by Leo Tolstoy
"Well, have you succeeded in undermining the basis of society?" asked Kolosoff, ironically quoting an expression used by a retrograde newspaper in attacking trial by jury. "Acquitted the culprits and condemned the innocent, have you?"
"Undermining the basis--undermining the basis," repeated Prince Korchagin, laughing. He had a firm faith in the wisdom and learning of his chosen friend and companion.
At the risk of seeming rude, Nekhludoff left Kolosoff's question unanswered, and sitting down to his steaming soup, went on eating.
"Do let him eat," said Missy, with a smile. The pronoun him she used as a reminder of her intimacy with Nekhludoff. Kolosoff went on in a loud voice and lively manner to give the contents of the article against trial by jury which had aroused his indignation. Missy's cousin, Michael Sergeivitch, endorsed all his statements, and related the contents of another article in the same paper. Missy was, as usual, very distinguee, and well, unobtrusively well, dressed.
"You must be terribly tired," she said, after waiting until
Nekhludoff had swallowed what was in his mouth.
"Not particularly. And you? Have you been to look at the pictures?" he asked.
"No, we put that off. We have been playing tennis at the Salamatoffs'. It is quite true, Mr. Crooks plays remarkably well."
Nekhludoff had come here in order to distract his thoughts, for he used to like being in this house, both because its refined luxury had a pleasant effect on him and because of the atmosphere of tender flattery that unobtrusively surrounded him. But to-day everything in the house was repulsive to him--everything: beginning with the doorkeeper, the broad staircase, the flowers, the footman, the table decorations, up to Missy herself, who to-day seemed unattractive and affected. Kolosoff's self-assured, trivial tone of liberalism was unpleasant, as was also the sensual, self-satisfied, bull-like appearance of old Korchagin, and the French phrases of Katerina Alexeevna, the Slavophil. The constrained looks of the governess and the student were unpleasant, too, but most unpleasant of all was the pronoun him that Missy had used. Nekhludoff had long been wavering between two ways of regarding Missy; sometimes he looked at her as if by moonlight, and could see in her nothing but what was beautiful, fresh, pretty, clever and natural; then suddenly, as if the bright sun shone on her, he saw her defects and could not help seeing them. This was such a day for him. To-day he saw all the wrinkles of her face, knew which of her teeth were false, saw the way her hair was crimped, the sharpness of her elbows, and, above all, how large her thumb-nail was and how like her father's.
"Tennis is a dull game," said Kolosoff; "we used to play lapta when we were children. That was much more amusing."
"Oh, no, you never tried it; it's awfully interesting," said Missy, laying, it seemed to Nekhludoff, a very affected stress on the word "awfully." Then a dispute arose in which Michael Sergeivitch, Katerina Alexeevna and all the others took part, except the governess, the student and the children, who sat silent and wearied.
"Oh, these everlasting disputes!" said old Korchagin, laughing, and he pulled the napkin out of his waistcoat, noisily pushed back his chair, which the footman instantly caught hold of, and left the table.
Everybody rose after him, and went up to another table on which stood glasses of scented water. They rinsed their mouths, then resumed the conversation, interesting to no one.
"Don't you think so?" said Missy to Nekhludoff, calling for a confirmation of the statement that nothing shows up a man's character like a game. She noticed that preoccupied and, as it seemed to her, dissatisfied look which she feared, and she wanted to find out what had caused it.
"Really, I can't tell; I have never thought about it," Nekhludoff answered.
"Will you come to mamma?" asked Missy.
"Yes, yes," he said, in a tone which plainly proved that he did not want to go, and took out a cigarette.
She looked at him in silence, with a questioning look, and he felt ashamed. "To come into a house and give the people the dumps," he thought about himself; then, trying to be amiable, said that he would go with pleasure if the princess would admit him.
"Oh, yes! Mamma will be pleased. You may smoke there; and Ivan
Ivanovitch is also there."
