Reproach incarnate you did stand
Before the fatherland, a liberal idealist.
Perhaps the person of whom the people's poet so expressed himself did have the right to pose all his life in this vein, if he wanted, boring though it is. But our Stepan Trofimovich in truth was only an imitator compared with such persons; then, too, he used to get tired of standing and would often recline. But, even then, the incarnateness of the reproach was still preserved in that reclining position—the more so, speaking in all fairness, as even that was quite sufficient for our province. You should have seen him when he sat down to play cards in our club. His whole look seemed to say: "Cards! Me sit down to play whist with you! Is it compatible? Who must answer for it? Who broke up my activity and turned it into whist? Ah, perish Russia!" and he would trump majestically with a heart.
And to tell the truth he was terribly fond of a little game of cards, for which, especially of late, he had frequent and unpleasant skirmishes with Varvara Petrovna, the more so as he was forever losing. But of that later. I will merely note that he was even a man of tender conscience (sometimes, that is) and therefore often sorrowful. In the course of his twenty-year-long friendship with Varvara Petrovna he used to fall regularly, three or four times a year, into a state known among us as "civic grief"[10]—that is, simply a fit of spleen, but our much respected Varvara Petrovna liked the expression. Later on, besides civic grief, he also began falling into champagne; but the alert Varvara Petrovna guarded him all his life against all trivial inclinations. And he did need a nurse, because he would sometimes become quite strange: in the midst of the loftiest grief he would suddenly start laughing in a most plebeian manner. Moments came over him when he would start talking about himself in a humorous vein. And there was nothing Varvara Petrovna feared more than a humorous vein. This was a woman-classic, a woman-Maecenas, whose acts presupposed only the loftiest considerations. Supreme was the twenty-year-long influence of this lofty lady upon her poor friend. One ought to speak of her separately, and so I will.
III
There are strange friendships: two friends are almost ready to eat each other, they live like that all their lives, and yet they cannot part. Parting is even impossible: the friend who waxes capricious and breaks it off will be the first to fall sick and die, perhaps, if it should happen. I know positively that several times, occasionally even after his most intimate outpourings tête-à-tête with Varvara Petrovna, Stepan Trofimovich suddenly jumped up from the sofa when she had gone and started pounding the wall with his fists.
This occurred without a trace of allegory, so that once he even broke some plaster from the wall. Perhaps I shall be asked how I could have learned of such a fine detail. And what if I myself witnessed it? What if Stepan Trofimovich himself sobbed many a time on my shoulder while portraying in vivid colors all his innermost secrets? (And what, oh, what did he not tell me then!) But here is what almost always happened after such weepings: the very next day he would be ready to crucify himself for his ingratitude; he would hurriedly send for me, or come running to me himself, with the sole purpose of announcing to me that Varvara Petrovna was "an angel of honor and delicacy, while he was just the opposite." He not only came running to me, but he described it more than once to her in the most eloquent letters, and confessed, over his full signature, that no more than a day ago, for instance, he had been telling some outsider that she kept him out of vanity, that she envied his learning and talents, that she hated him and was only afraid to show her hatred openly for fear he would leave her and thereby damage her literary reputation; that he despised himself on account of that and had resolved to die a violent death, and was only waiting for a last word from her that would decide it all, and so on, and so on, in the same vein. You can imagine after that how hysterical the nervous outbursts of this most innocent of all fifty-year-old infants could become! I once read one of these letters, after some quarrel between them, venomously acted out, though the cause was a trifling one. I was horrified and implored him not to send the letter.
"Impossible... honor... duty ... I shall die if I do not confess everything to her, everything!" he answered all but deliriously, and he did send the letter.
And here lay the difference between them—Varvara Petrovna would never have sent such a letter. True, he loved writing to distraction, wrote to her even while living in the same house, and on hysterical occasions even two letters a day. I know positively that she always read these letters in a most attentive way, even in the event of two letters a day, and, having read them, lay them away in a special drawer, marked and sorted; what's more, she laid them up in her heart. Then, having kept her friend all day without an answer, she would meet him as if nothing had happened, as if nothing special had taken place the day before. She gradually drilled him so well that he himself did not dare to remind her of the previous day and only kept peeking into her eyes for some time. But she forgot nothing, and he sometimes forgot much too quickly, and, often that same day, encouraged by her composure, would laugh and frolic over the champagne, if friends stopped by. What venom there must have been in her eyes at those moments, yet he noticed nothing! Maybe after a week, or a month, or even half a year, at some special moment, having chanced to recall some expression from such a letter, and then the whole letter with all its circumstances, he would suddenly burn with shame, and suffered so much that he would come down with one of his attacks of cholerine. These special attacks of his, resembling cholerine, were on certain occasions the usual outcome of his nervous shocks and represented a certain rather interesting peculiarity of his organism.
Indeed, Varvara Petrovna undoubtedly and quite frequently hated him; but there was one thing he failed to notice in her to the very end, that for her he finally became her son, her creation, even, one might say, her invention, became flesh of her flesh, and that she maintained and sustained him not at all out of "envy of his talents" alone. And how insulted she must have been by such suppositions! Some unbearable love for him lay hidden in her, in the midst of constant hatred, jealousy, and contempt. She protected him from every speck of dust, fussed over him for twenty-two years, would lie awake whole nights from worry if his reputation as a poet, scholar, or civic figure were in question. She invented him, and she was the first to believe in her invention. He was something like a sort of dream of hers... But for that she indeed demanded a lot of him, sometimes even slavery. And she was incredibly resentful. Here, incidentally, I will relate two anecdotes.
IV
Once, back in the time of the first rumors about the emancipation of the serfs,[11]when the whole of Russia suddenly became exultant and all ready to be reborn, Varvara Petrovna was visited by a traveling Petersburg baron, a man with the highest connections and who stood quite close to these matters. Varvara Petrovna greatly valued such visits, because her connections with high society had grown weaker and weaker since her husband's death, and finally had ceased altogether. The baron stayed for an hour and had tea. No one else was there, but Varvara Petrovna invited Stepan Trofimovich and put him on display. The baron had even heard something about him before, or pretended he had, but he spoke little with him over tea. Of course, Stepan Trofimovich could not fall on his face, and his manners were most refined. Though his origins, it seems, were not high, it so happened that he had been brought up from a very early age in an aristocratic house in Moscow, and, therefore, decently; he spoke French like a Parisian. Thus the baron was to understand from the very first glance what sort of people Varvara Petrovna surrounded herself with, even in provincial seclusion. However, it did not turn out that way. When the baron positively confirmed the complete reliability of the first rumors then just spreading about the great reform, Stepan Trofimovich suddenly could not restrain himself and shouted "Hurrah!" and even made some sort of gesture with his hand signifying delight. His shout was not loud and was even elegant; it may even be that the delight was premeditated and the gesture was rehearsed on purpose in front of the mirror half an hour before tea; but something here must not have come out right, so that the baron allowed himself a little smile, though he at once, with remarkable courtesy, put in a phrase about the general and appropriate tender feeling of all Russian hearts in view of the great event. He left shortly after that and, as he was leaving, did not forget to hold out two fingers to Stepan Trofimovich as well. On returning to the drawing room, Varvara Petrovna remained silent for about three minutes, as if she were looking for something on the table; then she turned suddenly to Stepan Trofimovich, pale, her eyes flashing, and whispered through her teeth: