Darya Mihailovna’s house was regarded as almost the first in the whole province. It was a huge stone mansion, built after designs of Rastrelli in the taste of last century, and in a commanding position on the summit of a hill, at whose base flowed one of the principal rivers of central Russia. Darya Mihailovna herself was a wealthy and distinguished lady, the widow of a privy councillor. Pandalevsky said of her, that she knew all Europe and all Europe knew her! However, Europe knew her very little; even at Petersburg she had not played a very prominent part; but on the other hand at Moscow every one knew her and visited her. She belonged to the highest society, and was spoken of as a rather eccentric woman, not wholly good-natured, but excessively clever. In her youth she had been very pretty. Poets had written verses to her, young men had been in love with her, distinguished men had paid her homage. But twenty-five or thirty years had passed since those days and not a trace of her former charms remained. Every one who saw her now for the first time was impelled to ask himself, if this woman—skinny, sharp-nosed, and yellow-faced, though still not old in years—could once have been a beauty, if she was really the same woman who had been the inspiration of poets.... And every one marvelled inwardly at the mutability of earthly things. It is true that Pandalevsky discovered that Darya Mihailovna had preserved her magnificent eyes in a marvellous way; but we have seen that Pandalevsky also maintained that all Europe knew her.
Darya Mihailovna went every summer to her country place with her children (she had three: a daughter of seventeen, Natalya, and two sons of nine and ten years old). She kept open house in the country, that is, she received men, especially unmarried ones; provincial ladies she could not endure. But what of the treatment she received from those ladies in return?
Darya Mihailovna, according to them, was a haughty, immoral, and insufferable tyrant, and above all—she permitted herself such liberties in conversation, it was shocking! Darya Mihailovna certainly did not care to stand on ceremony in the country, and in the unconstrained frankness of her manners there was perceptible a slight shade of the contempt of the lioness of the capital for the petty and obscure creatures who surrounded her. She had a careless, and even a sarcastic manner with her own set; but the shade of contempt was not there.
By the way, reader, have you observed that a person who is exceptionally nonchalant with his inferiors, is never nonchalant with persons of a higher rank? Why is that? But such questions lead to nothing.
When Konstantin Diomiditch, having at last learnt by heart theétudeof Thalberg, went down from his bright and cheerful room to the drawing-room, he already found the whole household assembled. The salon was already beginning. The lady of the house was reposing on a wide couch, her feet gathered up under her, and a new French pamphlet in her hand; at the window behind a tambour frame, sat on one side the daughter of Darya Mihailovna, on the other, Mlle. Boncourt, the governess, a dry old maiden lady of sixty, with a false front of black curls under a parti-coloured cap and cotton wool in her ears; in the corner near the door was huddled Bassistoff reading a paper, near him were Petya and Vanya playing draughts, and leaning by the stove, his hands clasped behind his back, was a gentleman of low stature, with a swarthy face covered with bristling grey hair, and fiery black eyes—a certain African Semenitch Pigasov.
This Pigasov was a strange person. Full of acerbity against everything and every one—especially against women—he was railing from morning to night, sometimes very aptly, sometimes rather stupidly, but always with gusto. His ill-humour almost approached puerility; his laugh, the sound of his voice, his whole being seemed steeped in venom. Darya Mihailovna gave Pigasov a cordial reception; he amused her with his sallies. They were certainly absurd enough. He took delight in perpetual exaggeration. For example, if he were told of any disaster, that a village had been struck by lightning, or that a mill had been carried away by floods, or that a peasant had cut his hand with an axe, he invariably asked with concentrated bitterness, ‘And what’s her name?’ meaning, what is the name of the woman responsible for this calamity, for according to his convictions, a woman was the cause of every misfortune, if you only looked deep enough into the matter. He once threw himself on his knees before a lady he hardly knew at all, who had been effusive in her hospitality to him and began tearfully, but with wrath written on his face, to entreat her to have compassion on him, saying that he had done her no harm and never would come to see her for the future. Once a horse had bolted with one of Darya Mihailovna’s maids, thrown her into a ditch and almost killed her. From that time Pigasov never spoke of that horse except as the ‘good, good horse,’ and he even came to regard the hill and the ditch as specially picturesque spots. Pigasov had failed in life and had adopted this whimsical craze. He came of poor parents. His father had filled various petty posts, and could scarcely read and write, and did not trouble himself about his son’s education; he fed and clothed him and nothing more. His mother spoiled him, but she died early. Pigasov educated himself, sent himself to the district school and then to the gymnasium, taught himself French, German, and even Latin, and, leaving the gymnasiums with an excellent certificate, went to Dorpat, where he maintained a perpetual struggle with poverty, but succeeded in completing his three years’ course. Pigasov’s abilities did not rise above the level of mediocrity; patience and perseverance were his strong points, but the most powerful sentiment in him was ambition, the desire to get into good society, not to be inferior to others in spite of fortune. He had studied diligently and gone to the Dorpat University from ambition. Poverty exasperated him, and made him watchful and cunning. He expressed himself with originality; from his youth he had adopted a special kind of stinging and exasperated eloquence. His ideas did not rise above the common level; but his way of speaking made him seem not only a clever, but even a very clever, man. Having taken his degree as candidate, Pigasov decided to devote himself to the scholastic profession; he understood that in any other career he could not possibly be the equal of his associates. He tried to select them from a higher rank and knew how to gain their good graces; even by flattery, though he was always abusing them. But to do this he had not, to speak plainly, enough raw material. Having educated himself through no love for study, Pigasov knew very little thoroughly. He broke down miserably in the public disputation, while another student who had shared the same room with him, and who was constantly the subject of his ridicule, a man of very limited ability who had received a careful and solid education, gained a complete triumph. Pigasov was infuriated by this failure, he threw all his books and manuscripts into the fire and went into a government office. At first he did not get on badly, he made a fair official, not very active, extremely self-confident and bold, however; but he wanted to make his way more quickly, he made a false step, got into trouble, and was obliged to retire from the service. He spent three years on the property he had bought himself and suddenly married a wealthy half-educated woman who was captivated by his unceremonious and sarcastic manners. But Pigasov’s character had become so soured and irritable that family life was unendurable to him. After living with him a few years, his wife went off secretly to Moscow and sold her estate to an enterprising speculator; Pigasov had only just finished building a house on it. Utterly crushed by this last blow, Pigasov began a lawsuit with his wife, but gained nothing by it. After this he lived in solitude, and went to see his neighbours, whom he abused behind their backs and even to their faces, and who welcomed him with a kind of constrained half-laugh, though he did not inspire them with any serious dread. He never took a book in his hand. He had about a hundred serfs; his peasants were not badly off.
