PAVEL ILYITCH RASHEVITCH walked up and down, stepping softly on the
floor covered with little Russian plaids, and casting a long shadow
on the wall and ceiling while his guest, Meier, the deputy examining
magistrate, sat on the sofa with one leg drawn up under him smoking
and listening. The clock already pointed to eleven, and there were
sounds of the table being laid in the room next to the study.
"Say what you like," Rashevitch was saying, "from the standpoint
of fraternity, equality, and the rest of it, Mitka, the swineherd,
is perhaps a man the same as Goethe and Frederick the Great; but
take your stand on a scientific basis, have the courage to look
facts in the face, and it will be obvious to you that blue blood
is not a mere prejudice, that it is not a feminine invention. Blue
blood, my dear fellow, has an historical justification, and to
refuse to recognize it is, to my thinking, as strange as to refuse
to recognize the antlers on a stag. One must reckon with facts! You
are a law student and have confined your attention to the humane
studies, and you can still flatter yourself with illusions of
equality, fraternity, and so on; I am an incorrigible Darwinian,
and for me words such as lineage, aristocracy, noble blood, are not
empty sounds."
Rashevitch was roused and spoke with feeling. His eyes sparkled,
his pince-nez would not stay on his nose, he kept nervously shrugging
his shoulders and blinking, and at the word "Darwinian" he looked
jauntily in the looking-glass and combed his grey beard with both
hands. He was wearing a very short and shabby reefer jacket and
narrow trousers; the rapidity of his movements, his jaunty air, and
his abbreviated jacket all seemed out of keeping with him, and his
big comely head, with long hair suggestive of a bishop or a veteran
poet, seemed to have been fixed on to the body of a tall, lanky,
affected youth. When he stood with his legs wide apart, his long
shadow looked like a pair of scissors.
He was fond of talking, and he always fancied that he was saying
something new and original. In the presence of Meier he was conscious
of an unusual flow of spirits and rush of ideas. He found the
examining magistrate sympathetic, and was stimulated by his youth,
his health, his good manners, his dignity, and, above all, by his
cordial attitude to himself and his family. Rashevitch was not a
favourite with his acquaintances; as a rule they fought shy of him,
and, as he knew, declared that he had driven his wife into her grave
with his talking, and they called him, behind his back, a spiteful
creature and a toad. Meier, a man new to the district and unprejudiced,
visited him often and readily and had even been known to say that
Rashevitch and his daughters were the only people in the district
with whom he felt as much at home as with his own people. Rashevitch
liked him too, because he was a young man who might be a good match
for his elder daughter, Genya.
And now, enjoying his ideas and the sound of his own voice, and
looking with pleasure at the plump but well-proportioned, neatly
cropped, correct Meier, Rashevitch dreamed of how he would arrange
his daughter's marriage with a good man, and then how all his worries
over the estate would pass to his son-in-law. Hateful worries! The
interest owing to the bank had not been paid for the last two
quarters, and fines and arrears of all sorts had mounted up to more
than two thousand.
"To my mind there can be no doubt," Rashevitch went on, growing
more and more enthusiastic, "that if a Richard Coeur-de-Lion, or
Frederick Barbarossa, for instance, is brave and noble those qualities
will pass by heredity to his son, together with the convolutions
and bumps of the brain, and if that courage and nobility of soul
are preserved in the son by means of education and exercise, and
if he marries a princess who is also noble and brave, those qualities
will be transmitted to his grandson, and so on, until they become
a generic characteristic and pass organically into the flesh and
blood. Thanks to a strict sexual selection, to the fact that high-born
families have instinctively guarded themselves against marriage
with their inferiors, and young men of high rank have not married
just anybody, lofty, spiritual qualities have been transmitted from
generation to generation in their full purity, have been preserved,
and as time goes on have, through exercise, become more exalted and
lofty. For the fact that there is good in humanity we are indebted
to nature, to the normal, natural, consistent order of things, which
has throughout the ages scrupulously segregated blue blood from
plebeian. Yes, my dear boy, no low lout, no cook's son has given
us literature, science, art, law, conceptions of honour and duty
. . . . For all these things mankind is indebted exclusively to the
aristocracy, and from that point of view, the point of view of
natural history, an inferior Sobakevitch by the very fact of his
blue blood is superior and more useful than the very best merchant,
even though the latter may have built fifteen museums. Say what you
like! And when I refuse to shake hands with a low lout or a cook's
son, or to let him sit down to table with me, by that very act I
am safeguarding what is the best thing on earth, and am carrying
out one of Mother Nature's finest designs for leading us up to
perfection. . ."
