The possessed or, The devils
such visits highly, as her connections in higher circles had grown
weaker and weaker since the death of her husband, and had at last ceased
altogether. The baron spent an hour drinking tea with her. There was no
one else present but Stepan Trofimovitch, whom Varvara Petrovna invited
and exhibited. The baron had heard something about him before or
affected to have done so, but paid little attention to him at tea.
Stepan Trofimovitch of course was incapable of making a social blunder,
and his manners were most elegant. Though I believe he was by no means
of exalted origin, yet it happened that he had from earliest childhood
been brought up in a Moscow household--of high rank, and consequently
was well bred. He spoke French like a Parisian. Thus the baron was to
have seen from the first glance the sort of people with whom Varvara
Petrovna surrounded herself, even in provincial seclusion. But things
did not fall out like this. When the baron positively asserted the
absolute truth of the rumours of the great reform, which were then
only just beginning to be heard, Stepan Trofimovitch could not contain
himself, and suddenly shouted "Hurrah!" and even made some gesticulation
indicative of delight. His ejaculation was not over-loud and quite
polite, his delight was even perhaps premeditated, and his gesture
purposely studied before the looking-glass half an hour before tea. But
something must have been amiss with it, for the baron permitted himself
a faint smile, though he, at once, with extraordinary courtesy, put in
a phrase concerning the universal and befitting emotion of all Russian
hearts in view of the great event. Shortly afterwards he took his
leave and at parting did not forget to hold out two fingers to Stepan
Trofimovitch. On returning to the drawing-room Varvara Petrovna was
at first silent for two or three minutes, and seemed to be looking for
something on the table. Then she turned to Stepan Trofimovitch, and with
pale face and flashing eyes she hissed in a whisper:
"I shall never forgive you for that!"
Next day she met her friend as though nothing had happened, she never
referred to the incident, but thirteen years afterwards, at a tragic
moment, she recalled it and reproached him with it, and she turned pale,
just as she had done thirteen years before. Only twice in the course of
her life did she say to him:
"I shall never forgive you for that!"
The incident with the baron was the second time, but the first incident
was so characteristic and had so much influence on the fate of Stepan
Trofimovitch that I venture to refer to that too.
It was in 1855, in spring-time, in May, just after the news had reached
Skvoreshniki of the death of Lieutenant-General Stavrogin, a frivolous
old gentleman who died of a stomach ailment on the way to the Crimea,
where he was hastening to join the army on active service. Varvara
Petrovna was left a widow and put on deep mourning. She could not, it is
true, deplore his death very deeply, since, for the last four years,
she had been completely separated from him owing to incompatibility of
temper, and was giving him an allowance. (The Lieutenant-General himself
had nothing but one hundred and fifty serfs and his pay, besides his
position and his connections. All the money and Skvoreshniki belonged to
Varvara Petrovna, the only daughter of a very rich contractor.) Yet she
was shocked by the suddenness of the news, and retired into complete
solitude. Stepan Trofimovitch, of course, was always at her side.
May was in its full beauty. The evenings were exquisite. The wild cherry
was in flower. The two friends walked every evening in the garden and
used to sit till nightfall in the arbour, and pour out their thoughts
and feelings to one another. They had poetic moments. Under the
influence of the change in her position Varvara Petrovna talked more
than usual. She, as it were, clung to the heart of her friend, and this
continued for several evenings. A strange idea suddenly came over Stepan
Trofimovitch: "Was not the inconsolable widow reckoning upon him, and
expecting from him, when her mourning was over, the offer of his hand?"
A cynical idea, but the very loftiness of a man's nature sometimes
increases a disposition to cynical ideas if only from the many-sidedness
of his culture. He began to look more deeply into it, and thought it
seemed like it. He pondered: "Her fortune is immense, of course, but..."
Varvara Petrovna certainly could not be called a beauty. She was a
tall, yellow, bony woman with an extremely long face, suggestive of a
horse. Stepan Trofimovitch hesitated more and more, he was tortured by
doubts, he positively shed tears of indecision once or twice (he wept
not infrequently). In the evenings, that is to say in the arbour, his
countenance involuntarily began to express something capricious and
ironical, something coquettish and at the same time condescending. This
is apt to happen as it were by accident, and the more gentlemanly the
man the more noticeable it is. Goodness only knows what one is to think
about it, but it's most likely that nothing had begun working in her
heart that could have fully justified Stepan Trofimovitch's suspicions.
Moreover, she would not have changed her name, Stavrogin, for his
name, famous as it was. Perhaps there was nothing in it but the play
of femininity on her side; the manifestation of an unconscious feminine
yearning so natural in some extremely feminine types. However, I won't
answer for it; the depths of the female heart have not been explored to
this day. But I must continue.
