He still went on looking about him.
"So Stepan Trofimovitch wrote to you that he was getting married for the 'sins of another committed in Switzerland,' and that you were to fly here 'to save him,' in those very words?" said Varvara Petrovna, addressing him suddenly. Her face was yellow and distorted, and her lips were twitching.
"Well, you see, if there's anything I've not understood," said Pyotr Stepanovitch, as though in alarm, talking more quickly than ever, "it's his fault, of course, for writing like that.
Here's the letter.
You know, Varvara Petrovna, his letters are endless and incessant, and, you know, for the last two or three months there has been letter upon letter, till, I must own, at last I sometimes didn't read them through.
Forgive me, Stepan Trofimovitch, for my foolish confession, but you must admit, please, that, though you addressed them to me, you wrote them more for posterity, so that you really can't mind.... Come, come, don't be offended; we're friends, anyway.
But this letter, Varvara Petrovna, this letter, I did read through.
These 'sins'—these 'sins of another'—are probably some little sins of our own, and I don't mind betting very innocent ones, though they have suddenly made us take a fancy to work up a terrible story, with a glamour of the heroic about it; and it's just for the sake of that glamour we've got it up.
You see there's something a little lame about our accounts—it must be confessed, in the end.
We've a great weakness for cards, you know.... But this is unnecessary, quite unnecessary, I'm sorry, I chatter too much. But upon my word, Varvara Petrovna, he gave me a fright, and I really was half prepared to save him.
He really made me feel ashamed.
Did he expect me to hold a knife to his throat, or what?
Am I such a merciless creditor?
He writes something here of a dowry.... But are you really going to get married, Stepan Trofimovitch?
That would be just like you, to say a lot for the sake of talking. Ach, Varvara Petrovna, I'm sure you must be blaming me now, and just for my way of talking too...."
"On the contrary, on the contrary, I see that you are driven out of all patience, and, no doubt you have had good reason," Varvara Petrovna answered spitefully.
She had listened with spiteful enjoyment to all the "candid outbursts" of Pyotr Stepanovitch, who was obviously playing a part (what part I did not know then, but it was unmistakable, and over-acted indeed).
"On the contrary," she went on, "I'm only too grateful to you for speaking; but for you I might not have known of it.
My eyes are opened for the first time for twenty years.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, you said just now that you had been expressly informed; surely Stepan Trofimovitch hasn't written to you in the same style?"
"I did get a very harmless and... and... very generous letter from him...."
"You hesitate, you pick out your words. That's enough!
Stepan Trofimovitch, I request a great favour from you." She suddenly turned to him with flashing eyes. "Kindly leave us at once, and never set foot in my house again."
I must beg the reader to remember her recent "exaltation," which had not yet passed.
It's true that Stepan Trofimovitch was terribly to blame!
But what was a complete surprise to me then was the wonderful dignity of his bearing under his son's "accusation," which he had never thought of interrupting, and before Varvara Petrovna's "denunciation."
How did he come by such spirit?
I only found out one thing, that he had certainly been deeply wounded at his first meeting with Petrusha, by the way he had embraced him.
It was a deep and genuine grief; at least in his eyes and to his heart.
He had another grief at the same time, that is the poignant consciousness of having acted contemptibly. He admitted this to me afterwards with perfect openness.
And you know real genuine sorrow will sometimes make even a phenomenally frivolous, unstable man solid and stoical; for a short time at any rate; what's more, even fools are by genuine sorrow turned into wise men, also only for a short time of course; it is characteristic of sorrow.
And if so, what might not happen with a man like Stepan Trofimovitch?
It worked a complete transformation—though also only for a time, of course.
He bowed with dignity to Varvara Petrovna without uttering a word (there was nothing else left for him to do, indeed).
He was on the point of going out without a word, but could not refrain from approaching Darya Pavlovna.
She seemed to foresee that he would do so, for she began speaking of her own accord herself, in utter dismay, as though in haste to anticipate him.
"Please, Stepan Trofimovitch, for God's sake, don't say anything," she began, speaking with haste and excitement, with a look of pain in her face, hurriedly stretching out her hands to him. "Be sure that I still respect you as much... and think just as highly of you, and... think well of me too, Stepan Trofimovitch, that will mean a great deal to me, a great deal...."
Stepan Trofimovitch made her a very, very low bow.
"It's for you to decide, Darya Pavlovna; you know that you are perfectly free in the whole matter!
You have been, and you are now, and you always will be," Varvara Petrovna concluded impressively.
"Bah! Now I understand it all!" cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, slapping himself on the forehead.
"But... but what a position I am put in by all this!
Darya Pavlovna, please forgive me!...
What do you call your treatment of me, eh?" he said, addressing his father.
"Pierre, you might speak to me differently, mightn't you, my boy," Stepan Trofimovitch observed quite quietly.
"Don't cry out, please," said Pierre, with a wave of his hand. "Believe me, it's all your sick old nerves, and crying out will do no good at all.
You'd better tell me instead, why didn't you warn me since you might have supposed I should speak out at the first chance?"
Stepan Trofimovitch looked searchingly at him.
"Pierre, you who know so much of what goes on here, can you really have known nothing of this business and have heard nothing about it?"
"What?