"Oh, no, of course! I seem to have heard that you"re not fond of duels...."
"Why borrow from the French?" said Liputin, doubling up again.
"You"re for nationalism, then?"
Liputin shrank into himself more than ever.
"Bah, bah! What do I see?" cried Nicolas, noticing a volume of Considerant in the most conspicuous place on the table. "You don"t mean to say you"re a Fourierist! I"m afraid you must be! And isn"t this too borrowing from the French?" he laughed, tapping the book with his finger.
"No, that"s not taken from the French," Liputin cried with positive fury, jumping up from his chair. "That is taken from the universal language of humanity, not simply from the French. From the language of the universal social republic and harmony of mankind, let me tell you! Not simply from the French!"
"Foo! hang it all! There"s no such language!" laughed Nikolay.
Sometimes a trifle will catch the attention and exclusively absorb it for a time. Most of what I have to tell of young Stavrogin will come later. But I will note now as a curious fact that of all the impressions made on him by his stay in our town, the one most sharply imprinted on his memory was the unsightly and almost abject figure of the little provincial official, the coa.r.s.e and jealous family despot, the miserly money-lender who picked up the candle-ends and sc.r.a.ps left from dinner, and was at the same time a pa.s.sionate believer in some visionary future "social harmony," who at night gloated in ecstasies over fantastic pictures of a future phalanstery, in the approaching realisation of which, in Russia, and in our province, he believed as firmly as in his own existence. And that in the very place where he had saved up to buy himself a "little home," where he had married for the second time, getting a dowry with his bride, where perhaps, for a hundred miles round there was not one man, himself included, who was the very least like a future member "of the universal human republic and social harmony."
"G.o.d knows how these people come to exist!" Nikolay wondered, recalling sometimes the unlooked-for Fourierist.
IV Our prince travelled for over three years, so that he was almost forgotten in the town. We learned from Stepan Trofimovitch that he had travelled all over Europe, that he had even been in Egypt and had visited Jerusalem, and then had joined some scientific expedition to Iceland, and he actually did go to Iceland. It was reported too that he had spent one winter attending lectures in a German university. He did not write often to his mother, twice a year, or even less, but Varvara Petrovna was not angry or offended at this. She accepted submissively and without repining the relations that had been established once for all between her son and herself. She fretted for her "Nicolas" and dreamed of him continually. She kept her dreams and lamentations to herself. She seemed to have become less intimate even with Stepan Trofimovitch. She was forming secret projects, and seemed to have become more careful about money than ever. She was more than ever given to saving money and being angry at Stepan Trofimovitch"s losses at cards.
At last, in the April of this year, she received a letter from Paris from Praskovya Ivanovna Drozdov, the widow of the general and the friend of Varvara Petrovna"s childhood. Praskovya Ivanovna, whom Varvara Petrovna had not seen or corresponded with for eight years, wrote, informing her that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had become very intimate with them and a great friend of her only daughter, Liza, and that he was intending to accompany them to Switzerland, to Verney-Montreux, though in the household of Count K. (a very influential personage in Petersburg), who was now staying in Paris. He was received like a son of the family, so that he almost lived at the count"s. The letter was brief, and the object of it was perfectly clear, though it contained only a plain statement of the above-mentioned facts without drawing any inferences from them. Varvara Petrovna did not pause long to consider; she made up her mind instantly, made her preparations, and taking with her her protegee, Dasha (Shatov"s sister), she set off in the middle of April for Paris, and from there went on to Switzerland. She returned in July, alone, leaving Dasha with the Drozdovs. She brought us the news that the Drozdovs themselves had promised to arrive among us by the end of August.
The Drozdovs, too, were landowners of our province, but the official duties of General Ivan Ivanovitch Drozdov (who had been a friend of Varvara Petrovna"s and a colleague of her husband"s) had always prevented them from visiting their magnificent estate. On the death of the general, which had taken place the year before, the inconsolable widow had gone abroad with her daughter, partly in order to try the grape-cure which she proposed to carry out at Verney-Montreux during the latter half of the summer. On their return to Russia they intended to settle in our province for good. She had a large house in the town which had stood empty for many years with the windows nailed up. They were wealthy people. Praskovya Ivanovna had been, in her first marriage, a Madame Tushin, and like her school-friend, Varvara Petrovna, was the daughter of a government contractor of the old school, and she too had been an heiress at her marriage. Tushin, a retired cavalry captain, was also a man of means, and of some ability. At his death he left a snug fortune to his only daughter Liza, a child of seven. Now that Lizaveta Nikolaevna was twenty-two her private fortune might confidently be reckoned at 200,000 roubles, to say nothing of the property-which was bound to come to her at the death of her mother, who had no children by her second marriage. Varvara Petrovna seemed to be very well satisfied with her expedition. In her own opinion she had succeeded in coming to a satisfactory understanding with Praskovya Ivanovna, and immediately on her arrival she confided everything to Stepan Trofimovitch. She was positively effusive with him as she had not been for a very long time.
