The possessed or, The devils
everything wide open. And we'll go into the drawing-room. I've come to
you on a matter of importance. And you sweep up, my good woman, for once
in your life."
"They make such a muck!" Nastasya whined in a voice of plaintive
exasperation.
"Well, you must sweep, sweep it up fifteen times a day! You've a
wretched drawing-room" (when they had gone into the drawing-room). "Shut
the door properly. She'll be listening. You must have it repapered.
Didn't I send a paperhanger to you with patterns? Why didn't you choose
one? Sit down, and listen. Do sit down, I beg you. Where are you off to?
Where are you off to? Where are you off to?"
"I'll be back directly," Stepan Trofimovitch cried from the next room.
"Here I am again."
"Ah,--you've changed your coat." She scanned him mockingly. (He had
flung his coat on over the dressing-jacket.) "Well, certainly that's
more suited to our subject. Do sit down, I entreat you."
She told him everything at once, abruptly and impressively. She hinted at
the eight thousand of which he stood in such terrible need. She told him
in detail of the dowry. Stepan Trofimovitch sat trembling, opening
his eyes wider and wider. He heard it all, but he could not realise it
clearly. He tried to speak, but his voice kept breaking. All he knew
was that everything would be as she said, that to protest and refuse to
agree would be useless, and that he was a married man irrevocably.
_"Mais, ma bonne amie!_...for the third time, and at my age...and to
such a child." He brought out at last, _"Mais, c'est une enfant!"_
"A child who is twenty years old, thank God. Please don't roll your
eyes, I entreat you, you're not on the stage. You're very clever and
learned, but you know nothing at all about life. You will always want a
nurse to look after you. I shall die, and what will become of you?
She will be a good nurse to you; she's a modest girl, strong-willed,
reasonable; besides, I shall be here too, I shan't die directly. She's
fond of home, she's an angel of gentleness. This happy thought came to
me in Switzerland. Do you understand if I tell you myself that she is
an angel of gentleness!" she screamed with sudden fury. "Your house is
dirty, she will bring in order, cleanliness. Everything will shine like
a mirror. Good gracious, do you expect me to go on my knees to you with
such a treasure, to enumerate all the advantages, to court you! Why, you
ought to be on your knees.... Oh, you shallow, shallow, faint-hearted
man!"
"But... I'm an old man!"
"What do your fifty-three years matter! Fifty is the middle of life,
not the end of it. You are a handsome man and you know it yourself. You
know, too, what a respect she has for you. If I die, what will become of
her? But married to you she'll be at peace, and I shall be at peace. You
have renown, a name, a loving heart. You receive a pension which I look
upon as an obligation. You will save her perhaps, you will save her! In
any case you will be doing her an honour. You will form her for life,
you will develop her heart, you will direct her ideas. How many people
come to grief nowadays because their ideas are wrongly directed. By that
time your book will be ready, and you will at once set people talking
about you again."
"I am, in fact," he muttered, at once flattered by Varvara Petrovna's
adroit insinuations. "I was just preparing to sit down to my 'Tales from
Spanish History.'"
"Well, there you are. It's just come right."
"But... she? Have you spoken to her?"
"Don't worry about her. And there's no need for you to be inquisitive.
Of course, you must ask her yourself, entreat her to do you the honour,
you understand? But don't be uneasy. I shall be here. Besides, you love
her."
Stepan Trofimovitch felt giddy. The walls were going round. There was
one terrible idea underlying this to which he could not reconcile
himself.
_"Excellente amie,"_ his voice quivered suddenly. "I could never have
conceived that you would make up your mind to give me in marriage to
another... woman."
"You're not a girl, Stepan Trofimovitch. Only girls are given in
marriage. You are taking a wife," Varvara Petrovna hissed malignantly.
_"Oui, j'ai pris un mot pour un autre. Mais c'est égal."_ He gazed at her
with a hopeless air.
"I see that _c'est égal_," she muttered contemptuously through her teeth.
"Good heavens! Why he's going to faint. Nastasya, Nastasya, water!"
But water was not needed. He came to himself. Varvara Petrovna took up
her umbrella.
"I see it's no use talking to you now...."
_"Oui, oui, je suis incapable."_
"But by to-morrow you'll have rested and thought it over. Stay at home.
If anything happens let me know, even if it's at night. Don't write
letters, I shan't read them. To-morrow I'll come again at this time
alone, for a final answer, and I trust it will be satisfactory. Try to
have nobody here and no untidiness, for the place isn't fit to be seen.
Nastasya, Nastasya!"
The next day, of course, he consented, and, indeed, he could do nothing
else. There was one circumstance...
