It was eleven o'clock on the morning of the 30th. De Windt, grown desperate under the weight of his thoughts, flung his yellow novel into the empty stove, and had just lounged back to the sofa when—the door opened, quietly, and Ivan came in: Ivan, rather pale, but very dignified: his head held high.
Vladimir turned on him, opened his lips, closed them again and gazed, silently, at his comrade. Ivan returned the look for a few seconds,—stared—read—possibly understood. At all events his face suddenly quivered, and then—he began to laugh! He passed from one paroxysm to another, till de Windt, in a blind rage, took him by the shoulders and shook him, violently, to silence. Then, under a swift reaction, he stood before the prodigal drooping like a school-boy under his master's frown. But Ivan felt, apparently, no resentment. Presently he went to the side-table, poured himself out three fingers of cognac, drank it, and then, as he began to remove his dripping outer garments, asked, rather briskly than otherwise:
"Well, Vladimir—out with it! What are they going to do about me?"
And Vladimir, half-irritated, but driven, in any case, to speech, told, briefly and baldly, all he had to tell. In ten minutes, Ivan stood looking down upon the hopeless, crumbling ruin of his life.
In these sudden crises, there are few men philosophic enough, or wise enough, to look, broadly, back, inward, and ahead, in a calm analysis of cause, effect and reason. At this time, Ivan certainly knew—had known, for months if not for years, that he was leading a life for which nature had not fitted him: neglecting a career bestowed upon him by a higher hand than often interferes in the destinies of man. There had been many times when, his whole soul yearning over the work to which he could devote so little of his best self, he had cried aloud to Heaven to change his lot—to banish these half-gods that kept his true lord at bay. And now these inarticulate prayers were fully answered:—and Ivan's soul was writhing in rebellion at the injustice of that which had been put upon him: the malicious revenge of a scoundrelly officer who, for private reasons, had seen fit to punish him for an offence which was daily winked at by the entire army! Indeed, Brodsky's action, which was certainly justified by the letter but never by the spirit of the military code, had caused the military world a quiver of apprehension. They looked on, aghast, at proceedings which they were powerless to stop. But it is safe to say that there was not a man in the court-martial who did not blush as he admitted the justice of the sentence finally passed upon the luckless prisoner. The proceedings lasted, altogether, a fortnight; during which time all of Russia and a great part of Europe rang with the scandal.—Ivan did not even attempt a defence; though Irina, coming to him on the first evening, went down on her knees in her plea to be allowed to save him. Even Ivan's lawyer foresaw the reception of her unsupported statement as against the testimony of the hotel clerks, boys and waiters brought from Baden by Brodsky himself. In the end, Mademoiselle Petrovna was not permitted to appear at all in court. Ivan's money kept her safely out of Russia, after the second day of the trial. And, while the girl mourned for him, she knew well that her own fortune in the half-world was made.—Such advertising as this!—Who could compete with her? Had not the papers in Europe published, twenty times, the picture of the beautiful heroine of this unsavory romance?
In the mean time, in Moscow, the chief of the Third Section was aging a year a day as he raved, helpless and mad with fury, at the folly of his son and the treacherous villany of Brodsky. Privately, Russian officialdom was shaken to its depths. But daily the masks were adjusted, and the farce of virtue, within and without that court, went on; while the people, even to the peasants, laughed at the mockery of it all. Some sort of compensation, later on, Michael Gregoriev did obtain. In the autumn of that year Fóma Vassilyitch Brodsky went to Siberia, as the result of an examination of certain peculations, the charge of which, together with overwhelming proof, was brought by Prince Gregoriev of Moscow.
But that was a sorry triumph: the victor a broken man. For Michael Gregoriev had lost his son; and, with him, all those great ambitions for which he had toiled and cheated and blackmailed throughout a lifetime.
Finally, on the morning of May 17th, Ivan Gregoriev, degraded from his rank, driven in disgrace from the army, sat alone in his bedroom conning over the words of the telegram clutched in his listless hand: words whereby he understood that he was no longer the son of his father, but sat, a penniless outcast, alone in a pitiless, jeering world.