the same minute that he had said this very awkwardly; he felt, too, that he
was perhaps doing something horribly stupid at that moment.
"You-our Ex-cel-len-cy!" muttered Pseldonimov.
"To be sure.... I have called in to see you quite by chance, my friend, as
you can probably imagine...."
But evidently Pseldonimov could imagine nothing. He stood with staring eyes
in the utmost perplexity.
"You won't turn me out, I suppose.... Pleased or not, you must make a
visitor welcome...." Ivan Ilyitch went on, feeling that he was confused to
a point of unseemly feebleness; that he was trying to smile and was utterly
unable; that the humorous reference to Stepan Nikiforovitch and Trifon was
becoming more and more impossible. But as ill luck would have it,
Pseldonimov did not recover from his stupefaction, and still gazed at him
with a perfectly idiotic air. Ivan Ilyitch winced, he felt that in another
minute something incredibly foolish would happen.
"I am not in the way, am I?... I'll go away," he faintly articulated, and
there was a tremor at the right corner of his mouth.
But Pseldonimov had recovered himself.
"Good heavens, your Excellency ... the honour...." he muttered, bowing
hurriedly. "Graciously sit down, your Excellency...." And recovering
himself still further, he motioned him with both hands to a sofa before
which a table had been moved away to make room for the dancing.
Ivan Ilyitch felt relieved and sank on the sofa; at once some one flew to
move the table up to him. He took a cursory look round and saw that he was
the only person sitting down, all the others were standing, even the
ladies. A bad sign. But it was not yet time to reassure and encourage them.
The company still held back, while before him, bending double, stood
Pseldonimov, utterly alone, still completely at a loss and very far from
smiling. It was horrid; in short, our hero endured such misery at that
moment that his Haroun al-Raschid-like descent upon his subordinates for
the sake of principle might well have been reckoned an heroic action. But
suddenly a little figure made its appearance beside Pseldonimov, and began
bowing. To his inexpressible pleasure and even happiness, Ivan Ilyitch at
once recognised him as the head clerk of his office, Akim Petrovitch
Zubikov, and though, of course, he was not acquainted with him, he knew him
to be a businesslike and exemplary clerk. He got up at once and held out
his hand to Akim Petrovitch--his whole hand, not two fingers. The latter
took it in both of his with the deepest respect. The general was
triumphant, the situation was saved.
And now indeed Pseldonimov was no longer, so to say, the second person, but
the third. It was possible to address his remarks to the head clerk in his
necessity, taking him for an acquaintance and even an intimate one, and
Pseldonimov meanwhile could only be silent and be in a tremor of reverence.
So that the proprieties were observed. And some explanation was essential,
Ivan Ilyitch felt that; he saw that all the guests were expecting
something, that the whole household was gathered together in the doorway,
almost creeping, climbing over one another in their anxiety to see and hear
him. What was horrid was that the head clerk in his foolishness remained
standing.
"Why are you standing?" said Ivan Ilyitch, awkwardly motioning him to a
seat on the sofa beside him.
"Oh, don't trouble.... I'll sit here." And Akim Petrovitch hurriedly sat
down on a chair, almost as it was being put for him by Pseldonimov, who
remained obstinately standing.
"Can you imagine what happened," addressing himself exclusively to Akim
Petrovitch in a rather quavering, though free and easy voice. He even
drawled out his words, with special emphasis on some syllables, pronounced
the vowel _ah_ like _eh_; in short, felt and was conscious that he was
being affected but could not control himself: some external force was at
work. He was painfully conscious of many things at that moment.
"Can you imagine, I have only just come from Stepan Nikiforovitch
Nikiforov's, you have heard of him perhaps, the privy councillor. You
know ... on that special committee...."
Akim Petrovitch bent his whole person forward respectfully: as much as to
say, "Of course we have heard of him."
"He is your neighbor now," Ivan Ilyitch went on, for one instant for the
sake of ease and good manners addressing Pseldonimov, but he quickly turned
away again, on seeing from the latter's eyes that it made absolutely no
difference to him.
"The old fellow, as you know, has been dreaming all his life of buying
himself a house.... Well, and he has bought it. And a very pretty house
too. Yes.... And to-day was his birthday and he had never celebrated it
before, he used even to keep it secret from us, he was too stingy to keep
it, he-he. But now he is so delighted over his new house, that he invited
Semyon Ivanovitch Shipulenko and me, you know."