VIII
Stepan Trofimovitch's estate, as we used to call it (which consisted
of fifty souls, reckoning in the old fashion, and bordered on
Skvoreshniki), was not really his at all, but his first wife's, and
so belonged now to his son Pyotr Stepanovitch Verhovensky. Stepan
Trofimovitch was simply his trustee, and so, when the nestling was
full-fledged, he had given his father a formal authorisation to manage
the estate. This transaction was a profitable one for the young man. He
received as much as a thousand roubles a year by way of revenue from the
estate, though under the new regime it could not have yielded more than
five hundred, and possibly not that. God knows how such an arrangement
had arisen. The whole sum, however, was sent the young man by Varvara
Petrovna, and Stepan Trofimovitch had nothing to do with a single rouble
of it. On the other hand, the whole revenue from the land remained in
his pocket, and he had, besides, completely ruined the estate, letting
it to a mercenary rogue, and without the knowledge of Varvara Petrovna
selling the timber which gave the estate its chief value. He had some
time before sold the woods bit by bit. It was worth at least
eight thousand, yet he had only received five thousand for it. But
he sometimes lost too much at the club, and was afraid to ask Varvara
Petrovna for the money. She clenched her teeth when she heard at last of
everything. And now, all at once, his son announced that he was
coming himself to sell his property for what he could get for it, and
commissioned his father to take steps promptly to arrange the sale. It
was clear that Stepan Trofimovitch, being a generous and disinterested
man, felt ashamed of his treatment of _ce cher enfant_ (whom he had seen
for the last time nine years before as a student in Petersburg). The
estate might originally have been worth thirteen or fourteen thousand.
Now it was doubtful whether anyone would give five for it. No doubt
Stepan Trofimovitch was fully entitled by the terms of the trust to sell
the wood, and taking into account the incredibly large yearly revenue of
a thousand roubles which had been sent punctually for so many years,
he could have put up a good defence of his management. But Stepan
Trofimovitch was a generous man of exalted impulses. A wonderfully fine
inspiration occurred to his mind: when Petrusha returned, to lay on the
table before him the maximum price of fifteen thousand roubles without
a hint at the sums that had been sent him hitherto, and warmly and with
tears to press _ce cher fils_ to his heart, and so to make an end of all
accounts between them. He began cautiously and indirectly unfolding
this picture before Varvara Petrovna. He hinted that this would add a
peculiarly noble note to their friendship... to their "idea." This
would set the parents of the last generation--and people of the last
generation generally--in such a disinterested and magnanimous light in
comparison with the new frivolous and socialistic younger generation. He
said a great deal more, but Varvara Petrovna was obstinately silent. At
last she informed him airily that she was prepared to buy their estate,
and to pay for it the maximum price, that is, six or seven thousand
(though four would have been a fair price for it). Of the remaining
eight thousand which had vanished with the woods she said not a word.
This conversation took place a month before the match was proposed to
him. Stepan Trofimovitch was overwhelmed, and began to ponder. There
might in the past have been a hope that his son would not come,
after all--an outsider, that is to say, might have hoped so. Stepan
Trofimovitch as a father would have indignantly rejected the
insinuation that he could entertain such a hope. Anyway queer rumours
had hitherto been reaching us about Petrusha. To begin with, on
completing his studies at the university six years before, he had hung
about in Petersburg without getting work. Suddenly we got the news that
he had taken part in issuing some anonymous manifesto and that he
was implicated in the affair. Then he suddenly turned up abroad in
Switzerland at Geneva--he had escaped, very likely.
"It's surprising to me," Stepan Trofimovitch commented, greatly
disconcerted. "Petrusha, _c'est une si pauvre tête!_ He's good,
noble-hearted, very sensitive, and I was so delighted with him in
Petersburg, comparing him with the young people of to-day. But _c'est un
pauvre sire, tout de même_.... And you know it all comes from that
same half-bakedness, that sentimentality. They are fascinated, not by
realism, but by the emotional ideal side of socialism, by the religious
note in it, so to say, by the poetry of it... second-hand, of course.
And for me, for me, think what it means! I have so many enemies here and
more still _there_, they'll put it down to the father's influence. Good
God! Petrusha a revolutionist! What times we live in!"
Very soon, however, Petrusha sent his exact address from Switzerland for
money to be sent him as usual; so he could not be exactly an exile.
And now, after four years abroad, he was suddenly making his appearance
again in his own country, and announced that he would arrive shortly,
so there could be no charge against him. What was more, someone seemed
to be interested in him and protecting him. He wrote now from the south
of Russia, where he was busily engaged in some private but important
business. All this was capital, but where was his father to get that
other seven or eight thousand, to make up a suitable price for the
estate? And what if there should be an outcry, and instead of that
imposing picture it should come to a lawsuit? Something told Stepan
Trofimovitch that the sensitive Petrusha would not relinquish anything
that was to his interest. "Why is it--as I've noticed," Stepan
Trofimovitch whispered to me once, "why is it that all these desperate
socialists and communists are at the same time such incredible
skinflints, so avaricious, so keen over property, and, in fact, the
more socialistic, the more extreme they are, the keener they are over
property... why is it? Can that, too, come from sentimentalism?" I
don't know whether there is any truth in this observation of Stepan
Trofimovitch's. I only know that Petrusha had somehow got wind of the
sale of the woods and the rest of it, and that Stepan Trofimovitch was
aware of the fact. I happened, too, to read some of Petrusha's letters
to his father. He wrote extremely rarely, once a year, or even less
often. Only recently, to inform him of his approaching visit, he had
sent two letters, one almost immediately after the other. All his
letters were short, dry, consisting only of instructions, and as the