And, behold, in the midst of this exciting bustle she suddenly took it into her head to send for Stepan Trofimovitch.
The latter had long before received notice of this interview and was prepared for it, and he had every day been expecting just such a sudden summons.
As he got into the carriage he crossed himself: his fate was being decided.
He found his friend in the big drawing-room on the little sofa in the recess, before a little marble table with a pencil and paper in her hands. Fomushka, with a yard measure, was measuring the height of the galleries and the windows, while Varvara Petrovna herself was writing down the numbers and making notes on the margin.
She nodded in Stepan Trofimovitch's direction without breaking off from what she was doing, and when the latter muttered some sort of greeting, she hurriedly gave him her hand, and without looking at him motioned him to a seat beside her.
"I sat waiting for five minutes, 'mastering my heart,'" he told me afterwards.
"I saw before me not the woman whom I had known for twenty years.
An absolute conviction that all was over gave me a strength which astounded even her.
I swear that she was surprised at my stoicism in that last hour."
Varvara Petrovna suddenly put down her pencil on the table and turned quickly to Stepan Trofimovitch.
"Stepan Trofimovitch, we have to talk of business.
I'm sure you have prepared all your fervent words and various phrases, but we'd better go straight to the point, hadn't we?"
She had been in too great a hurry to show the tone she meant to take. And what might not come next?
"Wait, be quiet; let me speak. Afterwards you shall, though really I don't know what you can answer me," she said in a rapid patter.
"The twelve hundred roubles of your pension I consider a sacred obligation to pay you as long as you live. Though why a sacred obligation, simply a contract; that would be a great deal more real, wouldn't it?
If you like, we'll write it out.
Special arrangements have been made in case of my death.
But you are receiving from me at present lodging, servants, and your maintenance in addition.
Reckoning that in money it would amount to fifteen hundred roubles, wouldn't it?
I will add another three hundred roubles, making three thousand roubles in all.
Will that be enough a year for you?
I think that's not too little?
In any extreme emergency I would add something more.
And so, take your money, send me back my servants, and live by yourself where you like in Petersburg, in Moscow, abroad, or here, only not with me.
Do you hear?"
"Only lately those lips dictated to me as imperatively and as suddenly very different demands," said Stepan Trofimovitch slowly and with sorrowful distinctness.
"I submitted... and danced the Cossack dance to please you.
Oui, la comparaison peut etre permise.
C'etait comme un petit Cosaque du Don qui sautait sur sa propre tombe.
Now..."
"Stop, Stepan Trofimovitch, you are horribly long-winded.
You didn't dance, but came to see me in a new tie, new linen, gloves, scented and pomatumed.
I assure you that you were very anxious to get married yourself; it was written on your face, and I assure you a most unseemly expression it was.
If I did not mention it to you at the time, it was simply out of delicacy.
But you wished it, you wanted to be married, in spite of the abominable things you wrote about me and your betrothed.
Now it's very different.
And what has the Cosaque du Don to do with it, and what tomb do you mean?
I don't understand the comparison.
On the contrary, you have only to live. Live as long as you can. I shall be delighted."
"In an almshouse?"
"In an almshouse?
People don't go into almshouses with three thousand roubles a year.
Ah, I remember," she laughed. "Pyotr Stepanovitch did joke about an almshouse once.
Bah, there certainly is a special almshouse, which is worth considering.
It's for persons who are highly respectable; there are colonels there, and there's positively one general who wants to get into it.
If you went into it with all your money, you would find peace, comfort, servants to wait on you.
There you could occupy yourself with study, and could always make up a party for cards."
"Passons."
"Passons?" Varvara Petrovna winced.
"But, if so, that's all. You've been informed that we shall live henceforward entirely apart."