Akim Petrovitch bent forward again. He bent forward zealously. Ivan Ilyitch
felt somewhat comforted. It had struck him, indeed, that the head clerk
possibly was guessing that he was an indispensable _point d'appui_ for his
Excellency at that moment. That would have been more horrid than anything.
"So we sat together, the three of us, he gave us champagne, we talked about
problems ... even dis-pu-ted.... He-he!"
Akim Petrovitch raised his eyebrows respectfully.
"Only that is not the point. When I take leave of him at last--he is a
punctual old fellow, goes to bed early, you know, in his old age--I go
out.... My Trifon is nowhere to be seen! I am anxious, I make inquiries.
'What has Trifon done with the carriage?' It comes out that hoping I should
stay on, he had gone off to the wedding of some friend of his, or sister
maybe.... Goodness only knows. Somewhere here on the Petersburg Side. And
took the carriage with him while he was about it."
Again for the sake of good manners the general glanced in the direction of
Pseldonimov. The latter promptly gave a wriggle, but not at all the sort
of wriggle the general would have liked. "He has no sympathy, no heart,"
flashed through his brain.
"You don't say so!" said Akim Petrovitch, greatly impressed. A faint murmur
of surprise ran through all the crowd.
"Can you fancy my position...." (Ivan Ilyitch glanced at them all.) "There
was nothing for it, I set off on foot, I thought I would trudge to the
Great Prospect, and there find some cabby ... he-he!"
"He-he-he!" Akim Petrovitch echoed. Again a murmur, but this time on a more
cheerful note, passed through the crowd. At that moment the chimney of a
lamp on the wall broke with a crash. Some one rushed zealously to see to
it. Pseldonimov started and looked sternly at the lamp, but the general
took no notice of it, and all was serene again.
"I walked ... and the night was so lovely, so still. All at once I heard a
band, stamping, dancing. I inquired of a policeman; it is Pseldonimov's
wedding. Why, you are giving a ball to all Petersburg Side, my friend.
Ha-ha." He turned to Pseldonimov again.
"He-he-he! To be sure," Akim Petrovitch responded. There was a stir among
the guests again, but what was most foolish was that Pseldonimov, though he
bowed, did not even now smile, but seemed as though he were made of wood.
"Is he a fool or what?" thought Ivan Ilyitch. "He ought to have smiled at
that point, the ass, and everything would have run easily." There was a
fury of impatience in his heart.
"I thought I would go in to see my clerk. He won't turn me out I expect ...
pleased or not, one must welcome a guest. You must please excuse me, my
dear fellow. If I am in the way, I will go ... I only came in to have a
look...."
But little by little a general stir was beginning.
Akim Petrovitch looked at him with a mawkishly sweet expression as though
to say, "How could your Excellency be in the way?" all the guests stirred
and began to display the first symptoms of being at their ease. Almost all
the ladies sat down. A good sign and a reassuring one. The boldest spirits
among them fanned themselves with their handkerchiefs. One of them in a
shabby velvet dress said something with intentional loudness. The officer
addressed by her would have liked to answer her as loudly, but seeing that
they were the only ones speaking aloud, he subsided. The men, for the most
part government clerks, with two or three students among them, looked at
one another as though egging each other on to unbend, cleared their
throats, and began to move a few steps in different directions. No one,
however, was particularly timid, but they were all restive, and almost all
of them looked with a hostile expression at the personage who had burst in
upon them, to destroy their gaiety. The officer, ashamed of his cowardice,
began to edge up to the table.
"But I say, my friend, allow me to ask you your name," Ivan Ilyitch asked
Pseldonimov.
"Porfiry Petrovitch, your Excellency," answered the latter, with staring
eyes as though on parade.
"Introduce me, Porfiry Petrovitch, to your bride.... Take me to her ...
I...."
And he showed signs of a desire to get up. But Pseldonimov ran full speed
to the drawing-room. The bride, however, was standing close by at the door,
but as soon as she heard herself mentioned, she hid. A minute later
Pseldonimov led her up by the hand. The guests all moved aside to make way
for them. Ivan Ilyitch got up solemnly and addressed himself to her with a
most affable smile.
"Very, very much pleased to make your acquaintance," he pronounced with a
most aristocratic half-bow, "especially on such a day...."
He gave a meaning smile. There was an agreeable flutter among the ladies.
