The sick girl said not a word.
“It is evident that I am not mistaken. What shall I think now? Your bátiushka is a man of experience in life, who knows human nature; you are inexperienced; if any person seems bad to him, and good to you, then according to all probabilities it is you who are mistaken, and not he. You see that I must think so? Do you want to know why I tell you such a disagreeable thing? I will tell you. You may get angry at my words, you may hate me because of them, but still you will say to yourself, ‘He is saying what he thinks; he is not hypocritical, he does not want to deceive me.’ You are gaining confidence in me. Isn’t it true that I am speaking sincerely with you?”
The sick girl was hesitating whether to answer or not. “You are a strange man, doctor,” she said, at last.
“No, not strange; but I am not like one who deceives. I have told you straightforwardly what I think. But this is only my supposition. Maybe I am mistaken. Let me know whether I am. Tell me the name of the man towards whom you feel this inclination. Then—but again, only with your permission—I will speak about him to your bátiushka.”
“What will you tell him?”
“Does he know him intimately?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, I shall tell him that he must consent to your marriage, but only on one condition, that the time of the wedding be appointed not immediately, but in two or three months, so that you may have time to think coolly, whether you may not be right.”
“He will not consent.”
“He will consent in all probability. But if not, I will help you, as I said.”
Kirsánof spoke long in this style. Finally he succeeded in getting the sick girl to tell him the man’s name, and to let him talk with her father. But to bring the old man to terms was a harder matter than to manage her. Pólozof was greatly surprised to hear that his daughter’s strength had been failing on account of hopeless love; and still more surprised to hear the name of the man with whom she was in love, and he firmly declared: “Let her die sooner than marry him. Her death would be a lesser grief for both her and me.” It was a very hard case, all the more because Kirsánof hearing Pólozof’s reasons saw that the truth was really on the side of the old man, and not his daughter.
IV
Bridegrooms had swarmed by the hundred around the heiress of the great fortune; but the society which flocked to Pólozof’s dinners and suppers was a society of that excessively dubious type, of that excessively dubious refinement, which is generally found crowding the parlors of all such rich people as Pólozof, lifted above the more or less polite but still not fashionable circle in which they are born, without having any relationship or connection in the more or less genuinely polite society of the fashionable world. They become the benefactors of cunning adventurers and dandies who are absolutely indecent in their outward appearance, without speaking of their inward qualities. Therefore, Katerina Vasílyevna became interested when among the number of admirers came a genuine society man of absolutely good breeding; he behaved with so much more refinement; he spoke so much more sensibly and wittily than the others. Her father soon noticed that she was going to prefer him above the others; and, as an active, decided, substantial man, he immediately had a talk with his daughter:—
“My dear Kátya—Sólovtsof, look out for him; he is a very bad man, a perfectly heartless man; you would be so unhappy with him, that I would rather see you dead than his wife. It would be easier for both me and you.”
Katerina Vasílyevna loved her father; she was accustomed to respect his opinion; he never put restrictions upon her; she knew that he was speaking thus because he loved her; and above all, her character was inclined more to regard the wishes of those who loved her than of her caprices; she was one of those who liked to say to her friends, “I will do as you think best.”
She answered her father: “I like Sólovtsof; but if you think it is better for me to keep at a distance from him, I shall do so.”
Of course she would not have done so; and as her nature was opposed to falsehood, she would not have said so if she had loved him. Her attachment to Sólovtsof was as yet very weak. At that time it had hardly taken root; he was merely more interesting to her than others. She began to grow cool towards him; and maybe everything would have ended satisfactorily; but the father in his zeal put in too much salt; and, though in reality he did not put on much, yet it was enough to salt off the polite Sólovtsof. He saw that he must play the part of a victim, but how to find a pretext for becoming a victim. Pólozof somehow stepped on his toes; Sólovtsof, with a sense of self-respect and pain on his face, took leave of them, and ceased his calls. A week