It is to be supposed that she soon inwardly guessed the significance of
her friend's strange expression; she was quick and observant, and he was
sometimes extremely guileless. But the evenings went on as before, and
their conversations were just as poetic and interesting. And behold
on one occasion at nightfall, after the most lively and poetical
conversation, they parted affectionately, warmly pressing each other's
hands at the steps of the lodge where Stepan Trofimovitch slept. Every
summer he used to move into this little lodge which stood adjoining the
huge seignorial house of Skvoreshniki, almost in the garden. He had only
just gone in, and in restless hesitation taken a cigar, and not having
yet lighted it, was standing weary and motionless before the open
window, gazing at the light feathery white clouds gliding around the
bright moon, when suddenly a faint rustle made him start and turn
round. Varvara Petrovna, whom he had left only four minutes earlier,
was standing before him again. Her yellow face was almost blue. Her lips
were pressed tightly together and twitching at the corners. For ten full
seconds she looked him in the eyes in silence with a firm relentless
gaze, and suddenly whispered rapidly:
"I shall never forgive you for this!"
When, ten years later, Stepan Trofimovitch, after closing the doors,
told me this melancholy tale in a whisper, he vowed that he had been so
petrified on the spot that he had not seen or heard how Varvara Petrovna
had disappeared. As she never once afterwards alluded to the incident
and everything went on as though nothing had happened, he was all his
life inclined to the idea that it was all an hallucination, a symptom
of illness, the more so as he was actually taken ill that very night
and was indisposed for a fortnight, which, by the way, cut short the
interviews in the arbour.
But in spite of his vague theory of hallucination he seemed every day,
all his life, to be expecting the continuation, and, so to say, the
_dénouement_ of this affair. He could not believe that that was the end of
it! And if so he must have looked strangely sometimes at his friend.
V
She had herself designed the costume for him which he wore for the rest
of his life. It was elegant and characteristic; a long black frock-coat,
buttoned almost to the top, but stylishly cut; a soft hat (in summer a
straw hat) with a wide brim, a white batiste cravat with a full bow
and hanging ends, a cane with a silver knob; his hair flowed on to his
shoulders. It was dark brown, and only lately had begun to get a little
grey. He was clean-shaven. He was said to have been very handsome in his
youth. And, to my mind, he was still an exceptionally impressive figure
even in old age. Besides, who can talk of old age at fifty-three?
From his special pose as a patriot, however, he did not try to appear
younger, but seemed rather to pride himself on the solidity of his
age, and, dressed as described, tall and thin with flowing hair, he
looked almost like a patriarch, or even more like the portrait of the
poet Kukolnik, engraved in the edition of his works published in 1830 or
thereabouts. This resemblance was especially striking when he sat in the
garden in summertime, on a seat under a bush of flowering lilac, with
both hands propped on his cane and an open book beside him, musing
poetically over the setting sun. In regard to books I may remark that
he came in later years rather to avoid reading. But that was only quite
towards the end. The papers and magazines ordered in great profusion by
Varvara Petrovna he was continually reading. He never lost interest in
the successes of Russian literature either, though he always maintained
a dignified attitude with regard to them. He was at one time engrossed
in the study of our home and foreign politics, but he soon gave up the
undertaking with a gesture of despair. It sometimes happened that he
would take De Tocqueville with him into the garden while he had a Paul
de Kock in his pocket. But these are trivial matters.
I must observe in parenthesis about the portrait of Kukolnik; the
engraving had first come into the hands of Varvara Petrovna when she was
a girl in a high-class boarding-school in Moscow. She fell in love with
the portrait at once, after the habit of all girls at school who fall
in love with anything they come across, as well as with their teachers,
especially the drawing and writing masters. What is interesting in this,
though, is not the characteristics of girls but the fact that even at
fifty Varvara Petrovna kept the engraving among her most intimate and
treasured possessions, so that perhaps it was only on this account that
she had designed for Stepan Trofimovitch a costume somewhat like the
poet's in the engraving. But that, of course, is a trifling matter too.
For the first years or, more accurately, for the first half of the time
he spent with Varvara Petrovna, Stepan Trofimovitch was still planning a
book and every day seriously prepared to write it. But during the later
period he must have forgotten even what he had done. More and more
frequently he used to say to us:
"I seem to be ready for work, my materials are collected, yet the work
doesn't get done! Nothing is done!"
And he would bow his head dejectedly. No doubt this was calculated
to increase his prestige in our eyes as a martyr to science, but he
himself was longing for something else. "They have forgotten me! I'm
no use to anyone!" broke from him more than once. This intensified
depression took special hold of him towards the end of the fifties.
Varvara Petrovna realised at last that it was a serious matter. Besides,
she could not endure the idea that her friend was forgotten and useless.
To distract him and at the same time to renew his fame she carried him
off to Moscow, where she had fashionable acquaintances in the
literary and scientific world; but it appeared that Moscow too was
unsatisfactory.
It was a peculiar time; something new was beginning, quite unlike the
stagnation of the past, something very strange too, though it was felt
everywhere, even at Skvoreshniki. Rumours of all sorts reached us. The
facts were generally more or less well known, but it was evident that