The mistress of the house, Princess Sophia Vasilievna, was a recumbent lady. It was the eighth year that, when visitors were present, she lay in lace and ribbons, surrounded with velvet, gilding, ivory, bronze, lacquer and flowers, never going out, and only, as she put it, receiving intimate friends, i.e., those who according to her idea stood out from the common herd.
Nekhludoff was admitted into the number of these friends because he was considered clever, because his mother had been an intimate friend of the family, and because it was desirable that Missy should marry him.
Sophia Vasilievna's room lay beyond the large and the small drawing-rooms. In the large drawing-room, Missy, who was in front of Nekhludoff, stopped resolutely, and taking hold of the back of a small green chair, faced him.
Missy was very anxious to get married, and as he was a suitable match and she also liked him, she had accustomed herself to the thought that he should be hers (not she his). To lose him would be very mortifying. She now began talking to him in order to get him to explain his intentions.
"I see something has happened," she said. "Tell me, what is the matter with you?"
He remembered the meeting in the law court, and frowned and blushed.
"Yes, something has happened," he said, wishing to be truthful; "a very unusual and serious event."
"What is it, then? Can you not tell me what it is?" She was pursuing her aim with that unconscious yet obstinate cunning often observable in the mentally diseased.
"Not now. Please do not ask me to tell you. I have not yet had time fully to consider it," and he blushed still more.
"And so you will not tell me?" A muscle twitched in her face and she pushed back the chair she was holding. "Well then, come!" She shook her head as if to expel useless thoughts, and, faster than usual, went on in front of him.
He fancied that her mouth was unnaturally compressed in order to keep back the tears. He was ashamed of having hurt her, and yet he knew that the least weakness on his part would mean disaster, i.e., would bind him to her. And to-day he feared this more than anything, and silently followed her to the princess's cabinet.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MISSY'S MOTHER.
Princess Sophia Vasilievna, Missy's mother, had finished her very elaborate and nourishing dinner. (She had it always alone, that no one should see her performing this unpoetical function.) By her couch stood a small table with her coffee, and she was smoking a pachitos. Princess Sophia Vasilievna was a long, thin woman, with dark hair, large black eyes and long teeth, and still pretended to be young.
Her intimacy with the doctor was being talked about. Nekhludoff had known that for some time; but when he saw the doctor sitting by her couch, his oily, glistening beard parted in the middle, he not only remembered the rumours about them, but felt greatly disgusted. By the table, on a low, soft, easy chair, next to Sophia Vasilievna, sat Kolosoff, stirring his coffee. A glass of liqueur stood on the table. Missy came in with Nekhludoff, but did not remain in the room.
"When mamma gets tired of you and drives you away, then come to me," she said, turning to Kolosoff and Nekhludoff, speaking as if nothing had occurred; then she went away, smiling merrily and stepping noiselessly on the thick carpet.
"How do you do, dear friend? Sit down and talk," said Princess Sophia Vasilievna, with her affected but very naturally-acted smile, showing her fine, long teeth--a splendid imitation of what her own had once been. "I hear that you have come from the Law Courts very much depressed. I think it must be very trying to a person with a heart," she added in French.
"Yes, that is so," said Nekhludoff. "One often feels one's own de--one feels one has no right to judge."
"Comme, c'est vrai," she cried, as if struck by the truth of this remark. She was in the habit of artf
ully flattering all those with whom she conversed. "Well, and what of your picture? It does interest me so. If I were not such a sad invalid I should have been to see it long ago," she said.
"I have quite given it up," Nekhludoff replied drily. The falseness of her flattery seemed as evident to him to-day as her age, which she was trying to conceal, and he could not put himself into the right state to behave politely.
"Oh, that is a pity! Why, he has a real talent for art; I have it from Repin's own lips," she added, turning to Kolosoff.
"Why is it she is not ashamed of lying so?" Nekhludoff thought, and frowned.
