[1]"Roubaska" generally means "shirt," but also is used to express the "back" of a card. Hence Routilov's pun.
[1]"Roubaska" generally means "shirt," but also is used to express the "back" of a card. Hence Routilov's pun.
[2]Diminutive of "dourak"—fool. A Russian card game.
[2]Diminutive of "dourak"—fool. A Russian card game.
[3]Seenote 1 ch. VIII.
[3]Seenote 1 ch. VIII.
[4]Seenote 1 ch. XI.
[4]Seenote 1 ch. XI.
The Prepolovenskys undertook the arrangement of the wedding. It was decided that they should be married in a village six versts from the town. Varvara felt uneasy about marrying in the town, after they had lived together so many years as relatives. The day fixed for the wedding was concealed. The Prepolovenskys spread a rumour that it was to take place on Friday, but it was really to be on Wednesday. They did it to prevent curiosity seekers from coming to the wedding. Varvara more than once said to Peredonov:
"Ardalyon Borisitch, don't you say a word of when the wedding is to be or they might hinder us."
Peredonov gave the expenses for the wedding unwillingly and with humiliations for Varvara. Sometimes he brought his stick with the Koukish head and said to Varvara:
"Kiss the Koukish and I'll give you the money. If you don't, I won't."
Varvara kissed the Koukish.
"What of that, it won't split my lips," she said.
The date of the wedding was kept secret even from the bride's-men until the day itself, so that they might not chatter about it. At first Routilov and Volodin were invited as bride's-men and both eagerly accepted; Routilov looked for an amusing experience, while Volodin felt flattered to play such an important role at such a distinguished event in the life of such an esteemed personage. Then Peredonov considered that one bride's-man was not enough for him. He said:
"Varvara, you can have one, but I must have two. One isn't enough for me—it will be difficult to hold the crown[1]over me. I'm a tall man."
And Peredonov invited Falastov as his second bride's-man.
Varvara grumbled:
"To the devil with him! We've got two, why should we have any more?"
"He's got gold spectacles. He'll look important," said Peredonov.
On the morning of the wedding Peredonov washed in hot water, as he always did, to avoid catching cold, and then demanded rouge, explaining:
"Now I have to rouge myself every day or else they'll think I'm getting old and they won't appoint me as inspector."
Varvara disliked giving him any of her rouge, but she had to yield—and Peredonov coloured his cheeks. He muttered:
"Veriga himself paints so as to look younger. You don't expect me to get married with white cheeks."
Then, shutting himself in his bedroom, he decided to mark himself, so that Volodin could not change places with him. On his chest, on his stomach, on his forearms and in various other places he marked in ink the letter "P".
"Volodin ought to be marked too. But how can he be? He would see it and rub it off," thought Peredonov dejectedly.
Then a new thought came into his mind—to put on a pair of corsets so that he should not be taken for an old man if he happened to bend over. He asked Varvara for a pair of corsets, but Varvara's corsets proved to be too tight—they would not come together.
"They ought to have been bought earlier," he said savagely. "You never think of anything in time."
"What man wears corsets?" said Varvara. "No one does."
"Veriga does," said Peredonov.
"Yes, Veriga is an old man, but you, Ardalyon Borisitch, thank God, are in your prime."
Peredonov smiled with self-satisfaction, looked in the mirror and said:
"Of course, I shall live another hundred and fifty years."
The cat sneezed under the bed. Varvara said with a smile:
"There, even the cat's sneezing! That shows it's true."
But Peredonov suddenly frowned. The cat now aroused dread in him and its sneezing seemed to him a sign of ominous cunning.
"He'll sneeze something that's not wanted," he thought, and got under the bed and began to drive the cat out. The cat mewed savagely, pressed against the wall, and suddenly with a loud, piercing mew, jumped between Peredonov's hands and ran out of the room.
"A Dutch devil," Peredonov abused the animal savagely.
"He's certainly a devil," affirmed Varvara. "He's become altogether wild. He won't let himself be stroked, as if the devil had got into him."
The Prepolovenskys sent for the bride's-men early in the morning. At ten o'clock all had gathered at Peredonov's. Grushina also came, and Sofya with her husband. They were handed vodka and the usualzakouska.