Rashevitch stood still, combing his beard with both hands; his
shadow, too, stood still on the wall, looking like a pair of scissors.
"Take Mother-Russia now," he went on, thrusting his hands in his
pockets and standing first on his heels and then on his toes. "Who
are her best people? Take our first-rate painters, writers, composers
. . . . Who are they? They were all of aristocratic origin. Pushkin,
Lermontov, Turgenev, Gontcharov, Tolstoy, they were not sexton's
children."
"Gontcharov was a merchant," said Meier.
"Well, the exception only proves the rule. Besides, Gontcharov's
genius is quite open to dispute. But let us drop names and turn to
facts. What would you say, my good sir, for instance, to this
eloquent fact: when one of the mob forces his way where he has not
been permitted before, into society, into the world of learning,
of literature, into the Zemstvo or the law courts, observe, Nature
herself, first of all, champions the higher rights of humanity, and
is the first to wage war on the rabble. As soon as the plebeian
forces himself into a place he is not fit for he begins to ail, to
go into consumption, to go out of his mind, and to degenerate, and
nowhere do we find so many puny, neurotic wrecks, consumptives, and
starvelings of all sorts as among these darlings. They die like
flies in autumn. If it were not for this providential degeneration
there would not have been a stone left standing of our civilization,
the rabble would have demolished everything. Tell me, if you please,
what has the inroad of the barbarians given us so far? What has the
rabble brought with it?" Rashevitch assumed a mysterious, frightened
expression, and went on: "Never has literature and learning been
at such low ebb among us as now. The men of to-day, my good sir,
have neither ideas nor ideals, and all their sayings and doings are
permeated by one spirit--to get all they can and to strip someone
to his last thread. All these men of to-day who give themselves out
as honest and progressive people can be bought at a rouble a piece,
and the distinguishing mark of the 'intellectual' of to-day is that
you have to keep strict watch over your pocket when you talk to
him, or else he will run off with your purse." Rashevitch winked
and burst out laughing. "Upon my soul, he will! he said, in a thin,
gleeful voice. "And morals! What of their morals?" Rashevitch looked
round towards the door. "No one is surprised nowadays when a wife
robs and leaves her husband. What's that, a trifle! Nowadays, my
dear boy, a chit of a girl of twelve is scheming to get a lover,
and all these amateur theatricals and literary evenings are only
invented to make it easier to get a rich merchant to take a girl
on as his mistress. . . . Mothers sell their daughters, and people
make no bones about asking a husband at what price he sells his
wife, and one can haggle over the bargain, you know, my
dear. . . ."
Meier, who had been sitting motionless and silent all the time,
suddenly got up from the sofa and looked at his watch.
"I beg your pardon, Pavel Ilyitch," he said, "it is time for me to
be going."
But Pavel Ilyitch, who had not finished his remarks, put his arm
round him and, forcibly reseating him on the sofa, vowed that he
would not let him go without supper. And again Meier sat and listened,
but he looked at Rashevitch with perplexity and uneasiness, as
though he were only now beginning to understand him. Patches of red
came into his face. And when at last a maidservant came in to tell
them that the young ladies asked them to go to supper, he gave a
sigh of relief and was the first to walk out of the study.
At the table in the next room were Rashevitch's daughters, Genya
and Iraida, girls of four-and-twenty and two-and-twenty respectively,
both very pale, with black eyes, and exactly the same height. Genya
had her hair down, and Iraida had hers done up high on her head.