When she had convinced herself that Nekhludoff was in a bad temper and that one could not get him into an agreeable and clever conversation, Sophia Vasilievna turned to Kolosoff, asking his opinion of a new play. She asked it in a tone as if Kolosoff's opinion would decide all doubts, and each word of this opinion be worthy of being immortalised. Kolosoff found fault both with the play and its author, and that led him to express his views on art. Princess Sophia Vasilievna, while trying at the same time to defend the play, seemed impressed by the truth of his arguments, either giving in at once, or at least modifying her opinion. Nekhludoff looked and listened, but neither saw nor heard what was going on before him.
Listening now to Sophia Vasilievna, now to Kolosoff, Nekhludoff noticed that neither he nor she cared anything about the play or each other, and that if they talked it was only to gratify the physical desire to move the muscles of the throat and tongue after having eaten; and that Kolosoff, having drunk vodka, wine and liqueur, was a little tipsy. Not tipsy like the peasants who drink seldom, but like people to whom drinking wine has become a habit. He did not reel about or talk nonsense, but he was in a state that was not normal; excited and self-satisfied. Nekhludoff also noticed that during the conversation Princess Sophia Vasilievna kept glancing uneasily at the window, through which a slanting ray of sunshine, which might vividly light up her aged face, was beginning to creep up.
"How true," she said in reference to some remark of Kolosoff's, touching the button of an electric bell by the side of her couch. The doctor rose, and, like one who is at home, left the room without saying anything. Sophia Vasilievna followed him with her eyes and continued the conversation.
"Please, Philip, draw these curtains," she said, pointing to the window, when the handsome footman came in answer to the bell. "No; whatever you may say, there is some mysticism in him; without mysticism there can be no poetry," she said, with one of her black eyes angrily following the footman's movements as he was drawing the curtains. "Without poetry, mysticism is superstition; without mysticism, poetry is--prose," she continued, with a sorrowful smile, still not losing sight of the footman and the curtains. "Philip, not that curtain; the one on the large window," she exclaimed, in a suffering tone. Sophia Vasilievna was evidently pitying herself for having to make the effort of saying these words; and, to soothe her feelings, she raised to her lips a scented, smoking cigarette with her jewel-bedecked fingers.
The broad-chested, muscular, handsome Philip bowed slightly, as if begging pardon; and stepping lightly across the carpet with his broad-calved, strong, legs, obediently and silently went to the other window, and, looking at the princess, carefully began to arrange the curtain so that not a single ray dared fall on her. But again he did not satisfy her, and again she had to interrupt the conversation about mysticism, and correct in a martyred tone the unintelligent Philip, who was tormenting her so pitilessly. For a moment a light flashed in Philip's eyes.
"'The devil take you! What do you want?' was probably what he said to himself," thought Nekhludoff, who had been observing all this scene. But the strong, handsome Philip at once managed to conceal the signs of his impatience, and went on quietly carrying out the orders of the worn, weak, false Sophia Vasilievna.
"Of course, there is a good deal of truth in Lombroso's teaching," said Kolosoff, lolling back in the low chair and looking at Sophia Vasilievna with sleepy eyes; "but he over-stepped the mark. Oh, yes."
"And you? Do you believe in heredity?" asked Sophia Vasilievna, turning to Nekhludoff, whose silence annoyed her. "In heredity?" he asked. "No, I don't." At this moment his whole mind was taken up by strange images that in some unaccountable way rose up in his imagination. By the side of this strong and handsome Philip he seemed at this minute to see the nude figure of Kolosoff as an artist's model; with his stomach like a melon, his bald head, and his arms without muscle, like pestles. In the same dim way the limbs of Sophia Vasilievna, now covered with silks and velvets, rose up in his mind as they must be in reality; but this mental picture was too horrid and he tried to drive it away.
"Well, you know Missy is waiting for you," she said. "Go and find her. She wants to play a new piece by Grieg to you; it is most interesting."
"She did not mean to play anything; the woman is simply lying, for some reason or other," thought Nekhludoff, rising and pressing Sophia Vasilievna's transparent and bony, ringed hand.
