angrily and sarcastically at her mother.“Would not you like to marry me to this old prince, now, in order to establish my destiny on a safe and happy footing?”“I have not said a word about it; but, as you mention the fact, I will say that if youwereto marry the prince it would be a very happy thing for you, and—”“Oh! Well, I consider the idea utter nonsense!”cried the girl passionately.“Nonsense, humbug! and what's more, I think you have a good deal too much poetical inspiration, mamma; you are a woman poet in the fullest sense of the term, and they call you by that name here! You are always full of projects; and the impracticability and absurdity of your ideas does not in the least discourage you. I felt, when the prince was sitting here, that you had that notion in your head. When Mosgliakoff was talking nonsense there about marrying the old man to somebody I read all your thoughts in your face. I am ready to bet any money that you are thinking of it now, and that you have come to me now about this very question! However, as your perpetual projects on my behalf are beginning to weary me to death, I must beg you not to say one word about it, notone word, mamma; do you hear me?not one word; and I beg you will remember what I say!”She was panting with rage.“You are a child, Zina; a poor sorrow-worn, sick child!”said Maria Alexandrovna in tearful accents.“You speak to your poor mother disrespectfully; you wound me deeply, my dear; there is not another mother in the world who would have borne what I have to bear from you every day! But you are suffering, you are sick, you are sorrowful, and I am your mother, and, first of all, I am a Christian woman! I must bear it all, and forgive it. But one word, Zina: if I had really thought of the union you suggest, why would you consider it so impracticable and absurd? In my opinion, Mosgliakoff has never said a wiser thing than he did to-day, when he declared that marriage was what alone could save the prince,—not, of course, marriage with that slovenly slut, Nastasia; there he certainlydidmake a fool of himself!”“Now look here, mamma; do you ask me this out of pure curiosity, or with design? Tell me the truth.”“All I ask is, why does it appear to you to be so absurd?”“Good heavens, mother, you'll drive me wild! What a fate!”cried Zina, stamping her foot with impatience.“I'll tell you why, if you can't see for yourself. Not to mention all the other evident absurdities of the plan, to take advantage of the weakened wits of a poor old man, and deceive him and marry him—an old cripple, in order to get hold of his money,—and then every day and every hour to wish for his death, is, in my opinion, not only nonsense, but so mean,somean, mamma, that I—I can't congratulate you on your brilliant idea; that's all I can say!”There was silence for one minute.“Zina, do you remember all that happened two years ago?”asked Maria Alexandrovna of a sudden.Zina trembled.“Mamma!”she said, severely,“you promised me solemnly never to mention that again.”“And I ask you now, as solemnly, my dear child, to allow me to break that promise, just once! I have never broken it before. Zina! the time has come for a full and clear understanding between us! These two years of silence have been terrible. We cannot go on like this. I am ready to pray you, on my knees, to let me speak. Listen, Zina, your own mother who bore you beseeches you, on her knees! And I promise you faithfully, Zina, and solemnly, on the word of an unhappy but adoring mother, that never, under any circumstances, not even to save my life, will I ever mention the subject again. This shall be the last time, but it is absolutely necessary!”Maria Alexandrovna counted upon the effect of her words, and with reason:“Speak, then!”said Zina, growing whiter every moment.“Thank you, Zina!——Two years ago there came to the house, to teach your little brother Mitya, since dead, a tutor——”“Why do you begin so solemnly, mamma? Why all this eloquence, all these quite unnecessary details, which are painful to me, and only too well known to both of us?”cried Zina with a sort of irritated disgust.“Because, my dear child, I, your mother, felt in some degree bound to justify myself before you; and also because I wish to present this whole question to you from an entirely new point of view, and not from that mistaken position which you are accustomed to take up with regard to it; and because, lastly, I think you will thus better understand the conclusion at which I shall arrive upon the whole question. Do not think, dear child, that I wish to trifle with your heart! No, Zina, you will find in me a real mother; and perhaps, with tears streaming from your eyes, you will ask and beseech at my feet—at the feet of the 'mean woman,' as you have just called me,—yes, and pray for that reconciliation which you have rejected so long! That's why I wish to recall all, Zina,allthat has happened, from the very beginning; and without this I shall not speak at all!”“Speak, then!”repeated Zina, cursing the necessity for her mother's eloquence from the very bottom of her heart.“I continue then, Zina!——This tutor, a master of the parish school, almost a boy, makes upon you what is, to me, a totally inexplicable impression. I built too much upon my confidence in your good sense, or your noble pride, and principally upon the fact of his insignificance—(I must speak out!)—to allow myself to harbour the slightest suspicion of you! And then you suddenly come to me, one fine day, and state that you intend to marry the man! Zina, it was putting a knife to my heart! I gave a shriek and lost consciousness.“But of course you remember all this. Of course I thought it my duty to use all my power over you, which power you called tyranny. Think for yourself—a boy, the son of a deacon, receiving a salary of twelve roubles a month—a writer of weak verses which are printed, out of pity, in the 'library of short readings.' A man, a boy, who could talk of nothing but that accursed Shakespeare,—this boy to be the husband of Zenaida Moskaloff! Forgive me, Zina, but the very thought of it all makes mewild!“I rejected him, of course. But no power would stopyou; your father only blinked his eyes, as usual, and could not even understand what I was telling him about. You continue your relations with this boy, even giving him rendezvous, and, worst of all, you allow yourself to correspond with him!“Rumours now begin to flit about town: I am assailed with hints; they blow their trumpets of joy and triumph; and suddenly all my fears and anticipations are verified! You and he quarrel over something or other; he shows himself to be a boy (I can't call him a man!), who is utterly unworthy of you, and threatens to show your letters all over the town! On hearing this threat, you, beside yourself with irritation, boxed his ears. Yes, Zina, I am aware of even that fact! I know all, all! But to continue—the wretched boy shows one of your letters the very same day to that ne'er-do-well Zanshin, and within an hour Natalie Dimitrievna holds it in her hands—my deadly enemy! The same evening the miserable fellow attempts to put an end to himself, in remorse. In a word, there is a fearful scandal stirred up. That slut, Nastasia, comes panting to me with the dreadful news; she tells me that Natalie Dimitrievna has had your letter for a whole hour. In a couple of hours the whole town will learn of your foolishness! I bore it all. I did not fall down in a swoon; but oh, the blows, the blows you dealt to my heart, Zina! That shameless scum of the earth, Nastasia, says she will get the letter back for two hundred roubles! I myself run over, in thin shoes, too, through the snow to the Jew Baumstein, and pledge my diamond clasps—a keepsake of my dear mother's! In a couple of hours the letter is in my hands! Nastasia had stolen it; she had broken open a desk, and your honour was safe!