“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 kindhearted of men!”
“Well, really, as for kindheartedness … 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 today. And why are you so upset at her not coming to the ball tonight? 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 matinée 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.” At this point I lost patience, and cried furiously to Pyotr Stepanovitch:
“It’s all your doing, you rascal! This was what you were doing this morning. You helped Stavrogin, you came in the carriage, you helped her into it … it was you, you, you! Yulia Mihailovna, he is your enemy; he will be your ruin too! Beware of him!”
And I ran headlong out of the house. I wonder myself and cannot make out to this day how I came to say that to him. But I guessed quite right: it had all happened almost exactly as I said, as appeared later. What struck me most was the obviously artificial way in which he broke the news. He had not told it at once on entering the house as an extraordinary piece of news, but pretended that we knew without his telling us which was impossible in so short a time. And if we had known it, we could not possibly have refrained from mentioning it till he introduced the subject. Besides, he could not have heard yet that the town was “ringing with gossip” about the marshal’s wife in so short a time. Besides, he had once or twice given a vulgar, frivolous smile as he told the story, probably considering that we were fools and completely taken in.
But I had no thought to spare for him; the central fact I believed, and ran from Yulia Mihailovna’s, beside myself. The catastrophe cut me to the heart. I was wounded almost to tears; perhaps I did shed some indeed. I was at a complete loss what to do. I rushed to Stepan Trofimovitch’s, but the vexatious man still refused to open the door. Nastasya informed me, in a reverent whisper, that he had gone to bed, but I did not believe it. At Liza’s house I succeeded in questioning the servants. They confirmed the story of the elopement, but knew nothing themselves. There was great commotion in the house; their mistress had been attacked by fainting fits, and Mavriky Nikolaevitch was with her. I did not feel it possible to ask for Mavriky Nikolaevitch. To my inquiries about Pyotr Stepanovitch
