“One might think it was his father in person,” said Tatiana Markovna to herself. “How many candles he burns with his novels and plays, as many as four in a night!”
Again Raisky received a few lines from Vera. She wrote that she was longing to see him again, and that she wanted to ask for his services. She added the following postscript:—
“Dear Friend and Cousin, you taught me to love and to suffer, and poured the strength of your love into my soul. This it is that gives me courage to ask you to do a good deed. There is here an unhappy man who has been driven from his home and lies under the suspicion of the Government. He has no place to lay his head, and everyone, either from indifference or fear, avoids him. But you are kind and generous, and cannot be indifferent; still less will you hesitate to do a deed of pure charity. The wretched man has not a kopek, has no clothes, and autumn is coming on.
“If your heart tells you, as I don’t doubt it will, what to do, address the wife of the acolyte, Sekleteia Burdalakov, but arrange it so that neither Grandmother, nor anyone at home, knows anything of it. A sum of three hundred roubles will be sufficient, I think, to provide for him for a whole year, perhaps two hundred and fifty would suffice. Will you put in a cloak and a warm vest (in my firm belief in your kind heart and your love to me, I enclose the measures taken by the village tailor) to protect him from the cold.
“I don’t like to ask you for a rug for him; that would be to make an unfair use of kindness. In the winter the poor exile will probably leave the place, and will bless you, and to some degree me as well. I would not have troubled you, but you know that my Grandmother has all my money, which is therefore inaccessible.”
“What on earth is the meaning of this postscript?” cried Raisky. “The whole note is certainly not from her hand; she could not have written like this.”
He threw himself on the divan in a fit of nervous laughter. He was in Tatiana Markovna’s sitting-room, with Vikentev and Marfinka. At first the lovers laughed, but stopped when they saw the violent character of his mirth. Tatiana Markovna, who came in at this moment, offered him some drops of cordial in a teaspoon.
“No, Grandmother,” he cried, still laughing violently. “Don’t give me drops, but three hundred roubles.”
“What do you want the money for?” said Tatiana Markovna hesitating. “Is it for Markushka again. You had much better ask him to return the eighty roubles he has had.”
He entered into the spirit of the bargain, and eventually had to content himself with two hundred and fifty roubles, which he dispatched next day to the address given. He also ordered the cloak and vest, and bought a warm rug, to be sent in a few days.