"_Charmé_," the lady in the velvet dress pronounced, almost aloud.
The bride was a match for Pseldonimov. She was a thin little lady not more
than seventeen, pale, with a very small face and a sharp little nose. Her
quick, active little eyes were not at all embarrassed; on the contrary,
they looked at him steadily and even with a shade of resentment. Evidently
Pseldonimov was marrying her for her beauty. She was dressed in a white
muslin dress over a pink slip. Her neck was thin, and she had a figure like
a chicken's with the bones all sticking out. She was not equal to making
any response to the general's affability.
"But she is very pretty," he went on, in an undertone, as though addressing
Pseldonimov only, though intentionally speaking so that the bride could
hear.
But on this occasion, too, Pseldonimov again answered absolutely nothing,
and did not even wriggle. Ivan Ilyitch fancied that there was something
cold, suppressed in his eyes, as though he had something peculiarly
malignant in his mind. And yet he had at all costs to wring some
sensibility out of him. Why, that was the object of his coming.
"They are a couple, though!" he thought.
And he turned again to the bride, who had seated herself beside him on the
sofa, but in answer to his two or three questions he got nothing but "yes"
or "no," and hardly that.
"If only she had been overcome with confusion," he thought to himself,
"then I should have begun to banter her. But as it is, my position is
impossible."
And as ill-luck would have it, Akim Petrovitch, too, was mute; though this
was only due to his foolishness, it was still unpardonable.
"My friends! Haven't I perhaps interfered with your enjoyment?" he said,
addressing the whole company.
He felt that the very palms of his hands were perspiring.
"No ... don't trouble, your Excellency; we are beginning directly, but
now ... we are getting cool," answered the officer.
The bride looked at him with pleasure; the officer was not old, and wore
the uniform of some branch of the service. Pseldonimov was still standing
in the same place, bending forward, and it seemed as though his hooked nose
stood out further than ever. He looked and listened like a footman standing
with the greatcoat on his arm, waiting for the end of his master's farewell
conversation. Ivan Ilyitch made this comparison himself. He was losing his
head; he felt that he was in an awkward position, that the ground was
giving way under his feet, that he had got in somewhere and could not find
his way out, as though he were in the dark.
* * * * *
Suddenly the guests all moved aside, and a short, thick-set, middle-aged
woman made her appearance, dressed plainly though she was in her best, with
a big shawl on her shoulders, pinned at her throat, and on her head a cap
to which she was evidently unaccustomed. In her hands she carried a small
round tray on which stood a full but uncorked bottle of champagne and two
glasses, neither more nor less. Evidently the bottle was intended for only
two guests.
The middle-aged lady approached the general.
"Don't look down on us, your Excellency," she said, bowing. "Since you have
deigned to do my son the honour of coming to his wedding, we beg you
graciously to drink to the health of the young people. Do not disdain us;
do us the honour."
Ivan Ilyitch clutched at her as though she were his salvation. She was by
no means an old woman--forty-five or forty-six, not more; but she had such
a good-natured, rosy-cheeked, such a round and candid Russian face, she
smiled so good-humouredly, bowed so simply, that Ivan Ilyitch was almost
comforted and began to hope again.
"So you are the mo-other of your so-on?" he said, getting up from the sofa.
"Yes, my mother, your Excellency," mumbled Pseldonimov, craning his long
neck and thrusting forward his long nose again.
"Ah! I am delighted--de-ligh-ted to make your acquaintance."
"Do not refuse us, your Excellency."
"With the greatest pleasure."
The tray was put down. Pseldonimov dashed forward to pour out the wine.
Ivan Ilyitch, still standing, took the glass.
"I am particularly, particularly glad on this occasion, that I can ..." he
began, "that I can ... testify before all of you.... In short, as your
chief ... I wish you, madam" (he turned to the bride), "and you, friend
Porfiry, I wish you the fullest, completest happiness for many long years."
And he positively drained the glass with feeling, the seventh he had drunk
that evening. Pseldonimov looked at him gravely and even sullenly. The
general was beginning to feel an agonising hatred of him.
"And that scarecrow" (he looked at the officer) "keeps obtruding himself.
He might at least have shouted 'hurrah!' and it would have gone off, it
would have gone off...."
"And you too, Akim Petrovitch, drink a glass to their health," added the
mother, addressing the head clerk. "You are his superior, he is under you.