“But what a dreadful day you had sentenced me to live! I noticed some grey hairs among my raven locks for the first time, next morning! Zina, you have judged this boy's action yourself now! You can admit now, and perhaps smile a bitter smile over the admission, that it was beyond the limits of good sense to wish to entrust your fate to this youth.“But since that fatal time you are wretched, my child, you are miserable! You cannot forget him, or rather not him—for he was never worthy of you,—but you cannot forget the phantom of your past joy! This wretched young fellow is now on the point of death—consumption, they say; and you, angel of goodness that you are! you do not wish to marry while he is alive, because you fear to harass him in his last days; because to this day he is miserable with jealousy, though I am convinced that he never loved you in the best and highest sense of the word! I know well that, hearing of Mosgliakoff's proposal to you, he has been in a flutter of jealousy, and has spied upon you and your actions ever since; and you—you have been merciful to him, my child. And oh! God knows how I have watered my pillow with tears for you!”“Oh, mother, do drop all this sort of thing!”cried Zina, with inexpressible agony in her tone.“Surely we needn't hear all about your pillow!”she added, sharply.“Can't we get on without all this declamation and pirouetting?”“You do not believe me, Zina! Oh! do not look so unfriendly at me, my child! My eyes have not been dry these two years. I have hidden my tears from you; but I am changed, Zina mine, much changed and in many ways! I have long known of your feelings, Zina, but I admit I have only lately realized the depth of your mental anguish. Can you blame me, my child, if I looked upon this attachment of yours as romanticism—called into being by that accursed Shakespeare, who shoves his nose in everywhere where he isn't wanted?“What mother would blame me for my fears of that kind, for my measures, for the severity of my judgment? But now, understanding as I do, and realizing your two years' sufferings, I can estimate the depth of your real feelings. Believe me, I understand you far better than you understand yourself! I am convinced that you love not him—not this unnatural boy,—but your lost happiness, your broken hopes, your cracked idol!“I have loved too—perhaps more deeply than yourself; I, too, have suffered, I, too, have lost my exalted ideals and seen them levelled with the earth; and therefore who can blame me now—and, above all, canyoublame me now,—if I consider a marriage with the prince to be the one saving, the oneessentialmove left to you in your present position”?Zina listened to this long declamation with surprise. She knew well that her mother never adopted this tone without good reason. However this last and unexpected conclusion fairly amazed her.“You don't mean to say you seriously entertain the idea of marrying me to this prince?”she cried bewildered, and gazing at her mother almost with alarm;“that this is no mere idea, no project, no flighty inspiration, but your deliberate intention? Ihaveguessed right, then? And pray,howis this marriage going to save me? andwhyis it essential to me in my present position? And—and what has all this to do with what you have been talking about?——I cannot understand you, mother,—not a bit!”“AndIcan't understand, angel mine, how youcannotsee the connection of it all!”cried Maria Alexandrovna, in her turn.“In the first place, you would pass into new society, into a new world. You would leave for ever this loathsome little town, so full of sad memories for you; where you meet neither friends nor kindness; where they have bullied and maligned you; where all these—thesemagpieshate you because you are good looking! You could go abroad this very spring, to Italy, Switzerland, Spain!—to Spain, Zina, where the Alhambra is, and where the Guadalquiver flows—no wretched little stream like this of ours!”“But, one moment, mother; you talk as though I were married already, or at least as if the prince had made me an offer!”“Oh, no—oh dear, no! don't bother yourself about that, my angel! I know what I'm talking about! Let me proceed. I've said my‘firstly;’now, then, for my‘secondly!’I understand, dear child, with what loathing you would give your hand to that Mosgliakoff!——”“I know, without your telling me so, that I shall never behiswife!”cried Zina, angrily, and with flashing eyes.“If only you knew, my angel, how I understand and enter into your loathing for him! It is dreadful to vow before the altar that you will love a man whom youcannotlove—how dreadful to belong to one whom you cannot esteem! And he insists on yourlove—he only marries you for love. I can see it by the way he looks at you! Why deceive ourselves? I have suffered from the same thing for twenty-five years; your father ruined me—he, so to speak, sucked up my youth! You have seen my tears many a time!——”“Father's away in the country, don't touchhim, please!”said Zina.“I know you always take his part! Oh, Zina, my very heart trembled within me when I thought to arrange your marriage with Mosgliakoff for financial reasons! I trembled for the consequences. But with the prince it is different, you need not deceive him; you cannot be expected to give him yourlove, not yourlove—oh, no! and he is not in a state to ask it of you!”“Good heavens, what nonsense! I do assure you you are in error from the very first step—from the first and most important step! Understand, that I do not care to make a martyr of myself for some unknown reason! Know, also, that I shall not marry anyone at all; I shall remain a maid. You have bitten my head off for the last two years because I would not marry. Well, you must accept the fact, and make the best of it; that's all I can say, and so it shall be!”“But Zina, darling—my Zina, don't be so cross before you have heard me out! What a hot-headed little person you are, to be sure! Let me show you the matter from my point of view, and you'll agree with me—you really will! The prince will live a year—two at most; and surely it is better to be a young widow than a decayed old maid! Not to mention the fact that you will be a princess—free, rich, independent! I dare say you look with contempt upon all these calculations—founded upon his death; but I am a mother, and what mother will blame me for my foresight?“And if you, my angel of kindness, are unwilling to marry, even now, out of tenderness for that wretched boy's feelings, oh, think, think how, by marrying this prince, you will rejoice his heart and soothe and comfort his soul! For if he has a single particle of commonsense, he must understand that jealousy of this old man weretooabsurd—tooridiculous! He will understand that you marry him—for money, for convenience; that stern necessity compels you to it!“And lastly, he will understand that—that,—well I simply wish to say, that, upon the prince's death, you will be at liberty to marry whomsoever you please.”“That's a truly simple arrangement! All I have to do is to marry this prince, rob him of his money, and then count upon his death in order to marry my lover! You are a clever arithmetician, mamma; you do your sums and get your totals nicely. You wish to seduce me by offering me this! Oh, I understand you, mamma—I understand you well! You cannot resist the expression of your noble sentiments and exalted ideas, even in the manufacture of a nasty business. Why can't you say simply and straightforwardly,‘Zina, this is a dirty affair, but it will pay us, so please agree with me?’at all events, that would be candid and frank on your part.”