And then, from the adjacent hall, a long and large room, came the sound of quickly approaching footsteps, small steps, extremely rapid, as if someone were rolling along, and suddenly into the drawing room flew—not Nikolai Vsevolodovich at all, but a young man totally unknown to anyone.
V
I will allow myself to pause and depict, if only in cursory strokes, this suddenly appearing person.
This was a young man of twenty-seven or thereabouts, a little taller than average, with thin, rather long blond hair and a wispy, barely evident moustache and beard. Dressed in clean and even fashionable clothes, but not foppishly; a bit hunched and slack at first sight, and yet not hunched at all, even easygoing. Seemingly a sort of odd man, and yet everyone later found his manners quite decent and his conversation always to the point.
No one would call him bad-looking, but no one likes his face. His head is elongated towards the back and as if flattened on the sides, giving his face a sharp look. His forehead is high and narrow, but his features are small—eyes sharp, nose small and sharp, lips long and thin. The expression of his face is as if sickly, but it only seems so. He has a sort of dry crease on his cheeks and around his cheekbones, which makes him look as if he were recovering from a grave illness. And yet he is perfectly healthy and strong, and has never even been ill.
He walks and moves very hurriedly, and yet he is not hurrying anywhere. Nothing, it seems, can put him out of countenance; in any circumstances and in any society, he remains the same. There is great self-satisfaction in him, but he does not take the least note of it himself.
He speaks rapidly, hurriedly, but at the same time self-confidently, and is never at a loss for words. His thoughts are calm, despite his hurried look, distinct and final—and that is especially noticeable. His enunciation is remarkably clear; his words spill out like big, uniform grains, always choice and always ready to be at your service. You like it at first, but later it will become repulsive, and precisely because of this all too clear enunciation, this string of ever ready words. You somehow begin to imagine that the tongue in his mouth must be of some special form, somehow unusually long and thin, terribly red, and with an extremely sharp, constantly and involuntarily wriggling tip.
Well, so this was the young man who had just flown into the drawing room, and, really, even now it seems to me that he started talking in the next room and came in that way, already talking. Instantly he was standing before Varvara Petrovna.
". . . And imagine, Varvara Petrovna," the beads spilled out of him, "I came in thinking to find he'd already been here for a quarter of an hour; it's an hour and a half since he arrived; we met at Kirillov's; he left half an hour ago to come straight here, and told me to come here, too, in a quarter of an hour..."
"But, who? Who told you to come here?" Varvara Petrovna questioned.
"But, Nikolai Vsevolodovich, of course! You don't mean you're only learning of it this minute? His luggage at least should have arrived long ago, didn't they tell you? So I'm the first to announce it. By the way, we could send for him somewhere, but, anyhow, he'll certainly come himself presently and, it would seem, precisely at a moment that answers to some of his expectations and, at least so far as I can judge, to some of his calculations." Here he looked around the room and rested his eyes especially on the captain. "Ah, Lizaveta Nikolaevna, how glad I am to meet you first thing, I'm very glad to shake your hand," he quickly flew over to take the hand which the gaily smiling Liza offered him, "and I notice that the much esteemed Praskovya Ivanovna also seems to remember her 'professor,' and is not even angry with him, as she always was in Switzerland. But, by the way, how do your legs feel here, Praskovya Ivanovna, and were the Swiss consultants right in sentencing you to the climate of the fatherland?... what's that, ma'am? wet compresses? that must be very good for you. But how sorry I was, Varvara Petrovna" (he quickly turned again), "that I was too late to find you abroad and pay my respects in person, and I had so much to tell you besides ... I notified my old man here, but he, as is his custom, seems to..."
"Petrusha!" Stepan Trofimovich cried, instantly coming out of his stupor; he clasped his hands and rushed to his son. "Pierre, mon enfant,and I didn't recognize you!" He embraced him tightly, and tears poured from his eyes.
"There, there, don't be naughty, no need for gestures, there, enough, enough, I beg you," Petrusha hastily muttered, trying to free himself from the embrace.
"I have always, always been guilty before you!"
"Now, that's enough; save it for later. I just knew you were going to be naughty. Be a bit more sober, I beg you."
"But I haven't seen you for ten years!"
"The less reason for any outpourings..."
"Mon enfant!"
"So, I believe, I believe you love me, take your arms away. You're disturbing the others ... Ah, here is Nikolai Vsevolodovich, now don't be naughty, I beg you, finally!"
Nikolai Vsevolodovich was indeed already in the room; he had come in very quietly, and stopped for a moment in the doorway, quietly looking around at the gathering.
Just as four years ago, when I saw him for the first time, so now, too, I was struck at the first sight of him. I had not forgotten him in the least; but there are, it seems, such physiognomies as always, each time they appear, bring something new, as it were, which you have not noticed in them before, though you may have met them a hundred times previously. Apparently he was still the same as four years ago: as refined, as imposing, he entered as imposingly as then, even almost as youthful. His faint smile was as officially benign and just as self-satisfied; his glance as stern, thoughtful, and as if distracted. In short, it seemed we had parted only yesterday. But one thing struck me:
before, even though he had been considered a handsome man, his face had indeed "resembled a mask," as certain vicious-tongued ladies of our society put it. Whereas now—now, I don't know why, but he appeared to me, at very first sight, as decidedly, unquestionably handsome, so that it could in no way be said that his face resembled a mask. Was it because he had become a bit paler than before, and seemed to have lost some weight? Or was there perhaps some new thought that now shone in his eyes?
"Nikolai Vsevolodovich!" Varvara Petrovna cried, drawing herself up straight but not quitting her armchair, stopping him with an imperious gesture, "stop for one moment!"
But to explain the terrible question that suddenly followed this gesture and exclamation—a question I could not have supposed possible even in Varvara Petrovna herself—I shall ask the reader to recall what Varvara Petrovna's character had been all her life and the remarkable impetuousness she had shown in certain extraordinary moments. I also ask him to bear in mind that, despite the remarkable firmness of soul and the considerable amount of reason, and of practical, even, so to speak, managerial tact she possessed, there was no lack of moments in her life in which she would give all of herself suddenly, entirely, and, if it is permissible to say so, totally without restraint. I also ask him, finally, to consider that for her the present moment could indeed have been one of those in which the whole essence of a life—all that has been lived through, all the present, and perhaps the future—is suddenly focused. I shall also remind him in passing of the anonymous letter she had received, as she had just so irritably let on to Praskovya Ivanovna, though I think she kept silent about the further contents of the letter; and precisely in it, perhaps, lay the key to the possibility of that terrible question which she suddenly addressed to her son.
"Nikolai Vsevolodovich," she repeated, rapping out the words in a firm voice in which a menacing challenge sounded, "I ask you to tell me right now, without moving from that spot: is it true that this unfortunate lame woman—there she is, over there, look at her!—is it true that she is... your lawful wife?"