“Ah, go back where you came from! I’ll order them to throw you out right now, and they will!” Grushenka cried in a rage. “I was a fool, a fool to torment myself for five years! And I didn’t torment myself because of him at all, I tormented myself out of spite! And this isn’t him at all! Was he like that? This one’s more like his father! Where did you get such a wig? He was a falcon, and this one is a drake. He laughed and sang songs to me ... And I, I have been shedding tears for five years, cursed fool that I am, mean, shameless!”
She fell onto her armchair and covered her face with her hands. At that moment the chorus of Mokroye girls, finally assembled in the next room to the left, suddenly burst into a rollicking dance song.
“This is Sodom!” Pan Vrublevsky suddenly bellowed. “Innkeeper, throw these shameless people out!”
The innkeeper, who had been peeking curiously through the door for a long time already, hearing shouts and seeing that his guests were quarreling, came into the room at once.
“What are you yelling about? Shut your trap!” he addressed Vrublevsky with a sort of discourtesy that was even impossible to explain.
“Swine!” roared Pan Vrublevsky.
“Swine, am I? And what sort of cards have you just been playing with? I gave you a deck and you hid it! You were playing with marked cards! I can pack you off to Siberia for marked cards, do you know that, it’s the same as bad money ...” And going over to the sofa, he put his fingers between the cushion and the back and pulled out an unopened deck of cards.
“Here’s my deck, unopened!” He held it up and showed it all around. “From there I saw him shove my deck behind the cushion and put his own in place of it—you’re not a
“And I saw the other
“Ah, what shame, what shame!” exclaimed Grushenka, clasping her hands and genuinely blushing with shame. “Lord, what he’s come to!”
“And I thought so, too!” shouted Mitya. But he had barely spoken when Pan Vrublevsky, embarrassed and infuriated, turned to Grushenka and, shaking his fist at her, shouted:
“Public slut!” But he had barely exclaimed it when Mitya flew at him, seized him with both hands, lifted him up in the air, and in an instant carried him out of the room into the bedroom on the right, the one where he had just taken the two pans.
“I left him there on the floor!” he announced, returning at once, breathless with excitement. “He’s struggling, the scum, but there’s no chance he’ll get out . . .!”He closed one half of the door, and holding the other wide open, he called out to the little
“Excellency, would you care to follow him? If you please!”
“Mitri Fyodorovich, my dear,” exclaimed Trifon Borisich, “take back the money you lost to them! It’s the same as if they’d stolen it from you.”
“I don’t want my fifty roubles back,” Kalganov suddenly answered.
“And I don’t want my two hundred!” exclaimed Mitya. “Not for anything will I take it back, let him keep it as a consolation.”
“Bravo, Mitya! Well done!” cried Grushenka, and a terribly malicious note rang in her exclamation. The little
“Pani, jesli chcesz isc za mna, idzmy; jesli nie—bywaj zdrowa (Pani, if you want to come with me, come; if not—farewell).’”
And pompously, puffing with ambition and indignation, he went through the door. The man had character: after all that had taken place, he did not lose hope that the
“Lock it with a key,” said Kalganov. But the lock clicked from the other side; they had locked themselves in.
“Bravo!” Grushenka cried again, mercilessly and maliciously. “Bravo! And good riddance!”
Chapter 8:
