“He also must have gone pale as death,” he thought, chancing to notice his face in the mirror. “He must have been reading it and closing his eyes, and then suddenly opening them again, hoping the letter would turn to simple blank paper… He probably repeated the experiment three or four times!…”
XVII
THE ETERNAL HUSBAND
Almost exactly two years went by after the adventure we have described. We meet Mr. Velchaninov one beautiful summer day in a car of one of our newly opened railways. He was on his way to Odessa to join a friend, for the pleasure of it, and, along with that, on account of another, also quite agreeable, circumstance; through his friend he hoped to arrange for himself a meeting with one extremely interesting woman, with whom he had long wished to become acquainted. Without going into details, we shall limit ourselves to pointing out that he had regenerated, or, better to say, improved greatly over the last two years. Of the former hypochondria almost no traces remained. All that remained to him of various “memories” and anxieties—the consequences of illness—which had begun to beset him two years ago in Petersburg during the time of his then unsuccessful lawsuit—was some hidden shame from the awareness of his former faintheartedness. He was partially recompensed by the certainty that there would be no more of it and that no one would ever know about it. True, he had abandoned society then, had even begun to dress poorly, had hidden somewhere from everyone—and this, of course, everyone had noticed. But he had so quickly come forth to plead guilty, and with such a newly revived and self-confident air, that “everyone” forgave at once his momentary falling away; even those of them whom he had stopped greeting, these were the first to acknowledge him and offer him their hand, and what’s more without any importunate questions—as if he had been absent all the while somewhere far away on family business, which was no one’s affair, and had only just come back. The reason for all these beneficial and sensible changes for the better was, naturally, the winning of the lawsuit. Velchaninov got only sixty thousand roubles—no great thing, granted, but a very important one for him: first of all, he felt himself at once on firm ground again—meaning morally appeased; he knew for certain now that he would not squander this last of his money “like a fool,” as he had squandered his first two fortunes, and that he would have enough for the rest of his life. “However tottering their social edifice may be, and whatever they may be trumpeting there,” he thought occasionally, lending an ear and eye to all the marvelous and incredible that was being accomplished around him and all over Russia, “whatever people and thought may be regenerating into there, still I will always at least have this fine and tasty dinner which I’m now sitting down to, and thus I’m prepared for anything.” This thought, tender to the point of voluptuousness, was gradually taking full possession of him and produced in him even a physical turnabout, not to mention a moral one: he now looked like a totally different man compared with that “marmot” we described two years ago, with whom such indecent stories were beginning to happen—he looked cheerful, bright, imposing. Even the malignant wrinkles that had begun to form around his eyes and on his forehead were almost smoothed out; his complexion even changed—it became whiter, rosier. At the present moment he was sitting in a comfortable seat in a first-class car, and a sweet thought
was hatching in his mind: at the next station there would be a fork and a new line going to the right. “If I were to leave the direct line for a moment and bear to the right, then in no more than two stops I could visit yet another lady of my acquaintance, who has just returned from abroad and is now living in—agreeable for me, but rather boring for her—provincial seclusion; and thus the possibility arises of spending my time no less interestingly than in Odessa, the more so as Odessa won’t slip away either…” But he was still hesitant and had not made a final decision; he was “waiting for a push.” Meanwhile the station was approaching; the push was also not long in coming.
At this station the train stopped for forty minutes and the passengers were offered dinner. Just at the entrance to the waiting room for first- and second-class passengers there crowded, as usual, an impatient and hurrying multitude of people, and—perhaps also as usual—a scandal took place. One lady, who got out of a second-class car and was remarkably pretty, but somehow too magnificently dressed for a traveler, almost dragged with her, in both hands, an uhlan, a very young and handsome little officer, who was trying to tear free of her grip. The young officer was very tipsy, and the lady, in all probability an older relative, would not let him go, surely for fear he would rush straight to the buffet for a drink. Meanwhile, the uhlan was jostled in the crush by a little merchant, also on a spree, and even outrageously so. This merchant had been stuck at the station for two days already, drinking and squandering money, surrounded by all sorts of comradery, and kept being late for the train to continue his journey. There was a quarrel, the officer shouted, the merchant cursed, the lady was in despair and, drawing the uhlan away from the quarrel, exclaimed to him in a pleading voice: “Mitenka! Mitenka!” The little merchant found this much too scandalous; true, everyone was laughing, but the merchant was the more upset on account of what seemed to him, for some reason, an offense to morality.
“See that—’Mitenka’!…” he said reproachfully, imitating the lady’s piping little voice. “They’re no longer ashamed even in public!”
And, staggering over to the lady, who had thrown herself down on the first chair she could find and managed to sit the uhlan down beside her, he looked them both over with contempt and drew out in a singsong voice:
“Slut, slut that you are, your skirt tail’s all tattered!”
The lady shrieked and looked around pitifully, waiting for deliverance. She was ashamed, she was afraid, and to crown it all, the officer tore from his chair and, with a yell, rushed for the merchant, but slipped and flopped back into the chair. The guffawing increased around them, while no one even thought of helping; but Velchaninov did help; he suddenly seized the little merchant by the scruff of the neck and, turning him around, shoved him some five steps away from the frightened woman. With that the scandal ended; the little merchant was greatly taken aback both by the shove and by Velchaninov’s imposing figure; he was led away at once by his comrades. The dignified physiognomy of the elegantly dressed gentleman produced an imposing impression on the jeerers as welclass="underline" the laughter ceased. The lady, blushing and almost in tears, began pouring out assurances of her gratitude. The uhlan muttered: “Thanksh, thanksh!”—and made as if to offer Velchaninov his hand, but instead suddenly decided to lie down across the chairs and stretch his legs out on them.
“Mitenka!” the lady moaned reproachfully, clasping her hands.
Velchaninov was pleased both with the adventure and with its setting. The lady interested him; she was, as could be seen, a rich provincial, dressed magnificently but tastelessly, and with somewhat ridiculous manners—she precisely united in herself everything that guaranteed success to a big-city fop with certain goals regarding women. A conversation started; the lady hotly told and complained about her husband, who “suddenly disappeared somewhere from the car, and that was why it all happened, because it was eternally so, when needed, he’d disappear somewhere…”
“For a necessity…” the uhlan muttered.
“Ah, Mitenka!” she again clasped her hands.
“The husband’s going to catch it!” thought Velchaninov.
“What’s his name? I’ll go and find him,” he offered.
“Pal Palych,” the uhlan responded.
“Your husband’s name is Pavel Pavlovich?” Velchaninov asked with curiosity, and suddenly the familiar bald head thrust itself between him and the lady. Instantly he pictured the Zakhlebinins’ garden, innocent games, and the importunate bald head constantly thrusting itself between him and Nadezhda Fedoseevna.