XXXI
Ekaterina Ivanovna Pilnikova, Sasha’s aunt and guardian, received simultaneously two letters about Sasha—one from the Headmaster and the other from Kokovkina. These letters greatly alarmed her. She put all her affairs aside and drove at once from her village through the muddy autumn roads to our town. Sasha, who loved his aunt, met her with great joy. His aunt came with the intention of rating him soundly. But he threw himself on her neck with such gladness and kissed her hands so affectionately that she could not at first speak severely to him.
“Dear Auntie, how good of you to come!” said Sasha, and looked happily at her full, rosy face with its kind dimples on the cheeks and its grave, hazel eyes.
“You’d better postpone your pleasure, I must scold you first,” said his aunt in an irresolute voice.
“I don’t mind that,” said Sasha indifferently, “scold me, if you have anything to scold me for, but still I’m terribly glad to see you!”
“Terribly?” she repeated in a displeased voice. “I’ve been hearing terrible things about you.”
Sasha lifted his eyebrows and looked at his aunt with innocent, uncomprehending eyes.
“There’s one master, Peredonov, here,” he complained, “who has invented the tale that I’m a girl. He’s been annoying me, and then the Headmaster scolded me because I had got to know the Routilov girls. As if I went there to steal things! And what business is it of theirs?”
“He’s quite the same child that he was before,” thought his aunt in perplexity, “or has he become spoilt and corrupted so that he can deceive one even with his face?”
She shut herself in with Kokovkina and talked to her for a long time. She came out looking quite grave. Then she went to the Headmaster. She returned quite upset. She showered reproaches on Sasha. Sasha cried but firmly assured her that it was all an invention, that he did not permit himself any liberties with the Routilov girls. His aunt did not believe him. She scolded him, wept and threatened to give him a good whipping at once—that is today, as soon as she had seen these girls. Sasha kept crying and assuring her that nothing wrong had happened, and that it was all very exaggerated.
His aunt, angry and bloated with tears, went to the Routilovs.
As she waited in the Routilovs’ drawing-room, Ekaterina Ivanovna felt very agitated. She wanted to throw herself on the sisters at once with the severest reproaches which she had prepared beforehand. But their peaceful, pretty drawing-room aroused peaceful thoughts in her against her will, and softened her vexation. The unfinished embroidery left lying about, the keepsakes, the engravings on the walls, the carefully trained plants at the windows, the absence of dust and the homelike appearance of the room were not at all what one would expect in an unrespectable house; there was everything that is valued by housewives the world over—surely with such surroundings the young owners of such a drawing-room could not have corrupted her innocent young Sasha. All the conjectures she had made about Sasha seemed to her ridiculously absurd. On the other hand, Sasha’s explanations about his doings at the Routilovs seemed reasonable; they read, chatted, joked, laughed and played—they wanted to get up an amateur play, but Olga Vassilyevna would not allow him to take part.
The three sisters felt apprehensive. They did not yet know whether Sasha’s masquerading had remained a secret. But there were three of them and they all felt solicitous for one another. This gave them courage. All three of them gathered in Liudmilla’s room and deliberated in whispers.
“We must go down to her,” said Valeria. “It’s rude to keep her waiting.”
“Let her cool off a little,” replied Darya indifferently, “or she’ll go for us.”
The sisters scented themselves with clematis. They came in tranquil, cheerful, attractive, pretty as always; they filled the drawing-room with their charming chatter and gaiety. Ekaterina Ivanovna was immediately fascinated by them.
“So these are the corrupters!” she thought, with vexation at the school pedagogues. But then she thought that perhaps they were assuming this modesty. She decided not to yield to their fascination.
“You must forgive me, young ladies, but I have something serious to discuss with you,” she said, trying to make her voice dry and businesslike.
The sisters made her sit down and kept up a gay chatter.
“Which of you—” Ekaterina Ivanovna began irresolutely.
Liudmilla, as if she were a graceful hostess trying to get a visitor out of a difficulty, said cheerfully:
“It was I who spent most of the time with your nephew. We have similar views and tastes in many things.”
“Your nephew is a very charming boy,” said Darya, as if she were confident that her praise would please the visitor.
“Really most charming, and so entertaining,” said Liudmilla.
Ekaterina Ivanovna felt more and more awkward. She suddenly realised that she had no reasonable cause for complaint and this made her angry—Liudmilla’s last words gave her an opportunity to express her vexation—she said angrily:
“He may be an entertainment to you but to him—”
But Darya interrupted her and said in a sympathetic voice:
“Oh, I can see that those silly Peredonovian tales have reached you. Of course, you know that he’s quite mad? The Headmaster does not even allow him to go to the gymnasia now. They’re only waiting for an alienist to examine him and then he will be dismissed from the school.”
“But, allow me,” Ekaterina Ivanovna interrupted her with increasing irritation. “I am not interested in this schoolmaster but in my nephew. I have heard that you—pardon me—are corrupting him.”
And having thrown out this decisive word in her anger with the sisters, Ekaterina Ivanovna at once saw that she had gone too far. The sisters exchanged glances of such well-simulated perplexity and indignation that cleverer people than Ekaterina Ivanovna would have been taken in—they flushed and exclaimed altogether:
“That’s pleasant!”
“How terrible!”
“That’s something new!”
“Madam,” said Darya coldly, “you are not over choice in your expressions. Before you make use of such words you should find out whether they are fitting!”
“Of course, one can understand that,” said Liudmilla, with the look of a charming girl forgiving an injury, “he’s not a stranger to you. Naturally, you can’t help being disturbed by this stupid gossip. Even strangers like ourselves were sorry for him and had to be kind to him. But everything in our town is made a crime at once. You have no idea what terrible, terrible people live here!”
