What Is to Be Done?

and had lived in the government of Tambof till he was twenty years old, with only one American or Englishman in a circle of twenty or fifty or one hundred versts around, with his father, who had been all day long in the factory; in conformity with this tale, Charles Beaumont spoke Russian like a native Russian, and English fairly well, very well, but not distinctly, as is likely to be the case with a man who has lived in the land of the English tongue only a few years after reaching maturity.

XI

Beaumont found himself at the dinner-table, sitting with only two others, the old man and a very genteel, but somewhat melancholy blondinka, his daughter.

“Did I ever think,” said Pólozof at dinner, “that the shares in this factory would ever have such importance for me? It is hard for a man of my years to have such a shock come upon him, but it is good that Kátya cares so little that I have lost her fortune; for, even while I live, it is more her property than mine: her mother had property, and I had little. Of course I made every ruble grow into twenty; it shows that, on the other hand, it grew more from my labor than by inheritance; and how hard I worked! and how much one has to know!” The old man talked long in this self-flattering tone. “And everything was gained by my sweat and blood, but most of all by my brains,” he said in conclusion, and he repeated what he said at first: that such a shock was very hard to bear, and that if Kátya too were worried by it, it seemed to him that he would lose his senses; but Kátya not only does not worry, but even consoles him.

Either according to the American custom of not seeing anything extraordinary in a rapid accumulation of wealth, or in a failure, or because it was his natural character, Beaumont had no desire either to be overpowered by the greatness of the mind that could make three or four millions, or to feel great concern for the failure which left sufficient means to allow the maintenance of a good cook; but nevertheless it was necessary to offer some consolation after this long speech, and therefore he said, “Yes, it is a great solace when a family faces its troubles courageously.”

“Yes? you speak rather doubtfully, Karl Yakovlitch. You think that Kátya is melancholy on account of her lost riches? No, Karl Yakovlitch, no; you judge her unfairly; she and I have a different trouble; she and I have lost our confidence in men,” said Pólozof in that half-jesting, half-serious tone in which old and experienced people speak of the good and inexperienced thoughts of their children.

Katerina Vasílyevna blushed; it was disagreeable to her that her father turned the conversation to her feelings: but besides her father’s love there was another certain circumstance, for which her father was not to blame; if there is nothing to talk about, and there happens to be in the room a cat or a dog, the conversation will seize upon the animal; and if there is no cat or dog, then it goes to the children. The weather is the third and the extremity of resourcelessness.

“No, papa, it is hardly necessary to explain my melancholy by any motive so high; you know that I have a reserved nature, and I am lonesome.”

“One need not be melancholy unless he pleases,” said Beaumont; “but to be bored is in my opinion unpardonable. Loneliness is a fashion among our brethren, the English, but we Americans know nothing about it; we have no time to be melancholy. We have too much to do to allow of it, I think; I mean, it seems to me” (he corrected his Americanism) “that the Russian people ought to see themselves in the same situation: according to my way of looking at it, they too have too much to do; but, in reality, I see exactly the opposite in the Russians; they are very much disposed to reserve. Even the English cannot equal them in this respect. Englishmen are known all over Europe, including Russia, to be the most gloomy people in the world, but they are as much more sociable, lively, and gay than the Russians, as they themselves are behind the French in this respect, and your tourists tell you how reserved English society is. I don’t understand where their eyes are when they look at themselves.”

“And the Russians are right in being gloomy,” said Katerina Vasílyevna; “what chance do they have for activity? They have nothing to do! They have to sit and fold their hands. Give me something to do, and the chances are that I shall not be melancholy.”

“You want to find something to do? Oh, there ought not to be any obstacle to that; you see all around you such ignorance; excuse me for speaking so about your country, about your fatherland” (again he corrected his Anglicism); “but I was born here myself, and grew up here; I look upon it as my own, and therefore I don’t stand upon ceremony; you see in it genuine Turkish ignorance, Chinese helplessness. ‘I detest your fatherland because I love it as my own,’ I will say, imitating your poet; but there are great opportunities.”

“Yes, but what can a man, much less, what can a woman, do?”

“But you are doing something, Kátya,” said Pólozof.⁠—“I am going to expose her secret, Karl Yakovlitch. She teaches little girls because she hasn’t anything else to do. Every day she has her pupils, and she is busy with them from ten o’clock till one, and sometimes even longer.”

Beaumont looked up at Katerina Vasílyevna with respect. “This is our style in America; of course by America I mean only the Northern free States. The Southern States are worse than Mexico, almost as bad as Brazil.” Beaumont was an ardent abolitionist. “This is in