And Piotr Ivanovitch went out, carrying his head high. In the vestibule he fell in with a general who had come to pay his respects to his old friend. They had not met for thirty-five years. The general had no teeth and was bald.
“Why, how fresh you are,” said he, “Siberia must be better than Petersburg. Are these your family? Pray present me! What a fine young man your son is. Then you will dine with us to-morrow?”
“Yes, yes, certainly.”
On the doorstep they met the famous Chikhayef, also an old acquaintance.
“How did you know that I had come?”
“It would be a shame for Moscow, if it was not known; it was a shame that you were not met at the barriers. If you are going out to dine, it must be at your sister’s, Marya Ivanovna’s. Well, that is excellent; I shall be there also.”
Piotr Ivanovitch always had the look of a proud man for those who could not penetrate that exterior and read his expression of unspeakable goodness and suscepti-bility; but now Natalya Nikolayevna admired him for his unusual majesty, and Sofya Petrovna’s eyes smiled as she looked at him.
They reached Marya Ivanovna’s.
Marya Ivanova was Piotr Ivanovnitch’s godmother and was ten years his senior. She was an old maid.
Her story and how she failed to secure a husband, and how she lived in her youth, I shall tell in some other place.
She had lived uninterruptedly in Moscow. She had neither great intellect nor great wealth, and she did not value her relatives, on the contrary; but there was not a man who would not value her friendship. She was so con-vinced that all ought to value her, that all did value her. There were young liberals from the university who did not acknowledge her power, but these gentlemen con-spired only in her absence. All it required was for her to walk with her imperial gait into the drawing-room, to speak in her calm manner, to smile her caressing smile, and they were subjected. Her circle included every one. She looked on Moscow and treated it as her own household. Her special friends consisted of young peo-ple and intellectual men; women she did not like. She had also those sycophants, male and female, whom, for some reason or other, our literature has included in the general scorn it lavishes on the Hungarian cloak and on generals. But Marya Ivanovna considered that it was better for the ruined gambler Skopin and the “grass widow “Byesheva to live with her than in poverty, and so she supported them.
There were two powerful feelings in Marya Ivanovna’s present existence; they were her two brothers. Piotr lanovitch was her idol. Prince Ivan was her detesta-tion. She did not know that Piotr Ivanovitch had come, she had been at mass, and was at the present moment drinking her coffee. The vicar of Moscow, Byesheva, and Skopin were sitting at the table. Marya
Ivanovna was telling them of the young Count V , the
son of Count P. Z , who had just returned from
Sevastopol and with whom she was in love for she was always having passions. He was to dine with her that day.
The vicar got up and took his leave. Marya Ivanovna did not attempt to detain him. She was a latitudinarian in this respect; she was pious, but she did not like monks. She made sport of girls who ran after them, and she said boldly that, in her opinion, monks were the same kind of people as we poor sinners, and that salvation was to be obtained in the world better than in monasteries.
“Give out word that I am not receiving,” said she. “I am going to write to Pierre; I don’t understand why he has not come yet. Probably Natalya Nikolayevna is ill.”
Marya Ivanovna was convinced that Natalya Niko-layevna did not like her, and was her enemy. She could never forgive her because it was Natalya Nikola-yevna, and not she, his sister, who gave him her property and went with him to Siberia, and because her brother had definitely refused to accept this sacrifice when she had got ready to go with him. After thirty-five years she was beginning to believe her brother in his asser-tion that Natalya Nikolayevna was the best woman in the world, and his guardian angel; but she was jealous of her, and she kept imagining that she was a wicked woman.
She got up, went through the “hall,” and was start-ing for her library when the door opened, and the gray-haired Byesheva’s wrinkled face, expressing a joyous terror, appeared in the doorway.
“Marya Ivanovna, prepare your mind,” said she.
“A letter?”
“No, something more important.”
But, before she had a chance to finish her sentence, a man’s loud voice was heard in the vestibule.
