Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (559 page)

Tatyana Pavlovna glanced at her in genuine indignation.

“A booby like him!  And you tremble before him, you are ridiculous, Sofia, you make me angry, I tell you!”

“Ah, Tatyana Pavlovna, why should you attack him now?  But you are joking perhaps, eh?” my mother added, detecting something like a smile on Tatyana Pavlovna’s face.  Her scoldings could not indeed be always taken seriously.  But she smiled (if she did smile) only at my mother, of course, because she loved her devotedly, and no doubt noticed how happy she was at that moment at my meekness.

“Of course, I can’t help feeling hurt, if you will attack people unprovoked, Tatyana Pavlovna, and just when I’ve come in saying ‘Good evening, mother,’ a thing I’ve never done before,” I thought it necessary to observe at last.

“Only fancy,” she boiled over at once:  “He considers it as something to be proud of.  Am I to go down on my knees to you, pray, because for once in your life you’ve been polite?  and as though it were politeness!  Why do you stare into the corner when you come in?  I know how you tear and fling about before her!  You might have said ‘Good evening’ to me, too, I wrapped you in your swaddling clothes, I am your godmother.”

I need not say I did not deign to answer.  At that moment my sister came in and I made haste to turn to her.

“Liza, I saw Vassin to-day and he inquired after you.  You have met him?”

“Yes, last year in Luga,” she answered quite simply, sitting down beside me and looking at me affectionately.  I don’t know why, but I had fancied she would flush when I spoke of Vassin.  My sister was a blonde; very fair with flaxen hair, quite unlike both her parents.  But her eyes and the oval of her face were like our mother’s.  Her nose was very straight, small, and regular; there were tiny freckles in her face, however, of which there was no sign in my mother’s.  There was very little resemblance to Versilov, nothing but the slenderness of figure, perhaps, her tallness and something charming in her carriage.  There was not the slightest likeness between us — we were the opposite poles.

“I knew his honour for three months,” Liza added.

“Is it Vassin you call ‘his honour,’ Liza?  You should call him by his name.  Excuse my correcting you, sister, but it grieves me that they seem to have neglected your education.”

“But it’s shameful of you to remark upon it before your mother,” cried Tatyana Pavlovna, firing up; “and you are talking nonsense, it has not been neglected at all.”

“I am not saying anything about my mother,” I said sharply, defending myself.  “Do you know, mother, that when I look at Liza it’s as though it were you over again; you have given her the same charm of goodness, which you must have had yourself, and you have it to this day and always will have it. . . .  I was only talking of the surface polish, of the silly rules of etiquette, which are necessary, however.  I am only indignant at the thought that when Versilov has heard you call Vassin ‘his honour’ he has not troubled to correct you at all — his disdain and his indifference to us are so complete.  That’s what makes me furious.”

“He is a perfect bear himself, and he is giving us lessons in good manners!  Don’t you dare talk of Versilov before your mother, sir, or before me either, I won’t stand it!” Tatyana Pavlovna flashed out.

“I got my salary to-day, mother, fifty roubles; take it, please; here!”

I went up to her and gave her the money; she was in a tremor of anxiety at once.

“Oh, I don’t know about taking it,” she brought out, as though afraid to touch the money.  I did not understand.

“For goodness’ sake, mother, if you both think of me as one of the family, as a son and a brother. . . .”

“Oh, I’ve been to blame, Arkady: I ought to have confessed something to you, but I am afraid of you. . . .”

She said this with a timid and deprecating smile; again I did not understand and interrupted.

“By the way, did you know, mother, that Andrey Petrovitch’s case against the Sokolskys is being decided to-day?”

“Ah! I knew,” she cried, clasping her hands before her (her favourite gesture) in alarm.

“To-day?” cried Tatyana Pavlovna startled, “but it’s impossible, he would have told us.  Did he tell you?” she turned to my mother.

“Oh! no . . . that it was to-day . . . he didn’t.  But I have been fearing it all the week.  I would have prayed for him to lose it even, only to have it over and off one’s mind, and to have things as they used to be again.”

“What! hasn’t he even told you, mother?” I exclaimed.  “What a man!  There’s an example of the indifference and contempt I spoke of just now.”

“It’s being decided, how is it being decided?  And who told you?” cried Tatyana Pavlovna, pouncing upon me.  “Speak, do.”

