All this was done on the inspiration of the moment: a second before he had no idea that he would go and treat the peasant woman.
"I know how to get on with peasants to perfection, to perfection, and I"ve always told them so," he thought complacently, pouring out the rest of the vodka; though there was less than a gla.s.s left, it warmed and revived him, and even went a little to his head.
"Je suis malade tout a fait, mais ce n"est pas trop mauvais d"etre 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 etes 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 pa.s.sages of it, seven years before, when reading Renan"s "Vie de Jesus." 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 a Spa.s.sof."
"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 some one, 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 pa.s.sage 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 n.o.bility, 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 tres 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 pet.i.t morceau de sucre, ce n"est rien.... There is something n.o.ble 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.