Happening to hear that someone had had a fit, he ran to the place, following a correct premonition, and recognized the prince.
All necessary measures were taken at once.
The prince was transported to his room; though he came to his senses, it took him a rather long time to fully recover consciousness.
The doctor called in to examine his injured head gave him a lotion and announced that the bruises were not dangerous in the least.
When, an hour later, the prince began to understand his surroundings well enough, Kolya brought him in a carriage from the hotel to Lebedev's.
Lebedev received the sick man with extraordinary warmth and many bows.
For his sake he also hastened the move to the dacha: three days later they were all in Pavlovsk.
VI
Lebedev's dacha was not large, but it was comfortable and even beautiful.
The part meant to be rented out had been specially decorated.
On the terrace,26 a rather spacious one, between the street entrance and the rooms inside, stood several bitter orange, lemon, and jasmine trees in big green wooden tubs, which amounted, by Lebedev's reckoning, to a most enchanting look.
He had acquired some of these trees along with the dacha, and he was so charmed by the effect they produced on the terrace that he decided, when the chance came, to complete the set by purchasing more of the same trees in tubs at an auction.
When all the trees were finally transported to the dacha and put in place, Lebedev several times that day ran down the steps of the terrace to the street and admired his domain from there, each time mentally increasing the sum he proposed to ask from his future tenant.
Weakened, anguished, and physically shattered, the prince liked the dacha very much.
Incidentally, on the day of the move to Pavlovsk, that is, on the third day after his fit, the prince already had the outward look of an almost healthy man, though he felt that he had still not recovered inwardly.
He was glad of everyone he saw around him during those three days, glad of Kolya, who hardly ever left his side, glad of Lebedev's whole family (minus the nephew, who had disappeared somewhere), glad of Lebedev himself; he was even pleased to receive General Ivolgin, who had visited him still in the city.
On the day of the move, which took place in the evening, quite a few guests gathered around him on the terrace: first came Ganya, whom the prince barely recognized— he had changed so much and grown so thin in all that time.
Then Varya and Ptitsyn appeared, who also had a dacha in Pavlovsk.
As for General Ivolgin, he was at Lebedev's almost uninterruptedly, and had probably even moved along with him.
Lebedev tried to keep him away from the prince and near himself; he treated him in a comradely way; evidently they had long been acquainted.
The prince noticed that during those three days they sometimes got into long conversations with each other, often shouted and argued, it seemed, even about learned subjects, which evidently gave Lebedev pleasure.
One might even have thought that he needed the general.
Yet with regard to the prince, he took the same precautions with his own family as with the general, once they had moved to the dacha: he allowed no one to go near the prince, under the pretext of not disturbing him, stamped his feet, ran in pursuit of his daughters, not excepting Vera and the baby, at the first suspicion that they had gone out to the terrace where the prince was, despite all the prince's requests not to chase anyone away.
"First, there won't be any respectfulness if I spoil them like that; and second, it's even improper for them . . ." he finally explained, to the prince's direct question.
"But why?" the prince exhorted him. "You really torment me by all this watching and guarding.
I'm bored being alone, I've told you several times, and you weary me still more with all this ceaseless arm-waving and tiptoeing about."
The prince was hinting at the fact that Lebedev, though he chased everyone in the house away from him, under the guise of preserving the peace necessary for the sick man, kept going into the prince's room himself almost every moment during all those three days, and each time would first open the door, put his head in, look around the room as if making sure that he was there, that he had not escaped, and only then, on tiptoe, with slow and stealthy steps, would approach his armchair, so that on occasion he unintentionally frightened his tenant.
He ceaselessly inquired whether he needed anything, and when the prince finally began asking to be left alone, Lebedev would turn obediently and silently, make his way on tiptoe back to the door, waving his arms all the while, as if to let him know that it was just so, that he would not say a word, and that here he was going out, and he would not come back, and yet, in ten minutes or at the most a quarter of an hour, he would come back.
Kolya, who had free access to the prince, thereby provoked the deepest distress and even wounded indignation in Lebedev.
Kolya noticed that Lebedev spent as much as half an hour by the door, eavesdropping on what he and the prince were talking about, of which he naturally informed the prince.
"It's as if you've appropriated me, the way you keep me under lock and key," the prince protested. "At least at the dacha, I want it to be otherwise, and rest assured that I will receive whomever I like and go wherever I like."
"Without the slightest doubt," Lebedev waved his arms.
The prince looked him up and down intently.
"And tell me, Lukyan Timofeevich, that little cupboard of yours, which you had hanging over the head of your bed, did you bring it here?"
"No, I didn't."
"Can you have left it there?"
"It was impossible to take it without tearing it from the wall. . . It's firmly, firmly attached."
"Perhaps there's one like it here?"
"Even better, even better, that's why I bought this dacha."
"Ahh.
And who was it you wouldn't let see me?
An hour ago?"
"That . . . that was the general, sir.
I actually did prevent him, and he's not fitting for you.
I deeply respect the man, Prince; he . . . he's a great man, sir; you don't believe me?
Well, you'll see, but all the same ... it would be better, illustrious Prince, if you didn't receive him."
"But why so, may I ask?
And why are you standing on tiptoe now, Lebedev, and always approaching me as if you're about to whisper some secret in my ear?"
"I'm mean, mean, I feel it," Lebedev answered unexpectedly, beating his breast with feeling. "But won't the general be too hospitable for you, sir?"
"Be too hospitable?"