‘Fine towns there, indeed! There is war going on there now; wherever you go, I suppose they are firing cannons off all the while... Are you meaning to set off soon?’
‘Soon... if only papa. He means to appeal to the authorities; he threatens to separate us.’
Anna Vassilyevna turned her eyes heavenwards.
‘No, Lenotchka, he will not do that. I would not myself have consented to this marriage. I would have died first; but what’s done can’t be undone, and I will not let my daughter be disgraced.’
So passed a few days. At last Anna Vassilyevna plucked up her courage, and one evening she shut herself up alone with her husband in her room. The whole house was hushed to catch every sound. At first nothing was to be heard; then Nikolai Artemyevitch’s voice began to tune up, then a quarrel broke out, shouts were raised, even groans were discerned.... Already Shubin was plotting with the maids and Zoya to rush in to the rescue; but the uproar in the bedroom began by degrees to grow less, passed into quiet talk, and ceased. Only from time to time a faint sob was to be heard, and then those, too, were still. There was the jingling of keys, the creak of a bureau being unfastened.... The door was opened, and Nikolai Artemyevitch appeared. He looked surlily at every one who met him, and went out to the club; while Anna Vassilyevna sent for Elena, embraced her warmly, and, with bitter tears flowing down her cheeks, she said:
‘Everything is settled, he will not make a scandal, and there is nothing now to hinder you from going—from abandoning us.’
‘You will let Dmitri come to thank you?’ Elena begged her mother, as soon as the latter had been restored a little.
‘Wait a little, my darling, I cannot bear yet to see the man who has come between us. We shall have time before you go.’
‘Before we go,’ repeated Elena mournfully.
Nikolai Artemyevitch had consented ‘not to make a scandal,’ but Anna Vassilyevna did not tell her daughter what a price he had put on his consent. She did not tell her that she had promised to pay all his debts, and had given him a thousand roubles down on the spot. Moreover, he had declared decisively to Anna Vassilyevna that he had no wish to meet Insarov, whom he persisted in calling ‘the Montenegrin vagrant,’ and when he got to the club, he began, quite without occasion, talking of Elena’s marriage, to his partner at cards, a retired general of engineers. ‘You have heard,’ he observed with a show of carelessness, ‘my daughter, through the higher education, has gone and married a student.’ The general looked at him through his spectacles, muttered, ‘H’m!’ and asked him what stakes would he play for.