‘I meant, Uncle, that you were as much in love as anybody could be and you didn’t even know it. Just think! You brought me here to marry her simply so that she could stay on with you as your niece …’

  ‘And … and do you forgive me, Sergey?’

  ‘Oh, Uncle!’

  And he embraced me again.

  ‘But take care, Uncle! Everybody’s against you. You’ve got to stand up and fight — and tomorrow, mind.’

  ‘Yes … yes, tomorrow!’ he repeated thoughtfully, ‘and yes, we’ll go about it with courage, strength of character, and true nobility of spirit … yes, that’s right, with nobility of spirit!’

  ‘Don’t give way, Uncle!’

  ‘Never, Seryozha! Just one thing: how do I go about it, how do I start?’

  ‘Don’t think about it, Uncle. Everything will be settled tomorrow. Just rest today. The more you think about it, the worse it will be. And if Foma so much as opens his mouth — kick him out immediately, grind him into the dust.’

  ‘But maybe there’s no need to kick him out? This is what I’ve decided, my boy. I’m going straight to him tomorrow morning, at daybreak, to have a good long chat with him, like I’ve had with you. Surely he’ll understand; he’s a thorough gentleman! But it worries me that Mamma may have mentioned something to Tatyana Ivanovna about my proposal tomorrow. That may spell trouble!’

  ‘Don’t worry about Tatyana Ivanovna, Uncle!’

  And I told him about the incident with Obnoskin in the summer-house. Uncle was most surprised. I made no mention of Mizinchikov.

  ‘She’s a phantasmagorical woman! Quite phantasmagorical!’ he exclaimed. ‘Poor soul! They’re all after something, trying to take advantage of her weakness! I’m surprised about Obnoskin … Wasn’t he supposed to have gone away? … Strange, very strange indeed! I don’t quite know what to say, Seryozha … We’ve got to look into this tomorrow at the latest and do something about it … But are you quite sure it was Tatyana Ivanovna?’

  I replied that although I hadn’t seen her face, I had reason to believe it could have been none other than Tatyana Ivanovna.

  ‘Hm! Perhaps he’s just carrying on with one of the servant girls whom you mistook for Tatyana Ivanovna? Dasha, the gardener’s girl for instance? She’s a crafty, saucy thing, you know — and been caught at it before by Anna Nilovna, that’s how I know! … But no! He did say he wanted to get married. Strange! Very strange!’

  Finally we parted. I embraced Uncle and blessed him.

  ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow,’ he repeated, ‘everything will be settled — before you wake up. I’ll go straight to Foma and have everything out honourably with him, I’ll not conceal a thing from him, I’ll treat him like a brother — he’s to know everything down to the innermost workings of my heart. Goodnight, Seryozha. Go to sleep, you’re tired. I doubt if I’ll have a wink of sleep tonight.’

  He departed. I went to bed immediately, utterly exhausted. It had been a hard day. My nerves were on edge, and before I managed to fall finally asleep, I started and woke up several times. But, strange as were the impressions with which I went to sleep, they were as nothing compared with the strangeness of my awakening next morning.

  PART II

  1

  Pursuit

  I had a sound, dreamless sleep. Suddenly I felt as though a ten-ton weight had descended upon my feet. I let out a cry and woke up. It was already daylight; the sun was streaming in at the window. And there on my bed, or rather on my feet, sat Mr Bakhcheyev.

  There was no doubt about it: it was he. Having somehow extricated my feet, I sat up and stared at the man in the dumb bewilderment of one not yet fully awake.

  ‘Look at him staring!’ the fat man exclaimed. ‘What are you gaping at? Get up, young man, get up! I’ve been trying to waken you for the last half hour, rub your eyes now!’

  ‘What’s happened? What time is it?’

  ‘It’s early still, my friend, but our Aphrodite has given us the slip before dawn! Get up, we’re going after them!’

  ‘Aphrodite?’