‘Ah!Constantin,’ said Darya Mihailovna, when Pandalevsky came into the drawing-room, ‘isAlexandrinecoming?’
‘Alexandra Pavlovna asked me to thank you, and they will be extremely delighted,’ replied Konstantin Diomiditch, bowing affably in all directions, and running his plump white hand with its triangular cut nails through his faultlessly arranged hair.
‘And is Volintsev coming too?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, according to you, African Semenitch,’ continued Darya Mihailovna, turning to Pigasov, ‘all young ladies are affected?’
Pigasov’s mouth twitched, and he plucked nervously at his elbow.
‘I say,’ he began in a measured voice—in his most violent moods of exasperation he always spoke slowly and precisely. ‘I say that young ladies, in general—of present company, of course, I say nothing.’
‘But that does not prevent your thinking of them,’ put in Darya Mihailovna.
‘I say nothing of them,’ repeated Pigasov. ‘All young ladies, in general, are affected to the most extreme point—affected in the expression of their feelings. If a young lady is frightened, for instance, or pleased with anything, or distressed, she is certain first to throw her person into some such elegant attitude (and Pigasov threw his figure into an unbecoming pose and spread out his hands) and then she shrieks—ah! or she laughs or cries. I did once though (and here Pigasov smiled complacently) succeed in eliciting a genuine, unaffected expression of emotion from a remarkably affected young lady!’
‘How did you do that?’
Pigasov’s eyes sparkled.
‘I poked her in the side with an aspen stake, from behind. She did shriek, and I said to her, “Bravo, bravo! that’s the voice of nature, that was a genuine shriek! Always do like that for the future!”’
Every one in the room laughed.
‘What nonsense you talk, African Semenitch,’ cried Darya Mihailovna. ‘Am I to believe that you would poke a girl in the side with a stake!’
‘Yes, indeed, with a stake, a very big stake, like those that are used in the defence of a fort.’
‘Mais c’est un horreur ce que vous dites là, Monsieur,’ cried Mlle. Boncourt, looking angrily at the boys, who were in fits of laughter.
‘Oh, you mustn’t believe him,’ said Darya Mihailovna. ‘Don’t you know him?’
But the offended French lady could not be pacified for a long while, and kept muttering something to herself.
‘You need not believe me,’ continued Pigasov coolly, ‘but I assure you I told the simple truth. Who should know if not I? After that perhaps you won’t believe that our neighbour, Madame Tchepuz, Elena Antonovna, told me herself, mindherself, that she had murdered her nephew?’
‘What an invention!’
‘Wait a minute, wait a minute! Listen and judge for yourselves. Mind, I don’t want to slander her, I even like her as far as one can like a woman. She hasn’t a single book in her house except a calendar, and she can’t read except aloud, and that exercise throws her into a violent perspiration, and she complains then that her eyes feel bursting out of her head.... In short, she’s a capital woman, and her servant girls grow fat. Why should I slander her?’
‘You see,’ observed Darya Mihailovna, ‘African Semenitch has got on his hobbyhorse, now he will not be off it to-night.’
‘My hobby! But women have three at least, which they are never off, except, perhaps, when they’re asleep.’
‘What three hobbies are those?’
‘Reproof, reproach, recrimination.’
‘Do you know, African Semenitch,’ began Darya Mihailovna, ‘you cannot be so bitter against women for nothing. Some woman or other must have——’
‘Done me an injury, you mean?’ Pigasov interrupted.
Darya Mihailovna was rather embarrassed; she remembered Pigasov’s unlucky marriage, and only nodded.
‘One woman certainly did me an injury,’ said Pigasov, ‘though she was a good, very good one.’
‘Who was that?’
‘My mother,’ said Pigasov, dropping his voice.