Peredonov ate little and thought dejectedly as to how he could distinguish himself from Volodin.
"He's curled like a sheep," he thought maliciously, and suddenly imagined that he too might comb his hair in a special way. He rose from the table and said:
"You go on eating and drinking—I don't object; but I'll go to the hairdresser and I'll have my hair done in the Spanish style."
"What is the Spanish style?" asked Routilov.
"Wait and you'll see."
When Peredonov went to get his hair trimmed, Varvara said:
"He's always inventing new notions. He sees devils. If he only drank less gin, the cursed tippler!"
Prepolovenskaya said with a sly smile:
"Well, as soon as you are married, Ardalyon Borisitch will get his place and settle down."
Grushina sniggered. She was amused by the secrecy of this wedding, and she was excited by an intense desire to create an ignominious spectacle of some sort and yet not be mixed up with it. On the day before she had whispered in an underhand way to her friends the place and hour of the wedding. And early that morning she had called in the blacksmith's younger son, had given him a five-kopeck piece, and hinted to him that towards evening he should wait outside the town where the newly married couple would pass, to throw rubbish at them. The boy gladly agreed and gave his sworn promise not to betray her. Grushina reminded him:
"You did give away Cherepnin when they beat you."
"We were fools," said the boy. "Now, let 'em hang us and we won't tell."
And the boy, in confirmation of his oath, ate a small handful of loam. For this Grushina added another three kopecks.
At the hairdresser's Peredonov demanded the barber himself. The barber, a young man who had lately finished a course at the town school and who had read books from the rural library, was just finishing cutting the hair of a landed proprietor. When he had finished, he came up to Peredonov.
"Let him go first," said Peredonov angrily.
The man paid and left. Peredonov sat down in front of the mirror.
"I want my hair trimmed and properly arranged," said he. "I have an important affair on to-day, something special, and so I want my hair arranged in the Spanish style."
The boy apprentice, who stood at the door, snorted with amusement. His master looked sternly at him. He had never had occasion to trim anyone's hair in Spanish style, and did not know what the Spanish style was or even if there were such a style. But if the gentleman demanded such a thing, then it must be assumed that he knew what he wanted. The young hairdresser did not want to betray his ignorance. He said respectfully:
"It's impossible to do it with your hair, sir."
"Why impossible?" said Peredonov taken aback.
"Your hair is badly nourished," explained the hairdresser.
"Do you expect me to pour beer over it?" growled Peredonov.
"Excuse me, why beer?" said the hairdresser affably. "When your hair is trimmed your head shows signs of baldness and what's left isn't enough to do the thing in the Spanish style."
Peredonov felt himself crushed by the impossibility of having his hair trimmed in the Spanish style. He said dejectedly:
"Well, cut it as you like."
He began to wonder whether the hairdresser had been persuaded not to cut his hair in a distinguished style. He ought not to have spoken about it at home. Evidently, while he was walking gravely and sedately along the street, Volodin had run like a little sheep by back streets and had conspired with the hairdresser.
"Would you like a spray, sir?" said the hairdresser, having finished trimming his hair.
"Spray me with mignonette. The more, the better," demanded Peredonov. "You might at least make up by spraying me with plenty of mignonette."
"I'm sorry, but we don't keep mignonette," said the hairdresser in confusion. "How will opopanax do?"
"You can't do anything I want," said Peredonov bitterly. "Go ahead, and spray me with whatever you've got."
He returned home in vexation. It was a windy day. The gates kept banging, yawning and laughing in the wind. Peredonov looked at them dispiritedly. How could he face the drive? But everything arranged itself.
Three carriages were waiting—they had to sit down and drive away at once, in order not to attract attention. Many curiosity mongers might collect and follow them to the wedding, if the carriages waited about too long. They took their places and drove off: Peredonov with Varvara, the Prepolovenskys with Routilov, Grushina with the other bride's-men.
A cloud of dust rose in the square. Peredonov heard a noise of axes. Barely visible through the dust, a wooden wall loomed and grew. They were building a fortress. Muzhiks, savage and morose-looking, glimmered in their red shirts through the dust.
The carriages ran past; the terrible vision flashed by and vanished. Peredonov looked around in terror, but nothing was visible, and he could not decide to tell anyone about his vision.