  ‘Our very own, bless her! She’s up and away! Gone before sunrise! I only dropped in for a minute to wake you up and I’ve wasted two hours already! Come on, young man, your Uncle’s waiting too.’ And he added with a malicious tremor in his voice: ‘A fine way to see in the festive day!’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ I said impatiently, although to tell the truth, I was beginning to get a shrewd idea. ‘You don’t mean Tatyana Ivanovna, do you?’

  ‘And who else? The very same! Didn’t I say it, didn’t I warn you — nobody would listen! So there, that’s her way of marking the festive occasion! Lovesick, dotty woman with Cupid on the brain! Bah! And he’s a good one too — that streaky-bearded pipsqueak!’

  ‘Surely not Mizinchikov?’

  ‘Bah! Why don’t you rub your eyes and sober up, young fellow, for this great day at least! You must have had one too many at supper last night, if you’re still feeling it! Mizinchikov? It’s Obnoskin, not Mizinchikov. Ivan Ivanych Mizinchikov is an honourable man and he’s coming with us to chase them.’

  ‘Well, I never!’ I exclaimed, sitting up in bed with a start. ‘Obnoskin — are you sure?’

  ‘You’re impossible!’ the fat man replied, jumping to his feet. ‘I came to pass a piece of news to a man of education and I’m taken for a liar! Well, young man, up, up, if you want to come with us, on with those pants of yours — this is not time for tongue-wagging: I’ve wasted too much precious time on you already!’

  And he left the room in high dudgeon.

  Utterly amazed, I jumped out of bed, dressed hurriedly and ran downstairs. I wanted to find Uncle. It seemed everybody in the house was still asleep and quite unaware of what had occurred. I quietly mounted the steps of the main porch and in the hall ran into Nastenka. She had evidently dressed in a hurry, slinging a morning peignoir or some kind of dressing-gown over her shoulders. Her hair was dishevelled — it was obvious she had just got out of bed and was probably waiting to meet someone in the hall.

  ‘Tell me, is it really true Tatyana Ivanovna has eloped with Obnoskin?’ she asked quickly in a cracking voice, pale and frightened.

  ‘So they say. I’m looking for Uncle; we want to go after them.’

  ‘Oh! Do, do bring her back quickly! It’ll be the end of her if you don’t.’

  ‘But where’s Uncle?’

  ‘He’s probably at the stables — they’re getting the carriage ready. I was waiting for him here. Listen, tell him I’ve made up my mind to leave today; that’s final. Father has come to fetch me. I’m going immediately if I can. This is the end! There’s no more hope!’

  She looked distraught with grief as she spoke and suddenly burst into tears. I feared she was on the verge of hysterics.

  ‘Now, now!’ I implored. ‘It’s all for the best — you’ll see … Nastasya Yevgrafovna, what’s happening to you?’

  ‘I … I don’t know … what it is,’ she said, gasping for breath and squeezing my hands feverishly. ‘Tell him …’

  At this moment we heard a noise coming from the next door on the right.

  She let go of my hand and, without finishing her sentence, rushed upstairs.

  I found the company, that is Uncle, Bakhcheyev and Mizinchikov, assembled in full strength in the back yard by the stables. Fresh horses were being harnessed to Bakhcheyev’s calash. Everything stood ready for departure; they were waiting only for me.

  ‘Here he is!’ Uncle exclaimed as soon as I appeared. ‘Heard what’s happened, my boy?’ he added with a strange expression on his face.

  Fear, panic and a kind of expectation were evident in his looks, voice and movements. He was conscious that a turning-point in his life had been reached.

  I was immediately apprised of the circumstances in detail. Mr Bakhcheyev, having spent a most uncomfortable night, had left home in the early hours to attend morning mass at the monastery which was situated about five versts from his village. As he drew up at the turning leading off the highway, he suddenly saw a tarantass rushing by at full speed. In it crouched Obnoskin and a seemingly terrified Tatyana Ivanovna, her face red and puffed with crying. She cried out and stretched her hands towards Bakhcheyev as if imploring his protection, or so it appeared from his narrative. ‘And that bearded little scoundrel,’ he continued, ‘struck with mortal terror, tried to hide his face; but not so fast, my fellow!’ Mr Bakhcheyev immediately wheeled around and raced back to Stepanchikovo, where he woke up Uncle, Mizinchikov, and last of all me too. It was decided to organize immediate pursuit.