‘Your mother? What injury could she have done you?’
‘She brought me into the world.’
Darya Mihailovna frowned.
‘Our conversation,’ she said, ‘seems to have taken a gloomy turn.Constantin, play us Thalberg’s newétude. I daresay the music will soothe African Semenitch. Orpheus soothed savage beasts.’
Konstantin Diomiditch took his seat at the piano, and played the étude very fairly well. Natalya Alexyevna at first listened attentively, then she bent over her work again.
‘Merci, c’est charmant,’ observed Darya Mihailovna, ‘I love Thalberg.Il est si distingué. What are you thinking of, African Semenitch?’
‘I thought,’ began African Semenitch slowly, ‘that there are three kinds of egoists; the egoists who live themselves and let others live; the egoists who live themselves and don’t let others live; and the egoists who don’t live themselves and don’t let others live. Women, for the most part, belong to the third class.’
‘That’s polite! I am very much astonished at one thing, African Semenitch; your confidence in your convictions; of course you can never be mistaken.’
‘Who says so? I make mistakes; a man, too, may be mistaken. But do you know the difference between a man’s mistakes and a woman’s? Don’t you know? Well, here it is; a man may say, for example, that twice two makes not four, but five, or three and a half; but a woman will say that twice two makes a wax candle.’
‘I fancy I’ve heard you say that before. But allow me to ask what connection had your idea of the three kinds of egoists with the music you have just been hearing?’
‘None at all, but I did not listen to the music.’
‘Well, “incurable I see you are, and that is all about it,”’ answered Darya Mihailovna, slightly altering Griboyedov’s line. ‘What do you like, since you don’t care for music? Literature?’
‘I like literature, only not our contemporary literature.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ll tell you why. I crossed the Oka lately in a ferry boat with a gentleman. The ferry got fixed in a narrow place; they had to drag the carriages ashore by hand. This gentleman had a very heavy coach. While the ferrymen were straining themselves to drag the coach on to the bank, the gentleman groaned so, standing in the ferry, that one felt quite sorry for him.... Well, I thought, here’s a fresh illustration of the system of division of labour! That’s just like our modern literature; other people do the work, and it does the groaning.’
Darya Mihailovna smiled.
‘And that is called expressing contemporary life,’ continued Pigasov indefatigably, ‘profound sympathy with the social question and so on. ... Oh, how I hate those grand words!’
‘Well, the women you attack so—they at least don’t use grand words.’
Pigasov shrugged his shoulders.
‘They don’t use them because they don’t understand them.’
Darya Mihailovna flushed slightly.
‘You are beginning to be impertinent, African Semenitch!’ she remarked with a forced smile.
There was complete stillness in the room.
‘Where is Zolotonosha?’ asked one of the boys suddenly of Bassistoff.
‘In the province of Poltava, my dear boy,’ replied Pigasov, ‘in the centre of Little Russia.’ (He was glad of an opportunity of changing the conversation.) ‘We were talking of literature,’ he continued, ‘if I had money to spare, I would at once become a Little Russian poet.’
‘What next? a fine poet you would make!’ retorted Darya Mihailovna. ‘Do you know Little Russian?’
‘Not a bit; but it isn’t necessary.’
‘Not necessary?’
‘Oh no, it’s not necessary. You need only take a sheet of paper and write at the top “A Ballad,” then begin like this, “Heigho, alack, my destiny!” or “the Cossack Nalivaiko was sitting on a hill and then on the mountain, under the green tree the birds are singing, grae, voropae, gop, gop!” or something of that kind. And the thing’s done. Print it and publish it. The Little Russian will read it, drop his head into his hands and infallibly burst into tears—he is such a sensitive soul!’
‘Good heavens!’ cried Bassistoff. ‘What are you saying? It’s too absurd for anything. I have lived in Little Russia, I love it and know the language... “grae, grae, voropae” is absolute nonsense.’
‘It may be, but the Little Russian will weep all the same. You speak of the “language.”... But is there a Little Russian language? Is it a language, in your opinion? an independent language? I would pound my best friend in a mortar before I’d agree to that.’
Bassistoff was about to retort.
‘Leave him alone!’ said Darya Mihailovna, ‘you know that you will hear nothing but paradoxes from him.’
Pigasov smiled ironically. A footman came in and announced the arrival of Alexandra Pavlovna and her brother.
Darya Mihailovna rose to meet her guests.
‘How do you do, Alexandrine?’ she began, going up to her, ‘how good of you to come!... How are you, Sergei Pavlitch?’
Volintsev shook hands with Darya Mihailovna and went up to Natalya Alexyevna.
‘But how about that baron, your new acquaintance, is he coming to-day?’ asked Pigasov.
‘Yes, he is coming.’
‘He is a great philosopher, they say; he is just brimming over with Hegel, I suppose?’
Darya Mihailovna made no reply, and making Alexandra Pavlovna sit down on the sofa, established herself near her.
‘Philosophies,’ continued Pigasov, ‘are elevated points of view! That’s another abomination of mine; these elevated points of view. And what can one see from above? Upon my soul, if you want to buy a horse, you don’t look at it from a steeple!’
‘This baron was going to bring you an essay?’ said Alexandra Pavlovna.
