The possessed or, The devils
I've always told them so," he thought complacently, pouring out the rest
of the vodka; though there was less than a glass left, it warmed and
revived him, and even went a little to his head.
_"Je suis malade tout à fait, mais ce n'est pas trop mauvais d'être
malade."_
"Would you care to purchase?" a gentle feminine voice asked close by
him.
He raised his eyes and to his surprise saw a lady--_une dame et elle en
avait l'air,_ somewhat over thirty, very modest in appearance, dressed not
like a peasant, in a dark gown with a grey shawl on her shoulders.
There was something very kindly in her face which attracted Stepan
Trofimovitch immediately. She had only just come back to the cottage,
where her things had been left on a bench close by the place where
Stepan Trofimovitch had seated himself. Among them was a portfolio,
at which he remembered he had looked with curiosity on going in, and a
pack, not very large, of American leather. From this pack she took out
two nicely bound books with a cross engraved on the cover, and offered
them to Stepan Trofimovitch.
"_Et... mais je crois que c'est l'Evangile..._ with the greatest
pleasure.... Ah, now I understand.... _Vous êtes ce qu'on appelle_ a
gospel-woman; I've read more than once.... Half a rouble?"
"Thirty-five kopecks," answered the gospel-woman. "With the greatest
pleasure. _Je n'ai rien contre l'Evangile,_ and I've been wanting to
re-read it for a long time...."
The idea occurred to him at the moment that he had not read the gospel
for thirty years at least, and at most had recalled some passages of it,
seven years before, when reading Renan's "Vie de Jésus." As he had no
small change he pulled out his four ten-rouble notes--all that he
had. The woman of the house undertook to get change, and only then
he noticed, looking round, that a good many people had come into the
cottage, and that they had all been watching him for some time past, and
seemed to be talking about him. They were talking too of the fire in the
town, especially the owner of the cart who had only just returned from
the town with the cow. They talked of arson, of the Shpigulin men.
"He said nothing to me about the fire when he brought me along, although
he talked of everything," struck Stepan Trofimovitch for some reason.
"Master, Stepan Trofimovitch, sir, is it you I see? Well, I never should
have thought it!... Don't you know me?" exclaimed a middle-aged man who
looked like an old-fashioned house-serf, wearing no beard and dressed
in an overcoat with a wide turn-down collar. Stepan Trofimovitch was
alarmed at hearing his own name.
"Excuse me," he muttered, "I don't quite remember you."
"You don't remember me. I am Anisim, Anisim Ivanov. I used to be in the
service of the late Mr. Gaganov, and many's the time I've seen you, sir,
with Varvara Petrovna at the late Avdotya Sergyevna's. I used to go to
you with books from her, and twice I brought you Petersburg sweets from
her...."
"Why, yes, I remember you, Anisim," said Stepan Trofimovitch, smiling.
"Do you live here?"
"I live near Spasov, close to the V---- Monastery, in the service
of Marta Sergyevna, Avdotya Sergyevna's sister. Perhaps your honour
remembers her; she broke her leg falling out of her carriage on her
way to a ball. Now her honour lives near the monastery, and I am in her
service. And now as your honour sees, I am on my way to the town to see
my kinsfolk."
"Quite so, quite so."
"I felt so pleased when I saw you, you used to be so kind to me,"
Anisim smiled delightedly. "But where are you travelling to, sir, all by
yourself as it seems.... You've never been a journey alone, I fancy?"
Stepan Trofimovitch looked at him in alarm.
"You are going, maybe, to our parts, to Spasov?"
"Yes, I am going to Spasov. _Il me semble que tout le monde va à
Spassof._"
"You don't say it's to Fyodor Matveyevitch's? They will be pleased to
see you. He had such a respect for you in old days; he often speaks of
you now."
"Yes, yes, to Fyodor Matveyevitch's."
"To be sure, to be sure. The peasants here are wondering; they make out
they met you, sir, walking on the high road. They are a foolish lot."
"I... I... Yes, you know, Anisim, I made a wager, you know, like an
Englishman, that I would go on foot and I..."
The perspiration came out on his forehead.
"To be sure, to be sure." Anisim listened with merciless curiosity. But
Stepan Trofimovitch could bear it no longer. He was so disconcerted that
he was on the point of getting up and going out of the cottage. But the
samovar was brought in, and at the same moment the gospel-woman, who
had been out of the room, returned. With the air of a man clutching at a
straw he turned to her and offered her tea. Anisim submitted and walked
away.
The peasants certainly had begun to feel perplexed: "What sort of person
is he? He was found walking on the high road, he says he is a teacher,
he is dressed like a foreigner, and has no more sense than a little
child; he answers queerly as though he had run away from someone, and
he's got money!" An idea was beginning to gain ground that information
must be given to the authorities, "especially as things weren't quite
right in the town." But Anisim set all that right in a minute. Going
into the passage he explained to every one who cared to listen that
Stepan Trofimovitch was not exactly a teacher but "a very learned man
and busy with very learned studies, and was a landowner of the district
himself, and had been living for twenty-two years with her excellency,
the general's widow, the stout Madame Stavrogin, and was by way of being
the most important person in her house, and was held in the greatest
respect by every one in the town. He used to lose by fifties and
hundreds in an evening at the club of the nobility, and in rank he was
a councillor, which was equal to a lieutenant-colonel in the army, which
was next door to being a colonel. As for his having money, he had
so much from the stout Madame Stavrogin that there was no reckoning
it"--and so on and so on.