“Where is she? You go on, Natasha.”
“It is he! “exclaimed Marya Ivanovna, and with long, firm steps she went to her brother. She met him as if she had parted with him only the day before.
“When did you arrive? Where are you staying? How did you come by carriage? “Such questions as this did Marya Ivanovna put, as she went with him into the drawing-room; nor did she wait or listen to his re-plies, but kept looking, with wide-open eyes, now at one, now at another of them. Byesheva was amazed at such calmness, or indifference rather, and did not approve of it. They all smiled; the conversation languished. Marya Ivanovna relapsed into silence, and kept looking at her brother gravely.
“How are you? “asked Piotr Ivanovitch, taking her hand, and smiling.
Piotr Ivanovitch addressed his sister with the plural pronoun “vui,” and she used the singular “tui.” Marya Ivanovna looked once more at the gray beard and the bald head, at his teeth, at the wrinkles around his eyes, at his sunburned face, and she knew it all.
“Here is my Sonya.”
But she did not look at her.
“Whatafoo….”
Her voice broke; she seized her brother’s bald head with both her big white hands. “What a fool you were,” she was going to say, “that you did not give me warning,” but her bosom and shoulders shook, her face grew convulsed, and she began to sob, while still press-ing the bald head to her bosom, and repeating :
“What a foo-1 you were not to give me notice.”
Piotr Ivanovitch no longer seemed to himself such a great man, or so important, as he had seemed to be when he stood on the doorsteps of the Hotel Chevalier. He was seated in an arm-chair, but his head was in his sis-ter’s arms, and his nose was squeezed against her corset, and something tickled his nose, and his hair was tumbled, and tears were in his eyes. But still he liked it
When this ebullition of happy tears had passed, Marya Ivanovna realized and believed in the reality of what had happened, and began to study them all. But several times again, during the course of that day, when it came over her what he had once been, and what she had once been, and what they were now, and when her imagina-tion vividly pictured their past unhappiness, and their former happiness and their former love, she would again spring up, and say :
“What a fool you were, Petrushka; what a fool not to give me warning. Why did you not come directly to me? I would have taken you in,” said Marya Ivanovna. “At any rate, you will dine with me. It won’t be a bore to you, Sergye’f, for a young hero from Sevastopol is coming. But don’t you know the son of Nikolai’ Mi-khai’lovitch? He is a writer who has already written something. I have-not read it yet, but it* is praised, and he is a fine young fellow. I will have him invited. Chikhayef also wanted to come. Well, he is a chatter-box. I don’t like him. He ‘s been to see you already. And have you seen Nikita? Now all that is rubbish. What do you intend to do? And how is your health, Natalie? Where did you get this handsome lad and lassie?”
But the conversation kept flagging.
Before dinner Natalya Nikolayevna and the children went to see the old aunt. The brother and sister were left alone together, and he began to unfold his plans.
“Sonya is grown up; we shall have to bring her out; of course we shall live in Moscow,” said Marya Ivanovna.
“Not for the world.”
“Serozha will have to go into the service.”
“Not for the world.”
“You are as crazy as ever.”
Nevertheless, she had a great fondness for the “crazy” one.
“We shall have to settle down here, then go into the country and show the children everything.”
“My rule is not to interfere in family affairs,” said Marya Ivanovna, who was now growing calm after her excitement, “and I never give advice. But that a young man should go into the service I have always thought, and think so still, but now more than ever. You have no idea, Petrusha, what young men are nowadays. I know them all; here is Prince Dmitri’s son, he has entirely failed. Yes, and what is more, they are to blame for it. You see, I am not afraid of any one; I am an old woman, and it is not well.”
And she began to talk about the government. She was dissatisfied with the excessive freedom granted to every one.
“They have done one good thing, they let you come home. That is good.”
Petrusha began to speak in the government’s defense, but Marya Ivanovna was of a different nature from Pakhtin’s. She would not argue with him; she