‘Yes, an essay,’ replied Darya Mihailovna, with exaggerated carelessness, ‘on the relation of commerce to manufactures in Russia. ... But don’t be afraid; we will not read it here.... I did not invite you for that.Le baron est aussi aimable que savant. And he speaks Russian beautifully!C’est un vrai torrent... il vous entraîne.
‘He speaks Russian so beautifully,’ grumbled Pigasov, ‘that he deserves a eulogy in French.’
‘You may grumble as you please, African Semenitch.... It’s in keeping with your ruffled locks.... I wonder, though, why he does not come. Do you know what,messieurs et mesdames’ added Darya Mihailovna, looking round, ‘we will go into the garden. There is still nearly an hour to dinner-time and the weather is glorious.’
All the company rose and went into the garden.
Darya Mihailovna’s garden stretched right down to the river. There were many alleys of old lime-trees in it, full of sunlight and shade and fragrance and glimpses of emerald green at the ends of the walks, and many arbours of acacias and lilacs.
Volintsev turned into the thickest part of the garden with Natalya and Mlle. Boncourt. He walked beside Natalya in silence. Mlle. Boncourt followed a little behind.
‘What have you been doing to-day?’ asked Volintsev at last, pulling the ends of his handsome dark brown moustache.
In features he resembled his sister strikingly; but there was less movement and life in his expression, and his soft beautiful eyes had a melancholy look.
‘Oh! nothing,’ answered Natalya, ‘I have been listening to Pigasov’s sarcasms, I have done some embroidery on canvas, and I’ve been reading.’
‘And what have you been reading?’
‘Oh! I read—a history of the Crusades,’ said Natalya, with some hesitation.
Volintsev looked at her.
‘Ah!’ he ejaculated at last, ‘that must be interesting.’
He picked a twig and began to twirl it in the air. They walked another twenty paces.
‘What is this baron whom your mother has made acquaintance with?’ began Volintsev again.
‘A Gentleman of the Bedchamber, a new arrival;mamanspeaks very highly of him.’
‘Your mother is quick to take fancies to people.’
‘That shows that her heart is still young,’ observed Natalya.
‘Yes. I shall soon bring you your mare. She is almost quite broken in now. I want to teach her to gallop, and I shall manage it soon.’
‘Merci!... But I’m quite ashamed. You are breaking her in yourself ... and they say it’s so hard!’
‘To give you the least pleasure, you know, Natalya Alexyevna, I am ready... I... not in such trifles——’
Volintsev grew confused.
Natalya looked at him with friendly encouragement, and again said ‘merci!’
‘You know,’ continued Sergei Pavlitch after a long pause, ‘that not such things.... But why am I saying this? you know everything, of course.’
At that instant a bell rang in the house.
‘Ah!la cloche du diner!’ cried Mlle. Boncourt, ‘rentrons.’
‘Quel dommage,’ thought the old French lady to herself as she mounted the balcony steps behind Volintsev and Natalya, ‘quel dommage que ce charmant garçon ait si peu de ressources dans la conversation,’ which may be translated, ‘you are a good fellow, my dear boy, but rather a fool.’
The baron did not arrive to dinner. They waited half-an-hour for him. Conversation flagged at the table. Sergei Pavlitch did nothing but gaze at Natalya, near whom he was sitting, and zealously filled up her glass with water. Pandalevsky tried in vain to entertain his neighbour, Alexandra Pavlovna; he was bubbling over with sweetness, but she hardly refrained from yawning.
Bassistoff was rolling up pellets of bread and thinking of nothing at all; even Pigasov was silent, and when Darya Mihailovna remarked to him that he had not been very polite to-day, he replied crossly, ‘When am I polite? that’s not in my line;’ and smiling grimly he added, ‘have a little patience; I am only kvas, you know,du simpleRussian kvas; but your Gentleman of the Bedchamber——’
‘Bravo!’ cried Darya Mihailovna, ‘Pigasov is jealous, he is jealous already!’
But Pigasov made her no rejoinder, and only gave her a rather cross look.
Seven o’clock struck, and they were all assembled again in the drawing-room.
‘He is not coming, clearly,’ said Darya Mihailovna.
But, behold, the rumble of a carriage was heard: a small tarantass drove into the court, and a few instants later a footman entered the drawing-room and gave Darya Mihailovna a note on a silver salver. She glanced through it, and turning to the footman asked:
‘But where is the gentleman who brought this letter?’
‘He is sitting in the carriage. Shall I ask him to come up?’
‘Ask him to do so.’
The man went out.
‘Fancy, how vexatious!’ continued Darya Mihailovna, ‘the baron has received a summons to return at once to Petersburg. He has sent me his essay by a certain Mr. Rudin, a friend of his. The baron wanted to introduce him to me—he speaks very highly of him. But how vexatious it is! I had hoped the baron would stay here for some time.’
‘Dmitri Nikolaitch Rudin,’ announced the servant
A man of about thirty-five entered, of a tall, somewhat stooping figure, with crisp curly hair and swarthy complexion, an irregular but expressive and intelligent face, a liquid brilliance in his quick, dark blue eyes, a straight, broad nose, and well-curved lips. His clothes were not new, and were somewhat small, as though he had outgrown them.