“But, my dear child, why,whylook at it from this point of view? Why look at it under the light of suspicion asdeceit, and low cunning, and covetousness? You consider my calculations as meanness, as deceit; but, by all that is good and true, where is the meanness? Show me the deceit. Look at yourself in the glass: you are so beautiful, that a kingdom would be a fair price for you! And suddenly you, you, the possessor of this divine beauty, sacrifice yourself, in order to soothe the last years of an old man's life! You would be like a beautiful star, shedding your light over the evening of his days. You would be like the fresh green ivy, twining in and about his old age; not the stinging nettle that this wretched woman at his place is, fastening herself upon him, and thirstily sucking his blood! Surely his money, his rank are not worthy of being put in the scales besideyou? Where is the meanness of it; where is the deceit of all this? You don't know what you are saying, Zina.”“I suppose theyareworthy of being weighed against me, if I am to marry a cripple for them! No, mother, however you look at it, it is deceit, and you can't get out ofthat!”“On the contrary, my dear child, I can look at it from a high, almost from an exalted—nay, Christian—point of view. You, yourself, told me once, in a fit of temporary insanity of some sort, that you wished to be a sister of charity. You had suffered; you said your heart could love no more. If, then, you cannot love, turn your thoughts to the higher aspect of the case. This poor old man has also suffered—he is unhappy. I have known him, and felt the deepest sympathy towards him—akin to love,—for many a year. Be his friend, his daughter, be his plaything, even, if you like; but warm his old heart, and you are doing a good work—a virtuous, kind, noble work of love.“He may be funny to look at; don't think of that. He's but half a man—pity him! You are a Christian girl—do whatever is right by him; and this will be medicine for your own heart-wounds; employment, action, all this will heal you too, and where is the deceit here? But you do not believe me. Perhaps you think that I am deceiving myself when I thus talk of duty and of action. You think that I, a woman of the world, have no right to good feeling and the promptings of duty and virtue. Very well, do not trust me, if you like: insult me, do what you please to your poor mother; but you will have to admit that her words carry the stamp of good sense,—they are saving words! Imagine that someone else is talking to you, not I. Shut your eyes, and fancy that some invisible being is speaking. What is worrying you is the idea that all this is for money—a sort of sale or purchase. Very well, thenrefusethe money, if it is so loathsome to your eyes. Leave just as much as is absolutely necessary for yourself, and give the rest to the poor. Helphim, if you like, the poor fellow who lies there a-dying!”“He would never accept my help!”muttered Zina, as though to herself.“He would not, but his mother would!”said Maria Alexandrovna.“She would take it, and keep her secret. You sold your ear-rings, a present from your aunt, half a year or so ago, and helped her;Iknow all about it! I know, too, that the woman washes linen in order to support her unfortunate son!”“He will soon be where he requires no more help!”“I know, I understand your hints.”Maria Alexandrovna sighed a real sigh.“They say he is in a consumption, and must die.“Butwhosays so?“I asked the doctor the other day, because, having a tender heart, Zina, I felt interested in the poor fellow. The doctor said that he was convinced the malady wasnotconsumption; that it was dangerous, no doubt, but stillnotconsumption, only some severe affection of the lungs. Ask him yourself! He certainly told me that under different conditions—change of climate and of his style of living,—the sick man might well recover. He said—and I have read it too, somewhere, that off Spain there is a wonderful island, called Malaga—I think it was Malaga; anyhow, the name was like some wine, where, not only ordinary sufferers from chest maladies, but even consumptive patients, recover entirely, solely by virtue of the climate, and that sick people go there on purpose to be cured.“Oh, but Spain—the Alhambra alone—and the lemons, and the riding on mules. All this is enough in itself to impress a poetical nature. You think he would not accept your help, your money—for such a journey? Very well—deceit is permissible where it may save a man's life.“Give him hope, too! Promise him your love; promise to marry him when you are a widow! Anything in the world can be said with care and tact! Your own mother would not counsel you to an ignoble deed, Zina. You will do as I say, to save this boy's life; and with this object, everything is permissible! You will revive his hope; he will himself begin to think of his health, and listen to what the doctor says to him. He will do his best to resuscitate his dead happiness; and if he gets well again, even if you never marry him, you will have saved him—raised him from the dead!“I can look at him with some sympathy. I admit I can, now! Perhaps sorrow has changed him for the better; and I say frankly, if he should be worthy of you when you become a widow, marry him, by all means! You will be rich then, and independent. You can not only cure him, but, having done so, you can give him position in the world—a career! Your marriage to him will then be possible and pardonable, not, as now, an absolute impossibility!“For what would become of both of you were you to be capable of such madnessnow? Universal contempt, beggary; smacking little boys, which is part of his duty; the reading of Shakespeare; perpetual, hopeless life in Mordasoff; and lastly his certain death, which will undoubtedly take place before long unless he is taken away from here!“While, if you resuscitate him—if you raise him from the dead, as it were, you raise him to a good, useful, and virtuous life! He may then enter public life—make himself rank, and a name! At the least, even if he must die, he will die happy, at peace with himself, in your arms—for he will be by then assured of your love and forgiveness of the past, and lying beneath the scent of myrtles and lemons, beneath the tropical sky of the South. Oh, Zina, all this is within your grasp, and all—all isgain. Yes, and all to be had by merely marrying this prince.”Maria Alexandrovna broke off, and for several minutes there was silence; not a word was said on either side: Zina was in a state of indescribable agitation. I say indescribable because I will not attempt to describe Zina's feelings: I cannot guess at them; but Ithinkthat Maria Alexandrovna had found the road to her heart.Not knowing how her words had sped with her daughter, Maria Alexandrovna now began to work her busy brain to imagine and prepare herself for every possible humour that Zina might prove to be in; but at last she concluded that she had happened upon the right track after all. Her rude hand had touched the sorest place in Zina's heart, but her crude and absurd sentimental twaddle had not blinded her daughter.“However, that doesn't matter”—thought the mother.“All I care to do is to make herthink; I wish my ideas to stick!”So she reflected, and she gained her end; the effect was made—the arrow reached the mark. Zina had listened hungrily as her mother spoke; her cheeks were burning, her breast heaved.“Listen, mother,”she said at last, with decision; though the sudden pallor of her face showed clearly what the decision had cost her.“Listen mother——”But at this moment a sudden noise in the entrance hall, and a shrill female voice, asking for Maria Alexandrovna, interrupted Zina, while her mother jumped up from her chair.“Oh! the devil fly away with this magpie of a woman!”cried the latter furiously.“Why, I nearly drove her out by force only a fortnight ago!”she added, almost in despair.“I can't, I can't receive her now. Zina, this question is too important to be put off: she must have news for me or she never would have dared to come. I won't receive the old —— Oh!howglad I am to see you, dear Sophia Petrovna. What lucky chance broughtyouto see me? What acharmingsurprise!”said Maria Alexandrovna, advancing to receive her guest.Zina escaped out of the room.

