"Hurrah!" Stepan Trofimovich cried and snapped his fingers.
He was perfectly delighted, the more so as he had spent the whole time of separation from his friend being extremely dejected. She had not even said a proper good-bye to him as she was leaving, and did not mention any of her plans to "that old woman," fearing, perhaps, that he might blurt something out. She was angry with him then for the loss of a considerable sum at cards, which had suddenly been discovered. But while still in Switzerland she had felt in her heart that her abandoned friend should be rewarded on her return, the more so as she had long been treating him severely. The abrupt and mysterious separation struck and tormented the timid heart of Stepan Trofimovich, and, as if by design, other perplexities also came along at the same time.
He suffered over a certain rather considerable and long-standing financial obligation, which could by no means be met without Varvara Petrovna's help. Moreover, in May of this year came the end of our kindly, mild Ivan Osipovich's term as governor; he was replaced, and not without some unpleasantness. Then, in Varvara Petrovna's absence, the entrance of our new superior, Andrei Antonovich von Lembke, also took place; with that there at once began to be a noticeable change in the attitude of almost all our provincial society towards Varvara Petrovna, and, consequently, towards Stepan Trofimovich as well. At least he had already managed to gather a few unpleasant though valuable observations and, it seems, had grown very timid on his own without Varvara Petrovna. He had an alarming suspicion that the new governor had already received reports on him as a dangerous man. He learned positively that some of our ladies intended to stop calling on Varvara Petrovna. It was said repeatedly of the future governor's wife (who was expected here only in the autumn) that though she was, one heard, a haughty woman, at least she was a real aristocrat, not like "our wretched Varvara Petrovna." Everyone knew from somewhere, certainly and with details, that the new governor's wife and Varvara Petrovna had already met once in society and had parted in enmity, so that the mere reminder of Mrs. von Lembke supposedly produced a morbid impression on Varvara Petrovna. Varvara Petrovna's bright and victorious look, the contemptuous indifference with which she heard about the opinions of our ladies and the agitation in society, resurrected the fallen spirits of timid Stepan Trofimovich and cheered him up at once. With a special joyfully fawning humor he began to elaborate upon the new governor's arrival.
"You undoubtedly know, excellente amie, " he spoke, drawing the words out fashionably and coquettishly, "what is meant by a Russian administrator, generally speaking, and what is meant by a new Russian administrator—that is, newly baked, newly installed... Ces interminables mots russes![ix]... But it is unlikely that you can have learned in practice what administrative rapture means and what sort of thing it is!"
"Administrative rapture? I have no idea."
"That is... Vous savez, chez nous... En un mot,[x] set some utter nonentity to selling some paltry railroad tickets, and this nonentity will at once decide he has the right to look at you like Jupiter when you come to buy a ticket, pour vous montrer son pouvoir,[xi] 'Come,' he thinks, 'I'll show my power over you...' And it reaches the point of administrative rapture with them ... En un mot, I've just read that some beadle in one of our churches abroad—mais c'est très curieux[xii]—chased out, I mean literally chased out of the church, a wonderful English family, les dames charmantes, just before the start of the Lenten service—vous savez ces chants et le livre de Job[xiii]—on the sole pretext that 'it is not in order for foreigners to hang about in Russian churches and they should come at the proper time...' and he sent them all into a faint... This beadle was in a fit of administrative rapture et il a montré son pouvoir[xiv]. . ."
"Abbreviate if you can, Stepan Trofimovich."
"Mr. von Lembke is now touring the province. En un mot, this Andrei Antonovich, though he is a Russian German of Orthodox faith and even—I will grant him that—a remarkably handsome man, of the forty-year-old sort ..."
"Where did you get that he's a handsome man? He has sheep's eyes."
"In the highest degree. But, very well, I yield to the opinion of our ladies..."
"Let's move on, Stepan Trofimovich, I beg you! By the way, since when have you been wearing a red necktie?"
"I... only today..."
"And do you take your exercise? Do you go for a four-mile walk every day, as the doctor prescribed?"
"Not... not always."
"Just as I thought! I felt it even in Switzerland!" she cried irritably. "You are now going to walk not four but six miles a day! You've gone terribly to seed, terribly, ter-ri-bly! You're not just old, you're decrepit ... I was struck when I saw you today, in spite of your red necktie ... quelle idée rouge![xv] Go on about von Lembke, if there really is anything to say, but let it end somewhere, I beg you, I'm tired."
"En un mot, I merely wanted to say that he is one of those administrators who start out at the age of forty, who vegetate in insignificance until they're forty and then suddenly make their way by means of an unexpectedly acquired wife or by some other no less desperate means... That he is away now... that is, I mean to say that he at once had it whispered in both ears that I am a corrupter of youth and a fomenter of provincial atheism... He began making inquiries at once."
"Can it be true?"
"I've even taken measures. When it was 're-por-ted' that you 'ruled the province,' vous savez,[xvi] he allowed himself to say that 'such things will not continue.’”
"Is that what he said?"
"That 'such things will not continue,' and avec cette morgue[xvii] ... His spouse, Yulia Mikhailovna, we shall behold here at the end of August, direct from Petersburg."
"From abroad. I met her there."
"Vraiment?"[xviii]
"In Paris and in Switzerland. She's related to the Drozdovs."
"Related? What a remarkable coincidence! They say she's ambitious and... supposedly has good connections?"
"Nonsense! Nothing to speak of! She sat a spinster without a kopeck until she was forty-five, then she went and married her von Lembke, and now, of course, her whole goal is to pull him up. A pair of intriguers."
"And they say she's two years older than he is."
"Five. Her mother wore out the train of her dress on my doorstep in Moscow; she used to get herself invited to my balls out of charity when Vsevolod Nikolaevich was alive. And the girl used to sit alone in the corner all evening with a turquoise fly on her forehead, no one would dance with her, so when it got to be past two I'd take pity on her and send her her first partner. She was already twenty-five then, and they still took her out in short skirts like a schoolgirl. It became indecent to invite them."
"That fly, I can just see it!"
"I tell you, I arrived and stumbled right onto an intrigue. You've just read Drozdov's letter—what could be clearer? And what did I find? That fool Drozdov herself—she's never been anything but a fool— suddenly looked at me as if she were asking why I had come. You can imagine how surprised I was! I looked and there was this finagling Lembke woman, and this cousin with her, old Drozdov's nephew—it was all clear! Of course, I undid it all at once, and Praskovya is on my side again; but the intrigue, the intrigue!"