Bab Bab 3 · The Second Marriage And The Second Family

. The Second Marriage And The Second Family

Very shortly after getting his four-year-old Mitya off his hands Fyodor

Pavlovitch married a second time. His second marriage lasted eight

years. He took this second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, also a very young

girl, from another province, where he had gone upon some small piece of

business in company with a Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovitch was a drunkard

and a vicious debauchee he never neglected investing his capital, and

managed his business affairs very successfully, though, no doubt, not

over-scrupulously. Sofya Ivanovna was the daughter of an obscure

deacon, and was left from childhood an orphan without relations. She

grew up in the house of a general’s widow, a wealthy old lady of good

position, who was at once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not know

the details, but I have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and

gentle creature, was once cut down from a halter in which she was

hanging from a nail in the loft, so terrible were her sufferings from

the caprice and everlasting nagging of this old woman, who was

apparently not bad-hearted but had become an insufferable tyrant

through idleness.

Fyodor Pavlovitch made her an offer; inquiries were made about him and

he was refused. But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed an

elopement to the orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she would

not on any account have married him if she had known a little more

about him in time. But she lived in another province; besides, what

could a little girl of sixteen know about it, except that she would be

better at the bottom of the river than remaining with her benefactress.

So the poor child exchanged a benefactress for a benefactor. Fyodor

Pavlovitch did not get a penny this time, for the general’s widow was

furious. She gave them nothing and cursed them both. But he had not

reckoned on a dowry; what allured him was the remarkable beauty of the

innocent girl, above all her innocent appearance, which had a peculiar

attraction for a vicious profligate, who had hitherto admired only the

coarser types of feminine beauty.

“Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor,” he used to say

afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this

might, of course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had

received no dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her “from

the halter,” he did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel

that she had “wronged” him, he took advantage of her phenomenal

meekness and submissiveness to trample on the elementary decencies of

marriage. He gathered loose women into his house, and carried on orgies

of debauchery in his wife’s presence. To show what a pass things had

come to, I may mention that Grigory, the gloomy, stupid, obstinate,

argumentative servant, who had always hated his first mistress,

Adelaïda Ivanovna, took the side of his new mistress. He championed her

cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a manner little befitting a

servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels and drove all the

disorderly women out of the house. In the end this unhappy young woman,

kept in terror from her childhood, fell into that kind of nervous

disease which is most frequently found in peasant women who are said to

be “possessed by devils.” At times after terrible fits of hysterics she

even lost her reason. Yet she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two sons, Ivan and

Alexey, the eldest in the first year of marriage and the second three

years later. When she died, little Alexey was in his fourth year, and,

strange as it seems, I know that he remembered his mother all his life,

like a dream, of course. At her death almost exactly the same thing

happened to the two little boys as to their elder brother, Mitya. They

were completely forgotten and abandoned by their father. They were

looked after by the same Grigory and lived in his cottage, where they

were found by the tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother.

She was still alive, and had not, all those eight years, forgotten the

insult done her. All that time she was obtaining exact information as

to her Sofya’s manner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous

surroundings she declared aloud two or three times to her retainers:

“It serves her right. God has punished her for her ingratitude.”

Exactly three months after Sofya Ivanovna’s death the general’s widow

suddenly appeared in our town, and went straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s

house. She spent only half an hour in the town but she did a great

deal. It was evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had not seen for

those eight years, came in to her drunk. The story is that instantly

upon seeing him, without any sort of explanation, she gave him two

good, resounding slaps on the face, seized him by a tuft of hair, and

shook him three times up and down. Then, without a word, she went

straight to the cottage to the two boys. Seeing, at the first glance,

that they were unwashed and in dirty linen, she promptly gave Grigory,

too, a box on the ear, and announcing that she would carry off both the

children she wrapped them just as they were in a rug, put them in the

carriage, and drove off to her own town. Grigory accepted the blow like

a devoted slave, without a word, and when he escorted the old lady to

her carriage he made her a low bow and pronounced impressively that,

“God would repay her for the orphans.” “You are a blockhead all the

same,” the old lady shouted to him as she drove away.

Fyodor Pavlovitch, thinking it over, decided that it was a good thing,

and did not refuse the general’s widow his formal consent to any

proposition in regard to his children’s education. As for the slaps she

had given him, he drove all over the town telling the story.

It happened that the old lady died soon after this, but she left the

boys in her will a thousand roubles each “for their instruction, and so

that all be spent on them exclusively, with the condition that it be so

portioned out as to last till they are twenty-one, for it is more than

adequate provision for such children. If other people think fit to

throw away their money, let them.” I have not read the will myself, but

I heard there was something queer of the sort, very whimsically

expressed. The principal heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, the Marshal of

Nobility of the province, turned out, however, to be an honest man.

Writing to Fyodor Pavlovitch, and discerning at once that he could

extract nothing from him for his children’s education (though the

latter never directly refused but only procrastinated as he always did

in such cases, and was, indeed, at times effusively sentimental), Yefim

Petrovitch took a personal interest in the orphans. He became

especially fond of the younger, Alexey, who lived for a long while as

one of his family. I beg the reader to note this from the beginning.