A sadness tormented Peredonov the whole way. Everything looked hostilely at him. The wind blew ominously. The sky was black. The wind was in their faces and seemed to moan for something. The trees gave no shadow—they kept their shadows within themselves. But the dust rose, a long grey, half-transparent serpent. The sun hid behind the clouds—did it look out from under them?
The road was undulating. Unexpected bushes, copses and fields rose from behind low hillocks, and streams appeared under the hollow-sounding, wooden arched bridges.
"The eye-bird flew by," said Peredonov morosely, looking into the whitish, misty distance of the sky. "One eye and two wings, and nothing more."
Varvara smiled. She thought that Peredonov had been drunk since the morning. But she did not argue with him—"for," she thought, "he might get angry and refuse to go to the wedding."
All four of Routilov's sisters were already in a corner of the church, hiding behind a column. Peredonov did not see them at first, but later during the ceremony when they appeared from their ambush and came forward, he saw them and felt frightened. They actually did not do anything unpleasant, they did not demand (as he had been afraid at first) that he should chase Varvara away and take one of them. They only kept laughing all the time. And their laughter, quiet at first, resounded louder and more evil in his ears all the time, like the laughter of untameable furies.
There were practically no outsiders in the church. Only two or three old women came from somewhere or other. And this was fortunate, for Peredonov conducted himself curiously and stupidly. He yawned, mumbled, nudged Varvara, complained about the smell of incense, wax and muzhiks.
"Your sisters are always laughing," he grumbled, turning to Routilov. "They'll perforate their livers with laughing."
Besides that, the nedotikomka disturbed him. It was dirty and dusty and kept hiding under the priest's vestments.
Both Varvara and Grushina thought the church ceremonies amusing. They giggled continuously. The words about a woman cleaving to her husband evoked special merriment. Routilov also giggled. He considered it his duty always and everywhere to amuse the ladies. Volodin conducted himself sedately, and crossed himself, preserving an expression of profundity on his face. The church ceremonies did not suggest to his mind anything but that they were an established custom which ought to be fulfilled, and that the fulfilment of all ceremonies leads one to a certain inner convenience: he went to church on Sundays, and he prayed, and was absolved, he had sinned and repented and again he was absolved. Now this is excellent and convenient—all the more convenient because once outside the church he did not have to think about churchly matters, but was guided entirely by quite different and worldly rules.
The ceremony was barely over and they had not yet had time to leave the church when suddenly a drunken crowd tumbled noisily into the church. It was Mourin and his friends.
Mourin, dusty and tousled, as usual, embraced Peredonov and shouted:
"You can't hide it from us, old boy! We're such fast friends that you can't part us by pouring cold water on us. And yet you hid it from us, you tricky fellow!"
Exclamations came from all sides:
"Villain, you didn't invite us!"
"But we're here all the same!"
"Yes, we found it out without you!"
The new-comers embraced and congratulated Peredonov. Mourin said:
"We missed the way because we stopped for a drink, or else we'd have conferred the pleasure of our company on you earlier."
Peredonov looked at them gloomily and did not reply to their congratulations. Malevolence and fear tormented him.
"They're always tracking me everywhere," he thought dejectedly.
"You might have crossed your foreheads," he said angrily. "Or possibly you were thinking evil against me."
The visitors crossed themselves, laughed and joked. The young officials especially distinguished themselves. The deacon reproached them.
Among the visitors was a young men with red moustaches whom Peredonov did not even know. He resembled a cat to an extraordinary degree. Wasn't it their cat turned into human shape? It was not for nothing that this young man kept snarling—he had not forgotten his cattish habits.
"Who told you?" asked Varvara angrily of the new guests.
"A nice young woman told us," replied Mourin. "But we have forgotten who it was."
Grushina turned around and winked at them. The new guests smiled back but did not give her away. Mourin said:
"As you like, Ardalyon Borisitch, but we're coming with you and you must give us champagne. Don't be a skinflint. You can't pour cold water on such friends as we are, and yet you've tried to get married on the quiet."
When the Peredonovs returned from the wedding the sun had gone down, but the sky was all fiery and golden. But this did not please Peredonov. He growled:
"They've dabbed pieces of gold on the sky and they're falling off. Who ever saw such a waste!"
