After Masha left the gate, she was met by Rakhmétof, who had been prowling for half an hour around the dacha.
“Are you going away, Masha? For long?”
“Yes; probably I shan’t get back before late this evening; I have a great deal to attend to.”
“Is Viéra Pavlovna all alone by herself?”
“She is alone.”
“Then I will step in and stay with her, in your place, in case I can do anything to help her.”
“If you only would; and I tremble on her account. And I forgot entirely, Mr. Rakhmétof; call some of the neighbors. There is a cook and a nurse-girl, friends of mine, to get dinner; for she has not had anything to eat yet.”
“All right! I have not had any dinner myself. We’ll help ourselves. Have you had your dinner?”
“Yes; Viéra Pavlovna would not let me go without it.”
“Well, that’s good. I imagined she would have forgotten this on account of her own trouble.”
Except Masha, and those who were her equals or superiors in the simplicity of soul and dress, all people were rather afraid of Rakhmétof. Lopukhóf and Kirsánof, and all those who feared nobody and nothing, felt in his presence, at times, some trepidation. Towards Viéra Pavlovna he was very distant. She found him very tiresome. He never sought her society. But Masha liked him, though he was less sociable and polite to her than were any other of their visitors.
“I came without being invited, Viéra Pavlovna,” he began. “But I have seen Aleksandr Matvéitch, and I know all, and so I came to the conclusion that I might be useful to you in some way; and I am going to spend the evening here.”
His services might have been very useful, even now, to help Viéra Pavlovna in undoing the things. Anyone in Rakhmétof’s place would have been asked to do it, or would have offered his services. But he did not offer, and he was not asked. Viéra Pavlovna only pressed his hand, and, with sincere feeling said that she was very grateful to him for his attention.
“I shall remain in the library,” he said. “If anything is needed, call me, and if anybody comes, I will open the door. Don’t you trouble yourself.”
With these words he went into the library; took from his pocket a big piece of ham and a hunk of black rye bread—all of which must have weighed four pounds; he sat down and ate it to the last crumb, striving to chew it all very fine; he drank half a pitcher of water; then he went to the bookshelves and began to pick out something to read. “I know that; not original, not original, not original, not original.” This criticism, “not original,” referred to such books as Macaulay, Guizot, Thiers, Ranke, Gervinus.
“Ah! but here’s something good!”
This he said, after reading on the back of several huge tomes, Complete Works of Newton. He began hastily to turn over the pages; finally he found what he was looking for, and with a lovely smile cried: “Here it is, here it is!—Observations on the Prophesies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John.62 Yes, this side of knowledge has, till now, remained with me without any real foundation. Newton wrote this commentary when he was old, when he was half sane and half crazy. It is the classical fountain when one is on the question of the mixture of sense and insanity. Here is a question of worldwide historical interest; this mixture which is in almost all occurrences, in almost all books, and in almost all brains. But here it must be in a model form: in the first place, the most ingenious and normal brain that ever was known; in the second place, the acknowledged, undisputed insanity which was superinduced upon this brain. And so the book is capital in its way. The most obscure features of the general phenomenon must appear here more distinctly than anywhere else, and no one can have the least doubt that here you find these very features of this phenomenon, to which the features of the mixture of sanity and insanity are related. The book is worth studying.”
With great energy he began to read the book, which for the last century had been scarcely read, except by those who wanted to set it right. For anyone else to read it, except Rakhmétof, would be equivalent to eating sand or sawdust. But it was to his taste.
Such people as Rakhmétof are rare. So far in my life I have met with only eight examples of this species (and that number includes two women). They have no interrelation, except in one feature. Among them were people soft and severe, people melancholy and gay, energetic people and phlegmatic people, sentimental people (one of them had a severe face, sarcastic even to impudence; another one, with a wooden face, quiet and indifferent to everything; they both shed tears before me several times, like hysterical women, and not on their own account, but during talks on different topics. While by themselves, I am sure they wept often), and people who never, under any circumstances, lost their self-possession. There was no resemblance between them in any respect, with the exception of the one feature, but that feature, in itself, joined them into one species, and separated them from the rest of humanity. I used to laugh at those with whom I have been intimately acquainted, when I was alone with them. They would either get angry or not, but they would also join in the laugh. And, really, there was so much that was amusing about them—the main characteristic was amusing—for this very reason, that they were people of a different species, I love to laugh at such people.
The one whom I met in the circle of Lopukhóf and Kirsánof, and about whom I am going to speak here, serves as a living proof that a reserve clause is necessary in the arguments between Lopukhóf and Mertsálof