Look after my boy, I beg you as a mother. And don't forget us in the
future, our good, kind friend, Akim Petrovitch."
"How nice these old Russian women are," thought Ivan Ilyitch. "She has
livened us all up. I have always loved the democracy...."
At that moment another tray was brought to the table; it was brought in by
a maid wearing a crackling cotton dress that had never been washed, and a
crinoline. She could hardly grasp the tray in both hands, it was so big. On
it there were numbers of plates of apples, sweets, fruit meringues and
fruit cheeses, walnuts and so on, and so on. The tray had been till then in
the drawing-room for the delectation of all the guests, and especially the
ladies. But now it was brought to the general alone.
"Do not disdain our humble fare, your Excellency. What we have we are
pleased to offer," the old lady repeated, bowing.
"Delighted!" said Ivan Ilyitch, and with real pleasure took a walnut and
cracked it between his fingers. He had made up his mind to win popularity
at all costs.
Meantime the bride suddenly giggled.
"What is it?" asked Ivan Ilyitch with a smile, encouraged by this sign of
life.
"Ivan Kostenkinitch, here, makes me laugh," she answered, looking down.
The general distinguished, indeed, a flaxen-headed young man, exceedingly
good-looking, who was sitting on a chair at the other end of the sofa,
whispering something to Madame Pseldonimov. The young man stood up. He was
apparently very young and very shy.
"I was telling the lady about a 'dream book,' your Excellency," he muttered
as though apologising.
"About what sort of 'dream book'?" asked Ivan Ilyitch condescendingly.
"There is a new 'dream book,' a literary one. I was telling the lady that
to dream of Mr. Panaev means spilling coffee on one's shirt front."
"What innocence!" thought Ivan Ilyitch, with positive annoyance.
Though the young man flushed very red as he said it, he was incredibly
delighted that he had said this about Mr. Panaev.
"To be sure, I have heard of it...." responded his Excellency.
"No, there is something better than that," said a voice quite close to Ivan
Ilyitch. "There is a new encyclopædia being published, and they say Mr.
Kraevsky will write articles... and satirical literature."
This was said by a young man who was by no means embarrassed, but rather
free and easy. He was wearing gloves and a white waistcoat, and carried a
hat in his hand. He did not dance, and looked condescending, for he was on
the staff of a satirical paper called _The Firebrand_, and gave himself
airs accordingly. He had come casually to the wedding, invited as an
honoured guest of the Pseldonimovs', with whom he was on intimate terms and
with whom only a year before he had lived in very poor lodgings, kept by a
German woman. He drank vodka, however, and for that purpose had more than
once withdrawn to a snug little back room to which all the guests knew
their way. The general disliked him extremely.
"And the reason that's funny," broke in joyfully the flaxen-headed young
man, who had talked of the shirt front and at whom the young man on the
comic paper looked with hatred in consequence, "it's funny, your
Excellency, because it is supposed by the writer that Mr. Kraevsky does not
know how to spell, and thinks that 'satirical' ought to be written with a
'y' instead of an 'i.'"
But the poor young man scarcely finished his sentence; he could see from
his eyes that the general knew all this long ago, for the general himself
looked embarrassed, and evidently because he knew it. The young man seemed
inconceivably ashamed. He succeeded in effacing himself completely, and
remained very melancholy all the rest of the evening.
But to make up for that the young man on the staff of the _Firebrand_ came
up nearer, and seemed to be intending to sit down somewhere close by. Such
free and easy manners struck Ivan Ilyitch as rather shocking.
"Tell me, please, Porfiry," he began, in order to say something, "why--I
have always wanted to ask you about it in person--why you are called
Pseldonimov instead of Pseudonimov? Your name surely must be Pseudonimov."
"I cannot inform you exactly, your Excellency," said Pseldonimov.
"It must have been that when his father went into the service they made a
mistake in his papers, so that he has remained now Pseldonimov," put in
Akim Petrovitch. "That does happen."
"Un-doubted-ly," the general said with warmth, "un-doubted-ly; for only
think, Pseudonimov comes from the literary word pseudonym, while
Pseldonimov means nothing."
"Due to foolishness," added Akim Petrovitch.
"You mean what is due to foolishness?"
"The Russian common people in their foolishness often alter letters, and
sometimes pronounce them in their own way. For instance, they say nevalid
instead of invalid."
"Oh, yes, nevalid, he-he-he...."