“Nastasia Petrovna, I think you had better go and see what is doing in the kitchen!”observed Maria Alexandrovna, as she returned from seeing the prince off.“I'm sure that rascal Nikitka will spoil the dinner! Probably he's drunk already!”The widow obeyed.

As the latter left the room, she glanced suspiciously at Maria Alexandrovna, and observed that the latter was in a high state of agitation. Therefore, instead of going to look after Nikitka, she went through the“Salon,”along the passage to her own room, and through that to a dark box-room, where the old clothes of the establishment and such things were stored. There she approached the locked door on tiptoe; and stifling her breath, she bent to the keyhole, through which she peeped, and settled herself to listen intently. This door, which was always kept shut, was one of the three doors communicating with the room where Maria Alexandrovna and Zina were now left alone. Maria Alexandrovna always considered Nastasia an untrustworthy sort of woman, although extremely silly into the bargain. Of course she had suspected the widow—more than once—of eavesdropping; but it so happened that at the moment Madame Moskaleva was too agitated and excited to think of the usual precautions.

She was sitting in her arm-chair and gazing at Zina. Zina felt that her mother was looking at her, and was conscious of an unpleasant sensation at her heart.

“Zina!”

Zina slowly turned her head towards the speaker, and lifted her splendid dark eyes to hers.

“Zina, I wish to speak to you on a most important matter!”

Zina adopted an attentive air, and sat still with folded hands, waiting for light. In her face there was an expression of annoyance as well as irony, which she did her best to hide.

“I wish to ask you first, Zina, what you thought ofthatMosgliakoff, to-day?”

“You have known my opinion of him for a long time!”replied Zina, surlily.

“Yes, yes, of course! but I think he is getting just a littletootroublesome, with his continual bothering you—”

“Oh, but he says he is in love with me, in which case his importunity is pardonable!”

“Strange! You used not to be so ready to find his offences pardonable; you used to fly out at him if ever I mentioned his name!”