He walked quickly up to Darya Mihailovna, and with a slight bow told her that he had long wished to have the honour of an introduction to her, and that his friend the baron greatly regretted that he could not take leave of her in person.
The thin sound of Rudin’s voice seemed out of keeping with his tall figure and broad chest.
‘Pray be seated... very delighted,’ murmured Darya Mihailovna, and, after introducing him to the rest of the company, she asked him whether he belonged to those parts or was a visitor.
‘My estate is in the T—— province,’ replied Rudin, holding his hat on his knees. ‘I have not been here long. I came on business and stayed for a while in your district town.’
‘With whom?’
‘With the doctor. He was an old chum of mine at the university.’
‘Ah! the doctor. He is highly spoken of. He is skilful in his work, they say. But have you known the baron long?’
‘I met him last winter in Moscow, and I have just been spending about a week with him.’
‘He is a very clever man, the baron.’
‘Yes.’
Darya Mihailovna sniffed at her little crushed-up handkerchief steeped ineau de cologne.
‘Are you in the government service?’ she asked.
‘Who? I?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. I have retired.’
There followed a brief pause. The general conversation was resumed.
‘If you will allow me to be inquisitive,’ began Pigasov, turning to Rudin, ‘do you know the contents of the essay which his excellency the baron has sent?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘This essay deals with the relations to commerce—or no, of manufactures to commerce in our country.... That was your expression, I think, Darya Mihailovna?’
‘Yes, it deals with’... began Darya Mihailovna, pressing her hand to her forehead.
‘I am, of course, a poor judge of such matters,’ continued Pigasov, ‘but I must confess that to me even the title of the essay seems excessively (how could I put it delicately?) excessively obscure and complicated.’
‘Why does it seem so to you?’
Pigasov smiled and looked across at Darya Mihailovna.
‘Why, is it clear to you?’ he said, turning his foxy face again towards Rudin.
‘To me? Yes.’
‘H’m. No doubt you must know better.’
‘Does your head ache?’ Alexandra Pavlovna inquired of Darya Mihailovna.
‘No. It is only my—c’est nerveux.’
‘Allow me to inquire,’ Pigasov was beginning again in his nasal tones, ‘your friend, his excellency Baron Muffel—I think that’s his name?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Does his excellency Baron Muffel make a special study of political economy, or does he only devote to that interesting subject the hours of leisure left over from his social amusements and his official duties?’
Rudin looked steadily at Pigasov.
‘The baron is an amateur on this subject,’ he replied, growing rather red, ‘but in his essay there is much that is interesting and just.’
‘I am not able to dispute it with you; I have not read the essay. But I venture to ask—the work of your friend Baron Muffel is no doubt founded more upon general propositions than upon facts?’
‘It contains both facts and propositions founded upon the facts.’
‘Yes, yes. I must tell you that, in my opinion—and I’ve a right to give my opinion, on occasion; I spent three years at Dorpat... all these, so-called general propositions, hypotheses, these systems—excuse me, I am a provincial, I speak the truth bluntly—are absolutely worthless. All that’s only theorising—only good for misleading people. Give us facts, sir, and that’s enough!’
‘Really!’ retorted Rudin, ‘why, but ought not one to give the significance of the facts?’
‘General propositions,’ continued Pigasov, ‘they’re my abomination, these general propositions, theories, conclusions. All that’s based on so-called convictions; every one is talking about his convictions, and attaches importance to them, prides himself on them. Ah!’
And Pigasov shook his fist in the air. Pandalevsky laughed.
‘Capital!’ put in Rudin, ‘it follows that there is no such thing as conviction according to you?’
‘No, it doesn’t exist.’
‘Is that your conviction?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you say that there are none then? Here you have one at the very first turn.’
All in the room smiled and looked at one another.
‘One minute, one minute, but——,’ Pigasov was beginning.
But Darya Mihailovna clapped her hands crying, ‘Bravo, bravo, Pigasov’s beaten!’ and she gently took Rudin’s hat from his hand.
‘Defer your delight a little, madam; there’s plenty of time!’ Pigasov began with annoyance. ‘It’s not sufficient to say a witty word, with a show of superiority; you must prove, refute. We had wandered from the subject of our discussion.’
‘With your permission,’ remarked Rudin, coolly, ‘the matter is very simple. You do not believe in the value of general propositions—you do not believe in convictions?’
‘I don’t believe in them, I don’t believe in anything!’
‘Very good. You are a sceptic.’
‘I see no necessity for using such a learned word. However——’
‘Don’t interrupt!’ interposed Darya Mihailovna.
‘At him, good dog!’ Pandalevsky said to himself at the same instant, and smiled all over.
‘That word expresses my meaning,’ pursued Rudin. ‘You understand it; why not make use of it? You don’t believe in anything. Why do you believe in facts?’
‘Why? That’s good! Facts are matters of experience, every one knows what facts are. I judge of them by experience, by my own senses.’
‘But may not your senses deceive you? Your senses tell you that the sun goes round the earth,... but perhaps you don’t agree with Copernicus? You don’t even believe in him?’
Again a smile passed over every one’s face, and all eyes were fastened on Rudin. ‘He’s by no means a fool,’ every one was thinking.