“Why, here he is himself!  Perhaps he will tell you,” I announced, catching the sound of his step in the passage and hastily sitting down again beside Liza.

“Brother, for God’s sake, spare mother, and be patient with Andrey Petrovitch . . ,” she whispered to me.

“I will, I will,” with that I turned to her and pressed her hand.

Liza looked at me very mistrustfully, and she was right.

2

He came in very much pleased with himself, so pleased that he did not feel it necessary to conceal his state of mind.  And, indeed, he had become accustomed of late to displaying himself before us without the slightest ceremony, not only in his bad points but even where he was ridiculous, a thing which most people are afraid to do; at the same time, he fully recognized that we should understand to the smallest detail.  In the course of the last year, so Tatyana Pavlovna observed, he had become slovenly in his dress: his clothes though old were always well cut and free from foppishness.  It is true that he was prepared to put on clean linen only on every alternate day, instead of every day, which was a real distress to my mother; it was regarded by them as a sacrifice, and the whole group of devoted women looked upon it as an act of heroism.  He always wore soft wide-brimmed black hats.  When he took off his hat his very thick but silvery locks stood up in a shock on his head; I liked looking at his hair when he took off his hat.

“Good evening; still disputing; and is he actually one of the party?  I heard his voice from outside in the passage; he has been attacking me I suppose?”

It was one of the signs of his being in a good humour for him to be witty at my expense; I did not answer, of course.  Lukerya came in with a regular sackful of parcels and put them on the table.

“Victory!  Tatyana Pavlovna! the case is won, and the Sokolskys certainly won’t venture to appeal.  I’ve won the day!  I was able to borrow a thousand roubles at once.  Sonia, put down your work, don’t try your eyes.  Back from work, Liza?”

“Yes, father,” answered Liza, looking at him affectionately; she used to call him father; nothing would have induced me to submit to doing the same.

“Tired?”

“Yes.”

“Give up your work, don’t go to-morrow, and drop it altogether.”

“Father, that will be worse for me.”

“I beg you will . . . I greatly dislike to see women working, Tatyana Pavlovna.”

“How can they get on without work? a woman’s not to work?”

“I know, I know; that’s excellent and very true, and I agree with it beforehand, but — I mean needlework particularly.  Only imagine, I believe that’s one of the morbid anomalous impressions of my childhood.  In my dim memories of the time when I was five or six years old I remember more often than anything — with loathing, of course — a solemn council of wise women, stern and forbidding, sitting at a round table with scissors, material, patterns, and a fashion-plate.  They thought they knew all about it, and shook their heads slowly and majestically, measuring, calculating, and preparing to cut out.  All those kind people who were so fond of me had suddenly become unapproachable, and if I began to play I was carried out of the room at once.  Even my poor nurse, who held me by the hand and took no notice of my shouting and pulling at her, was listening and gazing enraptured, as though at a kind of paradise.  The sternness of those sensible faces and the solemnity with which they faced the task of cutting out is for some reason distressing for me to picture even now.  Tatyana Pavlovna, you are awfully fond of cutting out.  Although it may be aristocratic, yet I do prefer a woman who does not work at all.  Don’t take that as meant for you, Sonia. . . . How could you, indeed!  Woman is an immense power without working.  You know that, though, Sonia.  What’s your opinion, Arkady Makarovitch?  No doubt you disagree?”

“No, not at all,” I answered— “that’s a particularly good saying that woman is an immense power, though I don’t understand why you say that about work.  And she can’t help working if she has no money — as you know yourself.”

“Well, that’s enough,” and he turned to my mother, who positively beamed all over (when he addressed me she was all of a tremor); “at least, to begin with, I beg you not to let me see you doing needlework for me.  No doubt, Arkady, as a young man of the period you are something of a socialist; well, would you believe it, my dear fellow, none are so fond of idleness as the toiling masses.”

“Rest perhaps, not idleness.”

“No, idleness, doing nothing; that’s their ideal!  I knew a man who was for ever at work, though he was not one of the common people, he was rather intellectual and capable of generalizing.  Every day of his life, perhaps, he brooded with blissful emotion on visions of utter idleness, raising the ideal to infinity, so to speak, to unlimited independence, to everlasting freedom, dreaming, and idle contemplation.  So it went on till he broke down altogether from overwork.  There was no mending him, he died in a hospital.  I am sometimes seriously disposed to believe that the delights of labour have been invented by the idle, from virtuous motives, of course.  It is one of the ‘Geneva ideas’ of the end of last century.  Tatyana Pavlovna, I cut an advertisement out of the newspaper the day before yesterday, here it is”; he took a scrap of paper out of his waist-coat pocket.  “It is one of those everlasting students, proficient in classics and mathematics and prepared to travel, to sleep in a garret or anywhere.  Here, listen:  ‘A teacher (lady) prepares for all the scholastic establishments (do you hear, for all) and gives lessons in arithmetic!’  Prepares for all the scholastic establishments — in arithmetic, therefore, may we assume?  No, arithmetic is something apart for her.  It is a case of simple hunger, the last extremity of want.  It is just the ineptitude of it that’s so touching: it’s evident that the lady has never prepared anyone for any school, and it is doubtful whether she is fit to teach anything.  Yet at her last gasp she wastes her one remaining rouble and prints in the paper that she prepares for all the scholastic establishments, and what’s more, gives lessons in arithmetic.  Per tutto mundo e in altri siti.”

“Oh, Andrey Petrovitch, she ought to be helped!  Where does she live?” cried Tatyana Pavlovna.

“Oh, there are lots of them!”  He put the advertisement in his pocket.  “That bag’s full of treats for you, Liza, and you, Tatyana Pavlovna; Sonia and I don’t care for sweet things.  And perhaps for you, young man.  I bought the things myself at Eliseyev’s and at Ballé’s.  Too long we’ve gone hungry, as Lukerya said.  (NB — None of us had ever gone hungry.)  Here are grapes, sweets, duchesses and strawberry tarts; I’ve even brought some excellent liqueur; nuts, too.  It’s curious that to this day I’m fond of nuts as I have been from a child, Tatyana Pavlovna, and of the commonest nuts, do you know.  Liza takes after me; she is fond of cracking nuts like a squirrel.  But there’s nothing more charming, Tatyana Pavlovna, than sometimes when recalling one’s childhood to imagine oneself in a wood, in a copse, gathering nuts. . . .  The days are almost autumnal, but bright; at times it’s so fresh, one hides in the bushes, one wanders in the wood, there’s a scent of leaves. . . . I seem to see something sympathetic in your face, Arkady Makarovitch?”

“The early years of my childhood, too, were spent in the country.”

“But I thought you were brought up in Moscow, if I am not mistaken.”

“He was living in Moscow at the Andronikovs’ when you went there; but till then he used to live in the country with your aunt, Varvara Stepanovna,” Tatyana Pavlovna put in.

“Sonia, here’s some money, put it away.  I promise you, in a few days, five thousand.”

“So there’s no hope then for the Sokolskys?” asked Tatyana Pavlovna.

“Absolutely none, Tatyana Pavlovna.”

“I have always sympathized with you and all of yours, Andrey Petrovitch, and I have always been a friend of the family, but though the Sokolskys are strangers, yet, upon my word, I am sorry for them.  Don’t be angry, Andrey Petrovitch.”

“I have no intention of going shares with them, Tatyana Pavlovna!”

“You know my idea, of course, Andrey Petrovitch; they would have settled the case out of court, if at the very beginning you had offered to go halves with them; now, of course, it is too late.  Not that I venture to criticize. . . .  I say so because I don’t think the deceased would have left them out of his will altogether.”

“Not only he wouldn’t have left them out, he’d have certainly left them everything, and would have left none out but me, if he’d known how to do things and to write a will properly; but as it is, the law’s on my side, and it’s settled.  I can’t go shares, and I don’t want to, Tatyana Pavlovna, and that is the end of the matter.”

He spoke with real exasperation, a thing he rarely allowed himself to do.  Tatyana Pavlovna subsided.  My mother looked down mournfully.  Versilov knew that she shared Tatyana Pavlovna’s views.

“He has not forgotten that slap in the face at Ems,” I thought to myself.  The document given me by Kraft and at that moment in my pocket would have a poor chance if it had fallen into his hands.  I suddenly felt that the whole responsibility was still weighing upon me, and this idea, together with all the rest, had, of course, an irritating effect upon me.

“Arkady, I should like you to be better dressed, my dear fellow; your suit is all right, but for future contingencies I might recommend you to an excellent Frenchman, most conscientious and possessed of taste.”