“Of course, there is a good deal of truth in Lombroso’s teaching,” said Kólosoff, lolling back in the low chair and looking at Sophia Vasílievna with sleepy eyes; “but he overstepped the mark. Oh, yes.”
“And you? Do you believe in heredity?” asked Sophia Vasílievna, turning to Nekhlúdoff, whose silence annoyed her.
“In heredity?” he asked. “No, I don’t.” At this moment his whole mind was taken up by strange images that in some unaccountable way rose up in his imagination. By the side of this strong and handsome Philip he seemed at this minute to see the nude figure of Kólosoff as an artist’s model; with his stomach like a melon, his bald head, and his arms without muscle, like pestles. In the same dim way the limbs of Sophia Vasílievna, now covered with silks and velvets, rose up in his mind as they must be in reality; but this mental picture was too horrid and he tried to drive it away.
“Well, you know Missy is waiting for you,” she said. “Go and find her. She wants to play a new piece by Grieg to you; it is most interesting.”
“She did not mean to play anything; the woman is simply lying, for some reason or other,” thought Nekhlúdoff, rising and pressing Sophia Vasílievna’s transparent and bony, ringed hand.
Katerína Alexéevna met him in the drawing-room, and at once began, in French, as usual—
“I see the duties of a juryman act depressingly upon you.”
“Yes; pardon me, I am in low spirits today, and have no right to weary others by my presence,” said Nekhlúdoff.
“Why are you in low spirits?”
“Allow me not to speak about that,” he said, looking round for his hat.
“Don’t you remember how you used to say that we must always tell the truth? And what cruel truths you used to tell us all! Why do you not wish to speak out now? … Don’t you remember, Missy?” she said, turning to Missy, who had just come in.
“We were playing a game then,” said Nekhlúdoff, seriously; “one may tell the truth in a game, but in reality we are so bad—I mean I am so bad—that I, at least, cannot tell the truth.”
“Oh, do not correct yourself, but rather tell us why we are so bad,” said Katerína Alexéevna, playing with her words and pretending not to notice how serious Nekhlúdoff was.
“Nothing is worse than to confess to being in low spirits,” said Missy. “I never do it, and therefore am always in good spirits.”
Nekhlúdoff felt as a horse must feel when it is being caressed to make it submit to having the bit put in its mouth and be harnessed, and today he felt less than ever inclined to draw.
“Well, are you coming into my room? We will try to cheer you up.”
He excused himself, saying he had to be at home, and began taking leave. Missy kept his hand longer than usual.
“Remember that what is important to you is important to your friends,” she said. “Are you coming tomorrow?”
“I hardly expect to,” said Nekhlúdoff; and feeling ashamed, without knowing whether for her or for himself, he blushed and went away.
“What is it? Comme cela m’intrigue,” said Katerína Alexéevna. “I must find it out. I suppose it is some affaire d’amour propre; il est très susceptible, notre cher Mítia.”
“Plutot une affaire d’amour sale,” Missy was going to say, but stopped and looked down with a face from which all the light had gone—a very different face from the one with which she had looked at him. She would not mention to Katerína Alexéevna even, so vulgar a pun, but only said, “We all have our good and our bad days.”
“Is it possible that he, too, will deceive?” she thought; “after all that has happened it would be very bad of him.”
If Missy had had to explain what she meant by “after all that has happened,” she could have said nothing definite, and yet she knew that he had not only excited her hopes but had almost given her a promise. No definite words had passed between them—only looks and smiles and hints; and yet she considered him as her own, and to lose him would be very hard.
XXVIII
“Shameful and stupid, horrid and shameful!” Nekhlúdoff kept saying to himself, as he walked home along the familiar streets. The depression he had felt whilst speaking to Missy would not leave him. He felt that, looking at it externally, as it were, he was in the right, for he had never said anything to her that could be considered binding, never made her an offer; but he knew that in reality he had bound himself to her, had promised to be hers. And yet today he felt with his whole being that he could not marry her.
“Shameful and horrid, horrid and shameful!” he repeated to himself, with reference not only to his relations with Missy but also to the rest. “Everything is horrid and shameful,” he muttered, as he stepped into the porch of his house. “I am not going to have any supper,” he said to his manservant Cornéy, who followed him into the dining-room, where the cloth was laid for supper and tea. “You may go.”
“Yes, sir,” said Cornéy, yet he did not go, but began clearing the supper off the table. Nekhlúdoff looked at Cornéy with a feeling of ill-will. He wished to be left alone, and it seemed to him that everybody was bothering him in order to spite him. When Cornéy had gone away with the supper things, Nekhlúdoff moved to the tea urn and was about to make himself some tea, but hearing Agraphéna Petróvna’s footsteps, he went hurriedly into the drawing-room, to avoid being seen by her, and shut the