‘You are pleased to keep on joking,’ said Pigasov. ‘Of course that’s very original, but it’s not to the point.’
‘In what I have said hitherto,’ rejoined Rudin, ‘there is, unfortunately, too little that’s original. All that has been well known a very long time, and has been said a thousand times. That is not the pith of the matter.’
‘What is then?’ asked Pigasov, not without insolence.
In discussions he always first bantered his opponent, then grew cross, and finally sulked and was silent.
‘Here it is,’ continued Rudin. ‘I cannot help, I own, feeling sincere regret when I hear sensible people attack——’
‘Systems?’ interposed Pigasov.
‘Yes, with your leave, even systems. What frightens you so much in that word? Every system is founded on a knowledge of fundamental laws, the principles of life——’
‘But there is no knowing them, no discovering them.’
‘One minute. Doubtless they are not easy for every one to get at, and to make mistakes is natural to man. However, you will certainly agree with me that Newton, for example, discovered some at least of these fundamental laws? He was a genius, we grant you; but the grandeur of the discoveries of genius is that they become the heritage of all. The effort to discover universal principles in the multiplicity of phenomena is one of the radical characteristics of human thought, and all our civilisation——’
‘That’s what you’re driving at!’ Pigasov broke in in a drawling tone. ‘I am a practical man and all these metaphysical subtleties I don’t enter into and don’t want to enter into.’
‘Very good! That’s as you prefer. But take note that your very desire to be exclusively a practical man is itself your sort of system—your theory.’
‘Civilisation you talk about!’ blurted in Pigasov; ‘that’s another admirable notion of yours! Much use in it, this vaunted civilisation! I would not give a brass farthing for your civilisation!’
‘But what a poor sort of argument, African Semenitch!’ observed Darya Mihailovna, inwardly much pleased by the calmness and perfect good-breeding of her new acquaintance. ‘C’est un homme comme il faut,’ she thought, looking with well-disposed scrutiny at Rudin; ‘we must be nice to him!’ Those last words she mentally pronounced in Russian.
‘I will not champion civilisation,’ continued Rudin after a short pause, ‘it does not need my championship. You don’t like it, every one to his own taste. Besides, that would take us too far. Allow me only to remind you of the old saying, “Jupiter, you are angry; therefore you are in the wrong.” I meant to say that all those onslaughts upon systems—general propositions—are especially distressing, because together with these systems men repudiate knowledge in general, and all science and faith in it, and consequently also faith in themselves, in their own powers. But this faith is essential to men; they cannot exist by their sensations alone, they are wrong to fear ideas and not to trust in them. Scepticism is always characterised by barrenness and impotence.’
‘That’s all words!’ muttered Pigasov.
‘Perhaps so. But allow me to point out to you that when we say “that’s all words!” we often wish ourselves to avoid the necessity of saying anything more substantial than mere words.’
‘What?’ said Pigasov, winking his eyes.
‘You understood what I meant,’ retorted Rudin, with involuntary, but instantly repressed impatience. ‘I repeat, if man has no steady principle in which he trusts, no ground on which he can take a firm stand, how can he form a just estimate of the needs, the tendencies and the future of his country? How can he know what he ought to do, if——’
‘I leave you the field,’ ejaculated Pigasov abruptly, and with a bow he turned away without looking at any one.
Rudin stared at him, and smiled slightly, saying nothing.
‘Aha! he has taken to flight!’ said Darya Mihailovna. ‘Never mind, Dmitri...! I beg your pardon,’ she added with a cordial smile, ‘what is your paternal name?’
‘Nikolaitch.’
‘Never mind, my dear Dmitri Nikolaitch, he did not deceive any of us. He wants to make a show of notwishingto argue any more. He is conscious that hecannotargue with you. But you had better sit nearer to us and let us have a little talk.’
Rudin moved his chair up.
‘How is it we have not met till now?’ was Darya Mihailovna’s question. ‘That is what surprises me. Have you read this book?C’est de Tocqueville, vous savez?’
And Darya Mihailovna held out the French pamphlet to Rudin.
Rudin took the thin volume in his hand, turned over a few pages of it, and laying it down on the table, replied that he had not read that particular work of M. de Tocqueville, but that he had often reflected on the question treated by him. A conversation began to spring up. Rudin seemed uncertain at first, and not disposed to speak out freely; his words did not come readily, but at last he grew warm and began to speak. In a quarter of an hour his voice was the only sound in the room, All were crowding in a circle round him.
Only Pigasov remained aloof, in a corner by the fireplace. Rudin spoke with intelligence, with fire and with judgment; he showed much learning, wide reading. No one had expected to find in him a remarkable man. His clothes were so shabby, so little was known of him. Every one felt it strange and incomprehensible that such a clever man should have suddenly made his appearance in the country. He seemed all the more wonderful and, one may even say, fascinating to all of them, beginning with Darya Mihailovna. She was pluming herself on having discovered him, and already at this early date was dreaming of how she would introduce Rudin into the world. In her quickness to receive impressions there was much that was almost childish, in spite of her years. Alexandra Pavlovna, to tell the truth, understood little of all that Rudin said, but was full of wonder and delight; her brother too was admiring him. Pandalevsky was watching Darya Mihailovna and was filled with envy. Pigasov thought, ‘If I have to give five hundred roubles I will get a nightingale to sing better than that!’ But the most impressed of all the party were Bassistoff and Natalya. Scarcely a breath escaped Bassistoff; he sat the whole time with open mouth and round eyes and listened—listened as he had never listened to any one in his life—while Natalya’s face was suffused by a crimson flush, and her eyes, fastened unwaveringly on Rudin, were both dimmed and shining.
