“Don’t insult her, I tell you.”
“Hold your tongue.”
“Don’t dare ...”
“Hold your tongue!”
“Don’t dare to insult my betrothed,”
cried David at the top of his voice, “my future
wife!”
“Betrothed!” repeated my father, with
round eyes. “Betrothed! Wife!
Ho, ho, ho! ...” ("Ha, ha, ha,” my aunt
echoed behind the door.) “Why, how old are you?
He’s been no time in the world, the milk is hardly
dry on his lips, he is a mere babe and he is going
to be married! But I ... but you ...”
“Let me go, let me go,” whispered Raissa,
and she made for the door. She looked more dead
than alive.
“I am not going to ask permission of you,”
David went on shouting, propping himself up with his
fists on the edge of the bed, “but of my own
father who is bound to be here one day soon; he is
a law to me, but you are not; but as for my age, if
Raissa and I are not old enough ... we will bide our
time whatever you may say....”
“Aie, aie, Davidka, don’t forget yourself,”
my father interrupted. “Just look at yourself.
You are not fit to be seen. You have lost all
sense of decency.”
David put his hand to the front of his shirt.
“Whatever you may say ...” he repeated.
“Oh, shut his mouth, Porfiry Petrovitch,”
piped my aunt from behind the door, “shut his
mouth, and as for this hussy, this baggage ... this
...”
But something extraordinary must have cut short my
aunt’s eloquence at that moment: her voice
suddenly broke off and in its place we heard another,
feeble and husky with old age....
“Brother,” this weak voice articulated,
“Christian soul.”
We all turned round.... In the same costume
in which I had just seen him, thin, pitiful and wild
looking, Latkin stood before us like an apparition.
“God!” he pronounced in a sort of childish
way, pointing upwards with a bent and trembling finger
and gazing impotently at my father, “God has
chastised me, but I have come for Va ... for Ra ...
yes, yes, for Raissotchka.... What ... tchoo!
what is there for me? Soon underground—and
what do you call it? One little stick, another
... cross-beam—that’s what I ...
want, but you, brother, diamond-merchant ... mind
... I’m a man, too!”
Raissa crossed the room without a word and taking
his arm buttoned his vest.
“Let us go, Vassilyevna,” he said; “they
are all saints here, don’t come to them and
he lying there in his case”—he pointed
to David—“is a saint, too, but you
and I are sinners, brother. Come. Tchoo....
Forgive an old man with a pepper pot, gentleman!
We have stolen together!” he shouted suddenly;
“stolen together, stolen together!” he
repeated, with evident satisfaction that his tongue
had obeyed him at last.
Everyone in the room was silent. “And where
is ... the ikon here,” he asked, throwing back
his head and turning up his eyes; “we must cleanse
ourselves a bit.”
