"I received from him a quite innocent and... and ... a very noble letter..."
"You're embarrassed, fishing for words—enough! Stepan Trofimovich, I expect a great favor from you," she suddenly turned to him, her eyes flashing, "please be so good as to leave us right now, and henceforth never step across the threshold of my house."
I must ask you to bear in mind her recent "exaltation," which still had not passed. True, Stepan Trofimovich really was to blame! But this is what amazed me at the time: that he stood up with remarkable dignity both under Petrusha's "exposures," not even trying to interrupt them, and under Varvara Petrovna's "curse." Where did he get so much spirit? One thing I discovered was that he had been undoubtedly and deeply insulted by his first meeting with Petrusha earlier, namely, by that embrace. This was a deep, realgrief, at least in his eyes, for his heart. He had yet another grief at that moment, namely, his own morbid awareness that he had acted basely; this he confessed to me later in all frankness. And a real,undoubted grief is sometimes capable of making a solid and steadfast man even out of a phenomenally light-minded one, if only for a short time; moreover, real and true grief has sometimes even made fools more intelligent, also only for a time, of course; grief has this property. And, if so, then what might transpire with a man like Stepan Trofimovich? A whole revolution—also, of course, only for a time.
He made a dignified bow to Varvara Petrovna without uttering a word (true, there was nothing else left for him to do). He was about to walk out altogether, just like that, but could not help himself and went over to Darya Pavlovna. She seemed to have anticipated it, because she began speaking at once, all in a fright, as if hastening to forestall him:
"Please, Stepan Trofimovich, for God's sake, don't say anything," she began, in an ardent patter, with a pained look on her face, and hurriedly giving him her hand. "Be assured that I respect you all the same... and value you all the same, and... you think well of me, too, Stepan Trofimovich, and I will appreciate it very, very much..."
Stepan Trofimovich gave her a low, low bow.
"As you will, Darya Pavlovna, you know that this whole matter is entirely at your will! It was and it is, both now and hereafter," Varvara Petrovna concluded weightily.
"Bah, but now I, too, understand it all!" Pyotr Stepanovich slapped himself on the forehead. "But... but in that case what position have I been put in? Darya Pavlovna, please forgive me! ... What have you done to me in that case, eh?" he turned to his father.
"Pierre, you might express yourself differently with me, is that not so, my friend?" Stepan Trofimovich said, even quite softly.
"Don't shout, please," Pierre waved his hands, "believe me, it's all your old, sick nerves, and it won't help anything if you shout. Better tell me, couldn't you have supposed I'd start speaking the moment I came in? How could you not warn me?"
Stepan Trofimovich gave him a searching look.
"Pierre, you know so much about what is going on here, how can it be that you really didn't know anything, that you hadn't heard anything?"
"Wha-a-at? Such people! So we're not only an old child, but a wicked child as well? Varvara Petrovna, did you hear what he said?"
A hubbub ensued; but suddenly an incident broke out which no one could have expected.
VIII
First of all I will mention that during the last two or three minutes some new emotion had taken possession of Lizaveta Nikolaevna; she was quickly whispering something to her maman and to Mavriky Nikolaevich, who was bending down to her. Her face was anxious, but at the same time had a look of determination. Finally, she rose from her seat, obviously hurrying to leave and hurrying her maman, whom Mavriky Nikolaevich began helping up from her chair. But clearly they were not fated to leave without seeing everything to the end.
Shatov, who had been completely forgotten by all in his corner (not far from Lizaveta Nikolaevna), and who apparently did not know himself why he was sitting there and would not go away, suddenly rose from his chair and walked across the entire room, with unhurried but firm steps, towards Nikolai Vsevolodovich, looking him straight in the face. The latter noticed him approaching from afar and grinned slightly; but when Shatov came up close to him, he ceased grinning.
When Shatov stopped silently in front of him, without taking his eyes off him, everyone suddenly noticed it and became hushed, Pyotr Stepanovich last of all; Liza and her maman stopped in the middle of the room. Thus about five seconds went by; the expression of bold perplexity on Nikolai Vsevolodovich's face turned to wrath, he frowned, and suddenly...
And suddenly Shatov swung his long, heavy arm and hit him in the face with all his might. Nikolai Vsevolodovich swayed badly on his feet.
Shatov hit him even somehow peculiarly, not at all as people ordinarily slap someone in the face (if it is possible to put it so), not with his palm, but with his whole fist, and his was a big, heavy, bony fist, covered with red hair and freckles. If he had hit the nose, he would have broken it. But the blow landed on the cheek, touching the left corner of the lip and the upper teeth, which immediately started to bleed.
I think there was a momentary cry, perhaps Varvara Petrovna cried out—I do not recall, because everything at once froze again, as it were. In any case, the whole scene lasted no more than some ten seconds.
Nevertheless, terribly much happened in those ten seconds.
I will remind the reader once more that Nikolai Vsevolodovich was one of those natures that knows no fear. In a duel he would stand cold-bloodedly before his adversary's fire, take aim himself, and kill with brutal calm. If anyone had slapped him in the face then, I think he would not even have challenged the offender to a duel, but would have killed him at once, on the spot; he was precisely that sort, and would kill with full awareness and not at all in rage. I even think that he never knew those blinding fits of wrath that make one unable to reason. For all the boundless anger that would occasionally take possession of him, he was always able to preserve complete self-control, and therefore to realize that for killing someone otherwise than in a duel he would certainly be sent to hard labor; nevertheless, he would still have killed the offender, and that without the slightest hesitation.
I have been studying Nikolai Vsevolodovich all this recent time, and, owing to special circumstances, I know a great many facts about him as I now write. I might perhaps compare him with some past gentlemen, of whom certain legendary memories are still preserved in our society. It was told, for example, of the Decembrist L——n, [74]that all his life he deliberately courted danger, reveled in the sensation of it, turned it into a necessity of his nature; when young he would fight duels over nothing; in Siberia he would go against a bear armed only with a knife, liked meeting up with escaped convicts in the Siberian forests—and they, I will note in passing, are more dangerous than any bear. There is no doubt that these legendary gentlemen were capable of experiencing, even to an intense degree, the sensation of fear— otherwise they would have been much calmer, and would not have made the sense of danger into a necessity of their nature. No, but overcoming their own cowardice—that, of course, was what tempted them. A ceaseless reveling in victory and the awareness that no one can be victorious over you—that was what attracted them. Even before his exile, this L——n had struggled with starvation for some time and earned his bread by hard work, solely because he absolutely refused to submit to the demands of his rich father, which he found unjust. His understanding of struggle was thus many-sided; he valued his own staunchness and strength of character not only with bears or in duels.