“Don't shout, Screwy, the people are staring at us,” I said, getting round Pavel Ivanovich. “Let us change this conversation. It's old women's chatter. I'll explain in a few words, and that must be enough for you. I went to the Kalinin's house because I was dull and also because Nadenka interested me. She's a very interesting girl.… Perhaps I might even have married her. But, finding out that you had preceded me as a candidate for her heart, that you were not indifferent to her, I decided to disappear.… It would have been cruel on my part to stand in the way of such a good fellow as yourself.…”
“Thanks for the favour! I never asked you for this gracious gift, and, as far as I can judge by the expression of your face, you are now not speaking the truth; you are talking nonsense not reflecting on what you say.… And besides, the fact of my being a good fellow did not hinder you on one of your last meetings with Nadenka to make her some proposals in the summer-house, which would have brought no good to the excellent young fellow if he had married her.”
“O-ho! Screwy, where did you find out about this proposal? It seems that your affairs are not going on badly, if such secrets are confided to you!… However, you've grown white with rage and almost look as if you were going to strike me.… And just now we agreed to be objective! Screwy, what a funny fellow you are! Well, we've had about enough of all this nonsense.… Let's go to the post office.…”
X
We went to the post office, which looked out gaily with its three little windows on to the market place. Through the grey paling gleamed the many coloured flower garden of our postmaster, Maxim Fedorovich, who was known in the whole district as a great connoisseur of all that concerned gardening and the art of laying out beds, borders, lawns, etc.
We found Maxim Fedorovich very pleasantly occupied. Smiling, and red with pleasure, he was seated at his green table, turning over hundred-rouble notes as if they were a book. Evidently even the sight of another man's money had a pleasing effect on his frame of mind.
“How do you do, Maxim Fedorovich?” I said to him. “Where have you got such a pile of money?”
“It's to be sent to St. Petersburg,” the postmaster replied, smiling sweetly, and he pointed his chin at the corner of the room where a dark figure was sitting on the only chair in the post office.
This dark figure rose when he saw me and came towards us. I recognized my new acquaintance, my new enemy, whom I had so grievously insulted when I had got drunk at the Count's.
“My best greetings!” he said.