Part 10

‘Come to my room for a minute,’ Shubin said to Bersenyev, directly the latter had taken leave of Anna Vassilyevna: ‘I have something to show you.’

Bersenyev followed him to his attic. He was surprised to see a number of studies, statuettes, and busts, covered with damp cloths, set about in all the corners of the room.

‘Well I see you have been at work in earnest,’ he observed to Shubin.

‘One must do something,’ he answered. ‘If one thing doesn’t do, one must try another. However, like a true Corsican, I am more concerned with revenge than with pure art. _Trema, Bisanzia!_’

‘I don’t understand you,’ said Bersenyev.

‘Well, wait a minute. Deign to look this way, gracious friend and benefactor, my vengeance number one.’

Shubin uncovered one figure, and Bersenyev saw a capital bust of Insarov, an excellent likeness. The features of the face had been correctly caught by Shubin to the minutest detail, and he had given him a fine expression, honest, generous, and bold.

Bersenyev went into raptures over it.

‘That’s simply exquisite!’ he cried. ‘I congratulate you. You must send it to the exhibition! Why do you call that magnificent work your vengeance?’

‘Because, sir, I intended to offer this magnificent work as you call it to Elena Nikolaevna on her name day. Do you see the allegory? We are not blind, we see what goes on about us, but we are gentlemen, my dear sir, and we take our revenge like gentlemen.... But here,’ added Shubin, uncovering another figure, ‘as the artist according to modern aesthetic principles enjoys the enviable privilege of embodying in himself every sort of baseness which he can turn into a gem of creative art, we in the production of this gem, number two, have taken vengeance not as gentlemen, but simply _en canaille_.’

He deftly drew off the cloth, and displayed to Bersenyev’s eyes a statuette in Dantan’s style, also of Insarov. Anything cleverer and more spiteful could not be imagined. The young Bulgarian was represented as a ram standing on his hind-legs, butting forward with his horns. Dull solemnity and aggressiveness, obstinacy, clumsiness and narrowness were simply printed on the visage of the ‘sire of the woolly flock,’ and yet the likeness to Insarov was so striking that Bersenyev could not help laughing.

‘Eh? is it amusing?’ said Shubin. ‘Do you recognise the hero? Do you advise me to send it too to the exhibition? That, my dear fellow, I intend as a present for myself on my own name day.... Your honour will permit me to play the fool.’

And Shubin gave three little leaps, kicking himself behind with his heels.

Bersenyev picked up the cloth off the floor--and threw it over the statuette.

‘Ah, you, magnanimous’--began Shubin. ‘Who the devil was it in history was so particularly magnanimous? Well, never mind! And now,’ he continued, with melancholy triumph, uncovering a third rather large mass of clay, ‘you shall behold something which will show you the humility and discernment of your friend. You will realise that he, like a true artist again, feels the need and the use of self-castigation. Behold!’

The cloth was lifted and Bersenyev saw two heads, modelled side by side and close as though growing together.... He did not at once know what was the subject, but looking closer, he recognised in one of them Annushka, in the other Shubin himself. They were, however, rather caricatures than portraits. Annushka was represented as a handsome fat girl with a low forehead, eyes lost in layers of fat, and a saucily turned-up nose. Her thick lips had an insolent curve; her whole face expressed sensuality, carelessness, and boldness, not without goodnature. Himself Shubin had modelled as a lean emaciated rake, with sunken cheeks, his thin hair hanging in weak wisps about his face, a meaningless expression in his dim eyes, and his nose sharp and thin as a dead man’s.

Bersenyev turned away with disgust. ‘A nice pair, aren’t they, my dear fellow?’ said Shubin; ‘won’t you graciously compose a suitable title? For the first two I have already thought of titles. On the bust shall be inscribed: “A hero resolving to liberate his country.” On the statuette: “Look out, sausage-eating Germans!” And for this work what do you think of “The future of the artist Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin?” Will that do?’

‘Leave off,’ replied Bersenyev. ‘Was it worth while to waste your time on such a ----’ He could not at once fix on a suitable word.

‘Disgusting thing, you mean? No, my dear fellow, excuse me, if anything ought to go to the exhibition, it’s that group.’