And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man of a generosity and humanity rarely to

be met with, the young people were more indebted for their education

and bringing up than to any one. He kept the two thousand roubles left

to them by the general’s widow intact, so that by the time they came of

age their portions had been doubled by the accumulation of interest. He

educated them both at his own expense, and certainly spent far more

than a thousand roubles upon each of them. I won’t enter into a

detailed account of their boyhood and youth, but will only mention a

few of the most important events. Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say

that he grew into a somewhat morose and reserved, though far from timid

boy. At ten years old he had realized that they were living not in

their own home but on other people’s charity, and that their father was

a man of whom it was disgraceful to speak. This boy began very early,

almost in his infancy (so they say at least), to show a brilliant and

unusual aptitude for learning. I don’t know precisely why, but he left

the family of Yefim Petrovitch when he was hardly thirteen, entering a

Moscow gymnasium, and boarding with an experienced and celebrated

teacher, an old friend of Yefim Petrovitch. Ivan used to declare

afterwards that this was all due to the “ardor for good works” of Yefim

Petrovitch, who was captivated by the idea that the boy’s genius should

be trained by a teacher of genius. But neither Yefim Petrovitch nor

this teacher was living when the young man finished at the gymnasium

and entered the university. As Yefim Petrovitch had made no provision

for the payment of the tyrannical old lady’s legacy, which had grown

from one thousand to two, it was delayed, owing to formalities

inevitable in Russia, and the young man was in great straits for the

first two years at the university, as he was forced to keep himself all

the time he was studying. It must be noted that he did not even attempt

to communicate with his father, perhaps from pride, from contempt for

him, or perhaps from his cool common sense, which told him that from

such a father he would get no real assistance. However that may have

been, the young man was by no means despondent and succeeded in getting

work, at first giving sixpenny lessons and afterwards getting

paragraphs on street incidents into the newspapers under the signature

of “Eye-Witness.” These paragraphs, it was said, were so interesting

and piquant that they were soon taken. This alone showed the young

man’s practical and intellectual superiority over the masses of needy

and unfortunate students of both sexes who hang about the offices of

the newspapers and journals, unable to think of anything better than

everlasting entreaties for copying and translations from the French.

Having once got into touch with the editors Ivan Fyodorovitch always

kept up his connection with them, and in his latter years at the

university he published brilliant reviews of books upon various special

subjects, so that he became well known in literary circles. But only in

his last year he suddenly succeeded in attracting the attention of a

far wider circle of readers, so that a great many people noticed and

remembered him. It was rather a curious incident. When he had just left

the university and was preparing to go abroad upon his two thousand

roubles, Ivan Fyodorovitch published in one of the more important

journals a strange article, which attracted general notice, on a

subject of which he might have been supposed to know nothing, as he was

a student of natural science. The article dealt with a subject which

was being debated everywhere at the time—the position of the

ecclesiastical courts. After discussing several opinions on the subject

he went on to explain his own view. What was most striking about the

article was its tone, and its unexpected conclusion. Many of the Church

party regarded him unquestioningly as on their side. And yet not only

the secularists but even atheists joined them in their applause.

Finally some sagacious persons opined that the article was nothing but

an impudent satirical burlesque. I mention this incident particularly

because this article penetrated into the famous monastery in our

neighborhood, where the inmates, being particularly interested in the

question of the ecclesiastical courts, were completely bewildered by

it. Learning the author’s name, they were interested in his being a

native of the town and the son of “that Fyodor Pavlovitch.” And just

then it was that the author himself made his appearance among us.

Why Ivan Fyodorovitch had come amongst us I remember asking myself at

the time with a certain uneasiness. This fateful visit, which was the

first step leading to so many consequences, I never fully explained to

myself. It seemed strange on the face of it that a young man so

learned, so proud, and apparently so cautious, should suddenly visit

such an infamous house and a father who had ignored him all his life,

hardly knew him, never thought of him, and would not under any

circumstances have given him money, though he was always afraid that

his sons Ivan and Alexey would also come to ask him for it. And here

the young man was staying in the house of such a father, had been

living with him for two months, and they were on the best possible

terms. This last fact was a special cause of wonder to many others as

well as to me. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov, of whom we have spoken

already, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s first wife, happened to be

in the neighborhood again on a visit to his estate. He had come from

Paris, which was his permanent home. I remember that he was more

surprised than any one when he made the acquaintance of the young man,

who interested him extremely, and with whom he sometimes argued and not

without an inner pang compared himself in acquirements.

“He is proud,” he used to say, “he will never be in want of pence; he

has got money enough to go abroad now. What does he want here? Every

one can see that he hasn’t come for money, for his father would never

give him any. He has no taste for drink and dissipation, and yet his

father can’t do without him. They get on so well together!”

That was the truth; the young man had an unmistakable influence over

his father, who positively appeared to be behaving more decently and

even seemed at times ready to obey his son, though often extremely and

even spitefully perverse.

It was only later that we learned that Ivan had come partly at the

request of, and in the interests of, his elder brother, Dmitri, whom he

saw for the first time on this very visit, though he had before leaving

Moscow been in correspondence with him about an important matter of

more concern to Dmitri than himself. What that business was the reader

will learn fully in due time. Yet even when I did know of this special

circumstance I still felt Ivan Fyodorovitch to be an enigmatic figure,

and thought his visit rather mysterious.

I may add that Ivan appeared at the time in the light of a mediator

between his father and his elder brother Dmitri, who was in open

quarrel with his father and even planning to bring an action against

him.

The family, I repeat, was now united for the first time, and some of

its members met for the first time in their lives. The younger brother,

Alexey, had been a year already among us, having been the first of the

three to arrive. It is of that brother Alexey I find it most difficult

to speak in this introduction. Yet I must give some preliminary account

of him, if only to explain one queer fact, which is that I have to

introduce my hero to the reader wearing the cassock of a novice. Yes,

he had been for the last year in our monastery, and seemed willing to

be cloistered there for the rest of his life.