“Stay, hold your tongue, wait a bit! Why do you gabble like that? To begin with, what sort of creature are you?”
Sofya Matveyevna told her after a fashion, giving a very brief account of herself, however, beginning with Sevastopol. Varvara Petrovna listened in silence, sitting up erect in her chair, looking sternly straight into the speaker's eyes.
“Why are you so frightened? Why do you look at the ground? I like people who look me straight in the face and hold their own with me. Go on.”
She told of their meeting, of her books, of how Stepan Trofimovitch had regaled the peasant woman with vodka . . . “That's right, that's right, don't leave out the slightest detail,” Varvara Petrovna encouraged her.
At last she described how they had set off, and how Stepan Trofimovitch had gone on talking, “really ill by that time,” and here had given an account of his life from the very beginning, talking for some hours. “Tell me about his life.”
Sofya Matveyevna suddenly stopped and was completely nonplussed.
“I can't tell you anything about that, madam,” she brought out, almost crying; “besides, I could hardly understand a word of it.”
“Nonsense! You must have understood something.”
“He told a long time about a distinguished lady with black hair.” Sofya Matveyevna flushed terribly though she noticed Varvara Petrovna's fair hair and her complete dissimilarity with the “brunette” of the story.
“Black-haired? What exactly? Come, speak!”
“How this grand lady was deeply in love with his honour all her life long and for twenty years, but never dared to speak, and was shamefaced before him because she was a very stout lady. . . .”
“The fool!” Varvara Petrovna rapped out thoughtfully but resolutely.
Sofya Matveyevna was in tears by now.
“I don't know how to tell any of it properly, madam, because I was in a great fright over his honour; and I couldn't understand, as he is such an intellectual gentleman.”
“It's not for a goose like you to judge of his intellect. Did he offer you his hand?”
The speaker trembled.
“Did he fall in love with you? Speak! Did he offer you his hand?” Varvara Petrovna shouted peremptorily.
“That was pretty much how it was,” she murmured tearfully. “But I took it all to mean nothing, because of his illness,” she added firmly, raising her eyes.
“What is your name?”
“Sofya Matveyevna, madam,”
“Well, then, let me tell you, Sofya Matveyevna, that he is a wretched and worthless little man. . . . Good Lord! Do you look upon me as a wicked woman '! ”
Sofya Matveyevna gazed open-eyed.
“A wicked woman, a tyrant? Who has ruined his life?”
“How can that be when you are crying yourself, madam?”
Varvara Petrovna actually had tears in her eyes.
“Well, sit down, sit down, don't be frightened. Look me straight in the face again. Why are you blushing? Dasha, come here. Look at her. What do you think of her? Her heart is pure. . . .”
And to the amazement and perhaps still greater alarm of Sofya Matveyevna, she suddenly patted her on the cheek.
“It's only a pity she is a fool. Too great a fool for her age. That's all right, my dear, I'll look after you. I see that it's all nonsense. Stay near here for the time. A room shall be taken for you and you shall have food and everything else from me . . . till I ask for you.”
Sofya Matveyevna stammered in alarm that she must hurry on.
“You've no need to hurry. I'll buy all your books, and meantime you stay here. Hold your tongue; don't make excuses. If I hadn't come you would have stayed with him all the same, wouldn't you?”
“I wouldn't have left him on any account,” Sofya Matveyevna brought out softly and firmly, wiping her tears.
It was late at night when Doctor Salzfish was brought. He was a very respectable old man and a practitioner of fairly wide experience who had recently lost his post in the service in consequence of some quarrel on a point of honour with his superiors. Varvara Petrovna instantly and actively took him under her protection. He examined the patient attentively, questioned him, and cautiously pronounced to Varvara Petrovna that “the sufferer's” condition was highly dubious in consequence of complications, and that they must be prepared “even for the worst.” Varvara Petrovna, who had during twenty years get accustomed to expecting nothing serious or decisive to come from Stepan Trofimovitch, was deeply moved and even turned pale. “Is there really no hope?”
“Can there ever be said to be absolutely no hope? But ...” She did not go to bed all night, and felt that the morning would never come. As soon as the patient opened his eyes and returned to consciousness (he was conscious all the time, however, though he was growing weaker every hour), she went up to him with a very resolute air.
“Stepan Trofimovitch, one must be prepared for anything. I've sent for a priest. You must do what is right. . . .”
Knowing his convictions, she was terribly afraid of his refusing. He looked at her with surprise.
“Nonsense, nonsense!” she vociferated, thinking he was already refusing. “This is no time for whims. You have played the fool enough.”
“But ... am I really so ill, then?”
He agreed thoughtfully. And indeed I was much surprised to learn from Varvara Petrovna afterwards that he showed no fear of death at all. Possibly it was that he simply did not believe it, and still looked upon his illness as a trifling one.
He confessed and took the sacrament very readily. Every one, Sofya Matveyevna, and even the servants, came to congratulate him on taking the sacrament. They were all moved to tears looking at his sunken and exhausted face and his blanched and quivering lips.
“Oui, mes amis, and I only wonder that you . . . take so much trouble. I shall most likely get up to-morrow, and we will . . . set off. . . . Toute cette ceremonie . . . for which, of course, I feel every proper respect . . . was ...”
“I beg you, father, to remain with the in valid,” said Varvara Petrovna hurriedly, stopping the priest, who had already taken off his vestments. “As soon as tea has been handed, I beg you to begin to speak of religion, to support his faith.”
The priest spoke; every one was standing or sitting round the sick-bed.
“In our sinful days,” the priest began smoothly, with a cup of tea in his hand, “faith in the Most High is the sole refuge of the race of man in all the trials and tribulations of life, as well as its hope for that eternal bliss promised to the righteous.”
Stepan Trofimovitch seemed to revive, a subtle smile strayed on his lips.
“Man pere, je vous remercie et vous etes bien bon, mais . . .”
“No mais about it, no mais at all!” exclaimed Varvara Petrovna, bounding up from her chair. “Father,” she said, addressing the priest, “he is a man who . . . he is a man who . . . You will have to confess him again in another hour! That's the sort of man he is.”
Stepan Trofimovitch smiled faintly.
“My friends,” he said, “God is necessary to me, if only because He is the only being whom one can love eternally.”
Whether he was really converted, or whether the stately ceremony of the administration of the sacrament had impressed him and stirred the artistic responsiveness of his temperament or not, he firmly and, I am told, with great feeling uttered some words which were in flat contradiction with many of his former convictions.
“My immortality is necessary if only because God will not be guilty of injustice and extinguish altogether the flame of love for Him once kindled in my heart. And what is more precious than love? Love is higher than existence, love is the crown of existence; and how is it possible that existence should not be under its dominance? If I have once loved Him and rejoiced in my love, is it possible that He should extinguish me and my joy and bring me to nothingness again? If there is a God, then I am immortal. Voila ma profession de foi. ”