"Hurrah!" cried Stepan Trofimovitch, and snapped his fingers.
He was in a perfect rapture, especially as he had spent the whole time of his friend"s absence in extreme dejection. On setting off she had not even taken leave of him properly, and had said nothing of her plan to "that old woman," dreading, perhaps, that he might chatter about it. She was cross with him at the time on account of a considerable gambling debt which she had suddenly discovered. But before she left Switzerland she had felt that on her return she must make up for it to her forsaken friend, especially as she had treated him very curtly for a long time past. Her abrupt and mysterious departure had made a profound and poignant impression on the timid heart of Stepan Trofimovitch, and to make matters worse he was beset with other difficulties at the same time. He was worried by a very considerable money obligation, which had weighed upon him for a long time and which he could never hope to meet without Varvara Petrovna"s a.s.sistance. Moreover, in the May of this year, the term of office of our mild and gentle Ivan Ossipovitch came to an end. He was superseded under rather unpleasant circ.u.mstances. Then, while Varvara Petrovna was still away, there followed the arrival of our new governor, Andrey Antonovitch von Lembke, and with that a change began at once to be perceptible in the att.i.tude of almost the whole of our provincial society towards Varvara Petrovna, and consequently towards Stepan Trofimovitch. He had already had time anyway to make some disagreeable though valuable observations, and seemed very apprehensive alone without Varvara Petrovna. He had an agitating suspicion that he had already been mentioned to the governor as a dangerous man. He knew for a fact that some of our ladies meant to give up calling on Varvara Petrovna. Of our governor"s wife (who was only expected to arrive in the autumn) it was reported that though she was, so it was heard, proud, she was a real aristocrat, and "not like that poor Varvara Petrovna." Everybody seemed to know for a fact, and in the greatest detail, that our governor"s wife and Varvara Petrovna had met already in society and had parted enemies, so that the mere mention of Madame von Lembke"s name would, it was said, make a painful impression on Varvara Petrovna. The confident and triumphant air of Varvara Petrovna, the contemptuous indifference with which she heard of the opinions of our provincial ladies and the agitation in local society, revived the flagging spirits of Stepan Trofimovitch and cheered him up at once. With peculiar, gleefully-obsequious humour, he was beginning to describe the new governor"s arrival.
"You are no doubt aware, excellente amie," he said, jauntily and coquettishly drawling his words, "what is meant by a Russian administrator, speaking generally, and what is meant by a new Russian administrator, that is the newly-baked, newly-established...ces interminables mots Russes! But I don"t think you can know in practice what is meant by administrative ardour, and what sort of thing that is."
"Administrative ardour? I don"t know what that is."
"Well... Vous savez chez nous... En un mot, set the most insignificant nonent.i.ty to sell miserable tickets at a railway station, and the nonent.i.ty will at once feel privileged to look down on you like a Jupiter, pour montrer son pouvoir when you go to take a ticket. "Now then," he says, "I shall show you my power"... and in them it comes to a genuine, administrative ardour. En un mot, I"ve read that some verger in one of our Russian churches abroad-mais c"est tres curieux-drove, literally drove a distinguished English family, les dames charmantes, out of the church before the beginning of the Lenten service... vous savez ces chants et le livre de Job... on the simple pretext that "foreigners are not allowed to loaf about a Russian church, and that they must come at the time fixed...." And he sent them into fainting fits.... That verger was suffering from an attack of administrative ardour, et il a montre son pouvoir."
"Cut it short if you can, Stepan Trofimovitch."
"Mr. von Lembke is making a tour of the province now. En un mot, this Andrey Antonovitch, though he is a russified German and of the Orthodox persuasion, and even-I will say that for him-a remarkably handsome man of about forty..."
"What makes you think he"s a handsome man? He has eyes like a sheep"s."
"Precisely so. But in this I yield, of course, to the opinion of our ladies."
"Let"s get on, Stepan Trofimovitch, I beg you! By the way, you"re wearing a red neck-tie. Is it long since you"ve taken to it?"
