Speaking of outsiders, I also have an idea that the above-named members of the first fivesome were inclined to suspect that among Virginsky's guests that evening there were members of other groups unknown to them, also started in town from the same secret organization, and by the selfsame Verkhovensky, so that in the end all of those gathered suspected each other, and assumed various postures in front of each other, which indeed lent the whole gathering a rather incoherent and even partly romantic appearance. However, there were also people there who were beyond any suspicion. Such, for example, was one active army major, Virginsky's close relative, a completely innocent man, who had not even been invited, but had come on his own to celebrate the name day, so that it was simply impossible not to receive him. But anyhow Virginsky was not worried, because the major "simply could not denounce them"; for, despite all his stupidity, he had been fond throughout his life of scurrying around all those places where extreme liberals are to be found; did not sympathize himself, but liked very much to listen. Moreover, he had even been compromised once: it so happened that in his youth whole warehouses of
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and various tracts had passed through his hands, and though he had been afraid even to unfold them, he would still have regarded the refusal to disseminate them as perfect baseness—and there are some Russians of his sort even to this day. The remainder of the guests represented either the type of noble amour-propre crushed to the point of bile, or the type of the first and noblest impulse of fervent youth. These were two or three teachers, one of whom was lame, already about forty-five, an instructor in the high school, an extremely venomous and remarkably vain man, and two or three officers. Of the latter, one was a very young artillerist who had arrived just the other day from some military school, a silent boy who had not yet had time to make acquaintances, and who now suddenly turned up at Virginsky's with a pencil in his hand and, almost without taking part in the conversation, kept jotting things down in his notebook. Everyone saw this, but for some reason everyone tried to make it seem as if they had not noticed. There was also the loaf-about seminarian who together with Lyamshin had slipped the vile photographs into the book-hawker's bag, a big fellow with a free and easy but at the same time mistrustful manner, with a perpetually accusatory smile, and along with that a calm look of triumphant perfection contained within himself. There was, I have no idea why, also the son of our mayor, that same nasty boy, dissipated beyond his years, whom I have already mentioned while telling the story of the lieutenant's little wife. He was silent all evening. And finally, in conclusion, there was a high-school student, a very hot-headed and disheveled boy of about eighteen, who sat with the glum look of a young man whose dignity has been insulted, and suffered visibly on account of his eighteen years. This mite of a lad was already the head of an independent crew of conspirators formed in the upper grade of the high school, which fact was discovered afterwards to general amazement. I have not mentioned Shatov: he was sitting right there at the far corner of the table, his chair moved slightly out of line; he looked down, was gloomily silent, refused tea and bread, and would not let go of his peaked cap all the while, as if wishing thereby to declare that he was not a guest but had come on business, and could get up and leave whenever he liked. Not far from him sat Kirillov, also quite silent, though he did not look down but, on the contrary, examined each speaker point-blank with his fixed, lusterless stare, and listened to everything without the least emotion or surprise. Some of the guests who had never seen him before studied him stealthily and pensively. It is not known whether Madame Virginsky herself knew anything about the existence of the fivesome. I suppose she knew everything, and precisely from her husband. The girl student, of course, did not participate in any way, but she had her own concern: she intended to stay only for a day or two, and then go on farther and farther, to all the university towns, to "share the suffering lot of the poor students and arouse them to protest." She was bringing with her several hundred lithographed copies of an appeal— of her own composition, it would seem. Remarkably, the high-school boy hated her from first sight almost to the point of blood vengeance, though it was the first time he had seen her in his life, and she him. The major was her uncle, and met her that day for the first time in ten years. When Stavrogin and Verkhovensky entered, her cheeks were as red as cranberries: she had just had a spat with her uncle over their views of the woman question.
II
Verkhovensky sprawled himself with remarkable casualness on a chair at the upper corner of the table, greeting almost no one. His look was squeamish, and even arrogant. Stavrogin politely made his bows, but, despite the fact that everyone had been waiting only for them, everyone, as if on command, pretended that they had scarcely noticed them. The hostess sternly addressed Stavrogin as soon as he sat down.
"Stavrogin, you want tea?"
"Thanks," he replied.
"Tea for Stavrogin," she commanded the pouring woman, "and what about you?" (this was now to Verkhovensky).
"Of course I do, what a thing to ask a guest! And give me cream, too. You always serve such vileness instead of tea—and for a name-day party at that."
"What, you also recognize name days?" the girl student suddenly laughed. "We were just talking about that."
"It's old hat," the high-school boy grumbled from the other end of the table.
"What is old hat? To forget prejudices, innocent though they may be, isn't old hat but, on the contrary, to everyone's shame, is so far still new," the girl student instantly declared, simply lunging forward from her chair. "Besides, there are no innocent prejudices," she added bitterly.
"I just wanted to state," the high-school boy became terribly excited, "that although prejudices are, of course, old and need to be wiped out, yet concerning name days everybody already knows they're stupid and too old hat to waste precious time on, which has been wasted by the whole world even without that, so as to use one's wits for some object more in need of..."
"Too dragged out, can't understand a thing," the girl student shouted.