‘It’s simply disgusting,’ repeated Bersenyev. ‘And besides, it’s nonsense. You have absolutely no such degrading tendencies to which, unhappily, our artists have such a frequent bent. You have simply libelled yourself.’

‘Do you think so?’ said Shubin gloomily. ‘I have none of them, and if they come upon me, the fault is all one person’s. Do you know,’ he added, tragically knitting his brows, ‘that I have been trying drinking?’

‘Nonsense?’

‘Yes, I have, by God,’ rejoined Shubin; and suddenly grinning and brightening,--‘but I didn’t like it, my dear boy, the stuff sticks in my throat, and my head afterwards is a perfect drum. The great Lushtchihin himself--Harlampy Lushtchihin--the greatest drunkard in Moscow, and a Great Russian drunkard too, declared there was nothing to be made of me. In his words, the bottle does not speak to me.’

Bersenyev was just going to knock the group over but Shubin stopped him.

‘That’ll do, my dear boy, don’t smash it; it will serve as a lesson, a scare-crow.’

Bersenyev laughed.

‘If that’s what it is, I will spare your scarecrow then,’ he said. And now, ‘Long live eternal true art!’

‘Long live true art!’ put in Shubin. ‘By art the good is better and the bad is not all loss!’

The friends shook hands warmly and parted.

XXI

Elena’s first sensation on awakening was one of happy consternation. ‘Is it possible? Is it possible?’ she asked herself, and her heart grew faint with happiness. Recollections came rushing on her... she was overwhelmed by them. Then again she was enfolded by the blissful peace of triumph. But in the course of the morning, Elena gradually became possessed by a spirit of unrest, and for the remainder of the day she felt listless and weary. It was true she knew now what she wanted, but that made it no easier for her. That never-to-be forgotten meeting had cast her for ever out of the old groove; she was no longer at the same standpoint, she was far away, and yet everything went on about her in its accustomed order, everything pursued its own course as though nothing were changed; the old life moved on its old way, reckoning on Elena’s interest and co-operation as of old. She tried to begin a letter to Insarov, but that too was a failure; the words came on to paper either lifeless or false. Her diary she had put an end to by drawing a thick stroke under the last line. That was the past, and every thought, all her soul, was turned now to the future. Her heart was heavy. To sit with her mother who suspected nothing, to listen to her, answer her and talk to her, seemed to Elena something wicked; she felt the presence of a kind of falseness in her, she suffered though she had nothing to blush for; more than once an almost irresistible desire sprang up in her heart to tell everything without reserve, whatever might come of it afterwards. ‘Why,’ she thought, ‘did not Dmitri take me away then, from that little chapel, wherever he wanted to go? Didn’t he tell me I was his wife before God? What am I here for?’ She suddenly began to feel shy of every one, even of Uvar Ivanovitch, who was flourishing his fingers in more perplexity than ever. Now everything about her seemed neither sweet nor friendly, nor even a dream, but, like a nightmare, lay, an immovable dead load, on her heart; seeming to reproach her and be indignant with her, and not to care to know about her....’You are ours in spite of everything,’ she seemed to hear. Even her poor pets, her ill-used birds and animals looked at her--so at least she fancied--with suspicion and hostility. She felt conscience-stricken and ashamed of her feelings. ‘This is my home after all,’ she thought, ‘my family, my country.’... ‘No, it’s no longer your country, nor your family,’ another voice affirmed within her. Terror was overmastering her, and she was vexed with her own feebleness. The trial was only beginning and she was losing patience already... Was this what she had promised?

She did not soon gain control of herself. But a week passed and then another.... Elena became a little calmer, and grew used to her new position. She wrote two little notes to Insarov, and carried them herself to the post: she could not for anything--through shame and through pride--have brought herself to confide in a maid. She was already beginning to expect him in person.... But instead of Insarov, one fine morning Nikolai Artemyevitch made his appearance.

