"Why should you refuse?" said Peredonov. "Keep on going as if nothing had happened."
"Let him at least get something out of this—he'll have less cause for envy," thought Peredonov.
Peredonov felt terribly depressed. Volodin was not yet settled. "If I don't keep a look-out on him he may begin plotting with Varvara. Besides, it's possible that Adamenko will have a grudge against me for trying to marry her to Volodin. She has relatives in Peterburg; she might write to them and hurt my chances."
The weather was unpleasant. The sky was cloudy; the crows flew about cawing. They cawed above Peredonov's head, as if they taunted him and foreboded new and worse disappointments. Peredonov wrapped his scarf round his neck and thought that in such weather it was easy to catch cold.
"What sort of flowers are those, Pavloushka?" he asked as he pointed out to Volodin some small yellow flowers by a garden fence.
"That's liutiki,[1] Ardasha," said Volodin sadly. Peredonov recalled that many such flowers grew in his own garden, and what a terrible name they had! Perhaps they were poisonous. One day Varvara would take a handful of them and boil them instead of tea, and would poison him—then when the inspector's certificate arrived, she would poison him and make Volodin take his place. Perhaps they had already agreed upon it. It was not for nothing that he knew the name of this flower. In the meantime Volodin was saying:
"Let God be her judge! Why did she humiliate me? She's waiting for an aristocrat and it doesn't occur to her that there are all sorts of aristocrats—she might be miserable with one of them; but a simple, good man might make her happy. And now I'll go to church and put a candle for her health and pray: May God give her a drunken husband, who will beat her, who will squander her money and leave her penniless in the world. Then she will remember me, but it will be too late. She will dry her tears with her hand and say, 'What a fool I was to reject Pavel Vassilyevitch. There's no one to direct me now. He was a good man!'"
Touched by his own words, a few tears came into Volodin's eyes and he wiped them from his sheepish, bulging eyes with his hands.
"You'd better break some of her windows one night," advised Peredonov.
"Well, God be with her," said Volodin sadly. "I might be caught. No, and what a miserable little boy that is! O Lord, what have I done to him that he should think of harming me? Haven't I tried hard for him, and look what mischief he's done me! What do you think of such an infant; what will become of him? Tell me."