_"Mais c'est une dame et très comme il faut,"_ thought Stepan
Trofimovitch, as he recovered from Anisim's attack, gazing with
agreeable curiosity at his neighbour, the gospel pedlar, who was,
however, drinking the tea from a saucer and nibbling at a piece of
sugar. "_Ce petit morceau de sucre, ce n'est rien...._ There is something
noble and independent about her, and at the same time--gentle. _Le comme
il faut tout pur,_ but rather in a different style."
He soon learned from her that her name was Sofya Matveyevna Ulitin and
she lived at K----, that she had a sister there, a widow; that she was a
widow too, and that her husband, who was a sub-lieutenant risen from the
ranks, had been killed at Sevastopol.
"But you are still so young, _vous n'avez pas trente ans_."
"Thirty-four," said Sofya Matveyevna, smiling.
"What, you understand French?"
"A little. I lived for four years after that in a gentleman's family,
and there I picked it up from the children."
She told him that being left a widow at eighteen she was for some time
in Sevastopol as a nurse, and had afterwards lived in various places,
and now she travelled about selling the gospel.
"_Mais, mon Dieu,_ wasn't it you who had a strange adventure in our town,
a very strange adventure?"
She flushed; it turned out that it had been she.
_"Ces vauriens, ces malheureux,"_ he began in a voice quivering with
indignation; miserable and hateful recollections stirred painfully in
his heart. For a minute he seemed to sink into oblivion.
"Bah, but she's gone away again," he thought, with a start, noticing
that she was not by his side. "She keeps going out and is busy about
something; I notice that she seems upset too.... _Bah, je deviens
egoiste!_"
He raised his eyes and saw Anisim again, but this time in the most
menacing surroundings. The whole cottage was full of peasants, and it
was evidently Anisim who had brought them all in. Among them were the
master of the house, and the peasant with the cow, two other peasants
(they turned out to be cab-drivers), another little man, half drunk,
dressed like a peasant but clean-shaven, who seemed like a townsman
ruined by drink and talked more than any of them. And they were all
discussing him, Stepan Trofimovitch. The peasant with the cow insisted
on his point that to go round by the lake would be thirty-five miles out
of the way, and that he certainly must go by steamer. The half-drunken
man and the man of the house warmly retorted:
"Seeing that, though of course it will be nearer for his honour on
the steamer over the lake; that's true enough, but maybe according to
present arrangements the steamer doesn't go there, brother."
"It does go, it does, it will go for another week," cried Anisim, more
excited than any of them.
"That's true enough, but it doesn't arrive punctually, seeing it's late
in the season, and sometimes it'll stay three days together at Ustyevo."
"It'll be there to-morrow at two o'clock punctually. You'll be at Spasov
punctually by the evening," cried Anisim, eager to do his best for
Stepan Trofimovitch.
_"Mais qu'est-ce qu'il a cet homme,"_ thought Stepan Trofimovitch,
trembling and waiting in terror for what was in store for him.
The cab-drivers, too, came forward and began bargaining with him; they
asked three roubles to Ustyevo. The others shouted that that was not too
much, that that was the fare, and that they had been driving from here
to Ustyevo all the summer for that fare.
"But... it's nice here too.... And I don't want..." Stepan Trofimovitch
mumbled in protest.
"Nice it is, sir, you are right there, it's wonderfully nice at Spasov
now and Fyodor Matveyevitch will be so pleased to see you."
"_Mon Dieu, mes amis,_ all this is such a surprise to me."
At last Sofya Matveyevna came back. But she sat down on the bench
looking dejected and mournful.
"I can't get to Spasov!" she said to the woman of the cottage.
"Why, you are bound to Spasov, too, then?" cried Stepan Trofimovitch,
starting.
It appeared that a lady had the day before told her to wait at Hatovo
and had promised to take her to Spasov, and now this lady had not turned
up after all.
"What am I to do now?" repeated Sofya Matveyevna.
"_Mais, ma chère et nouvelle amie,_ I can take you just as well as the
lady to that village, whatever it is, to which I've hired horses, and
to-morrow--well, to-morrow, we'll go on together to Spasov."
"Why, are you going to Spasov too?"
"_Mais que faire, et je suis enchanté!_ I shall take you with the greatest
pleasure; you see they want to take me, I've engaged them already.
Which of you did I engage?" Stepan Trofimovitch suddenly felt an intense
desire to go to Spasov.
Within a quarter of an hour they were getting into a covered trap, he
very lively and quite satisfied, she with her pack beside him, with a
grateful smile on her face. Anisim helped them in.
"A good journey to you, sir," said he, bustling officiously round the
trap, "it has been a treat to see you."
"Good-bye, good-bye, my friend, good-bye."
"You'll see Fyodor Matveyevitch, sir..."
"Yes, my friend, yes... Fyodor Petrovitch... only good-bye."
II
"You see, my friend... you'll allow me to call myself your friend,
n'est-ce pas?" Stepan Trofimovitch began hurriedly as soon as the trap
started. "You see I... _J'aime le peuple, c'est indispensable, mais il me
semble que je ne m'avais jamais vu de près. Stasie... cela va sans dire
qu'elle est aussi du peuple, mais le vrai peuple,_ that is, the real
ones, who are on the high road, it seems to me they care for nothing,
but where exactly I am going... But let bygones be bygones. I fancy I am
talking at random, but I believe it's from being flustered."