XXII

No one in the house of the retired lieutenant of guards, Stahov, had ever seen him so sour, and at the same time so self-confident and important as on that day. He walked into the drawing-room in his overcoat and hat, with long deliberate stride, stamping with his heels; he approached the looking-glass and took a long look at himself, shaking his head and biting his lips with imperturbable severity. Anna Vassilyevna met him with obvious agitation and secret delight (she never met him otherwise); he did not even take off his hat, nor greet her, and in silence gave Elena his doe-skin glove to kiss. Anna Vassilyevna began questioning him about the progress of his cure; he made her no reply. Uvar Ivanovitch made his appearance; he glanced at him and said, ‘bah!’ He usually behaved coldly and haughtily to Uvar Ivanovitch, though he acknowledged in him ‘traces of the true Stahov blood.’ Almost all Russian families of the nobility are convinced, as is well known, of the existence of exceptional hereditary characteristics, peculiar to them alone; we have more than once heard discussions ‘among ourselves’ of the Podsalaskinsky ‘noses,’ and the ‘Perepreyevsky’ necks. Zoya came in and sat down facing Nikolai Artemyevitch. He grunted, sank into an armchair, asked for coffee, and only then took off his hat. Coffee was brought him; he drank a cup, and looking at everybody in turn, he growled between his teeth, ‘_Sortes, s’il vous plaît_,’ and turning to his wife he added, ‘_et vous, madame, restez, je vous prie_.’

They all left the room, except Anna Vassilyevna. Her head was trembling with agitation. The solemnity of Nikolai Artemyevitch’s preparations impressed her. She was expecting something extraordinary.

‘What is it?’ she cried, directly the door was closed.

Nikolai Artemyevitch flung an indifferent glance at Anna Vassilyevna.

‘Nothing special; what a way you have of assuming the air of a victim at once!’ he began, quite needlessly dropping the corners of his mouth at every word. ‘I only want to forewarn you that we shall have a new guest dining here to-day.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Kurnatovsky, Yegor Andreyevitch. You don’t know him. The head secretary in the senate.’

‘He is to dine with us to-day?’

‘Yes.’

‘And was it only to tell me this that you made every one go away?’

Nikolai Artemyevitch again flung a glance--this time one of irony--at Anna Vassilyevna.

‘Does that surprise you? Defer your surprise a little.’

He ceased speaking. Anna Vassilyevna too was silent for a little time.

‘I could have wished----’ she was beginning.

‘I know you have always looked on me as an “immoral” man,’ began Nikolai Artemyevitch suddenly.

‘I!’ muttered Anna Vassilyevna, astounded.

‘And very likely you are right. I don’t wish to deny that I have in fact sometimes given you just grounds for dissatisfaction’ (“my greys!” flashed through Anna Vassilyevna’s head), ‘though you must yourself allow, that in the condition, as you are aware, of your constitution----’

‘And I make no complaint against you, Nikolai Artemyevitch.’

‘_C’est possible_. In any case, I have no intention of justifying myself. Time will justify me. But I regard it as my duty to prove to you that I understand my duties, and know how to care for--for the welfare of the family entrusted--entrusted to me.’

‘What’s the meaning of all this?’ Anna Vassilyevna was thinking. (She could not guess that the preceding evening at the English club a discussion had arisen in a corner of the smoking-room as to the incapacity of Russians to make speeches. ‘Which of us can speak? Mention any one!’ one of the disputants had exclaimed. ‘Well, Stahov, for instance,’ had answered the other, pointing to Nikolai Artemyevitch, who stood up on the spot almost squealing with delight.)

‘For instance,’ pursued Nikolai Artemyevitch, ‘my daughter Elena. Don’t you consider that the time has come for her to take a decisive step along the path--to be married, I mean to say. All these intellectual and philanthropic pursuits are all very well, but only up to a certain point, up to a certain age. It’s time for her to drop her mistiness, to get out of the society of all these artists, scholars, and Montenegrins, and do like everybody else.’

‘How am I to understand you?’ asked Anna Vassilyevna.