The locksmith's sons met them just outside the town in a crowd of other street boys. They ran alongside and hooted. Peredonov trembled with fear. Varvara uttered curses, spat at the boys, and showed them the Koukish. The guests and the bride's-men roared with laughter.
At last they reached home. The entire company tumbled into Peredonov's house with a shout, a hubbub and whistling. They drank champagne, then took to vodka and began to play cards. They kept on drinking all night. Varvara got tipsy, danced, and was happy; Peredonov was also happy—Volodin had not yet been substituted for him. As always, the visitors conducted themselves disrespectfully and indecently towards Varvara; this seemed to her to be in the order of things.
After the wedding the Peredonovs' existence changed very little. Only Varvara's attitude towards her husband became more assured and independent. She ran about less for her husband—but, through deep-rooted habit, she was still a little afraid of him. Peredonov, also from habit, shouted at her as he used to do and sometimes even beat her. But he too scented the assurance she had acquired with her new position. And this depressed him. It seemed to him that if she was not so afraid of him as she had been, it was because she had strengthened her criminal idea to leave him and get Volodin into his place.
"I must be on my guard," he thought.
Varvara triumphed. She, together with her husband, paid visits to the town ladies, even to those with whom she was little acquainted. At these visits she showed a ridiculous pride and awkwardness. She was received everywhere though in many houses with astonishment. Varvara had ordered in good time for these visits a hat from the best local modiste. The large vivid flowers set abundantly on the hat delighted her.
The Peredonovs began their visits with the Head-Master's wife. Then they went to the wife of the Marshal of the Nobility.
On the day that the Peredonovs had prepared to make the visits—of which, of course, the Routilovs knew beforehand—the sisters went to Varvara Nikolayevna Khripatch, to see out of curiosity how Varvara Peredonov would conduct herself. The Peredonovs soon arrived. Varvara made a curtsy to the Head-Master's wife, and in a more than usually jarring voice said:
"Well, we've come to see you. Please love us and be kind to us."
"I'm very glad," replied the Head-Master's wife constrainedly. And she seated Varvara on the sofa.
Varvara sat down with obvious pleasure in the place indicated, spread out her rustling green dress, and said, trying to appear at ease:
"I've been a Mam'zell until now, but now I've become a Madam. We're namesakes—I'm Varvara and you're Varvara—and we've not been to each other's houses. While I was a Mam'zell, I sat at home most of the time. What's the good of sitting by one's stove all the time! Now Ardalyon Borisitch and I will live more socially. Grant me a favour—we will come to you and you will come to us, Mossure to Mossure and Madame to Madame."
"But I hear that you're not going to stay here long," said the Head-Master's wife. "I'm told that you and your husband are going to be transferred."
"Yes, the paper will come soon and then we shall leave here," replied Varvara. "But as the paper has not yet come, we must stay here a little longer and show ourselves."
Varvara had hopes of the inspector's position. After the wedding she wrote a letter to the Princess. She had not yet received an answer. She decided to write again at the New Year.
Liudmilla said:
"But we thought, Ardalyon Borisitch, that you were going to marry the young lady, Pilnikov?"
"What's the good of me marrying anyone else?" said Peredonov. "I need patronage."
"But how did your affair with Mademoiselle Pilnikov get broken off," Liudmilla teased him. "Didn't you pay her attentions? Did she refuse you?"
"I'll show her up yet," growled Peredonov morosely.
"That's anidée fixeof Ardalyon Borisitch," said the Head-Master's wife with a dry laugh.
[1]Crowns are held over the bride and bridegroom at Russian weddings in church.
[1]Crowns are held over the bride and bridegroom at Russian weddings in church.
The Peredonov's cat acted wildly, snarled and refused to come when called—it had become quite incorrigible. The animal alarmed Peredonov. He sometimes pronounced exorcisms over it.
"I wonder whether it will help," he thought. "There's strong electricity in a cat's fur. That's where the trouble is."
