What Is to Be Done?

if there had not been substantial proofs that he had constantly acted against his wife, and purposely brought Viérotchka and Lopukhóf together, in order to block the “ignoble marriage” of Mikhaïl Ivanuitch. But how did they get married? Pavel Konstantinuitch was not stingy in giving her a dowry. He had given Lopukhóf five thousand rubles in cash, and he had given the marriage and all its cost at his own expense. Through him the young people had exchanged little notes. They had met at the house of his colleague, the natchalnik Filantyef, “a married man, your ladyship. Although I am a man of little account, the maiden honor of my daughter, your ladyship, is dear to me. They met in my presence; and although we have not money enough to justify giving a boy of the age of ours a tutor, yet I hired one for an excuse, your ladyship,” etc., etc. His wife’s unreliability Pavel Konstantinuitch depicted in the darkest colors.

How then could she help being convinced and forgiving Pavel Konstantinuitch? And the main thing⁠—what a great and unexpected piece of happiness! Joy softens the heart. The khozyáïka began her speech of forgiveness with a very long explanation of the thoughts and actions of Marya Alekséyevna, and at first asked Pavel Konstantinuitch to send his wife away; but he implored her, and she herself acknowledged, that it was rather for show than because she meant it. Finally it was decided that Pavel Konstantinuitch should retain his place as manager; that they should give up their rooms facing the street and take another suite in the back of the building, on condition that his wife should not dare to show her face in those places on the first dvor where the khozyáïka’s eyes might fall; and that she should be obliged to go out of doors, when she went at all, by a staircase that lay far from the khozyáïka’s windows. From the twenty rubles a month that had been added to his salary, fifteen rubles should be taken back and five rubles would be left to him for a compensation for the manager’s energy in the khozyáïka’s interests and towards the expenses of his daughter’s wedding.

XXIII

Marya Alekséyevna had a number of schemes in mind as to the way to act towards Lopukhóf when he should come in the evening. The most revengeful was to hide two dvorniks in the kitchen, who at a given signal should throw themselves on Lopukhóf, and beat him to death. The most pathetic was solemnly to pronounce with her own lips, aided by Pavel Konstantinuitch, a parental curse on their disobedient daughter and on him, their murderer, with an explanation that the curse was valid⁠—even the earth, as is well known, does not receive the dust of those who are cursed by their parents. But this belonged to the same category of imaginations as the khozyáïka had, in regard to separating Pavel Konstantinuitch from his wife; for such schemes, like any other poetry, have no practical application, properly speaking, except to relieve the heart, by furnishing a framework for endless thoughts in solitude, and for other explanations, when, by and by, she should come to speak about it; as, for example, he or she might have done this or that, and he or she intended to do so, but, owing to his or her kindness, he or she felt grieved to do so.

The plan of beating Lopukhóf and cursing her daughter were the ideal part of Marya Alekséyevna’s thoughts and feelings. But the actual part of her mind and soul took a direction not so lofty, but more practical; and this difference is attributable to the inherent weakness of every human being. When Marya Alekséyevna came to her senses, at the gates of the “School of Pages,” she comprehended that her daughter had really disappeared, was married, and had left her for good and all; and this fact came before her imagination in the form of the following mental exclamation, “She has robbed me!” And all the way home she kept exclaiming mentally, and sometimes even audibly, “She has robbed me!” And, therefore, while she was detained for several minutes by the process of communicating her grievance to Feódor and Matrióna, through human weakness⁠—every human being is carried away, by the expression of feeling, to such an extent that he often forgets, in the excitement of the spirit, the interests of the moment⁠—Marya Alekséyevna ran into Viérotchka’s room, peeked into the drawers of her bureau, into her wardrobe; she cast a hasty glance over everything; no, apparently everything is untouched. And then she began to confirm this reassuring impression by a careful examination. The result was that really all her dresses and things remained there, with the exception of a pair of simple gold earrings, and an old white mousseline dress, and an old cloak, which Viérotchka wore when she went away. As regarded the practical direction in which Marya Alekséyevna’s acts would take, she expected that Viérotchka would give Lopukhóf an inventory of her things, which he would ask for; and she firmly decided that she should give her nothing from among her possessions of gold and the like, that she would give her four of the simplest of her dresses, and some of the thinnest and oldest of her underwear. To give her nothing was impossible, since her noble generosity would not allow it; and Marya Alekséyevna had always been very strict in her observance of noble generosity.

Another question of actual life was her relation to the khozyáïka; we have already seen that Marya Alekséyevna successfully solved the answer to it.

Now, there is a third question, “What can be done with the hussy and the rascal?” that is, with her daughter and her unexpected son-in-law. Curse them? that is not hard: but it is useless, except as a dessert