Virgin Soil (Volume 1)/Chapter 4
IV
Sipyagin had scarcely crossed the threshold when Paklin leaped up from his chair, and, rushing up to Nezhdanov, began to congratulate him.
'Well, you have made a fine catch!' he declared, giggling and tapping with his feet. 'Why, do you know who that is? Sipyagin, every one knows him, a kammerherr, a pillar of society of a sort, a future minister!'
'I know absolutely nothing of him,' Nezhdanov declared sullenly.
Paklin threw up his arms in despair.
'That's just our misfortune, Alexey Dmitritch, that we know no one! We want to produce an effect, we want to turn the whole world upside down, but we live outside that world, we only have to do with two or three friends, and go revolving in a narrow little circle———'
'I beg your pardon,' interposed Nezhdanov: 'that's not true. We only don't care to consort with our enemies; but as for men of our own stamp, as for the people, we are continually entering into relations with them.'
'Stay, stay, stay, stay!' Paklin in his turn interposed. 'In the first place: as for enemies, let me remind you of Goethe's lines:
Wer den Dichter will versteh'n
Muss im Dichter's Lande gehn . . .
but I say
Wer die Feinde will versteh'n
Muss im Feinde's Lande gehn. . .
To avoid one's enemies, not to know their manners and habits, is ridiculous! Ri . . . di . . . cu . . . lous! . . . Yes! yes! If I want to shoot a wolf in the forest I have to know all his holes! . . . Secondly, you talked just now of entering into relations with the people. . . My dear soul! In 1862 the Poles went "into the forest"; and we are going now into the same forest; that's to say, to the people, who are just as dark and obscure to us as any forest!'
'Then what's to be done, according to you?'
'The Hindoos fling themselves under the wheels of Juggernaut,' Paklin went on gloomily; 'it crushes them, and they die in bliss. We too have our Juggernaut. . . It crushes us indeed, but gives us no bliss.'
'Then what do you say's to be done?' Nezhdanov repeated almost with a shriek. 'Write novels with a "tendency," or what?'
Paklin flung wide his arms and bent his head towards his left shoulder.
'Novels, in any case, you could write, since you have a literary turn. . . . There, don't be angry, I won't! I know you don't like one to refer to it; besides, I agree with you: spinning out that sort of work with "padding" and all the new-fangled phrases too: "'Ah! I love you!' she bounded. . . . 'It's nothing to me,' he grated." It is anything but a lively job. That's why I repeat, form ties with all classes, from the highest downwards! We musn't rest all our hopes on fellows like Ostrodumov! They're honest, excellent fellows, but then they're dense! dense! Just look at our worthy friend. Why, the very soles of his boots aren't what clever people wear! Why, what made him go away from here just now? He didn't like to remain in the same room, to breathe the same air, as an aristocrat!'
'I must ask you not to speak slightingly of Ostrodumov before me,' Nezhdanov interposed emphatically. 'He wears thick boots because they 're cheaper.'
'I did not mean———' Paklin was beginning.
'If he doesn't care to remain in the same room with an aristocrat,' Nezhdanov continued, raising his voice, 'I applaud him for it; but the great thing is he knows how to sacrifice himself; he will face death, if need be, which you and I will never do!'
Paklin made a piteous little grimace, and pointed to his wasted, crippled little legs.
'Is fighting in my line, my friend Alexey Dmitritch? Good heavens! But never mind all that . . . I repeat, I'm heartily glad of your connection with Mr. Sipyagin, and I even foresee great advantages from that connection, for our cause. You will get into a higher circle! You will see those lionesses, those women of "velvet body worked by springs of steel," as it says in the Letters from Spain; study them, my dear boy, study them! If you were an epicurean, I should be positively afraid for you . . . upon my word, I should! But that's not your object in taking such an engagement, of course?'
'I am taking an engagement,' Nezhdanov caught him up, 'for the sake of bread and butter . . . And to get away from all of you for a time! ' he added to himself.
'To be sure! to be sure! And so I say to you: study them! What a perfume that gentleman has left behind him!' Paklin sniffed with his nose in the air. It's the veritable ambre that the mayoress dreamed of in the Revisor!