"Mumber, too, they say, your Excellency," boomed out the tall officer, who
had long been itching to distinguish himself in some way.
"What do you mean by mumber?"
"Mumber instead of number, your Excellency."
"Oh, yes, mumber ... instead of number.... To be sure, to be sure....
He-he-he!" Ivan Ilyitch had to do a chuckle for the benefit of the officer
too.
The officer straightened his tie.
"Another thing they say is nigh by," the young man on the comic paper put
in. But his Excellency tried not to hear this. His chuckles were not at
everybody's disposal.
"Nigh by, instead of near," the young man on the comic paper persisted, in
evident irritation.
Ivan Ilyitch looked at him sternly.
"Come, why persist?" Pseldonimov whispered to him.
"Why, I was talking. Mayn't one speak?" the latter protested in a whisper;
but he said no more and with secret fury walked out of the room.
He made his way straight to the attractive little back room where, for the
benefit of the dancing gentlemen, vodka of two sorts, salt fish, caviare
into slices and a bottle of very strong sherry of Russian make had been set
early in the evening on a little table, covered with a Yaroslav cloth. With
anger in his heart he was pouring himself out a glass of vodka, when
suddenly the medical student with the dishevelled locks, the foremost
dancer and cutter of capers at Pseldonimov's ball, rushed in. He fell on
the decanter with greedy haste.
"They are just going to begin!" he said rapidly, helping himself. "Come and
look, I am going to dance a solo on my head; after supper I shall risk the
fish dance. It is just the thing for the wedding. So to speak, a friendly
hint to Pseldonimov. She's a jolly creature that Kleopatra Semyonovna, you
can venture on anything you like with her."
"He's a reactionary," said the young man on the comic paper gloomily, as he
tossed off his vodka.
"Who is a reactionary?"
"Why, the personage before whom they set those sweet-meats. He's a
reactionary, I tell you."
"What nonsense!" muttered the student, and he rushed out of the room,
hearing the opening bars of the quadrille.
Left alone, the young man on the comic paper poured himself out another
glass to give himself more assurance and independence; he drank and ate a
snack of something, and never had the actual civil councillor Ivan Ilyitch
made for himself a bitterer foe more implacably bent on revenge than was
the young man on the staff of the _Firebrand_ whom he had so slighted,
especially after the latter had drunk two glasses of vodka. Alas! Ivan
Ilyitch suspected nothing of the sort. He did not suspect another
circumstance of prime importance either, which had an influence on the
mutual relations of the guests and his Excellency. The fact was that though
he had given a proper and even detailed explanation of his presence at his
clerk's wedding, this explanation did not really satisfy any one, and the
visitors were still embarrassed. But suddenly everything was transformed as
though by magic, all were reassured and ready to enjoy themselves, to
laugh, to shriek; to dance, exactly as though the unexpected visitor were
not in the room. The cause of it was a rumour, a whisper, a report which
spread in some unknown way that the visitor was not quite ... it
seemed--was, in fact, "a little top-heavy." And though this seemed at first
a horrible calumny, it began by degrees to appear to be justified; suddenly
everything became clear. What was more, they felt all at once
extraordinarily free. And it was just at this moment that the quadrille for
which the medical student was in such haste, the last before supper, began.
And just as Ivan Ilyitch meant to address the bride again, intending to
provoke her with some innuendo, the tall officer suddenly dashed up to her
and with a flourish dropped on one knee before her. She immediately jumped
up from the sofa, and whisked off with him to take her place in the
quadrille. The officer did not even apologise, and she did not even glance
at the general as she went away; she seemed, in fact, relieved to escape.
"After all she has a right to be,' thought Ivan Ilyitch, 'and of course
they don't know how to behave.' "Hm! Don't you stand on ceremony, friend
Porfiry," he said, addressing Pseldonimov. "Perhaps you have ...
arrangements to make ... or something ... please don't put yourself out."
'Why does he keep guard over me?'" he thought to himself.
Pseldonimov, with his long neck and his eyes fixed intently upon him,
began to be insufferable. In fact, all this was not the thing, not the
thing at all, but Ivan Ilyitch was still far from admitting this.
* * * * *
The quadrille began.
"Will you allow me, your Excellency?" asked Akim Petrovitch, holding the
bottle respectfully in his hands and preparing to pour from it into his
Excellency's glass.
"I ... I really don't know, whether...."