“Strange, too, that you always defended him, and were so very anxious that I should marry him!—and now you are the first to attack him!”

“Yes; I don't deny, Zina, that I did wish, then, to see you married to Mosgliakoff! It was painful to me to witness your continual grief, your sufferings, which I can well realize—whatever you may think to the contrary!—and which deprived me of my rest at night! I determined at last that there was but one great change of life that would ever save you from the sorrows of the past, and that change was matrimony! We are not rich; we cannot afford to go abroad. All the asses in the place prick their long ears, and wonder that you should be unmarried at twenty-three years old; and they must needs invent all sorts of stories to account for the fact! As if I would marry you to one of our wretched little town councillors, or to Ivan Ivanovitch, the family lawyer! There are no husbands foryouin this place, Zina! Of course Paul Mosgliakoff is a silly sort of a fellow, but he is better than these people here: he is fairly born, at least, and he has 150 serfs and landed property, all of which is better than living by bribes and corruption, and goodness knows what jobbery besides, as these do! and that is why I allowed my eyes to rest on him. But I give you my solemn word, I never had any real sympathy for him! and if Providence has sent you someone better now, oh, my dear girl, how fortunate that you have not given your word to Mosgliakoff! You didn't tell him anything for certain to-day, did you, Zina?”

“What is the use of beating about the bush, when the whole thing lies in a couple of words?”said Zina, with some show of annoyance.

“Beating about the bush, Zina? Is that the way to speak to your mother? But what am I? You have long ceased to trust to your poor mother! You have long looked upon me as your enemy, and not as your mother at all!”

“Oh, come mother! you and I are beyond quarrelling about an expression! Surely we understand one another by now? It is about time we did, anyhow!”

“But you offend me, my child! you will not believe that I am ready to devoteall, allI can give, in order to establish your destiny on a safe and happy footing!”

Zina looked angrily and sarcastically at her mother.

“Would not you like to marry me to this old prince, now, in order to establish my destiny on a safe and happy footing?”

“I have not said a word about it; but, as you mention the fact, I will say that if youwereto marry the prince it would be a very happy thing for you, and—”

“Oh! Well, I consider the idea utter nonsense!”cried the girl passionately.“Nonsense, humbug! and what's more, I think you have a good deal too much poetical inspiration, mamma; you are a woman poet in the fullest sense of the term, and they call you by that name here! You are always full of projects; and the impracticability and absurdity of your ideas does not in the least discourage you. I felt, when the prince was sitting here, that you had that notion in your head. When Mosgliakoff was talking nonsense there about marrying the old man to somebody I read all your thoughts in your face. I am ready to bet any money that you are thinking of it now, and that you have come to me now about this very question! However, as your perpetual projects on my behalf are beginning to weary me to death, I must beg you not to say one word about it, notone word, mamma; do you hear me?not one word; and I beg you will remember what I say!”She was panting with rage.

“You are a child, Zina; a poor sorrow-worn, sick child!”said Maria Alexandrovna in tearful accents.“You speak to your poor mother disrespectfully; you wound me deeply, my dear; there is not another mother in the world who would have borne what I have to bear from you every day! But you are suffering, you are sick, you are sorrowful, and I am your mother, and, first of all, I am a Christian woman! I must bear it all, and forgive it. But one word, Zina: if I had really thought of the union you suggest, why would you consider it so impracticable and absurd? In my opinion, Mosgliakoff has never said a wiser thing than he did to-day, when he declared that marriage was what alone could save the prince,—not, of course, marriage with that slovenly slut, Nastasia; there he certainlydidmake a fool of himself!”

“Now look here, mamma; do you ask me this out of pure curiosity, or with design? Tell me the truth.”

“All I ask is, why does it appear to you to be so absurd?”

“Good heavens, mother, you'll drive me wild! What a fate!”cried Zina, stamping her foot with impatience.“I'll tell you why, if you can't see for yourself. Not to mention all the other evident absurdities of the plan, to take advantage of the weakened wits of a poor old man, and deceive him and marry him—an old cripple, in order to get hold of his money,—and then every day and every hour to wish for his death, is, in my opinion, not only nonsense, but so mean,somean, mamma, that I—I can't congratulate you on your brilliant idea; that's all I can say!”

There was silence for one minute.

“Zina, do you remember all that happened two years ago?”asked Maria Alexandrovna of a sudden.

Zina trembled.

“Mamma!”she said, severely,“you promised me solemnly never to mention that again.”

“And I ask you now, as solemnly, my dear child, to allow me to break that promise, just once! I have never broken it before. Zina! the time has come for a full and clear understanding between us! These two years of silence have been terrible. We cannot go on like this. I am ready to pray you, on my knees, to let me speak. Listen, Zina, your own mother who bore you beseeches you, on her knees! And I promise you faithfully, Zina, and solemnly, on the word of an unhappy but adoring mother, that never, under any circumstances, not even to save my life, will I ever mention the subject again. This shall be the last time, but it is absolutely necessary!”

Maria Alexandrovna counted upon the effect of her words, and with reason:

“Speak, then!”said Zina, growing whiter every moment.

“Thank you, Zina!——Two years ago there came to the house, to teach your little brother Mitya, since dead, a tutor——”

“Why do you begin so solemnly, mamma? Why all this eloquence, all these quite unnecessary details, which are painful to me, and only too well known to both of us?”cried Zina with a sort of irritated disgust.

