To be sure all fathers are disposed to be blind in such cases."
"Silence! Silence!" cried Stepan Trofimovitch, shaking all over.
"You see you're screaming and swearing at me as you did last Thursday. You tried to lift your stick against me, but you know, I found that document.
I was rummaging all the evening in my trunk from curiosity.
It's true there's nothing definite, you can take that comfort.
It's only a letter of my mother's to that Pole.
But to judge from her character..."
"Another word and I'll box your ears."
"What a set of people!" said Pyotr Stepanovitch, suddenly addressing himself to me.
"You see, this is how we've been ever since last Thursday.
I'm glad you're here this time, anyway, and can judge between us.
To begin with, a fact: he reproaches me for speaking like this of my mother, but didn't he egg me on to it?
In Petersburg before I left the High School, didn't he wake me twice in the night, to embrace me, and cry like a woman, and what do you suppose he talked to me about at night?
Why, the same modest anecdotes about my mother!
It was from him I first heard them."
"Oh, I meant that in a higher sense!
Oh, you didn't understand me!
You understood nothing, nothing."
"But, anyway, it was meaner in you than in me, meaner, acknowledge that.
You see, it's nothing to me if you like.
I'm speaking from your point of view.
Don't worry about my point of view. I don't blame my mother; if it's you, then it's you, if it's a Pole, then it's a Pole, it's all the same to me.
I'm not to blame because you and she managed so stupidly in Berlin.
As though you could have managed things better.
Aren't you an absurd set, after that?
And does it matter to you whether I'm your son or not?
Listen," he went on, turning to me again, "he's never spent a penny on me all his life; till I was sixteen he didn't know me at all; afterwards he robbed me here, and now he cries out that his heart has been aching over me all his life, and carries on before me like an actor.
I'm not Varvara Petrovna, mind you."
He got up and took his hat.
"I curse you henceforth!" Stepan Trofimovitch, as pale as death, stretched out his hand above him.
"Ach, what folly a man will descend to!" cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, actually surprised.
"Well, good-bye, old fellow, I shall never come and see you again.
Send me the article beforehand, don't forget, and try and let it be free from nonsense. Facts, facts, facts. And above all, let it be short.
Good-bye."
III
Outside influences, too, had come into play in the matter, however.
Pyotr Stepanovitch certainly had some designs on his parent.
In my opinion he calculated upon reducing the old man to despair, and so to driving him to some open scandal of a certain sort.
This was to serve some remote and quite other object of his own, of which I shall speak hereafter.
All sorts of plans and calculations of this kind were swarming in masses in his mind at that time, and almost all, of course, of a fantastic character.
He had designs on another victim besides Stepan Trofimovitch.
In fact, as appeared afterwards, his victims were not few in number, but this one he reckoned upon particularly, and it was Mr. von Lembke himself.
Andrey Antonovitch von Lembke belonged to that race, so favoured by nature, which is reckoned by hundreds of thousands at the Russian census, and is perhaps unconscious that it forms throughout its whole mass a strictly organised union.
And this union, of course, is not planned and premeditated, but exists spontaneously in the whole race, without words or agreements as a moral obligation consisting in mutual support given by all members of the race to one another, at all times and places, and under all circumstances.
Andrey Antonovitch had the honour of being educated in one of those more exalted Russian educational institutions which are filled with the youth from families well provided with wealth or connections.
Almost immediately on finishing their studies the pupils were appointed to rather important posts in one of the government departments.
Andrey Antonovitch had one uncle a colonel of engineers, and another a baker. But he managed to get into this aristocratic school, and met many of his fellow-countrymen in a similar position.
He was a good-humoured companion, was rather stupid at his studies, but always popular.
And when many of his companions in the upper forms—chiefly Russians—had already learnt to discuss the loftiest modern questions, and looked as though they were only waiting to leave school to settle the affairs of the universe, Andrey Antonovitch was still absorbed in the most innocent schoolboy interests.
He amused them all, it is true, by his pranks, which were of a very simple character, at the most a little coarse, but he made it his object to be funny.