Before eating anything they each drank a wineglassful of bitter
liqueur, with an air as though they had drunk it by accident for
the first time in their lives and both were overcome with confusion
and burst out laughing.
"Don't be naughty, girls," said Rashevitch.
Genya and Iraida talked French with each other, and Russian with
their father and their visitor. Interrupting one another, and mixing
up French words with Russian, they began rapidly describing how
just at this time in August, in previous years, they had set off
to the hoarding school and what fun it had been. Now there was
nowhere to go, and they had to stay at their home in the country,
summer and winter without change. Such dreariness!
"Don't be naughty, girls," Rashevitch said again.
He wanted to be talking himself. If other people talked in his
presence, he suffered from a feeling like jealousy.
"So that's how it is, my dear boy," he began, looking affectionately
at Meier. "In the simplicity and goodness of our hearts, and from
fear of being suspected of being behind the times, we fraternize
with, excuse me, all sorts of riff-raff, we preach fraternity and
equality with money-lenders and innkeepers; but if we would only
think, we should see how criminal that good-nature is. We have
brought things to such a pass, that the fate of civilization is
hanging on a hair. My dear fellow, what our forefathers gained in
the course of ages will be to-morrow, if not to-day, outraged and
destroyed by these modern Huns. . . ."
After supper they all went into the drawing-room. Genya and Iraida
lighted the candles on the piano, got out their music. . . . But
their father still went on talking, and there was no telling when
he would leave off. They looked with misery and vexation at their
egoist-father, to whom the pleasure of chattering and displaying
his intelligence was evidently more precious and important than his
daughters' happiness. Meier, the only young man who ever came to
their house, came--they knew--for the sake of their charming,
feminine society, but the irrepressible old man had taken possession
of him, and would not let him move a step away.
"Just as the knights of the west repelled the invasions of the
Mongols, so we, before it is too late, ought to unite and strike
together against our foe," Rashevitch went on in the tone of a
preacher, holding up his right hand. "May I appear to the riff-raff
not as Pavel Ilyitch, but as a mighty, menacing Richard Coeur-de-Lion.
Let us give up sloppy sentimentality; enough of it! Let us all make
a compact, that as soon as a plebeian comes near us we fling some
careless phrase straight in his ugly face: 'Paws off! Go back to
your kennel, you cur!' straight in his ugly face," Rashevitch went
on gleefully, flicking his crooked finger in front of him. "In his
ugly face!"
"I can't do that," Meier brought out, turning away.
"Why not?" Rashevitch answered briskly, anticipating a prolonged
and interesting argument. "Why not?"
"Because I am of the artisan class myself!"
As he said this Meier turned crimson, and his neck seemed to swell,
and tears actually gleamed in his eyes.
"My father was a simple workman," he said, in a rough, jerky voice,
"but I see no harm in that."
Rashevitch was fearfully confused. Dumbfoundered, as though he had
been caught in the act of a crime, he gazed helplessly at Meier,
and did not know what to say. Genya and Iraida flushed crimson, and
bent over their music; they were ashamed of their tactless father.
A minute passed in silence, and there was a feeling of unbearable
discomfort, when all at once with a sort of painful stiffness and
inappropriateness, there sounded in the air the words:
"Yes, I am of the artisan class, and I am proud of it!"
Thereupon Meier, stumbling awkwardly among the furniture, took his
leave, and walked rapidly into the hall, though his carriage was
not yet at the door.
"You'll have a dark drive to-night," Rashevitch muttered, following
him. "The moon does not rise till late to-night."
They stood together on the steps in the dark, and waited for the
horses to be brought. It was cool.
"There's a falling star," said Meier, wrapping himself in his
overcoat.
"There are a great many in August."
When the horses were at the door, Rashevitch gazed intently at the
sky, and said with a sigh:
"A phenomenon worthy of the pen of Flammarion. . . ."