Once the idea came into his mind to have the cat shorn. No sooner thought of than done. Varvara was not at home. She had gone to Grushina's, after having put a bottle of cherry brandy into her pocket. There was no one to hinder her. Peredonov tied the cat on a cord—he had made a collar out of a pocket handkerchief—and led the animal to the hairdresser. The cat mewed wildly, and struggled. Sometimes it threw itself in desperation at Peredonov—but Peredonov kept it at a distance with his stick. A crowd of small boys ran behind him, hooting and laughing. Passers-by paused to look. People looked out of their windows to see what the noise was about. Peredonov morosely dragged the cat along on the cord without the least embarrassment.
He succeeded in getting the cat to the hairdresser and said:
"Shave the cat, barber, the closer the better."
The small boys crowded at the shop door, roaring with laughter and making faces. The hairdresser felt offended and grew red. He said in a slightly trembling voice:
"I beg your pardon, sir, we don't undertake such jobs. And who ever heard of a shaved cat? It must be the very latest fashion which hasn't reached us yet."
Peredonov listened to him with stupefied disappointment. He shouted:
"You'd better admit that you can't do it, incompetent!"
And he walked away, dragging after him the cat, which mewed continuously. On the way he thought dejectedly that everywhere and always everyone laughed at him and no one wanted to help him. His sadness oppressed his heart.
Peredonov went with Volodin and Routilov to the Summer-garden to play billiards. The marker said to them with embarrassment:
"I'm sorry, gentlemen, you can't play to-day."
"Why not?" asked Peredonov irritatedly.
"Well, I'm sorry to say there are no billiard balls," replied the marker.
"Someone pinched them when he wasn't looking," said the bar-tender sternly, leaning across the counter.
The marker trembled and suddenly twitched his reddened ears, as a hare does, and whispered:
"They were stolen."
Peredonov exclaimed in a frightened voice:
"Good Lord! Who stole them?"
"It's not known," said the marker; "no one seemed to have been here, and then when I went to look for the balls they weren't there."
Routilov sniggered and exclaimed:
"What a funny thing!"
Volodin assumed an injured look and scolded the marker:
"If you allow the billiard balls to be stolen when you are somewhere else and the billiard balls disappear, then you ought to have provided others for us to have something to play with. We come here and want to play, and if there are no billiard balls, how can we play?"
"Don't whine, Pavloushka," said Peredonov, "it's bad enough without you. Now, marker, you go and look for those balls, we must play—but meanwhile bring us a couple of beers."
They began to drink the beer. But it was tedious. The billiard balls could not be found. They wrangled with one another and they cursed the marker. The latter felt guilty and said nothing.
Peredonov detected in this theft a new intrigue, hostile to himself.
"Why?" he thought dejectedly, and could not understand.
He went into the garden, sat down on a bench near the pond—he had never sat there before—and fixed his eyes dully on the weed-clogged water.
Volodin sat down beside him and shared his grief, looking also at the pond with his sheepish eyes.
"Why is there such a dirty mirror here, Pavloushka," said Peredonov, pointing at the pond with his stick.
Volodin smiled and replied:
"It's not a mirror, Ardasha, it's a pond. And as there's no breeze just now the trees are reflected in it as if in a mirror."
Peredonov looked up; a fence on the other side of the pond separated the garden from the street. Peredonov asked:
"Why is the cat on that fence?"
Volodin looked in the same direction and said with a snigger:
"It was there, but it's gone."
There really had been no cat—it was an illusion of Peredonov's—a cat with wide green eyes, his cunning, tireless enemy.
Peredonov began to think about the billiard balls:
"Who needed them? Has the nedotikomka devoured them? Perhaps that's why I haven't seen it to-day," thought Peredonov. "It must have gorged itself and be asleep somewhere now."
Peredonov went home dejectedly.
The sunset was fading. A small cloud was wandering across the sky. She moved stealthily on her soft shoes, and peeped out at him. On her dark edges a reflection smiled enigmatically.
Above the stream, which flowed between the garden and the town, the shadows of the houses and the bushes wavered, whispered to each other, and seemed to be searching for someone.
And on the earth, in this dark and eternally hostile town, all the people he met were evil and malicious. Everything became mingled in a general ill-will towards Peredonov, the dogs laughed at him and the people barked at him.
The ladies of the town began to visit Varvara. Some of them with an eager curiosity had managed to pay a visit on the second or third day, to see how Varvara looked at home. Others delayed a week or more. And still others did not come at all—as, for instance, Vershina.