'He questioned Prince G. about me', Nezhdanov muttered thickly, taking up his position again at the window: he probably knows my whole story now.'
'Not probably, but certainly! What of it? I'll bet you it was just that that gave him the idea of taking you as a tutor! Say what you like, you 're an aristocrat yourself by blood, you know. And, of course, that means you're one of themselves! But I've stayed too long with you; it's time I was at the office, at the exploiter's! Good-bye for the present, my dear boy!'
Paklin was going towards the door, but he stopped and turned round.
'Listen, Alyosha,' he said in an ingratiating tone: 'you refused me just now; you will have money now, I know, but still allow me to make some sacrifice, however trifling, for the common cause! There's no other way I can help, so let me at least with my purse! Look; I put a ten-rouble bill on the table! Is it accepted?'
Nezhdanov made no answer, and did not stir.
'Silence gives consent! Thanks!' cried Paklin joyfully, and he disappeared.
Nezhdanov was left alone. . . . He went oo staring through the window-pane into the dark narrow court, into which no ray of sunshine fell even in summer, and dark too was his face.
Nezhdanov was the son, as we are already aware, of Prince G., a rich adjutant-general, and of his daughter's governess, a pretty 'institute-girl,' who had died on the day of his birth. Nezhdanov had received his early education at a boarding-school from an able and strict Swiss schoolmaster, and afterwards had gone to the university. He had himself wished to study law; but the general, his father, who detested the Nihilists, had made him enter 'in æsthetics,' as with a bitter smile Nezhdanov used to put it, that is, in the faculty of history and philology. Nezhdanov's father had been in the habit of seeing him only three or four times a year, but he took an interest in his welfare, and when he died bequeathed him, in memory of 'Nastenka ' (his mother) a sum of 6000 roubles, the interest of which was paid him by way of a 'pension,' by his brothers, the Princes G. Paklin had not been wrong in describing him as an aristocrat; everything in him betrayed good birth: his little ears, hands and feet, the delicate but rather small features of his face, his soft skin, his fluffy hair, even his rather mincing but musical voice. He was terribly nervous, terribly self-conscious, impressionable, and even capricious; the false position in which he had been put from his very childhood had made him irritable and quick to take offence; but his inborn magnamity had saved him from becoming suspicious and distrustful. This same false position of Nezhdanov's was the explanation of the contradictions to be met in his character. Daintily clean and fastidious to squeamishness, he forced himself to be cynical and coarse in his language; an idealist by nature, passionate and chastic, bold and timid at the same time, he was as ashamed of his timidity and of his purity as of some disgraceful vice, and made a point of jeering at ideals. His heart was soft and he shunned his fellows; he was easily enraged, and never harboured ill-feeling. He was indignant with his father for having made him study 'æsthetics'; ostensibly, as far as any one could see, he took interest only in political and social questions, and professed the most extreme views (in him they were more than a form of words!); secretly, he revelled in art, poetry, beauty in all its manifestations . . . he even wrote verses. He scrupulously concealed the book in which he scribbled them, and of all his friends in Petersburg, only Paklin─and that solely through the intuition peculiar to him─suspected its existence. Nothing so deeply offended, so outraged Nezhdanov as the faintest allusion to his poetical compositions─to that, as he considered, unpardonable weakness. Thanks to his Swiss schoolmaster, he knew a good many facts, and was not afraid of hard work; he even worked with positive fervour, though rather spasmodically and irregularly. His comrades loved him . . . they were attracted by his uprightness of character, his goodness and purity; but Nezhdanov had been born under no lucky star; life did not come easily to him. He was deeply conscious of this himself, and knew he was lonely in spite of the devotion of his friends.
He still stood at the window, thinking, thinking mournfully and drearily of the journey before him, of the new, unexpected turn in his life. He did not regret leaving Petersburg—he was leaving nothing in it specially precious to him; besides, he knew he would return in the autumn. And still a mood of dread and doubt came over him; he felt an involuntary dejection.
