Rudin: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

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 the _etude_
of 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, 'is _Alexandrine_ coming?'

'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 la, 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, mind _herself_, 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 new _etude_. I daresay the music will
soothe African Semenitch. Orpheus soothed savage beasts.'

Konstantin Diomiditch took his seat at the piano, and played the etude
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 distingue_. 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
entraine_!

'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; _maman_ speaks 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 garcon 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 simple_ Russian
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

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