"Oh, well, I pitied you, then!" Velchaninoff was growing angrier every moment. However, he informed Pavel Pavlovitch shortly as to how he had received the bracelet, and how Nadia had almost forced it upon him.

"You must understand," he added, "that otherwise I should never have agreed to accept the commission; there are quite enough disagreeables already."

"You liked the job, and accepted it with pleasure," giggled Pavel Pavlovitch.

"That is foolish on your part; but I suppose you must be forgiven. You must have seen from that boy's behaviour that I play no part in this matter. Others are the princ.i.p.al actors, not I!"

"At all events the job had attractions for you." Pavel Pavlovitch sat down and poured out a gla.s.s of wine.

"You think I shall knuckle under to that young gentleman? Pooh! I shall drive him out to-morrow, sir, like dust. I'll smoke this little gentleman out of his nursery, sir; you see if I don't." He drank his wine off at a gulp, and poured out some more. He seemed to grow freer as the moments went by; he talked glibly now.

"Ha-ha! Sac.h.i.n.ka and Nadienka!(2) darling little children. Ha-ha-ha!" He was beside himself with fury.

At this moment, a terrific crash of thunder startled the silence, and was followed by flashes of lightning and sheets of heavy rain. Pavel Pavlovitch rose and shut the window.

"The fellow asked you if you were afraid of the thunder; do you remember?

Ha-ha-ha! Velchaninoff afraid of thunder! And all that about 'fifty years old' wasn't bad, eh? Ha-ha-ha!" Pavel Pavlovitch was in a spiteful mood.

"You seem to have settled yourself here," said Velchaninoff, who could hardly speak for agony. "Do as you like, I must lie down."

"Come, you wouldn't turn a _dog_ out to-night!" replied Pavel, glad of a grievance.

"Of course, sit down; drink your wine-do anything you like," murmured Velchaninoff, as he laid himself flat on his divan, and groaned with pain.

"Am I to spend the night? Aren't you afraid?"

"What of?" asked Velchaninoff, raising his head slightly.

"Oh, nothing. Only last time you seemed to be a little alarmed, that's all."

"You are a fool!" said the other angrily, as he turned his face to the wall.

"Very well, sir; all right," said Pavel.

Velchaninoff fell asleep within a minute or so of lying down. The unnatural strain of the day, and his sickly state of health together, had suddenly undermined his strength, and he was as weak as a child. But physical pain would have its own, and soon conquered weakness and sleep; in an hour he was wide awake again, and rose from the divan in anguish.

Pavel Pavlovitch was asleep on the other sofa. He was dressed, and in his boots; his hat lay on the floor, and his eye-gla.s.s hung by its cord almost to the ground. Velchaninoff did not wake his guest. The room was full of tobacco smoke, and the bottle was empty; he looked savagely at the sleeping drunkard.

Having twisted himself painfully off his bed, Velchaninoff began to walk about, groaning and thinking of his agony; he could lie no longer.

He was alarmed for this pain in his chest, and not without reason. He was subject to these attacks, and had been so for many years; but they came seldom, luckily-once a year or two years. On such occasions, his agony was so dreadful for some ten hours or so that he invariably believed that he must be actually dying.

This night, his anguish was terrible; it was too late to send for the doctor, but it was far from morning yet. He staggered up and down the room, and before long his groans became loud and frequent.

The noise awoke Pavel Pavlovitch. He sat up on his divan, and for some time gazed in terror and perplexity upon Velchaninoff, as the latter walked moaning up and down. At last he gathered his senses, and enquired anxiously what was the matter.

Velchaninoff muttered something unintelligible.

"It's your kidneys-I'm sure it is," cried Pavel, very wide awake of a sudden. "I remember Peter Kuzmich used to have the same sort of attacks.

The kidneys-why, one can die of it. Let me go and fetch Mavra."

"No, no; I don't want anything," muttered Velchaninoff, waving him off irritably.

But Pavel Pavlovitch-goodness knows why-was beside himself with anxiety; he was as much exercised as though the matter at issue were the saving of his own son's life. He insisted on immediate compresses, and told Velchaninoff he must drink two or three cups of very hot weak tea-boiling hot. He ran for Mavra, lighted the fire in the kitchen, put the kettle on, put the sick man back to bed, covered him up, and within twenty minutes had the first hot application all ready, as well as the tea.

"Hot plates, sir, hot plates," he cried, as he clapped the first, wrapped in a napkin, on to Velchaninoff's chest. "I have nothing else handy; but I give you my word it's as good as anything else. Drink this tea quick, never mind if you scald your tongue-life is dearer. You can die of this sort of thing, you know." He sent sleepy Mavra out of her wits with flurry; the plates were changed every couple of minutes. At the third application, and after having taken two cups of scalding tea, Velchaninoff suddenly felt decidedly better.

"Capital! thank G.o.d! if we can once get the better of the pain it's a good sign!" cried Pavel, delightedly, and away he ran for another plate and some more tea.

"If only we can beat the pain down!" he kept muttering to himself every minute.

In half an hour the agony was pa.s.sed, but the sick man was so completely knocked up that, in spite of Pavel's repeated entreaties to be allowed to apply "just one more plate," he could bear no more. His eyes were drooping from weakness.

"Sleep-sleep," he muttered faintly.

"Very well," consented Pavel, "go to sleep."

"Are you spending the night here? What time is it?"

"Nearly two."

"You must sleep here."

"Yes, yes-all right. I will."

A moment after the sick man called to Pavel again.

"You-you-" muttered the former faintly, as Pavel ran up and bent over him, "you are better than I am. I understand all-all-thank you!"

"Go to sleep!" whispered Pavel Pavlovitch, as he crept back to his divan on tip-toes.

Velchaninoff, dozing off, heard Pavel quietly make his bed, undress and lie down, all very softly, and then put the light out.

Undoubtedly Velchaninoff fell asleep very quietly when the light was once out; he remembered that much afterwards. Yet all the while he was asleep, and until he awoke, he dreamed that he could not go to sleep in spite of his weakness. At length he dreamed that he was delirious, and that he could not for the life of him chase away the visions which crowded in upon him, although he was conscious the whole while they _were_ but visions and not reality. The apparition was familiar to him. He thought that his front door was open, and that his room gradually filled with people pouring in.

At the table in the middle of the room, sat one man exactly as had been the case a month before, during one of his dreams. As on the previous occasion, this man leant on his elbow at the table and would not speak; he was in a round hat with a c.r.a.pe band.

"How?" thought the dreamer. "Was it really Pavel Pavlovitch last time as well?" However, when he looked at the man's face, he was convinced that it was quite another person.

"Why has he a c.r.a.pe band, then?" thought Velchaninoff in perplexity.

The noise and chattering of all these people was dreadful; they seemed even more exasperated with Velchaninoff than on the former occasion. They were all threatening him with something or other, shaking their fists at him, and shouting something which he could not understand.

"It's all a vision," he dreamed, "I know quite well that I am up and about, because I could not lie still for anguish!"

Yet the cries and noise at times seemed so real that he was now and again half-convinced of their reality.

"Surely this _can't_ be delirium!" he thought. "What on earth do all these people want of me-my G.o.d!"

Yet if it were not a vision, surely all these cries would have roused Pavel Pavlovitch? There he was, fast asleep in his divan!