Pyotr Stepanovitch smiled a wry smile.
"I say," he said suddenly, with excessive haste in a voice that quivered and faltered, "I say, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, let's drop personalities once for all.
Of course, you can despise me as much as you like if it amuses you—but we'd better dispense with personalities for a time, hadn't we?"
"All right," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch assented.
Pyotr Stepanovitch grinned, tapped his knee with his hat, shifted from one leg to the other, and recovered his former expression.
"Some people here positively look upon me as your rival with Lizaveta Nikolaevna, so I must think of my appearance, mustn't I," he laughed.
"Who was it told you that though?
H'm. It's just eight o'clock; well I must be off. I promised to look in on Varvara Petrovna, but I shall make my escape. And you go to bed and you'll be stronger to-morrow.
It's raining and dark, but I've a cab, it's not over safe in the streets here at night.... Ach, by the way, there's a run-away convict from Siberia, Fedka, wandering about the town and the neighbourhood. Only fancy, he used to be a serf of mine, and my papa sent him for a soldier fifteen years ago and took the money for him.
He's a very remarkable person."
"You have been talking to him?" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch scanned him.
"I have.
He lets me know where he is.
He's ready for anything, anything, for money of course, but he has convictions, too, of a sort, of course.
Oh yes, by the way, again, if you meant anything of that plan, you remember, about Lizaveta Nikolaevna, I tell you once again, I too am a fellow ready for anything of any kind you like, and absolutely at your service.... Hullo! are you reaching for your stick.
Oh no... only fancy... I thought you were looking for your stick."
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was looking for nothing and said nothing. But he had risen to his feet very suddenly with a strange look in his face.
"If you want any help about Mr. Gaganov either," Pyotr Stepanovitch blurted out suddenly, this time looking straight at the paper-weight, "of course I can arrange it all, and I'm certain you won't be able to manage without me."
He went out suddenly without waiting for an answer, but thrust his head in at the door once more.
"I mention that," he gabbled hurriedly, "because Shatov had no right either, you know, to risk his life last Sunday when he attacked you, had he?
I should be glad if you would make a note of that."
He disappeared again without waiting for an answer.
IV
Perhaps he imagined, as he made his exit, that as soon as he was left alone, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch would begin beating on the wall with his fists, and no doubt he would have been glad to see this, if that had been possible.
But, if so, he was greatly mistaken. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was still calm.
He remained standing for two minutes in the same position by the table, apparently plunged in thought, but soon a cold and listless smile came on to his lips.
He slowly sat down again in the same place in the corner of the sofa, and shut his eyes as though from weariness.
The corner of the letter was still peeping from under the paperweight, but he didn't even move to cover it.
He soon sank into complete forgetfulness.
When Pyotr Stepanovitch went out without coming to see her, as he had promised, Varvara Petrovna, who had been worn out by anxiety during these days, could not control herself, and ventured to visit her son herself, though it was not her regular time.
She was still haunted by the idea that he would tell her something conclusive.
She knocked at the door gently as before, and again receiving no answer, she opened the door.
Seeing that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was sitting strangely motionless, she cautiously advanced to the sofa with a throbbing heart.
She seemed struck by the fact that he could fall asleep so quickly and that he could sleep sitting like that, so erect and motionless, so that his breathing even was scarcely perceptible.
His face was pale and forbidding, but it looked, as it were, numb and rigid. His brows were somewhat contracted and frowning. He positively had the look of a lifeless wax figure.
She stood over him for about three minutes, almost holding her breath, and suddenly she was seized with terror. She withdrew on tiptoe, stopped at the door, hurriedly made the sign of the cross over him, and retreated unobserved, with a new oppression and a new anguish at her heart.
He slept a long while, more than an hour, and still in the same rigid pose: not a muscle of his face twitched, there was not the faintest movement in his whole body, and his brows were still contracted in the same forbidding frown.
If Varvara Petrovna had remained another three minutes she could not have endured the stifling sensation that this motionless lethargy roused in her, and would have waked him.
But he suddenly opened his eyes, and sat for ten minutes as immovable as before, staring persistently and curiously, as though at some object in the corner which had struck him, although there was nothing new or striking in the room.
Suddenly there rang out the low deep note of the clock on the wall.
With some uneasiness he turned to look at it, but almost at the same moment the other door opened, and the butler, Alexey Yegorytch came in.
He had in one hand a greatcoat, a scarf, and a hat, and in the other a silver tray with a note on it.
"Half-past nine," he announced softly, and laying the other things on a chair, he held out the tray with the note—a scrap of paper unsealed and scribbled in pencil.
Glancing through it, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch took a pencil from the table, added a few words, and put the note back on the tray.
"Take it back as soon as I have gone out, and now dress me," he said, getting up from the sofa.
Noticing that he had on a light velvet jacket, he thought a minute, and told the man to bring him a cloth coat, which he wore on more ceremonious occasions.
At last, when he was dressed and had put on his hat, he locked the door by which his mother had come into the room, took the letter from under the paperweight, and without saying a word went out into the corridor, followed by Alexey Yegorytch.
From the corridor they went down the narrow stone steps of the back stairs to a passage which opened straight into the garden.
In the corner stood a lantern and a big umbrella.
"Owing to the excessive rain the mud in the streets is beyond anything," Alexey Yegorytch announced, making a final effort to deter his master from the expedition.