  ‘Obnoskin, Obnoskin …’ Uncle said, looking hard at me as if there was something else that he wanted to communicate to me at the same time, ‘who would have thought it!’

  ‘Any dirty trick was to be expected from that despicable creature!’ Mizinchikov spat vehemently, and immediately turned his head to avoid looking me in the eye.

  ‘Well, are we going or not? Unless you want to hang about till nightfall spinning fairy tales?’ Mr Bakhcheyev interrupted, taking his seat in the calash.

  ‘We’re going, we’re going!’ Uncle cried.

  ‘Everything’s for the best, Uncle,’ I whispered to him. ‘You see, it has all turned out just right in the end.’

  ‘Enough, say no more, my boy … Oh, dear me! Now they’ll kick her out from sheer spite because their plans have been ruined, do you see? How dreadful it’s all going to be!’

  ‘Now look here, Yegor Ilyich, do you want to stay behind and jabber or shall we get a move on?’ Mr Bakhcheyev exclaimed for the second time. ‘Perhaps we ought to call the whole thing off and bring out the food — what do you think? You don’t feel like a glass of vodka, do you?’

  These words were spoken with such biting sarcasm that it was quite impossible not to oblige Mr Bakhcheyev immediately. We all hastily took our seats and the horses galloped off at speed.

  For a while we sat in silence. From time to time Uncle would cast meaningful glances at me, although he did not want to start up a conversation with me in front of the others. He was often lost in deep thought, but would then come to with a start and look about him in alarm. Mizinchikov appeared calm as he sat smoking a cigar with the dignified air of a wronged man. Bakhcheyev, on the other hand, fretted for us all. He grumbled under his breath, he eyed us all with undisguised indignation, he flushed red, he wheezed, he constantly spat on the road, and was quite unable to settle himself.

  ‘Stepan Alekseyich, are you sure they’ve gone to Mishino?’ Uncle asked suddenly. ‘It’s twenty versts from here,’ he added to put me in the picture, ‘a tiny village with hardly more than thirty souls in it; a former district clerk recently acquired it from the previous owners. The fellow’s incorrigibly litigious! Or so they say, maybe he’s nothing of the sort. Stepan Alekseyich is sure that’s where Obnoskin has gone, and the clerk is helping him.’

  ‘Where else could he have gone?’ Bakhcheyev exclaimed with a start. ‘Of course he’s gone to Mishino. Only he may have put a good few versts between himself and Mishino by now! We wasted three solid hours in idle chatter in the yard!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mizinchikov remarked. ‘We’ll catch them.’

  ‘Yes, we’ll catch them! You’ll be lucky. You expect him to be sitting there waiting for you? Now he’s laid his hands on the jewels, you’ll not see him for dust!’

  ‘Calm down, Stepan Alekseyich, calm down, they won’t get away,’ Uncle said. ‘They’ve not had time to do anything yet — you’ll see who’s right!’

  ‘Not had time to do anything?’ sneered Mr Bakhcheyev. ‘Who knows what she’s not had time to do, all meek and mild though she is! “She’s so meek and mild,”’ he added in a shrill voice as though mocking somebody, ‘“she’s so meek and mild. She’s suffered.” She’s taken to her heels, the poor thing! And here we are chasing her up and down the highways at crack of dawn with our tongues dangling in the wind! A man can’t even be left in peace to say his prayers on a holy day any more! Bah!’

  ‘Look here, she’s of age,’ I remarked. ‘She’s nobody’s ward. No one can make her come back against her will. So what are we to do?’

