The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

At these words he would at once feel ashamed, and kiss her hands, and hold himself back for two or three days, but then he would just go off in a whirl and leave me in charge of her.

“Take care of her, my half-esteemed Ivan Severyanych,” he’d say. “You’re an artist, you’re not a whippersnapper like me, but a real high-class artist, and therefore you’re somehow able to talk to her so that you both have a nice time, while those ‘ruby-jewels’ just put me to sleep.”

I say:

“Why so? They’re loving words.”

“Loving,” he says, “but stupid and tiresome.”

I made no reply, but from then on started visiting her without ceremony: when the prince wasn’t there, I’d go to her wing twice a day to have tea and amuse her the best I could.

And I had to amuse her because, if she happened to start talking, she always complained:

“My dear Ivan Severyanych, friend of my heart,” she’d say, “jealousy, my darling one, torments me bitterly.”

Well, naturally, I reassured her:

“Why be so tormented?” I’d say. “Wherever he goes, he always comes back to you.”

She would burst into tears, beat her breast, and say:

“No, tell me … don’t conceal it from me, friend of my heart: where does he go?”

“To gentlefolk,” I say, “in the neighborhood or in town.”

“But isn’t there some woman,” she says, “who has come between us? Tell me: maybe he loved someone before me and has now gone back to her—or might my wicked one be thinking of marrying?” And her eyes blaze so as she says it that it’s even terrible to see.

I comfort her, but I think to myself:

“Who knows what he’s up to?”—because we saw little of him at that time.

Once it occurred to her that he wanted to marry, she got to begging me:

“Go to town, Ivan Severyanych, my darling, my this-and-that; go, find out the whole truth about him, and tell me everything without any secrets.”

She badgered me about it more and more and made me feel so sorry for her that I thought:

“Well, come what may, I’ll go. Though if I find out anything bad about betrayal, I won’t tell her everything, but I’ll see and clear things up for myself.”

I chose as a pretext that I supposedly had to go to buy medicine for the horses from the herbalists, and so I went, but I went not simply, but with a cunning design.

Grusha didn’t know, and the servants were under the strictest orders to conceal from her, that the prince, before this occasion with Grusha, had had another love in town: Evgenia Semyonovna, a gentlewoman, an official’s daughter. She was known to the whole town as a great piano player and a very kindly lady, and was also very good-looking, and she had a daughter by my prince, but she gained weight, and people said that was why he left her. However, as he still had considerable capital at that time, he bought a house for this lady and her daughter, and they lived on the income from this house. After bestowing it upon Evgenia Semyonovna, the prince never visited her, but our people, remembering old times, recalled her kindliness, and on each trip to town they would all drop in on her, because they loved her and she was terribly affectionate towards them all and was interested in the prince.

So on coming to town I went straight to her, to this good lady, and said:

“My dear Evgenia Semyonovna, I am going to stay with you.”

She replies:

“Well, of course, I’m very glad. But why aren’t you going to the prince’s place?”

“Ah,” I say, “is he here in town?”

“Yes, he is,” she replies. “It’s already the second week he’s been here, setting up some kind of business.”

“What kind of business?” I ask.

“He wants to lease a fulling mill,” she says.

“Lord,” I say, “what will he think up next?”

“Why,” she says, “is there something wrong with it?”

“Not at all,” I say, “only it surprises me a little.”

She smiles.

“No,” she says, “but here’s something that will really surprise you: the prince has sent me a letter asking me to receive him today, because he wants to have a look at his daughter.”

“And you, my dearest Evgenia Semyonovna,” I say, “are going to let him?”

She shrugs her shoulders and replies:

“Why not? Let him come and look at his daughter”—and with that she sighs and turns thoughtful; she sits with her head lowered, and she’s still so young, fair and full-bodied, and her manners are quite unlike Grusha’s … who knows nothing besides her “ruby-jewel,” while this one’s quite different … I became jealous for her.

“Oh,” I think, “while he’s here looking at his child, his greedy heart may notice you as well! Not much good will come of that for my Grushenka.” And in such reflections I was sitting in Evgenia Semyonovna’s nursery, where she had told the nanny to serve me tea, when I suddenly heard the doorbell, and the maid ran in all joyful and said to the nanny:

“Our dear prince has come!”

I was about to get up and go to the kitchen, but the nanny Tatyana Yakovlevna was a talkative old woman from Moscow: she passionately loved to tell all and on account of that didn’t want to be deprived of a listener, so she said: