Virgin Soil Part 47

"If that's so," he said aloud, "if we must run away from here before the police find us... I think it wouldn't be a bad thing if we were to get married. We may not find another such accommodating priest as Father Zosim!"

"I am quite ready," Mariana observed.

Nejdanov gave her a searching glance.

"A Roman maiden!" he exclaimed with a sarcastic half-smile. "What a feeling of duty!"

Mariana shrugged her shoulders.

"We must tell Solomin."

"Yes... Solomin..." Nejdanov drawled out. "But he is also in danger. The police would arrest him too. It seems to me that he also took part in things and knew even more than we did."

"I don't know about that," Mariana observed. "He never speaks of himself!

"Not as I do!" Nejdanov thought. "That was what she meant to imply.

Solomin... Solomin!" he added after a pause. "Do you know, Mariana, I should not be at all sorry if you had linked your fate forever with a man like Solomin... or with Solomin himself."

Mariana gave Nejdanov a penetrating glance in her turn. "You had no right to say that," she observed at last.

"I had no right! In what sense am I to take that? Does it mean that you love me, or that I ought not to touch upon this question generally speaking?"

"You had no right," Mariana repeated.

Nejdanov lowered his head.

"Mariana!" he exclaimed in a slightly different tone of voice.

"Yes?

"If I were to ask you now... now... you know what... But no, I will not ask anything of you.. goodbye."

He got up and went out; Mariana did not detain him. Nejdanov sat down on the couch and covered his face with his hands. He was afraid of his own thoughts and tried to stop thinking. He felt that some sort of dark, underground hand had clutched at the very root of his being and would not let him go. He knew that the dear, sweet creature he had left in the next room would not come out to him and he dared not go to her. What for? What would he say to her?

Firm, rapid footsteps made him open his eyes. Solomin pa.s.sed through his room, knocked at Mariana's door, and went in.

"Honour where honour is due!" Nejdanov whispered bitterly.

x.x.xIV

IT was already ten o'clock in the evening; in the drawing-room of the Arjanov house Sipiagin, his wife, and Kollomietzev were sitting over a game at cards when a footman entered and announced that an unknown gentleman, a certain Mr. Paklin, wished to see Boris Andraevitch upon a very urgent business.

"So late!" Valentina Mihailovna exclaimed, surprised.

"What?" Boris Andraevitch asked, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his handsome nose; "what did you say the gentleman's name was?"

"Mr. Paklin, sir."

"Paklin!" Kollomietzev exclaimed; "a real country name. Paklin. ..

Solomin... De vrais noms ruraux, hein?"

"Did you say," Boris Andraevitch continued, still turned towards the footman with his nose screwed up, "that the business was an urgent one?"

"The gentleman said so, sir."

"H'm.... No doubt some beggar or intriguer."

"Or both," Kollomietzev chimed in.

"Very likely. Ask him into my study." Boris Andraevitch got up. "Pardon, ma bonne. Have a game of ecarte till I come back, unless you would like to wait for me. I won't be long."

"Nous causerons... Allez!" Kollomietzev said.

When Sipiagin entered his study and caught sight of Paklin's poor, feeble little figure meekly leaning up against the door between the wall and the fireplace, he was seized by that truly ministerial sensation of haughty compa.s.sion and fastidious condescension so characteristic of the St. Petersburg bureaucrat. "Heavens! What a miserable little wretch!" he thought; "and lame too, I believe!"

"Sit down, please," he said aloud, making use of some of his most benevolent baritone notes and throwing back his head, sat down before his guest did. "You are no doubt tired from the journey. Sit down, please, and tell me about this important matter that has brought you so late."

"Your excellency," Paklin began, cautiously dropping into an arm-chair, "I have taken the liberty of coming to you--"

"Just a minute, please," Sipiagin interrupted him, "I think I've seen you before. I never forget faces. But er... er... really... where have I seen you?"

"You are not mistaken, your excellency. I had the honour of meeting you in St. Petersburg at a certain person's who... who has since...

unfortunately... incurred your displeasure--"

Sipiagin jumped up from his chair.

"Why, at Mr. Nejdanov's? I remember now. You haven't come from him by the way, have you?"

"Not at all, your excellency; on the contrary...I--"

Sipiagin sat down again.

"That's good. For had you come on his account I should have asked you to leave the house at once. I cannot allow any mediator between myself and Mr. Nejdanov. Mr. Nejdanov has insulted me in a way which cannot be forgotten... I am above any feelings of revenge, but I don't wish to know anything of him, nor of the girl--more depraved in mind than in heart" (Sipiagin had repeated this phrase at least thirty times since Mariana ran away), "who could bring herself to abandon a home that had sheltered her, to become the mistress of a nameless adventurer! It is enough for them that I am content to forget them."

At this last word Sipiagin waved his wrist into s.p.a.ce.

"I forget them, my dear sir!"

"Your excellency, I have already told you that I did not come from them in particular, but I may inform your excellency that they are legally married..." ("It's all the same," Paklin thought; "I said that I would lie and so here I am. Never mind!")

Sipiagin moved his head from left to right on the back of his chair.

"It does not interest me in the least, sir. It only makes one foolish marriage the more in the world--that's all. But what is this urgent matter to which I am indebted for the pleasure of your visit?"

"Ugh! you cursed director of a department!" Paklin thought, "I'll soon make you pull a different face!" "Your wife's brother," he said aloud, "Mr. Markelov, has been seized by the peasants whom he had been inciting to rebellion, and is now under arrest in the governor's house."