‘What splendid eyes he has!’ Volintsev whispered to her.
‘Yes, they are.’
‘It’s only a pity his hands are so big and red.’
Natalya made no reply.
Tea was brought in. The conversation became more general, but still by the sudden unanimity with which every one was silent, directly Rudin opened his mouth, one could judge of the strength of the impression he had produced. Darya Mihailovna suddenly felt inclined to tease Pigasov. She went up to him and said in an undertone, ‘Why don’t you speak instead of doing nothing but smile sarcastically? Make an effort, challenge him again,’ and without waiting for him to answer, she beckoned to Rudin.
‘There’s one thing more you don’t know about him,’ she said to him, with a gesture towards Pigasov,—‘he is a terrible hater of women, he is always attacking them; pray, show him the true path.’
Rudin involuntarily looked down upon Pigasov; he was a head and shoulders taller. Pigasov almost withered up with fury, and his sour face grew pale.
‘Darya Mihailovna is mistaken,’ he said in an unsteady voice, ‘I do not only attack women; I am not a great admirer of the whole human species.’
‘What can have given you such a poor opinion of them?’ inquired Rudin.
Pigasov looked him straight in the face.
‘The study of my own heart, no doubt, in which I find every day more and more that is base. I judge of others by myself. Possibly this too is erroneous, and I am far worse than others, but what am I to do? it’s a habit!’
‘I understand you and sympathise with you!’ was Rudin’s rejoinder. ‘What generous soul has not experienced a yearning for self-humiliation? But one ought not to remain in that condition from which there is no outlet beyond.’
‘I am deeply indebted for the certificate of generosity you confer on my soul,’ retorted Pigasov. ‘As for my condition, there’s not much amiss with it, so that even if there were an outlet from it, it might go to the deuce, I shouldn’t look for it!’
‘But that means—pardon the expression—to prefer the gratification of your own pride to the desire to be and live in the truth.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ cried Pigasov, ‘pride—that I understand, and you, I expect, understand, and every one understands; but truth, what is truth? Where is it, this truth?’
‘You are repeating yourself, let me warn you,’ remarked Darya Mihailovna.
Pigasov shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, where’s the harm if I do? I ask: where is truth? Even the philosophers don’t know what it is. Kant says it is one thing; but Hegel—no, you’re wrong, it’s something else.’
‘And do you know what Hegel says of it?’ asked Rudin, without raising his voice.
‘I repeat,’ continued Pigasov, flying into a passion, ‘that I cannot understand what truth means. According to my idea, it doesn’t exist at all in the world, that is to say, the word exists but not the thing itself.’
‘Fie, fie!’ cried Darya Mihailovna, ‘I wonder you’re not ashamed to say so, you old sinner! No truth? What is there to live for in the world after that?’
‘Well, I go so far as to think, Darya Mihailovna,’ retorted Pigasov, in a tone of annoyance, ‘that it would be much easier for you, in any case, to live without truth than without your cook, Stepan, who is such a master hand at soups! And what do you want with truth, kindly tell me? you can’t trim a bonnet with it!’
‘A joke is not an argument,’ observed Darya Mihailovna, ‘especially when you descend to personal insult.’
‘I don’t know about truth, but I see speaking it does not answer,’ muttered Pigasov, and he turned angrily away.
And Rudin began to speak of pride, and he spoke well. He showed that man without pride is worthless, that pride is the lever by which the earth can be moved from its foundations, but that at the same time he alone deserves the name of man who knows how to control his pride, as the rider does his horse, who offers up his own personality as a sacrifice to the general good.
‘Egoism,’ so he ended, ‘is suicide. The egoist withers like a solitary barren tree; but pride, ambition, as the active effort after perfection, is the source of all that is great.... Yes! a man must prune away the stubborn egoism of his personality to give it the right of self-expression.’
‘Can you lend me a pencil?’ Pigasov asked Bassistoff.
Bassistoff did not at once understand what Pigasov had asked him.
‘What do you want a pencil for?’ he said at last
‘I want to write down Mr. Rudin’s last sentence. If one doesn’t write it down, one might forget it, I’m afraid! But you will own, a sentence like that is such a handful of trumps.’
‘There are things which it is a shame to laugh at and make fun of, African Semenitch!’ said Bassistoff warmly, turning away from Pigasov.
Meanwhile Rudin had approached Natalya. She got up; her face expressed her confusion. Volintsev, who was sitting near her, got up too.
‘I see a piano,’ began Rudin, with the gentle courtesy of a travelling prince; ‘don’t you play on it?’
‘Yes, I play,’ replied Natalya, ‘but not very well. Here is Konstantin Diomiditch plays much better than I do.’
