“And which is the professor?”
“There's no professor at all, maman.”
“But there is. You said yourself that there'd be a professor. It's this one, probably.” She disdainfully indicated Shatov.
“I didn't tell you that there'd be a professor. Mr. G—— v is
in the service, and Mr. Shatov is a former student.”
“A student or professor, they all come from the university just the same. You only want to argue. But the Swiss one had moustaches and a beard.”
“It's the son of Stepan Trofimovitch that maman always calls the professor,” said Liza, and she took Shatov away to the sofa at the other end of the drawing-room.
“When her legs swell, she's always like this, you understand she's ill,” she whispered to Shatov, still with the same marked curiosity, scrutinising him, especially his shock of hair.
“Are you an officer?” the old lady inquired of me. Liza had mercilessly abandoned me to her.
“N-no.— I'm in the service . . . .”
“Mr. G—— v is a great friend of Stepan Trofimovitch's,” Liza chimed in immediately.
“Are you in Stepan Trofimovitch's service? Yes, and he's a professor, too, isn't he?”
“Ah, maman, you must dream at night of professors,” cried Liza with annoyance.
“I see too many when I'm awake. But you always will contradict your mother. Were you here four years ago when Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was in the neighbourhood?”
I answered that I was.
“And there was some Englishman with you?”
“No, there was not.”
Liza laughed.
“Well, you see there was no Englishman, so it must have been idle gossip. And Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovitch both tell lies. And they all tell lies.”
“Auntie and Stepan Trofimovitch yesterday thought there was a resemblance between Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch and Prince Harry in Shakespeare's Henry IV, and in answer to that maman says that there was no Englishman here,” Liza explained to us.
“If Harry wasn't here, there was no Englishman. It was no one else but Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch at his tricks.”
“I assure you that maman's doing it on purpose,” Liza thought necessary to explain to Shatov. “She's really heard of Shakespeare. I read her the first act of Othello myself. But she's in great pain now. Maman, listen, it's striking twelve, it's time you took your medicine.”
“The doctor's come,” a maid-servant announced at the door.
The old lady got up and began calling her dog: “Zemirka, Zemirka, you come with me at least.”
Zemirka, a horrid little old dog, instead of obeying, crept under the sofa where Liza was sitting.
“Don't you want to? Then I don't want you. Good-bye, my good sir, I don't know your name or your father's,” she said, addressing me.
“Anton Lavrentyevitch . . .”
“Well, it doesn't matter, with me it goes in at one ear and out of the other. Don't you come with me, Mavriky Nikolaevitch, it was Zemirka I called. Thank God I can still walk without help and to-morrow I shall go for a drive.”
She walked angrily out of the drawing-room.
“Anton Lavrentyevitch, will you talk meanwhile to Mavriky Nikolaevitch; I assure you you'll both be gainers by getting to know one another better,” said Liza, and she gave a friendly smile to Mavriky Nikolaevitch, who beamed all over as she looked at him. There was no help for it, I remained to talk to Mavriky Nikolaevitch.
II
Lizaveta Nikolaevna's business with Shatov turned out, to my surprise, to be really only concerned with literature. I had imagined, I don't know why, that she had asked him to come with some other object. We, Mavriky Nikolaevitch and I that is, seeing that they were talking aloud and not trying to hide anything from us, began to listen, and at last they asked our advice. It turned out that Lizaveta Nikolaevna was thinking of bringing out a book which she thought would be of use, but being quite inexperienced she needed some one to help her. The earnestness with which she began to explain her plan to Shatov quite surprised me.
“She must be one of the new people,” I thought. “She has not been to Switzerland for nothing.”
Shatov listened with attention, his eyes fixed on the ground, showing not the slightest surprise that a giddy young lady in society should take up work that seemed so out of keeping with her.
Her literary scheme was as follows. Numbers of papers and journals are published in the capitals and the provinces of Russia, and every day a number of events are reported in them. The year passes, the newspapers are everywhere folded up and put away in cupboards, or are torn up and become litter, or are used for making parcels or wrapping things. Numbers of these facts make an impression and are remembered by the public, but in the course of years they are forgotten. Many people would like to look them up, but it is a labour for them to embark upon this sea of paper, often knowing nothing of the day or place or even year in which the incident occurred. Yet if all the facts for a whole year were brought together into one book, on a definite plan, and with a definite object, under headings with references, arranged according to months and days, such a compilation might reflect the characteristics of Russian life for the whole year, even though the facts published are only a small fraction of the events that take place.
“Instead of a number of newspapers there would be a few fat books, that's all,” observed Shatov.
But Lizaveta Nikolaevna clung to her idea, in spite of the difficulty of carrying it out and her inability to describe it. “It ought to be one book, and not even a very thick one,” she maintained. But even if it were thick it would be clear, for the great point would be the plan and the character of the presentation of facts. Of course not all would be collected and reprinted. . The decrees and acts of government, local regulations, laws — all such facts, however important, might be altogether omitted from the proposed publication. They could leave out a great deal and confine themselves to a selection of events more or less characteristic of the moral life of the people, of the personal character of the Russian people at the present moment. Of course everything might be put in: strange incidents, fires, public subscriptions, anything good or bad, every speech or word, perhaps even floodings of the rivers, perhaps even some government decrees, but only such things to be selected as are characteristic of the period; everything would be put in with a certain view, a special significance and intention, with an idea which would illuminate the facts looked at in the aggregate, as a whole. And finally the book ought to be interesting even for light reading, apart from its value as a work of reference. It would be, so to say, a presentation of the spiritual, moral, inner life of Russia for a whole year.
“We want every one to buy it, we want it to be a book that will be found on every table,” Liza declared. “I understand that all lies in the plan, and that's why I apply to you,” she concluded. She grew very warm over it, and although her explanation was obscure and incomplete, Shatov began to understand.
“So it would amount to something with a political tendency, a selection of facts with a special tendency,” he muttered, still not raising his head.
“Not at all, we must not select with a particular bias, and we ought not to have any political tendency in it. Nothing but impartiality — that will be the only tendency.”
“But a tendency would be no harm,” said Shatov, with a slight movement, “and one can hardly avoid it if there is any selection at all. The very