“Don’t worry yourself, mother, I won’t be rude to Andrey Petrovitch again,” I rapped out all at once.
“Good heavens! how noble of him,” cried Tatyana Pavlovna. “Sonia darling, you don’t mean to say you still stand on ceremony with him? Who is he to be treated with such deference, and by his own mother, too! Look at you, why you behave as though you were afraid of him, it is disgraceful.”
“I should like it very much, mother, if you would call me Arkasha.”
“Oh . . . yes . . . certainly, yes I will,” my mother said hurriedly. I . . . don’t always . . . henceforward I will.”
She blushed all over. Certainly her face had at times a great charm. . . . It had a look of simplicity, but by no means of stupidity. It was rather pale and anaemic, her cheeks were very thin, even hollow; her forehead was already lined by many wrinkles, but there were none round her eyes, and her eyes were rather large and wide open, and shone with a gentle and serene light which had drawn me to her from the very first day. I liked her face, too, because it did not look particularly depressed or drawn; on the contrary, her expression would have been positively cheerful, if she had not been so often agitated, sometimes almost panic-stricken over trifles, starting up from her seat for nothing at all, or listening in alarm to anything new that was said, till she was sure that all was well and as before. What mattered to her was just that all should be as before; that there should be no change, that nothing new should happen, not even new happiness. . . . It might have been thought that she had been frightened as a child. Besides her eyes, I liked the oval of her rather long face, and I believe if it had been a shade less broad across the cheekbones she might have been called beautiful, not only in her youth but even now. She was not more than thirty-nine, but grey hairs were already visible in her chestnut hair.
Tatyana Pavlovna glanced at her in genuine indignation.
“A booby like him! And you tremble before him, you are ridiculous, Sofia, you make me angry, I tell you!”
“Ah, Tatyana Pavlovna, why should you attack him now? But you are joking perhaps, eh?” my mother added, detecting something like a smile on Tatyana Pavlovna’s face. Her scoldings could not indeed be always taken seriously. But she smiled (if she did smile) only at my mother, of course, because she loved her devotedly, and no doubt noticed how happy she was at that moment at my meekness.
“Of course, I can’t help feeling hurt, if you will attack people unprovoked, Tatyana Pavlovna, and just when I’ve come in saying ‘Good evening, mother,’ a thing I’ve never done before,” I thought it necessary to observe at last.
“Only fancy,” she boiled over at once: “He considers it as something to be proud of. Am I to go down on my knees to you, pray, because for once in your life you’ve been polite? and as though it were politeness! Why do you stare into the corner when you come in? I know how you tear and fling about before her! You might have said ‘Good evening’ to me, too, I wrapped you in your swaddling clothes, I am your godmother.”
I need not say I did not deign to answer. At that moment my sister came in and I made haste to turn to her.
“Liza, I saw Vassin to-day and he inquired after you. You have met him?”
“Yes, last year in Luga,” she answered quite simply, sitting down beside me and looking at me affectionately. I don’t know why, but I had fancied she would flush when I spoke of Vassin. My sister was a blonde; very fair with flaxen hair, quite unlike both her parents. But her eyes and the oval of her face were like our mother’s. Her nose was very straight, small, and regular; there were tiny freckles in her face, however, of which there was no sign in my mother’s. There was very little resemblance to Versilov, nothing but the slenderness of figure, perhaps, her tallness and something charming in her carriage. There was not the slightest likeness between us — we were the opposite poles.
“I knew his honour for three months,” Liza added.
“Is it Vassin you call ‘his honour,’ Liza? You should call him by his name. Excuse my correcting you, sister, but it grieves me that they seem to have neglected your education.”
“But it’s shameful of you to remark upon it before your mother,” cried Tatyana Pavlovna, firing up; “and you are talking nonsense, it has not been neglected at all.”
“I am not saying anything about my mother,” I said sharply, defending myself. “Do you know, mother, that when I look at Liza it’s as though it were you over again; you have given her the same charm of goodness, which you must have had yourself, and you have it to this day and always will have it. . . . I was only talking of the surface polish, of the silly rules of etiquette, which are necessary, however. I am only indignant at the thought that when Versilov has heard you call Vassin ‘his honour’ he has not troubled to correct you at all — his disdain and his indifference to us are so complete. That’s what makes me furious.”
“He is a perfect bear himself, and he is giving us lessons in good manners! Don’t you dare talk of Versilov before your mother, sir, or before me either, I won’t stand it!” Tatyana Pavlovna flashed out.
“I got my salary to-day, mother, fifty roubles; take it, please; here!”
I went up to her and gave her the money; she was in a tremor of anxiety at once.
“Oh, I don’t know about taking it,” she brought out, as though afraid to touch the money. I did not understand.
“For goodness’ sake, mother, if you both think of me as one of the family, as a son and a brother. . . .”
“Oh, I’ve been to blame, Arkady: I ought to have confessed something to you, but I am afraid of you. . . .”
She said this with a timid and deprecating smile; again I did not understand and interrupted.
“By the way, did you know, mother, that Andrey Petrovitch’s case against the Sokolskys is being decided to-day?”
“Ah! I knew,” she cried, clasping her hands before her (her favourite gesture) in alarm.
“To-day?” cried Tatyana Pavlovna startled, “but it’s impossible, he would have told us. Did he tell you?” she turned to my mother.
“Oh! no . . . that it was to-day . . . he didn’t. But I have been fearing it all the week. I would have prayed for him to lose it even, only to have it over and off one’s mind, and to have things as they used to be again.”
“What! hasn’t he even told you, mother?” I exclaimed. “What a man! There’s an example of the indifference and contempt I spoke of just now.”
“It’s being decided, how is it being decided? And who told you?” cried Tatyana Pavlovna, pouncing upon me. “Speak, do.”
“Why, here he is himself! Perhaps he will tell you,” I announced, catching the sound of his step in the passage and hastily sitting down again beside Liza.
“Brother, for God’s sake, spare mother, and be patient with Andrey Petrovitch . . .” she whispered to me.
“I will, I will,” with that I turned to her and pressed her hand.
Liza looked at me very mistrustfully, and she was right.
2
He came in very much pleased with himself, so pleased that he did not feel it necessary to conceal his state of mind. And, indeed, he had become accustomed of late to displaying himself before us without the slightest ceremony, not only in his bad points but even where he was ridiculous, a thing which most people are afraid to do; at the same time, he fully recognized that we should understand to the smallest detail. In the course of the last year, so Tatyana Pavlovna observed, he had become slovenly in his dress: his clothes though old were always well cut and free from foppishness. It is true that he was prepared to put on clean linen only on every alternate day, instead of every day, which was a real distress to my mother; it was regarded by them as a sacrifice, and the whole group of devoted women looked upon it as an act of heroism. He always wore soft wide-brimmed black hats. When he took off his hat his very thick but silvery locks stood up in a shock on his head; I liked looking at his hair when he took off his hat.