Pandalevsky put himself forward with a simper. ‘You should not say that, Natalya Alexyevna; your playing is not at all inferior to mine.’
‘Do you know Schubert’s “Erlkonig”?’ asked Rudin.
‘He knows it, he knows it!’ interposed Darya Mihailovna. ‘Sit down, Konstantin. You are fond of music, Dmitri Nikolaitch?’
Rudin only made a slight motion of the head and ran his hand through his hair, as though disposing himself to listen. Pandalevsky began to play.
Natalya was standing near the piano, directly facing Rudin. At the first sound his face was transfigured. His dark blue eyes moved slowly about, from time to time resting upon Natalya. Pandalevsky finished playing.
Rudin said nothing and walked up to the open window. A fragrant mist lay like a soft shroud over the garden; a drowsy scent breathed from the trees near. The stars shed a mild radiance. The summer night was soft—and softened all. Rudin gazed into the dark garden, and looked round.
‘That music and this night,’ he began, ‘reminded me of my student days in Germany; our meetings, our serenades.’
‘You have been in Germany then?’ said Darya Mihailovna.
‘I spent a year at Heidelberg, and nearly a year at Berlin.’
‘And did you dress as a student? They say they wear a special dress there.’
‘At Heidelberg I wore high boots with spurs, and a hussar’s jacket with braid on it, and I let my hair grow to my shoulders. In Berlin the students dress like everybody else.’
‘Tell us something of your student life,’ said Alexandra Pavlovna.
Rudin complied. He was not altogether successful in narrative. There was a lack of colour in his descriptions. He did not know how to be humorous. However, from relating his own adventures abroad, Rudin soon passed to general themes, the special value of education and science, universities, and university life generally. He sketched in a large and comprehensive picture in broad and striking lines. All listened to him with profound attention. His eloquence was masterly and attractive, not altogether clear, but even this want of clearness added a special charm to his words.
The exuberance of his thought hindered Rudin from expressing himself definitely and exactly. Images followed upon images; comparisons started up one after another—now startlingly bold, now strikingly true. It was not the complacent effort of the practised speaker, but the very breath of inspiration that was felt in his impatient improvising. He did not seek out his words; they came obediently and spontaneously to his lips, and each word seemed to flow straight from his soul, and was burning with all the fire of conviction. Rudin was the master of almost the greatest secret—the music of eloquence. He knew how in striking one chord of the heart to set all the others vaguely quivering and resounding. Many of his listeners, perhaps, did not understand very precisely what his eloquence was about; but their bosoms heaved, it seemed as though veils were lifted before their eyes, something radiant, glorious, seemed shimmering in the distance.
All Rudin’s thoughts seemed centred on the future; this lent him something of the impetuous dash of youth... Standing at the window, not looking at any one in special, he spoke, and inspired by the general sympathy and attention, the presence of young women, the beauty of the night, carried along by the tide of his own emotions, he rose to the height of eloquence, of poetry.... The very sound of his voice, intense and soft, increased the fascination; it seemed as though some higher power were speaking through his lips, startling even to himself.... Rudin spoke of what lends eternal significance to the fleeting life of man.
‘I remember a Scandinavian legend,’ thus he concluded, ‘a king is sitting with his warriors round the fire in a long dark barn. It was night and winter. Suddenly a little bird flew in at the open door and flew out again at the other. The king spoke and said that this bird is like man in the world; it flew in from darkness and out again into darkness, and was not long in the warmth and light.... “King,” replies the oldest of the warriors, “even in the dark the bird is not lost, but finds her nest.” Even so our life is short and worthless; but all that is great is accomplished through men. The consciousness of being the instrument of these higher powers ought to outweigh all other joys for man; even in death he finds his life, his nest.’
Rudin stopped and dropped his eyes with a smile of involuntary embarrassment.
‘Vous êtes un poète,’ was Darya Mihailovna’s comment in an undertone. And all were inwardly agreeing with her—all except Pigasov. Without waiting for the end of Rudin’s long speech, he quietly took his hat and as he went out whispered viciously to Pandalevsky who was standing near the door:
‘No! Fools are more to my taste.’
No one, however, tried to detain him or even noticed his absence.
The servants brought in supper, and half an hour later, all had taken leave and separated. Darya Mihailovna begged Rudin to remain the night. Alexandra Pavlovna, as she went home in the carriage with her brother, several times fell to exclaiming and marvelling at the extraordinary cleverness of Rudin. Volintsev agreed with her, though he observed that he sometimes expressed himself somewhat obscurely—that is to say, not altogether intelligibly, he added,—wishing, no doubt, to make his own thought clear, but his face was gloomy, and his eyes, fixed on a corner of the carriage, seemed even more melancholy than usual.
Pandalevsky went to bed, and as he took off his daintily embroidered braces, he said aloud ‘A very smart fellow!’ and suddenly, looking harshly at his page, ordered him out of the room. Bassistoff did not sleep the whole night and did not undress—he was writing till morning a letter to a comrade of his in Moscow; and Natalya, too, though she undressed and lay down in her bed, had not an instant’s sleep and never closed her eyes. With her head propped on her arm, she gazed fixedly into the darkness; her veins were throbbing feverishly and her bosom often heaved with a deep sigh.