They sit quiet and sulk.
In fact there's not enough social initiative to keep the disorderly in check."
"Ah, that's the simple truth!
They sit quiet, sulk and... gaze about them."
"And if it's the truth, you ought to say so aloud, proudly, sternly, just to show that you are not defeated, to those respectable residents and mothers of families.
Oh, you can do it; you have the gift when your head is clear.
You will gather them round you and say it aloud.
And then a paragraph in the Voice and the Financial News.
Wait a bit, I'll undertake it myself, I'll arrange it all for you.
Of course there must be more superintendence: you must look after the buffet; you must ask the prince, you must ask Mr.... You must not desert us, monsieur, just when we have to begin all over again.
And finally, you must appear arm-in-arm with Andrey Antonovitch....
How is Andrey Antonovitch?"
"Oh, how unjustly, how untruly, how cruelly you have always judged that angelic man!" Yulia Mihailovna cried in a sudden, outburst, almost with tears, putting her handkerchief to her eyes.
Pyotr Stepanovitch was positively taken aback for the moment.
"Good heavens! I.... What have I said? I've always..."
"You never have, never!
You have never done him justice."
"There's no understanding a woman," grumbled Pyotr Stepanovitch, with a wry smile.
"He is the most sincere, the most delicate, the most angelic of men!
The most kind-hearted of men!"
"Well, really, as for kind-heartedness... I've always done him justice...."
"Never!
But let us drop it.
I am too awkward in my defence of him.
This morning that little Jesuit, the marshal's wife, also dropped some sarcastic hints about what happened yesterday."
"Oh, she has no thoughts to spare for yesterday now, she is full of to-day.
And why are you so upset at her not coming to the ball to-night?
Of course, she won't come after getting mixed up in such a scandal.
Perhaps it's not her fault, but still her reputation... her hands are soiled."
"What do you mean; I don't understand? Why are her hands soiled?" Yulia Mihailovna looked at him in perplexity.
"I don't vouch for the truth of it, but the town is ringing with the story that it was she brought them together."
"What do you mean?
Brought whom together?"
"What, do you mean to say you don't know?" he exclaimed with well-simulated wonder. "Why Stavrogin and Lizaveta Nikolaevna."
"What?
How?" we all cried out at once.
"Is it possible you don't know?
Phew!
Why, it is quite a tragic romance: Lizaveta Nikolaevna was pleased to get out of that lady's carriage and get straight into Stavrogin's carriage, and slipped off with 'the latter' to Skvoreshniki in full daylight.
Only an hour ago, hardly an hour."
We were flabbergasted.
Of course we fell to questioning him, but to our wonder, although he "happened" to be a witness of the scene himself, he could give us no detailed account of it.
The thing seemed to have happened like this: when the marshal's wife was driving Liza and Mavriky Nikolaevitch from the matinee to the house of Praskovya Ivanovna (whose legs were still bad) they saw a carriage waiting a short distance, about twenty-five paces, to one side of the front door.
When Liza jumped out, she ran straight to this carriage; the door was flung open and shut again; Liza called to Mavriky Nikolaevitch,
"Spare me," and the carriage drove off at full speed to Skvoreshniki.
To our hurried questions whether it was by arrangement?
Who was in the carriage? Pyotr Stepanovitch answered that he knew nothing about it; no doubt it had been arranged, but that he did not see Stavrogin himself; possibly the old butler, Alexey Yegorytch, might have been in the carriage.
To the question
"How did he come to be there, and how did he know for a fact that she had driven to Skvoreshniki?" he answered that he happened to be passing and, at seeing Liza, he had run up to the carriage (and yet he could not make out who was in it, an inquisitive man like him!) and that Mavriky Nikolaevitch, far from setting off in pursuit, had not even tried to stop Liza, and had even laid a restraining hand on the marshal's wife, who was shouting at the top of her voice:
"She is going to Stavrogin, to Stavrogin."