'A nice teacher I shall make!' crossed his mind, 'a fine sort of schoolmaster!' He was ready to reproach himself for having undertaken the task of education, and yet such a reproach would have been unjust. Nezhdanov possessed a fair amount of knowledge, and, in spite of his uneven temper, children were at ease with him, and he, too, readily grew fond of them. The depression which came upon Nezhdanov was that feeling preceding every change of place─that feeling known to all melancholy, all brooding natures. To people of a bold, sanguine character it is unknown: they are rather disposed to rejoice when the daily routine of life is broken up, when their habitual surroundings are changed. Nezhdanov became so deeply absorbed in his meditations that by degrees, almost unconsciously, he began translating them into words; the emotions passing over him were already ranging themselves into rhythmic cadences.
'Oof, the devil!' he cried aloud, 'I do believe I'm on the high road to a poem!'
He shook himself, turned away from the window. Catching sight of Paklin's ten-rouble note lying on the table, he thrust it in his pocket and set to walking up and down the room.
'I must take an advance,' he mused to himself; 'a good thing this gentleman offers it. A hundred roubles . . . and from my brothers─from their excellencies─a hundred roubles . . . fifty for debts, fifty or seventy for the journey . . . and the rest for Ostrodumov. And what Paklin gives─he can have to. And we shall have to get something from Merkulov too.'
Even while he was making these calculations in his head, the same cadences were again astir within him. He stopped, fell to dreaming . . . and, his eyes fixed on the distance, he stood rooted to the spot. Then his hands, gropingly, as it were, felt for and opened a drawer in the table and drew out from the very bottom of it a manuscript-book.
He sank on to a chair, his eyes still turned away, took up a pen, and humming to himself, at times shaking back his hair, with much blotting and scratching out, he set to tracing line after line.
The door into the anteroom was half opened, and Mashurina's head appeared. Nezhdanov did not notice her and went on with his work. Long and intently Mashurina gazed upon him, and, with a shake of her head to right and left, drew back. . . . But Nezhdanov all at once drew himself up, looked round, and exclaiming with vexation, 'Oh, you!' he flung the book into the table drawer.
Then Mashurina advanced with a firm step into the room.
'Ostrodumov sent me to you,' she observed jerkily, 'to find out when you can get the money. If you can let us have it to-day we will start this evening.'
'To-day I can't', rejoined Nezhdanov, and he frowned; 'come to-morrow.'
'At what o'clock?'
'Two o'clock.'
'Very well.'
Mashurina was silent for a little. All at once she held out her hand to Nezhdanov.
'I think I interrupted you─forgive me; and besides . . . I'm just going away. Who knows whether we shall meet again? I wanted to say good-bye to you.'
Nezhdanov pressed her chilly red fingers.
'You saw that gentleman here?' he began; 'we came to terms. I am going to him as a tutor. His estate is in S——— province, near S——— itself.'
A rapturous smile flashed across Mashurina's face.
'Near S———! Then perhaps we shall see each other again. They may possibly send us there.' Mashurina sighed 'Ah, Alexey Dmitritch. . ..'
'What?' inquired Nezhdanov.
Mashurina assumed a concentrated look.
'Never mind. Good-bye. Never mind.'
Once more she pressed Nezhdanov's hand and retreated.
'And in all Petersburg there is no one cares for me like that . . . queer creature!' was Nezhdanov's thought. 'But why need she have interrupted me? . . . It's all for the best, though!
The following morning Nezhdanov betook himself to Sipyagin's town residence, and there, in a magnificent study, filled with furniture of a severe style, in full harmony with the dignity of a liberal politician and modern gentleman, he sat before a huge bureau, on which lay, in orderly arrangement, papers of no use to any one, beside gigantic ivory knives which never cut anything. For a whole hour he listened to the liberal-minded master of the house, and was immersed in the smooth flood of his clever, affable, condescending words. At last he received a hundred roubles in advance, and ten days later the same Nezhdanov, half-reclining on a velvet sofa in a reserved first-class compartment, beside this same clever liberal politician and modern gentleman, was being carried to Moscow on the jolting lines of the Nikolavsky railway.