‘Well, if you will kindly listen,’ answered Nikolai Artemyevitch, still with the same dropping of the corners of his lips, ‘I will tell you plainly, without beating about the bush. I have made acquaintance, I have become intimate with this young man, Mr. Kurnatovsky, in the hope of having him for a son-in-law. I venture to think that when you see him, you will not accuse me of partiality or precipitate judgment.’ (Nikolai Artemyevitch was admiring his own eloquence as he talked.) ‘Of excellent education--educated in the highest legal college--excellent manners, thirty-three years old, and upper-secretary, a councillor, and a Stanislas cross on his neck. You, I hope, will do me the justice to allow that I do not belong to the number of those _pères de famille_ who are mad for position; but you yourself told me that Elena Nikolaevna likes practical business men; Yegor Andreyevitch is in the first place a business man; now on the other side, my daughter has a weakness for generous actions; so let me tell you that Yegor Andreyevitch, directly he had attained the possibility--you understand me--the possibility of living without privation on his salary, at once gave up the yearly income assigned him by his father, for the benefit of his brothers.’

‘Who is his father?’ inquired Anna Vassilyevna.

‘His father? His father is a man well-known in his own line, of the highest moral character, _un vrai stoïcien_, a retired major, I think, overseer of all the estates of the Count B----’

‘Ah!’ observed Anna Vassilyevna.

‘Ah! why ah?’ interposed Nikolai Artemyevitch. ‘Can you be infected with prejudice?’

‘Why, I said nothing----’ Anna Vassilyevna was beginning.

‘No, you said, ah!--However that may be, I have thought it well to acquaint you with my way of thinking; and I venture to think--I venture to hope Mr. Kurnatovsky will be received _à bras ouverts_. He is no Montenegrin vagrant.’

‘Of course; I need only call Vanka the cook and order a few extra dishes.’

‘You are aware that I will not enter into that,’ said Nikolai Artemyevitch; and he got up, put on his hat, and whistling (he had heard some one say that whistling was only permissible in a country villa and a riding court) went out for a stroll in the garden. Shubin watched him out of the little window of his lodge, and in silence put out his tongue at him.

At ten minutes to four, a hackney-carriage drove up to the steps of the Stahovs’s villa, and a man, still young, of prepossessing appearance, simply and elegantly dressed, stepped out of it and sent up his name. This was Yegor Andreyevitch Kurnatovsky.

This was what, among other things, Elena wrote next day to Insarov:

‘Congratulate me, dear Dmitri, I have a suitor. He dined with us yesterday: papa made his acquaintance at the English club, I fancy, and invited him. Of course he did not come yesterday as a suitor. But good mamma, to whom papa had made known his hopes, whispered in my ear what this guest was. His name is Yegor Andreyevitch Kurnatovsky; he is upper-secretary to the Senate. I will first describe to you his appearance. He is of medium height, shorter than you, and a good figure; his features are regular, he is close-cropped, and wears large whiskers. His eyes are rather small (like yours), brown, and quick; he has a flat wide mouth; in his eyes and on his lips there is a perpetual sort of official smile; it seems to be always on duty there. He behaves very simply and speaks precisely, and everything about him is precise; he moves, laughs, and eats as though he were doing a duty. “How carefully she has studied him!” you are thinking, perhaps, at this minute. Yes; so as to be able to describe him to you. And besides, who wouldn’t study her suitor! There’s something of iron in him--and dull and empty at the same time--and honest; they say he is really very honest. You, too, are made of iron; but not like this man. At dinner he sat next me, and facing us sat Shubin. At first the conversation turned on commercial undertakings; they say he is very clever in business matters, and was almost throwing up his government post to take charge of a large manufacturing business. Pity he didn’t do it! Then Shubin began to talk about the theatre; Mr. Kurnatovsky declared and--I must confess--without false modesty, that he has no ideas about art. That reminded me of you--but I thought; no, Dmitri and I are ignorant of art in a very different way though. This man seemed to mean, “I know nothing of it, and it’s quite superfluous, still it may be admitted in a well-ordered state.” He seems, however, to think very little about Petersburg and _comme il faut_: he once even called himself one of the proletariat. ‘We are working people,’ he said; I thought if Dmitri had said that, I shouldn’t have liked it; but he may talk about himself, he may boast if he likes. With me he is very attentive; but I kept feeling that a very, very condescending superior was talking with me. When he means to praise any one, he says So-and-so is a man of principle--that’s his favourite word. He seems to be self-confident, hardworking, capable of self-sacrifice (you see, I am impartial), that’s to say, of sacrificing his own interest; but he is a great despot. It would be woeful to fall into his power! At dinner they began talking about bribes.