“Because, my dear child, I, your mother, felt in some degree bound to justify myself before you; and also because I wish to present this whole question to you from an entirely new point of view, and not from that mistaken position which you are accustomed to take up with regard to it; and because, lastly, I think you will thus better understand the conclusion at which I shall arrive upon the whole question. Do not think, dear child, that I wish to trifle with your heart! No, Zina, you will find in me a real mother; and perhaps, with tears streaming from your eyes, you will ask and beseech at my feet—at the feet of the 'mean woman,' as you have just called me,—yes, and pray for that reconciliation which you have rejected so long! That's why I wish to recall all, Zina,allthat has happened, from the very beginning; and without this I shall not speak at all!”

“Speak, then!”repeated Zina, cursing the necessity for her mother's eloquence from the very bottom of her heart.

“I continue then, Zina!——This tutor, a master of the parish school, almost a boy, makes upon you what is, to me, a totally inexplicable impression. I built too much upon my confidence in your good sense, or your noble pride, and principally upon the fact of his insignificance—(I must speak out!)—to allow myself to harbour the slightest suspicion of you! And then you suddenly come to me, one fine day, and state that you intend to marry the man! Zina, it was putting a knife to my heart! I gave a shriek and lost consciousness.

“But of course you remember all this. Of course I thought it my duty to use all my power over you, which power you called tyranny. Think for yourself—a boy, the son of a deacon, receiving a salary of twelve roubles a month—a writer of weak verses which are printed, out of pity, in the 'library of short readings.' A man, a boy, who could talk of nothing but that accursed Shakespeare,—this boy to be the husband of Zenaida Moskaloff! Forgive me, Zina, but the very thought of it all makes mewild!

“I rejected him, of course. But no power would stopyou; your father only blinked his eyes, as usual, and could not even understand what I was telling him about. You continue your relations with this boy, even giving him rendezvous, and, worst of all, you allow yourself to correspond with him!

“Rumours now begin to flit about town: I am assailed with hints; they blow their trumpets of joy and triumph; and suddenly all my fears and anticipations are verified! You and he quarrel over something or other; he shows himself to be a boy (I can't call him a man!), who is utterly unworthy of you, and threatens to show your letters all over the town! On hearing this threat, you, beside yourself with irritation, boxed his ears. Yes, Zina, I am aware of even that fact! I know all, all! But to continue—the wretched boy shows one of your letters the very same day to that ne'er-do-well Zanshin, and within an hour Natalie Dimitrievna holds it in her hands—my deadly enemy! The same evening the miserable fellow attempts to put an end to himself, in remorse. In a word, there is a fearful scandal stirred up. That slut, Nastasia, comes panting to me with the dreadful news; she tells me that Natalie Dimitrievna has had your letter for a whole hour. In a couple of hours the whole town will learn of your foolishness! I bore it all. I did not fall down in a swoon; but oh, the blows, the blows you dealt to my heart, Zina! That shameless scum of the earth, Nastasia, says she will get the letter back for two hundred roubles! I myself run over, in thin shoes, too, through the snow to the Jew Baumstein, and pledge my diamond clasps—a keepsake of my dear mother's! In a couple of hours the letter is in my hands! Nastasia had stolen it; she had broken open a desk, and your honour was safe!

“But what a dreadful day you had sentenced me to live! I noticed some grey hairs among my raven locks for the first time, next morning! Zina, you have judged this boy's action yourself now! You can admit now, and perhaps smile a bitter smile over the admission, that it was beyond the limits of good sense to wish to entrust your fate to this youth.

“But since that fatal time you are wretched, my child, you are miserable! You cannot forget him, or rather not him—for he was never worthy of you,—but you cannot forget the phantom of your past joy! This wretched young fellow is now on the point of death—consumption, they say; and you, angel of goodness that you are! you do not wish to marry while he is alive, because you fear to harass him in his last days; because to this day he is miserable with jealousy, though I am convinced that he never loved you in the best and highest sense of the word! I know well that, hearing of Mosgliakoff's proposal to you, he has been in a flutter of jealousy, and has spied upon you and your actions ever since; and you—you have been merciful to him, my child. And oh! God knows how I have watered my pillow with tears for you!”

“Oh, mother, do drop all this sort of thing!”cried Zina, with inexpressible agony in her tone.“Surely we needn't hear all about your pillow!”she added, sharply.“Can't we get on without all this declamation and pirouetting?”

“You do not believe me, Zina! Oh! do not look so unfriendly at me, my child! My eyes have not been dry these two years. I have hidden my tears from you; but I am changed, Zina mine, much changed and in many ways! I have long known of your feelings, Zina, but I admit I have only lately realized the depth of your mental anguish. Can you blame me, my child, if I looked upon this attachment of yours as romanticism—called into being by that accursed Shakespeare, who shoves his nose in everywhere where he isn't wanted?

“What mother would blame me for my fears of that kind, for my measures, for the severity of my judgment? But now, understanding as I do, and realizing your two years' sufferings, I can estimate the depth of your real feelings. Believe me, I understand you far better than you understand yourself! I am convinced that you love not him—not this unnatural boy,—but your lost happiness, your broken hopes, your cracked idol!

“I have loved too—perhaps more deeply than yourself; I, too, have suffered, I, too, have lost my exalted ideals and seen them levelled with the earth; and therefore who can blame me now—and, above all, canyoublame me now,—if I consider a marriage with the prince to be the one saving, the oneessentialmove left to you in your present position”?

Zina listened to this long declamation with surprise. She knew well that her mother never adopted this tone without good reason. However this last and unexpected conclusion fairly amazed her.

