"Can it be true?"
"You still don't believe it?"
"Will you really cast me off like an old worn-out shoe?"
"I'll see," laughed Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. "Come, let me go."
"Wouldn't you like me to stand on the steps... for fear I might by chance overhear something... for the rooms are small?"
"That's as well. Stand on the steps.
Take my umbrella."
"Your umbrella.... Am I worth it?" said the captain over-sweetly.
"Anyone is worthy of an umbrella."
"At one stroke you define the minimum of human rights...."
But he was by now muttering mechanically. He was too much crushed by what he had learned, and was completely thrown out of his reckoning.
And yet almost as soon as he had gone out on to the steps and had put up the umbrella, there his shallow and cunning brain caught again the ever-present, comforting idea that he was being cheated and deceived, and if so they were afraid of him, and there was no need for him to be afraid.
"If they're lying and deceiving me, what's at the bottom of it?" was the thought that gnawed at his mind.
The public announcement of the marriage seemed to him absurd.
"It's true that with such a wonder-worker anything may come to pass; he lives to do harm.
But what if he's afraid himself, since the insult of Sunday, and afraid as he's never been before?
And so he's in a hurry to declare that he'll announce it himself, from fear that I should announce it.
Eh, don't blunder, Lebyadkin!
And why does he come on the sly, at night, if he means to make it public himself?
And if he's afraid, it means that he's afraid now, at this moment, for these few days.... Eh, don't make a mistake, Lebyadkin!
"He scares me with Pyotr Stepanovitch.
Oy, I'm frightened, I'm frightened! Yes, this is what's so frightening!
And what induced me to blab to Liputin.
Goodness knows what these devils are up to. I never can make head or tail of it.
Now they are all astir again as they were five years ago.
To whom could I give information, indeed?
'Haven't I written to anyone in my foolishness?'
H'm! So then I might write as though through foolishness?
Isn't he giving me a hint? 'You're going to Petersburg on purpose.'
The sly rogue. I've scarcely dreamed of it, and he guesses my dreams.
As though he were putting me up to going himself.
It's one or the other of two games he's up to. Either he's afraid because he's been up to some pranks himself... or he's not afraid for himself, but is simply egging me on to give them all away!
Ach, it's terrible, Lebyadkin! Ach, you must not make a blunder!"
He was so absorbed in thought that he forgot to listen.
It was not easy to hear either. The door was a solid one, and they were talking in a very low voice. Nothing reached the captain but indistinct sounds.
He positively spat in disgust, and went out again, lost in thought, to whistle on the steps.
III
Marya Timofyevna's room was twice as large as the one occupied by the captain, and furnished in the same rough style; but the table in front of the sofa was covered with a gay-coloured table-cloth, and on it a lamp was burning. There was a handsome carpet on the floor. The bed was screened off by a green curtain, which ran the length of the room, and besides the sofa there stood by the table a large, soft easy chair, in which Marya Timofyevna never sat, however.
In the corner there was an ikon as there had been in her old room, and a little lamp was burning before it, and on the table were all her indispensable properties. The pack of cards, the little looking-glass, the song-book, even a milk loaf.
Besides these there were two books with coloured pictures—one, extracts from a popular book of travels, published for juvenile reading, the other a collection of very light, edifying tales, for the most part about the days of chivalry, intended for Christmas presents or school reading.
She had, too, an album of photographs of various sorts.
Marya Timofyevna was, of course, expecting the visitor, as the captain had announced. But when Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went in, she was asleep, half reclining on the sofa, propped on a woolwork cushion.
Her visitor closed the door after him noiselessly, and, standing still, scrutinised the sleeping figure.
The captain had been romancing when he told Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch she had been dressing herself up.
She was wearing the same dark dress as on Sunday at Varvara Petrovna's.
Her hair was done up in the same little close knot at the back of her head; her long thin neck was exposed in the same way.
The black shawl Varvara Petrovna had given her lay carefully folded on the sofa.
She was coarsely rouged and powdered as before.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch did not stand there more than a minute. She suddenly waked up, as though she were conscious of his eyes fixed upon her; she opened her eyes, and quickly drew herself up.
But something strange must have happened to her visitor: he remained standing at the same place by the door. With a fixed and searching glance he looked mutely and persistently into her face.