Katerina Alexeevna met him in the drawing-room, and at once began, in French, as usual:
"I see the duties of a juryman act depressingly upon you."
"Yes; pardon me, I am in low spirits to-day, and have no right to weary others by my presence," said Nekhludoff.
"Why are you in low spirits?"
"Allow me not to speak about that," he said, looking round for his hat.
"Don't you remember how you used to say that we must always tell the truth? And what cruel truths you used to tell us all! Why do you not wish to speak out now? Don't you remember, Missy?" she said, turning to Missy, who had just come in.
"We were playing a game then," said Nekhludoff, seriously; "one may tell the truth in a game, but in reality we are so bad--I mean I am so bad--that I, at least, cannot tell the truth."
"Oh, do not correct yourself, but rather tell us why we are so bad," said Katerina Alexeevna, playing with her words and pretending not to notice how serious Nekhludoff was.
"Nothing is worse than to confess to being in low spirits," said
Missy. "I never do it, and therefore am always in good spirits."
Nekhludoff felt as a horse must feel when it is being caressed to make it submit to having the bit put in its mouth and be harnessed, and to-day he felt less than ever inclined to draw.
"Well, are you coming into my room? We will try to cheer you up."
He excused himself, saying he had to be at home, and began taking leave. Missy kept his hand longer than usual.
"Remember that what is important to you is important to your friends," she said. "Are you coming tomorrow?"
"I hardly expect to," said Nekhludoff; and feeling ashamed, without knowing whether for her or for himself, he blushed and went away.
"What is it? Comme cela m'intrigue," said Katerina Alexeevna. "I must find it out. I suppose it is some affaire d'amour propre; il est tres susceptible, notre cher Mitia."
"Plutot une affaire d'amour sale," Missy was going to say, but stopped and looked down with a face from which all the light had gone--a very different face from the one with which she had looked at him. She would not mention to Katerina Alexeevna even, so vulgar a pun, but only said, "We all have our good and our bad days."
"Is it possible that he, too, will deceive?" she thought; "after all that has happened it would be very bad of him."
If Missy had had to explain what she meant by "after all that has happened," she could have said nothing definite, and yet she knew that he had not only excited her hopes but had almost given her a promise. No definite words had passed between them--only looks and smiles and hints; and yet she considered him as her own, and to lose him would be very hard.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE AWAKENING.
"Shameful and stupid, horrid and shameful!" Nekhludoff kept saying to himself, as he walked home along the familiar streets. The depression he had felt whilst speaking to Missy would not leave him. He felt that, looking at it externally, as it were, he was in the r
ight, for he had never said anything to her that could be considered binding, never made her an offer; but he knew that in reality he had bound himself to her, had promised to be hers. And yet to-day he felt with his whole being that he could not marry her.
"Shameful and horrid, horrid and shameful!" he repeated to himself, with reference not only to his relations with Missy but also to the rest. "Everything is horrid and shameful," he muttered, as he stepped into the porch of his house. "I am not going to have any supper," he said to his manservant Corney, who followed him into the dining-room, where the cloth was laid for supper and tea. "You may go."
"Yes, sir," said Corney, yet he did not go, but began clearing the supper off the table. Nekhludoff looked at Corney with a feeling of ill-will. He wished to be left alone, and it seemed to him that everybody was bothering him in order to spite him. When Corney had gone away with the supper things, Nekhludoff moved to the tea urn and was about to make himself some tea, but hearing Agraphena Petrovna's footsteps, he went hurriedly into the drawing-room, to avoid being seen by her, and shut the door after him. In this drawing-room his mother had died three months before. On entering the room, in which two lamps with reflectors were burning, one lighting up his father's and the other his mother's portrait, he remembered what his last relations with his mother had been. And they also seemed shameful and horrid. He remembered how, during the latter period of her illness, he had simply wished her to die. He had said to himself that he wished it for her sake, that she might be released from her suffering, but in reality he wished to be released from the sight of her sufferings for his own sake.