“You don't mean to say you seriously entertain the idea of marrying me to this prince?”she cried bewildered, and gazing at her mother almost with alarm;“that this is no mere idea, no project, no flighty inspiration, but your deliberate intention? Ihaveguessed right, then? And pray,howis this marriage going to save me? andwhyis it essential to me in my present position? And—and what has all this to do with what you have been talking about?——I cannot understand you, mother,—not a bit!”

“AndIcan't understand, angel mine, how youcannotsee the connection of it all!”cried Maria Alexandrovna, in her turn.“In the first place, you would pass into new society, into a new world. You would leave for ever this loathsome little town, so full of sad memories for you; where you meet neither friends nor kindness; where they have bullied and maligned you; where all these—thesemagpieshate you because you are good looking! You could go abroad this very spring, to Italy, Switzerland, Spain!—to Spain, Zina, where the Alhambra is, and where the Guadalquiver flows—no wretched little stream like this of ours!”

“But, one moment, mother; you talk as though I were married already, or at least as if the prince had made me an offer!”

“Oh, no—oh dear, no! don't bother yourself about that, my angel! I know what I'm talking about! Let me proceed. I've said my‘firstly;’now, then, for my‘secondly!’I understand, dear child, with what loathing you would give your hand to that Mosgliakoff!——”

“I know, without your telling me so, that I shall never behiswife!”cried Zina, angrily, and with flashing eyes.

“If only you knew, my angel, how I understand and enter into your loathing for him! It is dreadful to vow before the altar that you will love a man whom youcannotlove—how dreadful to belong to one whom you cannot esteem! And he insists on yourlove—he only marries you for love. I can see it by the way he looks at you! Why deceive ourselves? I have suffered from the same thing for twenty-five years; your father ruined me—he, so to speak, sucked up my youth! You have seen my tears many a time!——”

“Father's away in the country, don't touchhim, please!”said Zina.

“I know you always take his part! Oh, Zina, my very heart trembled within me when I thought to arrange your marriage with Mosgliakoff for financial reasons! I trembled for the consequences. But with the prince it is different, you need not deceive him; you cannot be expected to give him yourlove, not yourlove—oh, no! and he is not in a state to ask it of you!”

“Good heavens, what nonsense! I do assure you you are in error from the very first step—from the first and most important step! Understand, that I do not care to make a martyr of myself for some unknown reason! Know, also, that I shall not marry anyone at all; I shall remain a maid. You have bitten my head off for the last two years because I would not marry. Well, you must accept the fact, and make the best of it; that's all I can say, and so it shall be!”

“But Zina, darling—my Zina, don't be so cross before you have heard me out! What a hot-headed little person you are, to be sure! Let me show you the matter from my point of view, and you'll agree with me—you really will! The prince will live a year—two at most; and surely it is better to be a young widow than a decayed old maid! Not to mention the fact that you will be a princess—free, rich, independent! I dare say you look with contempt upon all these calculations—founded upon his death; but I am a mother, and what mother will blame me for my foresight?

“And if you, my angel of kindness, are unwilling to marry, even now, out of tenderness for that wretched boy's feelings, oh, think, think how, by marrying this prince, you will rejoice his heart and soothe and comfort his soul! For if he has a single particle of commonsense, he must understand that jealousy of this old man weretooabsurd—tooridiculous! He will understand that you marry him—for money, for convenience; that stern necessity compels you to it!

“And lastly, he will understand that—that,—well I simply wish to say, that, upon the prince's death, you will be at liberty to marry whomsoever you please.”

“That's a truly simple arrangement! All I have to do is to marry this prince, rob him of his money, and then count upon his death in order to marry my lover! You are a clever arithmetician, mamma; you do your sums and get your totals nicely. You wish to seduce me by offering me this! Oh, I understand you, mamma—I understand you well! You cannot resist the expression of your noble sentiments and exalted ideas, even in the manufacture of a nasty business. Why can't you say simply and straightforwardly,‘Zina, this is a dirty affair, but it will pay us, so please agree with me?’at all events, that would be candid and frank on your part.”

“But, my dear child, why,whylook at it from this point of view? Why look at it under the light of suspicion asdeceit, and low cunning, and covetousness? You consider my calculations as meanness, as deceit; but, by all that is good and true, where is the meanness? Show me the deceit. Look at yourself in the glass: you are so beautiful, that a kingdom would be a fair price for you! And suddenly you, you, the possessor of this divine beauty, sacrifice yourself, in order to soothe the last years of an old man's life! You would be like a beautiful star, shedding your light over the evening of his days. You would be like the fresh green ivy, twining in and about his old age; not the stinging nettle that this wretched woman at his place is, fastening herself upon him, and thirstily sucking his blood! Surely his money, his rank are not worthy of being put in the scales besideyou? Where is the meanness of it; where is the deceit of all this? You don't know what you are saying, Zina.”

“I suppose theyareworthy of being weighed against me, if I am to marry a cripple for them! No, mother, however you look at it, it is deceit, and you can't get out ofthat!”

“On the contrary, my dear child, I can look at it from a high, almost from an exalted—nay, Christian—point of view. You, yourself, told me once, in a fit of temporary insanity of some sort, that you wished to be a sister of charity. You had suffered; you said your heart could love no more. If, then, you cannot love, turn your thoughts to the higher aspect of the case. This poor old man has also suffered—he is unhappy. I have known him, and felt the deepest sympathy towards him—akin to love,—for many a year. Be his friend, his daughter, be his plaything, even, if you like; but warm his old heart, and you are doing a good work—a virtuous, kind, noble work of love.

