“I don’t find him in,” he gave me a slight nod.
I did not speak.
“Not punctual! He has his own ideas. From the Petersburg Side?”
“You mean you’ve come from the Petersburg Side?” I asked him in my turn.
“No, I asked whether you had.”
“I . . . yes, I have . . . but how did you know?”
“How did I know? H’m!” He winked, but did not deign to explain.
“I don’t live on the Petersburg Side, but I’ve just been there and have come from there.”
He remained silent, still with the same significant smile, which I disliked extremely. There was something stupid in his winking.
“From M. Dergatchev’s?” he said at last.
“From Dergatchev’s?” I opened my eyes. He gazed at me triumphantly. “I don’t know him.”
“H’m!”
“Well, as you please,” I answered. I began to loathe him.
“H’m. . . . To be sure. No, excuse me: you buy a thing at a shop, at another shop next door another man buys something else, and what, do you suppose? Money from a tradesman who is called a money-lender . . . for money too is an article of sale, and a money-lender is a tradesman too. . . . You follow me?”
“Certainly I follow.”
“A third purchaser comes along, and pointing to one shop, he says, ‘This is sound.’ Then he points to the other shop and says, ‘This is unsound.’ What am I to conclude about this purchaser?”
“How can I tell.”
“No, excuse me. I’ll take an example, man lives by good example. I walk along the Nevsky Prospect, and observe on the other side of the street a gentleman whose character I should like to investigate more closely. We walk, one each side of the street as far as the gate leading to Morskaya, and there, just where the English shop is, we observe a third gentleman, who has just been run over. Now mark: a fourth gentleman walks up, and wishes to investigate the character of all three of us, including the man who has been run over, from the point of view of practicability and soundness. . . . Do you follow?”
“Excuse me, with great difficulty.”
“Quite so; just what I thought. I’ll change the subject. I was at the springs in Germany, the mineral springs, as I had frequently been before, no matter which springs. I go to drink the waters and see an Englishman. It is difficult as you know to make acquaintance with an Englishman; two months later, having finished my cure, we were walking, a whole party of us, with alpenstocks on the mountain, no matter what mountain. At a pass there is an étape, the one where the monks make Chartreuse, note that. I meet a native standing in solitude looking about him in silence. I wish to form my conclusions in regard to his soundness: what do you think, can I apply for conclusions to the crowd of Englishmen with whom I am travelling solely because I was unable to talk to them at the springs?”
“How can I tell? Excuse me, it’s very difficult to follow you.”
“Difficult, is it?”
“Yes, you weary me.”
“H’m.” He winked and made a gesture, probably intended to suggest victory and triumph; then with stolid composure he took out of his pocket a newspaper which he had evidently only just bought, unfolded it and began reading the last page, apparently intending to leave me undisturbed. For five minutes he did not look at me.
“Brestograevskies haven’t gone smash, eh! Once they’ve started, they go on! I know a lot that have gone smash.”
He looked at me with intense earnestness.
“I don’t know much about the Stock Exchange so far,” I answered.
“You disapprove of it.”
“What?”
“Money.”
“I don’t disapprove of money but . . . but I think ideas come first and money second.”
“That is, allow me to say. . . . Here you have a man, so to say, with his own capital. . . .”
“A lofty idea comes before money, and a society with money but without a lofty idea comes to grief.”
I don’t know why, but I began to grow hot. He looked at me rather blankly, as though he were perplexed, but suddenly his whole face relaxed in a gleeful and cunning smile.
“Versilov, hey? He’s fairly scored, he has! Judgment given yesterday, eh?”
I suddenly perceived to my surprise that he knew who I was, and perhaps knew a great deal more. But I don’t understand why I flushed and stared in a most idiotic way without taking my eyes off him. He was evidently triumphant. He looked at me in high glee, as though he had found me out and caught me in the cleverest way.
“No,” he said, raising both his eyebrows; “you ask me about M. Versilov. What did I say to you just now about soundness? A year and a half ago over that baby he might have made a very perfect little job, but he came to grief.”
“Over what baby?”
“The baby who is being brought up now out of the way, but he won’t gain anything by it . . . because. . . .”
“What baby? What do you mean?”
“His baby, of course, his own by Mlle. Lidya Ahmakov. . . . ‘A charming girl very fond of me. . . .’ phosphorus matches — eh?”
“What nonsense, what a wild story! He never had a baby by Mlle. Ahmakov!”
“Go on! I’ve been here and there, I’ve been a doctor and I’ve been an accoucheur. My name’s Stebelkov, haven’t you heard of me? It’s true I haven’t practised for a long time, but practical advice on a practical matter I could give.”
“You’re an accoucheur . . . did you attend Mlle. Ahmakov?”
“No, I did not attend her. In a suburb there was a doctor Granz, burdened with a family; he was paid half a thaler, such is the position of doctors out there, and no one knew him either, so he was there instead of me. . . . I recommended him, indeed, because he was so obscure and unknown. You follow? I only gave practical advice when Versilov, Andrey Petrovitch, asked for it; but he asked me in dead secret, tête-à-tête. But Andrey Petrovitch wanted to catch two hares at once.”
I listened in profound astonishment.
“‘Chase two hares, catch neither,’ according to the popular, or rather peasant, proverb. What I say is: exceptions continually repeated become a general rule. He went after another hare, or, to speak plain Russian, after another lady, and with no results. Hold tight what you’ve got. When he ought to be hastening a thing on, he potters about: Versilov, that ‘petticoat prophet,’ as young Prince Sokolsky well described him before me at the time. Yes, you had better come to me! If there is anything you want to know about Versilov, you had better come to me!”
He was evidently delighted at my open-mouthed astonishment. I had never heard anything before about a baby. And at that moment the door of the next room slammed as some one walked rapidly in.
“Versilov lives in Mozhaisky Street, at Litvinov’s house, No. 17; I have been to the address bureau myself!” a woman’s voice cried aloud in an irritable tone; we could hear every word. Stebelkov raised his eyebrows and held up his finger. “We talk of him here, and there already he’s. . . . Here you have exceptions continually occurring! Quand on parle d’une corde. . . .”
He jumped up quickly and sitting down on the sofa, began listening at the door in front of which the sofa stood. I too was tremendously struck. I reflected that the speaker was probably the same young girl who had run down the stairs in such excitement. But how did Versilov come to be mixed up in this too? Suddenly there came again the same shriek, the furious shriek of some one savage with anger, who has been prevented from getting or doing something. The only difference was that the cries and shrieks were more prolonged than before. There were sounds of a struggle, a torrent of words, “I won’t, I won’t,” “Give it up, give it up at once!” or something of the sort, I don’t remember exactly. Then, just as before, some one rushed to the door and opened it. Both the people in the room rushed out into the passage, one just as before, trying to restrain the other. Stebelkov, who had leapt up from the sofa, and been listening with relish, fairly flew to the door, and with extreme lack of ceremony dashed into the passage straight upon the two. I too, of course, ran to the door. But his appearance in the passage acted like a pail of cold water. The two women vanished instantly, and shut the door with a slam.