  ‘True enough,’ Uncle replied, ‘but she’ll want to come back — I assure you. It’s only now she’s … The moment she sees us, she’ll want to come back — I guarantee. So we mustn’t leave her in the lurch, at the mercy of fate — it’s our duty …’

  ‘Nobody’s ward!’ cried Bakhcheyev, immediately launching into an attack against me. ‘She’s a fool, my friend, a certifiable idiot — never mind a ward. I didn’t want to say anything to you about her yesterday, but I happened to walk into her room by mistake the other day and there she was with her arms akimbo doing an écossaise in front of the looking-glass! And you should have seen her get-up: something out of this world! I just spat and left her to it. I could have told you there and then it was going to end up like this!’

  ‘You’re too hard on her,’ I remarked a little uncertainly. ‘We all know Tatyana Ivanovna … is not in good health … or rather, she has got a certain mania … It seems to me Obnoskin is to blame, not her.’

  ‘Not in good health, you say! Well now, what are we to do with him!’ the fat man responded immediately, turning crimson with anger. ‘The man has sworn to drive me out of my wits! He’s been at it since yesterday! She’s a crackpot, I repeat to you, my friend, a complete crackpot — not in good health indeed! She’s had Cupid on the brain since childhood! Now she’s at the end of her tether for Cupid. And as tor that streaky-beard, don’t even mention him! He’s not sparing the horses now with all that money in his pocket! What a laugh he’ll be having!’

  ‘Do you really think he’ll just abandon her?’

  ‘What else? He’s not going to lug a treasure like her with him everywhere he goes! She’s of no use to him! After he’s fleeced her she’ll find herself sitting on the roadside under a bush smelling daisies!’

  ‘Come, come, Stepan, don’t get carried away! It won’t be as bad as that!’ Uncle exclaimed. ‘Why are you taking it to heart so much? I’m surprised you should worry so, Stepan!’

  ‘Am I human or not? It makes me angry — angry on principle. Perhaps you think I’ve a soft spot for her? … The whole world be damned! Why did I have to come along now? Why didn’t I just carry on where I was going — minding my own business? Yes, minding my own business!’