“He may be funny to look at; don't think of that. He's but half a man—pity him! You are a Christian girl—do whatever is right by him; and this will be medicine for your own heart-wounds; employment, action, all this will heal you too, and where is the deceit here? But you do not believe me. Perhaps you think that I am deceiving myself when I thus talk of duty and of action. You think that I, a woman of the world, have no right to good feeling and the promptings of duty and virtue. Very well, do not trust me, if you like: insult me, do what you please to your poor mother; but you will have to admit that her words carry the stamp of good sense,—they are saving words! Imagine that someone else is talking to you, not I. Shut your eyes, and fancy that some invisible being is speaking. What is worrying you is the idea that all this is for money—a sort of sale or purchase. Very well, thenrefusethe money, if it is so loathsome to your eyes. Leave just as much as is absolutely necessary for yourself, and give the rest to the poor. Helphim, if you like, the poor fellow who lies there a-dying!”

“He would never accept my help!”muttered Zina, as though to herself.

“He would not, but his mother would!”said Maria Alexandrovna.“She would take it, and keep her secret. You sold your ear-rings, a present from your aunt, half a year or so ago, and helped her;Iknow all about it! I know, too, that the woman washes linen in order to support her unfortunate son!”

“He will soon be where he requires no more help!”

“I know, I understand your hints.”Maria Alexandrovna sighed a real sigh.“They say he is in a consumption, and must die.

“Butwhosays so?

“I asked the doctor the other day, because, having a tender heart, Zina, I felt interested in the poor fellow. The doctor said that he was convinced the malady wasnotconsumption; that it was dangerous, no doubt, but stillnotconsumption, only some severe affection of the lungs. Ask him yourself! He certainly told me that under different conditions—change of climate and of his style of living,—the sick man might well recover. He said—and I have read it too, somewhere, that off Spain there is a wonderful island, called Malaga—I think it was Malaga; anyhow, the name was like some wine, where, not only ordinary sufferers from chest maladies, but even consumptive patients, recover entirely, solely by virtue of the climate, and that sick people go there on purpose to be cured.

“Oh, but Spain—the Alhambra alone—and the lemons, and the riding on mules. All this is enough in itself to impress a poetical nature. You think he would not accept your help, your money—for such a journey? Very well—deceit is permissible where it may save a man's life.

“Give him hope, too! Promise him your love; promise to marry him when you are a widow! Anything in the world can be said with care and tact! Your own mother would not counsel you to an ignoble deed, Zina. You will do as I say, to save this boy's life; and with this object, everything is permissible! You will revive his hope; he will himself begin to think of his health, and listen to what the doctor says to him. He will do his best to resuscitate his dead happiness; and if he gets well again, even if you never marry him, you will have saved him—raised him from the dead!

“I can look at him with some sympathy. I admit I can, now! Perhaps sorrow has changed him for the better; and I say frankly, if he should be worthy of you when you become a widow, marry him, by all means! You will be rich then, and independent. You can not only cure him, but, having done so, you can give him position in the world—a career! Your marriage to him will then be possible and pardonable, not, as now, an absolute impossibility!

“For what would become of both of you were you to be capable of such madnessnow? Universal contempt, beggary; smacking little boys, which is part of his duty; the reading of Shakespeare; perpetual, hopeless life in Mordasoff; and lastly his certain death, which will undoubtedly take place before long unless he is taken away from here!

“While, if you resuscitate him—if you raise him from the dead, as it were, you raise him to a good, useful, and virtuous life! He may then enter public life—make himself rank, and a name! At the least, even if he must die, he will die happy, at peace with himself, in your arms—for he will be by then assured of your love and forgiveness of the past, and lying beneath the scent of myrtles and lemons, beneath the tropical sky of the South. Oh, Zina, all this is within your grasp, and all—all isgain. Yes, and all to be had by merely marrying this prince.”

Maria Alexandrovna broke off, and for several minutes there was silence; not a word was said on either side: Zina was in a state of indescribable agitation. I say indescribable because I will not attempt to describe Zina's feelings: I cannot guess at them; but Ithinkthat Maria Alexandrovna had found the road to her heart.

Not knowing how her words had sped with her daughter, Maria Alexandrovna now began to work her busy brain to imagine and prepare herself for every possible humour that Zina might prove to be in; but at last she concluded that she had happened upon the right track after all. Her rude hand had touched the sorest place in Zina's heart, but her crude and absurd sentimental twaddle had not blinded her daughter.“However, that doesn't matter”—thought the mother.“All I care to do is to make herthink; I wish my ideas to stick!”So she reflected, and she gained her end; the effect was made—the arrow reached the mark. Zina had listened hungrily as her mother spoke; her cheeks were burning, her breast heaved.

“Listen, mother,”she said at last, with decision; though the sudden pallor of her face showed clearly what the decision had cost her.“Listen mother——”But at this moment a sudden noise in the entrance hall, and a shrill female voice, asking for Maria Alexandrovna, interrupted Zina, while her mother jumped up from her chair.

“Oh! the devil fly away with this magpie of a woman!”cried the latter furiously.“Why, I nearly drove her out by force only a fortnight ago!”she added, almost in despair.“I can't, I can't receive her now. Zina, this question is too important to be put off: she must have news for me or she never would have dared to come. I won't receive the old —— Oh!howglad I am to see you, dear Sophia Petrovna. What lucky chance broughtyouto see me? What acharmingsurprise!”said Maria Alexandrovna, advancing to receive her guest.

Zina escaped out of the room.

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