The Peredonovs awaited return visits every day with anxious impatience; they counted up those who had not yet come. They awaited the Head-Master and his wife with special impatience. They waited and were immensely agitated for fear that the Khripatches should suddenly arrive.
A week had passed. The Khripatches had not yet come. Varvara had got into a temper and began to pour out abuse. This waiting plunged Peredonov into a deeply depressed state of mind. Peredonov's eyes became entirely vacant. It was as if they were becoming extinguished, and sometimes they seemed like the eyes of a dead man. Absurd fears tormented him. Without any visible cause he began to be afraid of one or another object. An idea somehow came into his head—and tormented him for several days—that they would cut his throat; he was afraid of everything sharp and hid the knives and the forks.
"Perhaps," he thought, "they've been bewitched by whispered spells. It might happen that I might cut myself with them."
"Why are there knives?" he asked Varvara. "Chinamen eat with chopsticks."
For a whole week after this they did not cook any meat, but lived on cabbage-soup and gruel.
Varvara, to get even with Peredonov for the troubles he had caused her before their wedding, sometimes agreed with him and encouraged him to think that his fancies and superstitions had a basis in reality. She told him that he had many enemies and that they had every reason to envy him. More than once she told Peredonov tauntingly that he had been informed against and slandered to the authorities and the Princess. And she rejoiced at his visible fear.
It seemed clear to Peredonov that the Princess was dissatisfied with him. Why couldn't she have sent him for his wedding an ikon or cake. He thought: Oughtn't he to earn her favour? But how? By falsehood? Should he slander someone, calumniate someone, inform against someone? He knew that all women love tittle-tattle—and so couldn't he invent something, something pleasant andrisquéabout Varvara and write it to the Princess? She would laugh and give him the place.
But Peredonov was not able to write the letter, and felt apprehensive about writing to a Princess. And later he forgot all about this scheme.
Peredonov gave ordinary visitors vodka and the cheapest port-wine. But he bought a three-rouble bottle of Madeira for the Head-Master. He considered this wine extremely expensive, kept it in his bedroom and showed it to his visitors, saying:
"It's for the Head-Master!"
Routilov and Volodin were once sitting at Peredonov's. Peredonov showed them the Madeira.
"What's the good of looking at the outside, it doesn't taste well," said Routilov with a snigger, "you might treat us to some of your expensive Madeira."
"What an idea!" exclaimed Peredonov angrily. "What should I give the Head-Master?"
"The Head-Master could drink a glass of vodka," said Routilov.
"Head-Masters don't drink vodka, they have to drink Madeira," said Peredonov reasonably.
"But suppose he likes vodka?" persisted Routilov.
"Good heavens! You don't suppose a general would like vodka!" said Peredonov with conviction.
"All the same you'd better give us some of it," insisted Routilov.
But Peredonov quickly took away the bottle and they heard the click of the lock on the little cupboard in which he kept the wine. When he came back to his guests he began to talk about the Princess to change the conversation. He said quite gravely:
"The Princess! Why she sold rotten apples in the market and managed to get hold of a Prince."
Routilov burst out laughing and shouted:
"Do Princes walk about markets?"
"Oh, she knew how to entice him in," said Peredonov.
"You're making it up, Ardalyon Borisitch, it's a cock-and-bull story," argued Routilov. "The Princess is a born lady."
Peredonov looked at him malignantly and thought:
"He's defending her. That means he's siding with the Princess. It's clear that she's bewitched him although she lives at a distance."
And the nedotikomka wriggled about him, laughed noiselessly and shook all over with laughter. It reminded Peredonov of various dreadful circumstances. He looked around timidly and whispered:
"In every town there's a sergeant of the gendarmes in the secret service. He wears civilian clothes, sometimes he's in the civil service, sometimes he's a tradesman, or he does something else, but at night when everyone is asleep he puts on his blue uniform and suddenly becomes a sergeant of the gendarmes."
"But why the uniform?" inquired Volodin reasonably.
"Because no one dares to appear before the authorities without a uniform. You might get beaten for doing it."
