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They parted for the night, having agreed to go to town the next day to see the merchant Golushkin, an Old Believer, who was said to be very zealous and promised proselytes. Solomin doubted whether it was worth while going, but agreed to go in the end. MARKELOV'S guests were still asleep when a messenger with a letter came to him from his sister, Madame Sipiagina.
How did it agree with what he had said at Markelov's? He thrust the copybook into the table drawer and went back to bed. But he did not fall asleep until dawn, when the larks had already begun to twitter and the sky was turning paler.
He leaned against the trunk of a tree and waited. He did not really know what he was feeling and had no desire to know, but it seemed to him more awful, and at the same time easier, than at Markelov's. Above everything he wanted to see her, to speak to her. The knot that suddenly binds two separate existences already had him in its grasp.
Not one of them wished to talk, but Solomin was the only one who sat silent peacefully. Both Nejdanov and Markelov seemed inwardly agitated. After tea they set out for the town. Markelov's old servant, who was sitting on the doorstep, accompanied his former master with his habitual dejected glance.
Asking for two days' leave from Sipiagin, who consented readily, though with a certain amount of severity, Nejdanov set out for Markelov's. Before his departure he managed to see Mariana. She was also not in the least abashed, looked at him calmly and resolutely, and called him "dear" quite naturally.
His bailiff, a small, short-sighted young man without a trace of authority or firmness in his bearing, was walking beside him, and merely kept on repeating, "Just so, sir," to Markelov's great disgust, who had expected more independence from him. Nejdanov went up to Markelov, and on looking into his face was struck by the same expression of spiritual weariness he was himself suffering from.
But who was this familiar figure sitting on the governor's step and looking at him with a dejected, reproachful glance? It was Markelov's old servant. He had evidently come to town for his master, and would not for a moment leave the door of his prison. But why did he look so reproachfully at Paklin? He had not betrayed Markelov!
They did not beat me, they even drank with me drank my health but they crushed my soul more completely than they did Markelov's ribs. I was born out of joint, wanted to set myself right, and have made matters worse. That is what you notice in my face." "Alexai," Mariana said slowly, "it would be very wrong of you not to be frank with me." He clenched his hands.
To do him justice he made no secret of his opinions." "Nejdanov," Paklin ventured, "may have been carried away, but his heart " "Is good," Sipiagin put in; "I know, like Markelov's. They all have good hearts. He has no doubt also been mixed up in this affair... and will be implicated.... I suppose I shall have to intercede for him too!" Paklin clasped his hands to his breast.
He dismissed the men and went into the house to see about a conveyance and lunch. The whole of Markelov's household consisted of a man servant, a cook, a coachman, and a very old man with hairy ears, in a long-skirted linen coat, who had once been his grandfather's valet. This old man was for ever gazing at Markelov with a most woe-begone expression on his face.
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