"I"ve... I"ve only put it on to-day."
"And do you take your const.i.tutional? Do you go for a four-mile walk every day as the doctor told you to?"
"N-not... always."
"I knew you didn"t! I felt sure of that when I was in Switzerland!" she cried irritably. "Now you must go not four but six miles a day! You"ve grown terribly slack, terribly, terribly! You"re not simply getting old, you"re getting decrepit.... You shocked me when I first saw you just now, in spite of your red tie, quelle idee rouge! Go on about Von Lembke if you"ve really something to tell me, and do finish some time, I entreat you, I"m tired."
"En un mot, I only wanted to say that he is one of those administrators who begin to have power at forty, who, till they"re forty, have been stagnating in insignificance and then suddenly come to the front through suddenly acquiring a wife, or some other equally desperate means.... That is, he has gone away now... that is, I mean to say, it was at once whispered in both his ears that I am a corrupter of youth, and a hot-bed of provincial atheism.... He began making inquiries at once."
"Is that true?"
"I took steps about it, in fact. When he was "informed" that you "ruled the province," vous savez, he allowed himself to use the expression that "there shall be nothing of that sort in the future.""
"Did he say that?"
"That "there shall be nothing of the sort in future," and, avec cette morgue.... His wife, Yulia Mihailovna, we shall behold at the end of August, she"s coming straight from Petersburg."
"From abroad. We met there."
"Vraiment?"
"In Paris and in Switzerland. She"s related to the Drozdovs."
"Related! What an extraordinary coincidence! They say she is ambitious and... supposed to have great connections."
"Nonsense! Connections indeed! She was an old maid without a farthing till she was five-and-forty. But now she"s hooked her Von Lembke, and, of course, her whole object is to push him forward. They"re both intriguers."
"And they say she"s two years older than he is?"
"Five. Her mother used to wear out her skirts on my doorsteps in Moscow; she used to beg for an invitation to our b.a.l.l.s as a favour when my husband was living. And this creature used to sit all night alone in a corner without dancing, with her turquoise fly on her forehead, so that simply from pity I used to have to send her her first partner at two o"clock in the morning. She was five-and-twenty then, and they used to rig her out in short skirts like a little girl. It was improper to have them about at last."
"I seem to see that fly."
"I tell you, as soon as I arrived I was in the thick of an intrigue. You read Madame Drozdov"s letter, of course. What could be clearer? What did I find? That fool Praskovya herself-she always was a fool-looked at me as much as to ask why I"d come. You can fancy how surprised I was. I looked round, and there was that Lembke woman at her tricks, and that cousin of hers-old Drozdov"s nephew-it was all clear. You may be sure I changed all that in a twinkling, and Praskovya is on my side again, but what an intrigue!"
"In which you came off victor, however. Bismarck!"
"Without being a Bismarck I"m equal to falseness and stupidity wherever I meet it, falseness, and Praskovya"s folly. I don"t know when I"ve met such a flabby woman, and what"s more her legs are swollen, and she"s a good-natured simpleton, too. What can be more foolish than a good-natured simpleton?"
"A spiteful fool, ma bonne amie, a spiteful fool is still more foolish," Stepan Trofimovitch protested magnanimously.
"You"re right, perhaps. Do you remember Liza?"
"Charmante enfant!"
"But she"s not an enfant now, but a woman, and a woman of character. She"s a generous, pa.s.sionate creature, and what I like about her, she stands up to that confiding fool, her mother. There was almost a row over that cousin."
"Bah, and of course he"s no relation of Lizaveta Nikolaevna"s at all.... Has he designs on her?"
"You see, he"s a young officer, not by any means talkative, modest in fact. I always want to be just. I fancy he is opposed to the intrigue himself, and isn"t aiming at anything, and it was only the Von Lembke"s tricks. He had a great respect for Nicolas. You understand, it all depends on Liza. But I left her on the best of terms with Nicolas, and he promised he would come to us in November. So it"s only the Von Lembke who is intriguing, and Praskovya is a blind woman. She suddenly tells me that all my suspicions are fancy. I told her to her face she was a fool. I am ready to repeat it at the day of judgment. And if it hadn"t been for Nicolas begging me to leave it for a time, I wouldn"t have come away without unmasking that false woman. She"s been trying to ingratiate herself with Count K. through Nicolas. She wants to come between mother and son. But Liza"s on our side, and I came to an understanding with Praskovya. Do you know that Karmazinov is a relation of hers?"
"What? A relation of Madame von Lembke?"
"Yes, of hers. Distant."