Volodin sniggered. Peredonov bent over him closer and whispered:
"Sometimes he even lives in the shape of a were-wolf. You may think it's simply a cat, but that's an error, it's really a gendarme running about. No one hides from a cat, and he listens to everything that's said."
At last, after a week and a half, the Head-Master's wife paid a visit to Varvara. She arrived with her husband on a week-day at four o'clock, all dressed up, attractive-looking, bringing a perfume of violets with her—altogether unexpectedly for the Peredonovs, who for some reason had expected the Khripatches on a Sunday, earlier in the day. They were dumbfounded. Varvara was in the kitchen half-dressed and dirty. She rushed away to get dressed and Peredonov received the visitors, looking as if he had been just awakened.
"Varvara will be here immediately," he mumbled, "she's dressing herself. She was working—we have a new servant who doesn't understand our ways. She's a hopeless fool."
Soon Varvara came in, dressed somehow, with a flushed, frightened face. She extended to her visitors a dirty, damp hand, and said in a voice trembling with agitation:
"You must forgive me for keeping you waiting—we didn't expect you on a week-day."
"I seldom go out on a Sunday," said Madame Khripatch. "There are drunkards in the street. I let my servant-maid have her day out."
The conversation somehow started, and the kindness of the Head-Master's wife somewhat encouraged Varvara. Madame Khripatch treated Varvara with a slight contemptuousness, but graciously—as with a repented sinner who had to be treated kindly but who might still soil one's hands. She gave Varvara several hints, as if incidentally, about clothes and housekeeping.
Varvara tried to please the Head-Master's wife, but her red hands and chapped lips still trembled with fear. This embarrassed Madame Khripatch. She tried to be even more gracious, but an involuntary fastidiousness overcame her. By her whole attitude she showed Varvara that there could never be a close acquaintance between them. But she did this so graciously that Varvara did not understand, and imagined that she and Madame Khripatch would become great friends.
Khripatch had the look of a man out of his element, but he concealed the fact skilfully and manfully. He refused the Madeira on the ground that he was not used to drinking wine at that hour of the day. He talked about the local news, about the approaching changes in the composition of the district court. But it was very noticeable that he and Peredonov moved in different circles of local society.
They did not make a long visit. Varvara was glad when they left; they just came and went. She said with relief as she took off her clothes:
"Well, thank God they've gone. I didn't know what to talk to them about. When you don't know people you can't tell how to get at them."
Suddenly she remembered that when the Khripatches left they had not invited her to their house. This distressed her at first, but afterwards she thought:
"They'll send a card with a note when to come. Gentry like them have a time for everything. I suppose I ought to have a go at French. I can't even say 'Pa' and 'Ma' in French."
When they got home the Head-Master's wife said to her husband:
"She's simply pitiful, and hopelessly vulgar; it's utterly impossible to be on equal terms with her. There's nothing in her to correspond with her position."
Khripatch replied:
"She fully corresponds with her husband. I'm impatiently waiting for them to take him away from us."
After the wedding Varvara began to drink now and then—most frequently with Grushina. Once when she was a little tipsy Prepolovenskaya was at her house and Varvara blabbed about the letter. She didn't tell everything but she hinted sufficiently clearly. This was enough for the cunning Sofya—it was a sudden revelation to her.
"But why didn't I guess it at once," she mentally reproached herself. She told Vershina in confidence about the forged letters—and from her it spread all over the town.
Prepolovenskaya could not help laughing at Peredonov's credulousness whenever she met him.
She said to him:
"You're very simple, Ardalyon Borisitch."
"I'm not simple at all," he replied, "I'm a graduate of a University."
"You may be a graduate, but anyone who wants to can take you in."
"I can take in everyone myself," argued Peredonov.
Prepolovenskaya smiled slyly and left him. Peredonov was dully perplexed.
"What does she mean? It's out of spite," he thought. "Everyone's my enemy."
And he made a Koukish after her.
"You'll get nothing out of me," he thought, consoling himself, but he was tormented by dread.
Her hints did not seem very satisfactory to Prepolovenskaya. But she did not want to tell him everything in plain words. Why should she quarrel with Varvara? From time to time she sent Peredonov anonymous letters in which the hints were clearer. But Peredonov misunderstood them.
