It was difficult to understand why these rumours, or rather fancies, persisted so obstinately, and why Yulia Mihailovna was so positively connected with it.
As soon as she came in, all turned to her with strange looks, brimful of expectation.
It must be observed that owing to the freshness of the event, and certain circumstances accompanying it, at the party people talked of it with some circumspection, in undertones.
Besides, nothing yet was known of the line taken by the authorities.
As far as was known, neither of the combatants had been troubled by the police.
Every one knew, for instance, that Gaganov had set off home early in the morning to Duhovo, without being hindered.
Meanwhile, of course, all were eager for someone to be the first to speak of it aloud, and so to open the door to the general impatience.
They rested their hopes on the general above-mentioned, and they were not disappointed.
This general, a landowner, though not a wealthy one, was one of the most imposing members of our club, and a man of an absolutely unique turn of mind. He flirted in the old-fashioned way with the young ladies, and was particularly fond, in large assemblies, of speaking aloud with all the weightiness of a general, on subjects to which others were alluding in discreet whispers.
This was, so to say, his special role in local society.
He drawled, too, and spoke with peculiar suavity, probably having picked up the habit from Russians travelling abroad, or from those wealthy landowners of former days who had suffered most from the emancipation.
Stepan Trofimovitch had observed that the more completely a landowner was ruined, the more suavely he lisped and drawled his words.
He did, as a fact, lisp and drawl himself, but was not aware of it in himself.
The general spoke like a person of authority.
He was, besides, a distant relation of Gaganov's, though he was on bad terms with him, and even engaged in litigation with him. He had, moreover, in the past, fought two duels himself, and had even been degraded to the ranks and sent to the Caucasus on account of one of them.
Some mention was made of Varvara Petrovna's having driven out that day and the day before, after being kept indoors "by illness," though the allusion was not to her, but to the marvellous matching of her four grey horses of the Stavrogins' own breeding.
The general suddenly observed that he had met "young Stavrogin" that day, on horseback.... Every one was instantly silent.
The general munched his lips, and suddenly proclaimed, twisting in his fingers his presentation gold snuff-box.
"I'm sorry I wasn't here some years ago... I mean when I was at Carlsbad...
H'm! I'm very much interested in that young man about whom I heard so many rumours at that time.
H'm! And, I say, is it true that he's mad?
Some one told me so then.
Suddenly I'm told that he has been insulted by some student here, in the presence of his cousins, and he slipped under the table to get away from him. And yesterday I heard from Stepan Vysotsky that Stavrogin had been fighting with Gaganov.
And simply with the gallant object of offering himself as a target to an infuriated man, just to get rid of him.
H'm! Quite in the style of the guards of the twenties.
Is there any house where he visits here?"
The general paused as though expecting an answer.
A way had been opened for the public impatience to express itself.
"What could be simpler?" cried Yulia Mihailovna, raising her voice, irritated that all present had turned their eyes upon her, as though at a word of command.
"Can one wonder that Stavrogin fought Gaganov and took no notice of the student?
He couldn't challenge a man who used to be his serf!"
A noteworthy saying!
A clear and simple notion, yet it had entered nobody's head till that moment.
It was a saying that had extraordinary consequences.
All scandal and gossip, all the petty tittle-tattle was thrown into the background, another significance had been detected.
A new character was revealed whom all had misjudged; a character, almost ideally severe in his standards.
Mortally insulted by a student, that is, an educated man, no longer a serf, he despised the affront because his assailant had once been his serf.
Society had gossiped and slandered him; shallow-minded people had looked with contempt on a man who had been struck in the face. He had despised a public opinion, which had not risen to the level of the highest standards, though it discussed them.
"And, meantime, you and I, Ivan Alexandrovitch, sit and discuss the correct standards," one old club member observed to another, with a warm and generous glow of self-reproach.
"Yes, Pyotr Mihailovitch, yes," the other chimed in with zest, "talk of the younger generation!"
"It's not a question of the younger generation," observed a third, putting in his spoke, "it's nothing to do with the younger generation; he's a star, not one of the younger generation; that's the way to look at it."
"And it's just that sort we need; they're rare people."
The chief point in all this was that the "new man," besides showing himself an unmistakable nobleman, was the wealthiest landowner in the province, and was, therefore, bound to be a leading man who could be of assistance.
I've already alluded in passing to the attitude of the landowners of our province.
People were enthusiastic:
"He didn't merely refrain from challenging the student. He put his hands behind him, note that particularly, your excellency," somebody pointed out.
"And he didn't haul him up before the new law-courts, either," added another.
"In spite of the fact that for a personal insult to a nobleman he'd have got fifteen roubles damages! He he he!"
"No, I'll tell you a secret about the new courts," cried a third, in a frenzy of excitement, "if anyone's caught robbing or swindling and convicted, he'd better run home while there's yet time, and murder his mother.
He'll be acquitted of everything at once, and ladies will wave their batiste handkerchiefs from the platform. It's the absolute truth!"