After seeing his visitor off, he walked up and down the garden,
gesticulating in the darkness, reluctant to believe that such a
queer, stupid misunderstanding had only just occurred. He was ashamed
and vexed with himself. In the first place it had been extremely
incautious and tactless on his part to raise the damnable subject
of blue blood, without finding out beforehand what his visitor's
position was. Something of the same sort had happened to him before;
he had, on one occasion in a railway carriage, begun abusing the
Germans, and it had afterwards appeared that all the persons he had
been conversing with were German. In the second place he felt that
Meier would never come and see him again. These intellectuals who
have risen from the people are morbidly sensitive, obstinate and
slow to forgive.
"It's bad, it's bad," muttered Rashevitch, spitting; he had a feeling
of discomfort and loathing as though he had eaten soap. "Ah, it's
bad!"
He could see from the garden, through the drawing-room window, Genya
by the piano, very pale, and looking scared, with her hair down.
She was talking very, very rapidly. . . . Iraida was walking up and
down the room, lost in thought; but now she, too, began talking
rapidly with her face full of indignation. They were both talking
at once. Rashevitch could not hear a word, but he guessed what they
were talking about. Genya was probably complaining that her father
drove away every decent person from the house with his talk, and
to-day he had driven away from them their one acquaintance, perhaps
a suitor, and now the poor young man would not have one place in
the whole district where he could find rest for his soul. And judging
by the despairing way in which she threw up her arms, Iraida was
talking probably on the subject of their dreary existence, their
wasted youth. . . .
When he reached his own room, Rashevitch sat down on his bed and
began to undress. He felt oppressed, and he was still haunted by
the same feeling as though he had eaten soap. He was ashamed. As
he undressed he looked at his long, sinewy, elderly legs, and
remembered that in the district they called him the "toad," and
after every long conversation he always felt ashamed. Somehow or
other, by some fatality, it always happened that he began mildly,
amicably, with good intentions, calling himself an old student, an
idealist, a Quixote, but without being himself aware of it, gradually
passed into abuse and slander, and what was most surprising, with
perfect sincerity criticized science, art and morals, though he had
not read a book for the last twenty years, had been nowhere farther
than their provincial town, and did not really know what was going
on in the world. If he sat down to write anything, if it were only
a letter of congratulation, there would somehow be abuse in the
letter. And all this was strange, because in reality he was a man
of feeling, given to tears, Could he be possessed by some devil
which hated and slandered in him, apart from his own will?
"It's bad," he sighed, as he lay down under the quilt. "It's bad."
His daughters did not sleep either. There was a sound of laughter
and screaming, as though someone was being pursued; it was Genya
in hysterics. A little later Iraida was sobbing too. A maidservant
ran barefoot up and down the passage several times. . . .
"What a business! Good Lord! . . ." muttered Rashevitch, sighing
and tossing from side to side. "It's bad."
He had a nightmare. He dreamt he was standing naked, as tall as a
giraffe, in the middle of the room, and saying, as he flicked his
finger before him:
"In his ugly face! his ugly face! his ugly face!"
He woke up in a fright, and first of all remembered that a
misunderstanding had happened in the evening, and that Meier would
certainly not come again. He remembered, too, that he had to pay
the interest at the bank, to find husbands for his daughters, that
one must have food and drink, and close at hand were illness, old
age, unpleasantnesses, that soon it would be winter, and that there
was no wood. . . .
It was past nine o'clock in the morning. Rashevitch slowly dressed,
drank his tea and ate two hunks of bread and butter. His daughters
did not come down to breakfast; they did not want to meet him, and
that wounded him. He lay down on his sofa in his study, then sat
down to his table and began writing a letter to his daughters. His
hand shook and his eyes smarted. He wrote that he was old, and no
use to anyone and that nobody loved him, and he begged his daughters
to forget him, and when he died to bury him in a plain, deal coffin
without ceremony, or to send his body to Harkov to the dissecting
theatre. He felt that every line he wrote reeked of malice and
affectation, but he could not stop, and went on writing and writing.
"The toad!" he suddenly heard from the next room; it was the voice
of his elder daughter, a voice with a hiss of indignation. "The
toad!"
"The toad!" the younger one repeated like an echo. "The toad!"