"Best of all, when he comes to you," Marya Timofeevna suddenly joined in, leaning forward in her armchair, "send him to the lackeys' room. Let him sit there and play his trumps with them on a bench, and we'll sit here and have coffee. A cup of coffee might be sent to him, too, but I deeply despise him."
And she shook her head emphatically.
"This must be ended," Varvara Petrovna repeated, having carefully heard out Marya Timofeevna. "Ring, please, Stepan Trofimovich."
Stepan Trofimovich rang, and then suddenly stepped forward, all excited.
"If... if I..." he babbled hotly, blushing, faltering, and stammering, "if I, too, have heard a most repulsive account, or, better to say, slander, then ... in perfect indignation... enfin, c 'est un homme perdu et quelque chose comme un forçat évadé..." [lxxiii]
He broke off and did not finish; Varvara Petrovna, narrowing her eyes, looked him up and down. The decorous Alexei Yegorovich came in.
"The carriage," Varvara Petrovna ordered, "and you, Alexei Yegorych, get ready to take Miss Lebyadkin home, wherever she tells you."
"Mr. Lebyadkin himself has been waiting downstairs for some time, ma'am, and wishes very much to be announced."
"That is impossible, Varvara Petrovna," Mavriky Nikolaevich, who had been imperturbably silent all the while, suddenly stepped forward in alarm. "If you will allow me, this is not the sort of man who can enter society, this... this... this is an impossible man, Varvara Petrovna."
"Hold off," Varvara Petrovna turned to Alexei Yegorych, and he disappeared.
" C'est un homme malhonnête et je crois même que c'est un forçat évadé ou quelque chose dans ce genre," [lxxiv]Stepan Trofimovich again muttered, again blushed, and again broke off.
"Liza, it's time to go," Praskovya Ivanovna announced squeamishly and rose from her seat. She seemed already to regret that, in her fright a little earlier, she had called herself a fool. While Darya Pavlovna was speaking, she had already begun listening with haughtily pursed lips. But I was struck most of all by the look of Lizaveta Nikolaevna from the moment Darya Pavlovna came in: hatred and contempt, much too unconcealed, flashed in her eyes.
"Hold off for a moment, Praskovya Ivanovna, I beg you," Varvara Petrovna stopped her with the same excessive calm. "Kindly sit down, I intend to speak everything out, and your legs hurt you. There, thank you. I lost my temper just now and said several impatient things to you. Kindly forgive me; it was foolish of me, and I'll be the first to repent, because I love justice in all things. Of course, you also lost your temper and mentioned some anonymous writer. Any anonymous calumny is deserving of contempt, if only because it is unsigned. If you think otherwise, I do not envy you. In any event, if I were in your place I would not drag such trash out of my pocket, I would not dirty myself. But you have dirtied yourself. However, since you started it, I will tell you that some six days ago I, too, received a letter, also anonymous and clownish. In it some scoundrel tries to persuade me that Nikolai Vsevolodovich has lost his mind and that I should beware of some lame woman who 'will play an extraordinary role in my fate'—I remember the expression. I thought it over and, knowing that Nikolai Vsevolodovich has an extraordinary number of enemies, I sent at once for one man here, a secret enemy of his and one of the most vengeful and contemptible of all, and my conversation with him at once convinced me of the contemptible source of the anonymous letter. If you, too, my poor Praskovya Ivanovna, have been bothered because of mewith the same sort of contemptible letters, and have been 'bombarded,' as you put it, then, of course, I'll be the first to regret having been the innocent cause. That is all I wanted to tell you by way of explanation. I'm sorry to see that you are so tired and are now beside yourself. Furthermore, I am absolutely determined now to admitthis suspicious man of whom Mavriky Nikolaevich said, in a not quite suitable phrase, that it was impossible to receivehim. Liza, especially, has no reason to be here. Come, Liza, my friend, and let me kiss you once more."
Liza crossed the room and stopped silently in front of Varvara Petrovna. The latter kissed her, took her by the hands, moved her back a little, looked at her with feeling, then made a cross over her and kissed her again.
"So, good-bye, Liza" (tears almost sounded in Varvara Petrovna's voice), "believe that I shall never cease to love you, whatever your fate promises hereafter ... God be with you. I have always blessed his holy right hand..."
She was going to add something, but checked herself and fell silent. Liza started walking back to her place, still in the same silence and as if pondering, but suddenly stopped before her mother.
"I won't go yet, maman, I'll stay with auntie a while longer," she spoke in a soft voice, but in those soft words there sounded an iron resolution.
"Oh, my God, what is it!" Praskovya Ivanovna cried out, feebly clasping her hands. But Liza did not answer, and did not even seem to hear; she sat down in her former corner and again began looking somewhere into the air.
Something proud and triumphant shone in Varvara Petrovna's face.
"Mavriky Nikolaevich, I have an extraordinary request: kindly go and have a look at that man downstairs, and if it is at all possible to admithim, bring him here."
Mavriky Nikolaevich bowed and went out. A minute later he brought in Mr. Lebyadkin.
IV
I have spoken before about the appearance of this man: a tall, curly, thick-set fellow of about forty, with a purple, somewhat bloated and flabby face, with cheeks that shook at every movement of his head, with small, bloodshot, at times quite cunning eyes, with a moustache and side-whiskers, with a nascent, fleshy, rather unpleasant-looking Adam's apple. But the most striking thing about him was that he appeared now wearing a tailcoat and clean linen. "There are people for whom clean linen is even indecent, sir," as Liputin once objected when Stepan Trofimovich jestingly reproached him for being slovenly. The captain also had black gloves, of which the right one, not yet put on, was held in his hand, while the left one, tightly stretched and refusing to be buttoned, half covered the fleshy left paw in which he held a brand-new, shiny, and probably never-before-sported round hat. It followed, therefore, that yesterday's "tailcoat of love," of which he had shouted to Shatov, actually existed. All this—that is, the tailcoat and linen—had been prepared (as I learned later) on Liputin's advice, for some mysterious purposes. There was no doubt that his arrival now (in a hired carriage) must also have been at someone's instigation and with someone's help; on his own he would never have managed to figure it out, along with getting dressed, ready, and resolved in some three quarters of an hour, even supposing that the scene on the church porch had become known to him immediately. He was not drunk, but was in the heavy, leaden, foggy state of a man who suddenly wakes up after many days of drinking. It seemed you would only have to shake him a couple of times by the shoulder and he would immediately become drunk again.