“What pathetic day has come on us? What is the matter with thee?”
“I merely beg, papa, by all—”
“And I beg thee also to leave me. Thou hast set me aside from the land management. I yielded; for, during the couple of years that remain to me in life, I have no wish to be quarrelling with my own child. But leave me even this corner in the house,—even this one room,—and permit me to transact such affairs as it is possible to transact here.”
“Dear papa, I only beg—”
“That I should move out into a cottage, which, for the fourth time, thou art choosing for me?”
Evidently the old man, in speaking of the “pathetic day,” wished merely that no one should divide this monopoly with him. He rose now, in his Persian dressing-gown, like King Lear, and grasped at the arm of his chair; thus giving his heartless daughter to understand that, if he had not done this, he should have fallen his whole length on the floor, stricken down by her cruelty. But tears came to her eyes, and a bitter feeling of her own helplessness flowed to her heart. For a while she stood in silence, struggling with sorrow and a wish to cry; then she said quietly, “I beg pardon of papa,” and went out of the room.
A quarter of an hour later, Pan Stanislav entered, at the request of Plavitski, but ill-humored, irritated through striving to master himself.
Plavitski, after he had greeted his visitor, seated him at his side in an armchair prepared previously, and, putting his palm on the young man’s knee, said,—
“Stas, but thou wilt not burn this house? Thou wilt not kill me, who opened my arms to thee as a relative; thou wilt not make my child an orphan?”
“No,” answered Pan Stanislav; “I will not burn the house, I will not cut uncle’s throat, and I will not make any child an orphan. I beg uncle not to talk in this manner, for it leads to nothing, and to me it is unendurable.”