‘“I know,” he said, “that in many cases the man who accepts a bribe is not to blame; he cannot do otherwise. Still, if he is found out, he must be punished without mercy.”

‘I cried, “Punish an innocent man!”

‘“Yes; for the sake of principle.”

‘“What principle?” asked Shubin. Kurnatovsky seemed annoyed or surprised, and said, “That needs no explanation.”

‘Papa, who seems to worship him, put in “of course not”; and to my vexation the conversation stopped there. In the evening Bersenyev came and got into a terrific argument with him. I have never seen our good Andrei Petrovitch so excited. Mr. Kurnatovsky did not at all deny the utility of science, universities, and so on, but still I understood Andrei Petrovitch’s indignation. The man looks at it all as a sort of gymnastics. Shubin came up to me after dinner, and said, “This fellow here and some one else (he can never bring himself to utter your name) are both practical men, but see what a difference; there’s the real living ideal given to life; and here there’s not even a feeling of duty, simply official honesty and activity without anything inside it.” Shubin is clever, and I remembered his words to tell you; but to my mind there is nothing in common between you. You _have faith_, and he has not; for a man cannot _have faith_ in himself only.

‘He did not go away till late; but mamma had time to inform me that he was pleased with me, and papa is in ecstasies. Did he say, I wonder, that I was a woman of principle? I was almost telling mamma that I was very sorry, but I had a husband already. Why is it papa dislikes you so? Mamma, we could soon manage to bring round.

‘Oh, my dear one! I have described this gentleman in such detail to deaden my heartache. I don’t live without you; I am constantly seeing you, hearing you. I look forward to seeing you--only not at our house, as you intended--fancy how wretched and ill at ease we should be!--but you know where I wrote to you--in that wood. Oh, my dear one! How I love you!’

XXIII

Three weeks after Kurnatovsky’s first visit, Anna Vassilyevna, to Elena’s great delight, returned to Moscow, to her large wooden house near Prechistenka; a house with columns, white lyres and wreaths over every window, with an attic, offices, a palisade, a huge green court, a well in the court and a dog’s kennel near the well. Anna Vassilyevna had never left her country villa so early, but this year with the first autumn chills her face swelled; Nikolai Artemyevitch for his part, having finished his cure, began to want his wife; besides, Augustina Christianovna had gone away on a visit to her cousin in Revel; a family of foreigners, known as ‘living statues,’ _des poses plastiques_, had come to Moscow, and the description of them in the _Moscow Gazette_ had aroused Anna Vassilyevna’s liveliest curiosity. In short, to stay longer at the villa seemed inconvenient, and even, in Nikolai Artemyevitch’s words, incompatible with the fulfilment of his ‘cherished projects.’ The last fortnight seemed very long to Elena. Kurnatovsky came over twice on Sundays; on other days he was busy. He came really to see Elena, but talked more to Zoya, who was much pleased with him. ‘_Das ist ein Mann_!’ she thought to herself, as she looked at his full manly face and listened to his self-confident, condescending talk. To her mind, no one had such a wonderful voice, no one could pronounce so nicely, ‘I had the hon-our,’ or, ‘I am most de-lighted.’ Insarov did not come to the Stahovs, but Elena saw him once in secret in a little copse by the Moskva river, where she arranged to meet him. They hardly had time to say more than a few words to each other. Shubin returned to Moscow with Anna Vassilyevna; Bersenyev, a few days later.

Insarov was sitting in his room, and for the third time looking through the letters brought him from Bulgaria by hand; they were afraid to send them by post. He was much disturbed by them. Events were developing rapidly in the East; the occupation of the Principalities by Russian troops had thrown all men’s minds into a ferment; the storm was growing--already could be felt the breath of approaching inevitable war. The fire was kindling all round, and no one could foresee how far it would go--where it would stop. Old wrongs, long cherished hopes--all were astir again. Insarov’s heart throbbed eagerly; his hopes too were being realised. ‘But is it not too soon, will it not be in vain?’ he thought, tightly clasping his hands. ‘We are not ready, but so be it! I must go.’