ROMASHOV was still standing on the doorstep.
The night was rather warm, but very dark.
He began to grope his way cautiously with his hand on the palings whilst waiting until his eyes got accustomed to the darkness.
Suddenly the kitchendoor of Nikolaiev’s dwelling was thrown open, and a broad stream of misty yellow light escaped.
Heavy steps sounded in the muddy street, the next moment Romashov heard Stepan’s, the Nikolaievs’ servant’s, angry voice—
“He comes here every blessed day, and the deuce knows what he comes for.”
Another soldier, whose voice Romashov did not recognize, answered indifferently with a lazy, long-drawn yawn—
“What business can it be of yours, my dear fellow?
Good-night, Stepan.”
“Good-night to you, Baulin; look in when you like.”
Romashov’s hands suddenly clung to the palings.
An unendurable feeling of shame made him blush, in spite of the darkness. All his body broke out into a perspiration, and, in his back and the soles of his feet, he felt the sting of a thousand red-hot, pointed nails.
“This chapter’s closed; even the soldiers laugh at me,” thought he with indescribable pain.
Directly afterwards it flashed on his mind that that very evening, in many expressions used, in the tones of the replies, in glances exchanged between man and wife, he had seen a number of trifles that he had hitherto not noticed, but which he now thought testified only to contempt of him, and ridicule, impatience and indignation at the persistent visits of that insufferable guest.
“What a disgrace and scandal this is to me!” he whispered without stirring from the spot.
“Things have reached such a pitch that it is as much as the Nikolaievs can do to endure my company.”
The lights in their drawing-room were now extinguished.
“They are in their bedroom now,” thought Romashov, and at once he began fancying that Nikolaiev and Shurochka were then talking about him whilst making their toilet for the night with the indifference and absence of bashfulness at each other’s presence that is characteristic of married couples.
The wife is sitting in her petticoat in front of the mirror, combing her hair.
Vladimir Yefimovitch is sitting in his night-shirt at the edge of the bed, and saying in a sleepy but angry tone, whilst flushed with the exertion of taking off his boots:
“Hark you, Shurochka, that infernal bore, your dear Romashov, will be the death of me with his insufferable visits.
And I really can’t understand how you can tolerate him.”
Then to this frank and candid speech Shurochka replies, without turning round, and with her mouth full of hairpins:
“Be good enough to remember, sir, he is not my Romochka, but yours.”
Another five minutes elapsed before Romashov, still tortured by these bitter and painful thoughts, made up his mind to continue his journey.
Along the whole extent of the palings belonging to the Nikolaievs’ house he walked with stealthy steps, cautiously and gently dragging his feet from the mire, as if he feared he might be discovered and arrested as a common vagrant.
To go straight home was not to his liking at all. Nay, he dared not even think of his gloomy, low-pitched, cramped room with its single window and repulsive furniture.
“By Jove! why shouldn’t I look up Nasanski, just to annoy her?” thought he all of a sudden, whereupon he experienced the delightful satisfaction of revenge.
“She reproached me for my friendship with Nasanski. Well, I shall just for that very reason pay him a visit.”
He raised eyes to heaven, and said to himself passionately, as he pressed his hands against his heart—
“I swear—I swear that to-day I have visited them for the last time.
I will no longer endure this mortification.”
And immediately afterwards he added mentally, as was his ingrained habit—
“His expressive black eyes glistened with resolution and contempt.”
But Romashov’s eyes, unfortunately, were neither “black” nor “expressive,” but of a very common colour, slightly varying between yellow and green.
Nasanski tenanted a room in a comrade’s—Lieutenant Siegerscht’s—house.
This Siegerscht was most certainly the oldest lieutenant in the whole Russian Army. Notwithstanding his unimpeachable conduct as an officer and the fact of his having served in the war with Turkey, through some unaccountable disposition of fate, his military career seemed closed, and every hope of further advancement was apparently lost.
He was a widower, with four little children and forty-eight roubles a month, on which sum, strangely enough, he managed to get along.
It was his practice to hire large flats which he afterwards, in turn, let out to his brother officers. He took in boarders, fattened and sold fowls and turkeys, and no one understood better than he how to purchase wood and other necessaries cheap and at the right time.
He bathed his children himself in a common trough, prescribed for them from his little medicine-chest when they were ill, and, with his sewing-machine, made them tiny shirts, under-vests, and drawers.
Like many other officers, Siegerscht had, in his bachelor days, interested himself in woman’s work, and acquired a readiness with his needle that proved very useful in hard times.
Malicious tongues went so far as to assert that he secretly and stealthily sold his handiwork.
Notwithstanding all his economy and closeness, his life was full of troubles.
Epidemic diseases ravaged his fowl-house, his numerous rooms stood unlet for long periods; his boarders grumbled at their bad food and refused to pay. The consequence of this was that, three or four times a year, Siegerscht—tall, thin, and unshaven, with cheerless countenance and a forehead dripping with cold sweat—might be seen on his way to the town to borrow some small sum. And all recognized the low, regimental cap that resembled a pancake, always with its peak askew, as well as the antiquated cloak, modelled on those worn in the time of the Emperor Nicholas, which waved in the breeze like a couple of huge wings.
A light was burning in Siegerscht’s flat, and as Romashov approached the window, he saw him sitting by a round table under a hanging-lamp. The bald head, with its gentle, worn features, was bent low over a little piece of red cloth which was probably destined to form an integral part of a Little Russian roubashka.
Romashov went up and tapped at the window.
Siegerscht started up, laid aside his work, rose from the table, and went up to the window.
“It is I, Adam Ivanich—open the window a moment.”
Siegerscht opened a little pane and looked out.
“Well, it’s you, Sub-Lieutenant Romashov.