  Thus Mr Bakhcheyev fretted; but I was no longer listening to him — all I could think of was Tatyana Ivanovna, whom we were presently pursuing. Here is a short account of her which I subsequently compiled from highly reliable sources and which forms an essential commentary on her adventures. Brought up a poor and neglected orphan in a family that had no love for her, poor as a young girl, poor as a spinster, and now poor as a woman of a certain age, Tatyana Ivanovna, in all her poverty-stricken years, had been made to drain a full cup of sorrow, loneliness, humiliation and censure, and to suffer the gall of eating other people’s bread. Cheerful by nature, impressionable and frivolous to a degree, she somehow managed at first to put up with her bitter lot and could even bring herself to laugh in her own charmingly carefree way; but with the years, the ravages of fate began to tell on her. Little by little Tatyana Ivanovna grew sallow and thin, turned irritable and morbid, and fell into the most impenetrable and boundless reverie, frequently to be interrupted by tears of hysteria and convulsive sobbing. The fewer of life’s blessings that were left to her, the more she entertained and comforted herself in her fanciful imagination. The more irrevocably her last substantive hopes waned and finally perished altogether, the more her extravagant and insubstantial dreams took hold of her. Unimaginable wealth, unfading beauty, elegant suitors, rich, renowned, of princely and distinguished stock, chaste and spotless of heart, expiring at her feet with infinite love, and, finally, the one — the one, the paragon of beauty, the seat of all the virtues, passionate and loving; an artist, a poet, a general’s son in turn or all at once — all this made up not only the substance of her dreams, but even of her waking hours. Her mind was already beginning to exhibit symptoms of deterioration as a result of indulging in this uninterrupted succession of opiate fantasies, when suddenly fate decided to play her a final trick. In the last stages of her degradation, demoralized by hopeless, totally oppressive circumstances while serving as a paid companion to a senile, toothless, and world’s most ill-tempered mistress, blamed for everything, begrudged every meal, every cast-off scrap of clothing, insulted with impunity by everyone, protected by no one, exhausted by her miserable existence and yet revelling in her inflamed and delirious fantasies, Tatyana Ivanovna was suddenly informed of the demise of a distant relative, whose remaining next of kin had long since passed away (a circumstance which in her frivolity she had never bothered to enquire about), a man unusual in every respect, who had led a sequestered life somewhere at the back of beyond — lonely, grim, unobtrusive, amassing wealth unobtrusively through usury and the practice of phrenology. At a stroke, enormous riches, a full hundred thousand rubles in silver, as if by magic, fell at her feet as the last remaining legal heiress of the deceased relative. This quirk of providence was the final blow. For how could this already clouded understanding not now believe with full confidence in dreams, when they were actually beginning to come true? Thus the poor thing parted for ever with her last remaining scraps of common sense. Transported with delight, she totally immersed herself in her world of impossible fantasies and enchanting visions. Away with all counsel and restraint, away all the barriers of reality, with its crystal-clear, inexorable laws of two-times-two. Thirty-five years of age and the dream of stunning beauty, the sad chill of autumn and the luxury of love’s infinite bliss, these thrived, in complete harmony, in her inner being. On one occasion in her life her hopes had already materialized: why indeed should they not continue to do so? Why indeed should he not appear too? Tatyana Ivanovna did not reason, she simply believed. But in anticipation of him, her idol, suitors and admirers of every rank and position, military and civil, army and cavalry, magnates and plain poets, those who had been to Paris and those who had only been to Moscow, moustachioed and clean-shaven, Spanish and non-Spanish (but mainly Spanish), began to haunt her day and night in such a staggering multitude as to give all onlookers cause for very serious concern — it was but a step to the lunatic asylum. Dazzling, beguiling visions crowded her imagination in an endless, intoxicating succession. Each moment of her everyday life was ridden with fantasies: a mere glance, and somebody was hopelessly in love; a passer-by, and he was bound to be a Spaniard; a funeral, and somebody had surely expired of love for her. And sure enough, all this was beginning to be substantiated in her eyes by the appearance of such as Obnoskin, Mizinchikov and dozens of others, all with the same intentions. Suddenly people began to indulge, pamper and flatter her. Poor Tatyana Ivanovna refused to suspect that this was simply because of her money. She was perfectly convinced that, as a result of the will of some mysterious agency, all men had suddenly improved their moral natures, turned good-humoured, sweet-tempered, kind-hearted and virtuous. He had not yet appeared in person; but, although there was not a shadow of doubt that he would eventually come, her present mode of life was so entertaining, so alluring, so full of pleasant surprises and delights, that she could as well wait a little longer. Tatyana Ivanovna ate sweets, read novels, and gathered the blossoms of delight. The novels inflamed her imagination even more, and she usually abandoned them on the second page. She could not sustain the strain of reading further — the first few lines would be enough to carry her into dreams, the merest suggestion of love, sometimes simply the description of a place or of a room or somebody’s dress. She maintained for herself an endless supply of new fashions, lace, hats, hair decorations, ribbons, dress patterns, designs, guipure, sweets, flowers and lap-dogs. Three girls in the women’s quarter spent days on end stitching, while the lady herself from morn till dusk, and even in the dead of night, tried on her finery and corsets and gyrated in front of full-length mirrors. It must be owned that, on acquiring her inheritance, her appearance had somehow improved and she even seemed to grow younger. To this day I have no idea how she was related to the late General Krakhotkin. I was always convinced that the kinship was a lie perpetrated by the General’s Lady in order to gain a hold over Tatyana Ivanovna and, come what may, ensure that Uncle married her money. Mr Bakhcheyev was quite right in maintaining that Cupid had turned her head completely; and Uncle’s suggestion, when her elopement with Obnoskin was discovered, to bring her back by force if necessary, was the most sensible yet. The poor thing was incapable of surviving without protection and would surely come to grief if she were to fall into bad hands.