“But there’s no doubt that’s not the worst thing you’ve ever done,” said Darya Alexeyevna with aversion.
“That’s a pathological incident, not an action,” observed Totsky.
“And the servant?” asked Nastasya Filippovna, not disguising her intense disgust.
“The servant was turned away next day, of course. The family was strict.”
“And you let that happen?”
“That’s good! Why, could I have gone and told of myself?” chuckled Ferdyshtchenko, though he seemed struck by the extremely unpleasant impression made on all bv his story.
“How loathsome!” cried Nastasya Filippovna.
“Why, you want to hear of a man’s worst action, and yet you expect something brilliant! A man’s worst actions are always loathsome, Nastasya Filippovna; we shall hear that directly from Ivan Petrovitch. And a great many people are brilliant on the outside and want to seem virtuous because they have their own carriage. All sorts of people keep a carriage. And by what means? …”
Ferdyshtchenko, in fact, was quite carried away, and flew into a sudden rage, positively forgetting himself and over-stepping all bounds; his whole face twitched with anger. Strange as it seems, he apparently had expected a very different reception of his story. These errors of taste, this special sort of bragging, as Totsky had called it, happened very frequently with Ferdyshtchenko, and were quite in his character.
Nastasya Filippovna positively quivered with fury and looked intently at Ferdyshtchenko. He was instantly quelled and relapsed into silence, almost cold with fear; he had gone too far.
“Hadn’t we better make an end of it?” Totsky asked artfully.
“It’s my turn, but I claim my right of exemption and shall not speak,” said Ptitsyn resolutely.
“Don’t you want to?”
“I can’t, Nastasya Filippovna; and in fact I look upon such a petit-jeu as out of the question.”
“General, I believe it’s your turn,” said Nastasya Filippovna, turning to Epanchin. “If you refuse, too, you will throw us all out, and I shall be sorry, for I was reckoning on finishing it by telling an incident from my own life. Only I wanted to do that after you and Afanasy Ivanovitch, for you must give me confidence,” she added, laughing.
“Oh, if you promise to,” cried the general fervently, “I am ready to tell you of my whole life; and I confess I have got my story ready for my turn….”
“And from his excellency’s air alone one may judge of the peculiar creative pleasure with which he has worked up his anecdote,” Ferdyshtchenko ventured to observe with a sarcastic smile, though he was still rather ill at ease.
Nastasya Filippovna glanced at the general, and she too smiled to herself. But her depression and irritability were obviously increasing every moment.
Totsky was more alarmed than ever at her promise to tell something herself.
“It has happened to me, friends, as to every one, to commit actions in my life that were not very pretty,” began the general; “but it’s strange that I regard the brief incident which I’ll describe directly as the basest action of my life. It’s almost thirty-five years ago, yet I can never escape a twinge at heart, so to say, at recalling it. It was an extremely foolish business, however, I was at that time only a lieutenant and was working my way up in the army. Well, we all know what a lieutenant is — young blood and ardour, but a miserable screw. I had an orderly in those days called Nikifor, who was awfully zealous on my behalf. He saved, sewed, scrubbed and cleaned, and even stole right and left anything he could lay his hands on to help our housekeeping. He was a most faithful and honest man. I was strict, of course, but just. We happened to stay for some time in a little town. I had lodgings in a suburb in the house of the widow of a retired sub-lieutenant. The old lady was eighty or thereabouts. She lived in a little ancient tumbledown wooden house, and was so poor she didn’t even keep a servant. What was worse, though, she had at one time had a numerous family and relations. Some had died, others were scattered, while others had forgotten the old woman. Her husband she had buried forty-five years before. Some years previously a niece used to live with her, a hunchback woman, as wicked as a witch, so people said; she had even bitten the old woman’s finger. But she too was dead; so that the old lady had been struggling on for three years quite alone. I was frightfully bored there, and she was so silly one could get nothing out of her. At last she stole a cock of mine. The matter has never been cleared up to this day, but there was no one else could have done it. We quarrelled over the cock — quarrelled in earnest; and it happened that as soon as I asked, I was transferred to other quarters, to a suburb the other side of the town, in the house of a merchant with a large family and a big beard, as I remember him. Nikifor and I were delighted to move. I left the old lady indignantly. Three days later I came in from drill and Nikifor informed me ‘We were wrong, your honour, to leave our bowl at our old lady’s; I have nothing to put the soup in.’ I was surprised, of course. ‘How so? How was it the bowl was left behind?’ Nikifor, surprised, went on to report that when we were leaving the landlady had not given him our bowl, because I had broken her pot; that she had kept our bowl in place of her pot, and that she had pretended I had suggested it. Such meanness on her part naturally made me furious; it would make any young officer’s blood boil. I leapt up and flew out. I was beside myself, so to say, when I got to the old woman’s. I saw her sitting in the passage, huddled up in the corner all alone, as though to get out of the sun, her cheek propped on her hand. I poured out a stream of abuse, calling her all sorts of names, you know, in regular Russian style. Only there seemed something strange as I looked at her: she sat with her face turned to me, her eyes round and staring, and answered not a word. And she looked at me in such a queer way, she seemed to be swaying. At last I calmed down. I looked at her, I questioned her — not a word. I stood hesitating: flies were buzzing, the sun was setting, there was stillness. Completely disconcerted, I walked away. Before I got home I was summoned to the major’s; then I had to go to the company, so I didn’t get home till it was quite evening. Nikifor’s first words were, ‘Do you know, your honour, that our landlady is dead?”When did she die?”Why, this evening, an hour and a half ago. So that at the very time I was abusing her she was passing away. It made such an impression on me that, I assure you, I couldn’t get over it. The thought of it haunted me; I dream of it at night. I am not superstitious, of course, but two days after I went to church to the funeral. In fact, as time goes on it seems to haunt me more. Not that it haunts me exactly, but now and then one pictures it and feels uncomfortable. I’ve come to the conclusion that the sting of it lies in this. In the first place, it was a woman — so to speak, a fellow-creature, a humane creature, as they call it nowadays. She had lived, lived a long life, lived too long. At one time she had had children, a husband, family and relations — all this bubbling, so to say, smiling, so to say, life about her; and then all at once complete blank, everything gone, she left alone like . . . some fly accursed from the beginning of time. And then at last God had brought her to the end, as the sun was setting, on a quiet summer evening my old woman too was passing awav — a theme for pious reflection, to be sure. And then at that very moment, instead of a tear to see her off, so to say, a reckless young lieutenant, swaggering arms akimbo, escorts her from the surface of the earth to the Russian tune of violent swearing over a lost bowl! Of course I was to blame, and, though from the length of years and change in my nature, I’ve long looked at my action as though it had been another man’s, I still regret it. So that, I repeat, it seems positively queer to me; for if I were to blame, I was not altogether