Sofya once wrote him:
"You had better see whether that Princess, who wrote you the letter, doesn't live here."
Peredonov thought that perhaps the Princess had really come to the town to watch his movements.
"It's obvious," he thought, "that she's in love with me and wants to get me away from Varvara."
And these letters both frightened and angered him. He kept asking Varvara:
"Where is the Princess? I hear that she has come to the town."
Varvara, to get even with him for what had happened before the marriage, tormented him with vague hints, taunts and half-timid, malignant insinuations. She smiled insolently, and said to him in that strained voice which is usually heard from a person who lies knowingly without the hope of being believed:
"How should I know where the Princess lives now?"
"You're lying—you do know!" said Peredonov in terror.
He did not know what to believe—the meaning of her words, or the lie betrayed in the sound of her voice—and this, like everything he did not understand, terrified him. Varvara retorted:
"What an idea! Perhaps she left Peter for somewhere else. She doesn't have to ask me when she goes away."
"But perhaps she really has come here?" asked Peredonov timidly.
"Perhaps she really has come here!" Varvara mimicked him. "She's smitten with you and she's come here to see you."
"You're a liar! Is it likely that she'd fall in love with me?"
Varvara laughed spitefully.
From that time Peredonov began to look about attentively for the Princess. Sometimes it seemed to him that she was looking in at the window, through the door, eavesdropping, and whispering with Varvara.
Time passed by and the paper, announcing his appointment as inspector, so eagerly expected day after day, still did not come. He had no private information of the situation. Peredonov did not dare to find out from the Princess herself—Varvara constantly frightened him by saying that the Princess was a very great lady, and he thought that if he wrote to her it might cause him extreme unpleasantness. He did not know precisely what they could do to him if the Princess complained of him, but this made him think of dreadful possibilities. Varvara said to him:
"Don't you know aristocrats? You must wait until they act of themselves. But once you remind them, they get offended, and it'll be the worse for you. They're so touchy. They're proud, and they like to be taken at their word."
And Peredonov was still credulous. But he got angry with the Princess. Sometimes he even thought that the Princess would inform against him in order to rid herself of her obligations to him. Or else she would inform against him because he had married Varvara when perhaps she herself was in love with him. That was why she had surrounded him with spies, he thought, who kept an eye on him everywhere. They had so hemmed him in that he had no air to breathe, no light. She was not an eminent lady for nothing. She could do whatever she liked. From spite he invented most unlikely stories about the Princess. He told Routilov and Volodin that he had formerly been her lover and that she had given him large sums of money.
"But I've drunk it all away," he said. "Why the devil should I save it! She also promised me a pension for life, but she took me in over that."
"And would you have accepted it?" asked Routilov with a snigger.
Peredonov was silent. He did not understand the question. But Volodin answered for him gravely and judiciously:
"Why not accept it, if she's rich? She's gratified herself with pleasures and she ought to pay for them."
"If she were at least a beauty," said Peredonov mournfully. "She's freckled and pug-nosed. She paid very well, otherwise I wouldn't even want to spit at the hag! She must attend to my request."
"You're a liar, Ardalyon Borisitch," said Routilov.
"A liar! What an idea! Do you suppose she paid me for nothing? She's jealous of Varvara, and that's why she doesn't give me the job at once."
Peredonov did not feel any shame when he said that the Princess paid him. Volodin was a credulous listener, and did not notice the absurdities and contradictions in his stories. Routilov protested, but thought that without fire there can be no smoke. He thought there must have been something between Peredonov and the Princess.
"She's older than the priest's dog,"[1]said Peredonov convincingly, as if it were to the point; "but see that you don't blab about it, because it might come to her ears and do no good. She paints herself, and she tries to make herself as young as a sucking-pig by injecting things in her veins. And you know that she's old. She's really a hundred."
Volodin nodded his head and clicked his tongue affirmatively. He believed it all.
It so happened that on the day after this conversation Peredonov read Krilov's fable, "The Liar." And for several days afterwards he was afraid to go over the bridge, but crossed the river in a boat, for fear that the bridge should tumble down.[2]
He explained to Volodin:
"What I said about the Princess was the truth, only the bridge might take a sudden notion not to believe my story, and tumble down to the devil."