“Terrible people,” repeated Valeria quietly, in a clear, fragile voice and shivered from head to foot as if she had come in contact with something unclean.
“You ask him yourself,” said Darya. “Just look at him; he’s still a mere child. Perhaps you have got used to his naivete, but one can see better from the outside that he’s quite an unspoiled boy.”
The sisters lied with such assurance and tranquillity that it was impossible not to believe them. Why not? Lies have often more verisimilitude than the truth. Nearly always. As for truth of course it has no verisimilitude.
“Of course it is true that he was often here,” said Darya, “but we shan’t let him cross our threshold again, if you object.”
“And I shall go and see Khripatch today,” said Liudmilla. “How did he get hold of that notion? Surely he doesn’t believe such a stupid tale?”
“No, I don’t think he believes it himself,” admitted Ekaterina Ivanovna. “But he says that various unpleasant rumours are going about.”
“There! You see!” exclaimed Liudmilla happily. “Of course he doesn’t believe it himself. What’s the reason of all this fuss then?”
Liudmilla’s cheerful voice deceived Ekaterina Ivanovna. She thought:
“I wonder what exactly has happened? The Headmaster does say that he doesn’t believe it.”
The sisters for a long time supported each other in persuading Ekaterina Ivanovna of the complete innocence of their relations with Sasha. To set her mind more completely at rest they were on the point of telling her in detail precisely what they did with Sasha; but they stopped short because they were all such innocent, simple things that it was difficult to remember them. And Ekaterina Ivanovna at last came to believe that her Sasha and the charming Routilovs were the innocent victims of stupid slander.
As she bade them goodbye she kissed them kindly and said:
“You’re charming, simple girls. I thought at first that you were—forgive the rude word—wantons.”
The sisters laughed gaily. Liudmilla said:
“No, we’re just happy girls with sharp little tongues and that’s why we’re not liked by some of the local geese.”
When she returned from the Routilovs Sasha’s aunt said nothing to him. He met her, feeling rather frightened and embarrassed and he looked at her cautiously and attentively. After a long deliberation with Kokovkina the aunt decided:
“I must see the Headmaster again.”
That same day Liudmilla went to see Khripatch. She sat for some time in the drawing-room with the Headmaster’s wife and then announced that she had come to see Nikolai Vassilyevitch on business.
An animated conversation took place in Khripatch’s study—not because they had much to say to one another but because they liked to chatter. And they talked rapidly to each other, Khripatch with his dry, crackling volubility, Liudmilla with her gentle, resonant prattle. With the irresistible persuasiveness of falsehood, she poured out to Khripatch her half-false story of her relations with Sasha Pilnikov. Her chief motives were, of course, her sympathy with the boy who was suffering from this coarse suspicion, her desire to take the place of Sasha’s absent family. And finally he was such a charming, unspoiled boy. Liudmilla even cried a little and her swift tears rolled down her cheeks to her half-smiling lips, giving her an extraordinary attractiveness.
“I have grown to love him like a brother,” she said. “He is a fine, lovable boy. He appreciated affection and he kissed my hands.”
“That was very good of you,” said Khripatch somewhat flustered, “and does honour to your kind feelings. But you have needlessly taken to heart the simple fact that I considered it my duty to inform the boy’s relatives of the rumours that reached me.”
Liudmilla prattled on, without listening to him, and her voice passed into a tone of gentle rebuke.
“Tell me what was wrong in our taking an interest in the boy? Why should he suffer from that coarse, mad Peredonov? When shall we be rid of him? Can’t you see yourself that Pilnikov is quite a child, really a mere child?”
She clasped her small, pretty hands together, rattled her gold bracelets, laughed softly, took her handkerchief out to dry her tears and wafted a delicate perfume towards Khripatch. And Khripatch suddenly wanted to tell her that she was “lovely as a heavenly angel,” and that this unfortunate episode “was not worth a single instant of her dear sorrow.” But he refrained.
And Liudmilla chattered on and on and dissolved into smoke the chimerical structure of the Peredonovian lie. Think of comparing the charming Liudmillotchka with the crude, dirty, insane Peredonov! Whether Liudmilla was telling the whole truth or romancing was all the same to Khripatch; but he felt that if he did not believe Liudmilla and should argue with her and take steps to punish Pilnikov it might lead to an inquiry and disgrace the whole School District. All the more since this business was bound up with Peredonov who would be found to be insane. And Khripatch smiled, saying to Liudmilla:
“I’m very sorry that this should upset you so much. I didn’t for a moment permit myself any disagreeable suspicions of your acquaintance with Pilnikov. I esteem most highly those good and kindly motives which have inspired your actions, and not for a single instant have I considered the rumours that passed in the town and those that reached me as anything but unreasonable slanders which gave me deep concern. I was obliged to inform Madame Pilnikov, especially since even more distorted rumours might have reached her, but I had no intention of distressing you and had no idea that Madame Pilnikov would come and complain to you.”
“We’ve had a satisfactory explanation with Madame Pilnikov,” said Liudmilla. “But don’t punish Sasha on our account. If our house is so dangerous for schoolboys we won’t let him come again.”
“You’re very good to him,” said Khripatch irresolutely. “We can have nothing against his visiting his acquaintances in his leisure hours, if his aunt permits it. We are very far from wishing to turn students’ lodgings into places of confinement. In any case, until the Peredonov affair is decided, it would be better for Pilnikov to remain at home.”
The accepted explanation given by the Routilov girls and by Sasha received confirmation from a terrible event which happened in the Peredonovs’ house. This finally convinced the townspeople that all the rumours about Sasha and the Routilov girls were the ravings of a madman.