“Stop that effusion!” I cried, trying to stop his medical chatter. “Can't you understand how tiresome all this stuff is?”
“No matter that it's tiresome.… Listen, and punish yourself.… Perhaps another time you will be more careful. It may teach you not to do such stupidities. If you don't arrange matters with this scabby Osipov, it may cost you your position! The priest of Themis to be tried for thrashing a man!… What a scandal!”
Pavel Ivanovich is the only man whose judgments I listen to with a light heart, without frowning, whom I allow to gaze inquiringly into my eyes and to thrust his investigating hand into the depths of my soul.… We two are friends in the very best sense of the word; we respect each other, although we have between us accounts of the most unpleasant, the most delicate nature.… Like a black cat, a woman had passed between us. This eternal casus belli had been the cause of reckonings between us, but did not make us quarrel, and we continued to be at peace. “Screw” is a very nice fellow. I like his simple and far from plastic face, with its large nose, screwed-up eyes and thin, reddish beard. I like his tall, thin, narrow-shouldered figure, on which his frock-coat and paletot hung as on a clothes-horse.
His badly made trousers formed ugly creases at the knees, and his boots were terribly trodden down at the heels; his white tie was always in the wrong place. But do not think that he was slovenly.… You had but to look once at his kind, concentrated face to understand that he had no time to trouble about his own appearance; besides, he did not know how to.… He was young, honest, not vain, and loved his medicine, and he was always moving about—this in itself is sufficient to explain to his advantage all the defects of his inelegant toilet. He, like an artist, did not know the value of money, and imperturbably sacrificed his own comfort and the blessings of life to one of his passions, and thus he gave the impression of being a man without means, who could scarcely make both ends meet.… He neither smoked nor drank, he spent no money on women, but nevertheless the two thousand roubles he earned by his appointment at the hospital and by private practice passed through his hands as quickly as my money does when I am out on the spree. Two passions drained him: the passion of lending money, and the passion of ordering things he saw advertised in the newspapers.… He lent money to whoever asked for it, without any demur not uttering a single word about when it was to be returned. It was not possible either by hook or by crook to eradicate in him his heedless trust in people's conscientiousness, and this confidence was even more apparent in his constantly ordering things that were lauded in newspaper advertisements.… He wrote for everything, the necessary and the unnecessary. He wrote for books, telescopes, humorous magazines, dinner services “composed of 100 articles,” chronometers.… And it was not surprising that the patients who came to Pavel Ivanovich mistook his room for an arsenal or for a museum. He had always been cheated, but his trust was as strong and unshakable as ever. He was a capital fellow, and we shall meet him more than once on the pages of this novel.
“Good gracious! What a time I have been sitting here!” he exclaimed suddenly, looking at the cheap watch with one lid he had ordered from Moscow, and which was “guaranteed for five years,” but had already been repaired twice. “I must be off, friend! Good-bye! And mark my words, these sprees of the Count's will lead to no good! To say nothing about your health.… Oh, by-the-by! Shall you go to Tenevo to-morrow?”
“What's up there to-morrow?”
“The fête of the Church! Everybody will be there, so come too! You must positively come! I have promised that you will come. Don't make me a liar!”
It was not necessary to ask to whom he had given his word. We understood each other. The doctor then took leave, put on his well-worn overcoat, and went away.
I remained alone.… In order to drown the unpleasant thoughts that began to swarm in my head, I went to my writing-table and trying not to think nor to call myself to account, I began to open my post. The first envelope that caught my eye contained the following letter:
“My Darling Serezha,
“Forgive me for troubling you, but I am so surprised that I don't know to whom to apply.… It is shameful! Of course, now it will be impossible to get it back, and I'm not sorry, but judge for yourself: if thieves are to enjoy indulgence, a respectable woman cannot feel safe anywhere. After you left I awoke on the divan and found many of my things were missing. Somebody had stolen my bracelet, my gold studs, ten pearls out of my necklace, and had taken about a hundred roubles out of my purse. I wanted to complain to the Count, but he was asleep, so I went away without doing so. This is very wrong! The Count's house—and they steal as in a tavern! Tell the Count. I send you much love and kisses.
“Your loving,
“Tina.”