“Yes; but there is still some swelling, and it is inflamed.”
“Yesterday there was considerably more, and by tomorrow there will be none at all.”
Piotr, after cleaning out the ashtray and bringing the cigar-holder, leaves the room.
“I did not want to appear before you as a wounded hero.”
“Why didn’t you write me, then?”
“Da! I thought that I should be able to put on my coat right away; that is, day before yesterday; and day before yesterday, I expected to put it on yesterday; and yesterday, today. I thought it was not worth while to worry you.”
“Yes, and you have worried me all the more. It was not nice of you, Mr. Beaumont. And when shall you finish this business of yours?”
“Da! probably in a day or two; the delay is not our fault. Mr. Lotter and I are all ready, but it is the stockholders.”
“And what have you been reading?”
“A new novel by Thackeray. How can a man write himself out so when he has such a talent! It is because his fund of ideas is getting low.”
“I have read it; it is quite true.” And she went on to speak of Thackeray’s failing powers. Then they so spoke about half an hour on various other topics in the very same manner.
“Well, it is almost time for me to go to Viéra Pavlovna. When do you want to make her acquaintance? They are lovely people.”
“I will try to arrange to do it soon; I will ask you to introduce me. I am very grateful to you for your visit. Is that your horse?”
“Yes, it is mine.”
“That’s the reason why your bátiushka never rides him. It is a very good horse.”
“I think he is; I don’t know much about them.”
“It’s a beautiful horse, sir; cost three hundred and fifty rubles,” said the coachman.
“How old is he?”
“Six years, sir.”
“Let us start, Zakhár; I am all ready. Goodbye, Mr. Beaumont; will you come today?”
“Hardly likely, no; tomorrow, sure.”
XVII
Does it ever happen that people do such things? Do young girls who are in love ever make such visits? Not to speak of the fact that no well-trained young lady would allow herself to do such a thing; but if she did, the conversation would be quite different. If the action performed by Katerina Vasílyevna was contrary to morality, then still more contrary to the generally accepted ideas as to the relations between men and young women, would be the character, so to speak, of this immoral action. Isn’t it clear that Katerina Vasílyevna and Beaumont were not human beings, but fish? and if they were human beings, that they had the blood of fishes in their veins? The way that she usually behaved towards him in her own house, also absolutely corresponded with this theory.
“I am too tired to talk, Mr. Beaumont,” she used to say when he stayed late. “You stay with papa, but I am going to bed”; and she used to leave him.
Sometimes he used to reply, “Stay quarter of an hour more, Katerina Vasílyevna.”
“All right,” she would say in such cases; but more often he replied, “Then goodbye,111 Katerina Vasílyevna.”
What kind of people are these, I should like to know; and I should like to know if they are not simply excellent people, whose meetings are disturbed by nobody, who are free to see each other when and as much as they please, whose marriage no one will hinder as soon as they make up their minds, and who, therefore, have no reason to be possessed of devils. But still I am vexed at their cool treatment of each other, and I am not as much ashamed for them as for myself. Is it really my fate as a novelist, to compromise in the eyes of all well-bred readers, all my heroes and heroines? Some of them eat and drink; others are not possessed of devils without cause; what uninteresting people!
XVIII
Meantime, so far as the old man Pólozof could judge, the affair was coming to a marriage. When the probable bride and probable bridegroom were getting to be so intimate, it was evident that there would be a marriage. Has he not heard their talk? To be sure, his daughter and the probable bridegroom were not always under his eyes. More often than not they would sit by themselves or walk together by themselves; but this did not change in the least the tenor of their conversations. Even the shrewdest student of the human heart would have never suspected, had he heard them talk, that Beaumont would marry Katerina Vasílyevna. Not that they never spoke about their feelings. They spoke about them as they spoke about everything else in the world; but they said excessively little about them; and even this little counted as nothing from the tone in which they spoke. The tone was vexatious from its very calmness, and what they said would have seemed terribly absurd to anyone in society. Now, for example, it happened that in about a week after the visit for which Beaumont was so grateful to Katerina Vasílyevna, and in about two months after their acquaintance had begun, the sale of the factory was accomplished. Mr. Lotter was intending to leave on the following day. (And he left; don’t imagine that he is going to bring a catastrophe. He, as is common with business men in transacting commercial operations, told Beaumont that the firm would make him the manager of the factory, at the salary of a thousand pounds, as
