The Little Demon Fyodor Sologub (large ebook reader .TXT) 📖

have to drink Madeira,” said Peredonov reasonably.

“But suppose he likes vodka?” persisted Routilov.

“Good heavens! You don’t suppose a general would like vodka!” said Peredonov with conviction.

“All the same you’d better give us some of it,” insisted Routilov.

But Peredonov quickly took away the bottle and they heard the click of the lock on the little cupboard in which he kept the wine. When he came back to his guests he began to talk about the Princess to change the conversation. He said quite gravely:

“The Princess! Why she sold rotten apples in the market and managed to get hold of a Prince.”

Routilov burst out laughing and shouted:

“Do Princes walk about markets?”

“Oh, she knew how to entice him in,” said Peredonov.

“You’re making it up, Ardalyon Borisitch, it’s a cock-and-bull story,” argued Routilov. “The Princess is a born lady.”

Peredonov looked at him malignantly and thought:

“He’s defending her. That means he’s siding with the Princess. It’s clear that she’s bewitched him although she lives at a distance.”

And the nedotikomka wriggled about him, laughed noiselessly and shook all over with laughter. It reminded Peredonov of various dreadful circumstances. He looked around timidly and whispered:

“In every town there’s a sergeant of the gendarmes in the secret service. He wears civilian clothes, sometimes he’s in the civil service, sometimes he’s a tradesman, or he does something else, but at night when everyone is asleep he puts on his blue uniform and suddenly becomes a sergeant of the gendarmes.”

“But why the uniform?” inquired Volodin reasonably.

“Because no one dares to appear before the authorities without a uniform. You might get beaten for doing it.”

Volodin sniggered. Peredonov bent over him closer and whispered:

“Sometimes he even lives in the shape of a werewolf. You may think it’s simply a cat, but that’s an error, it’s really a gendarme running about. No one hides from a cat, and he listens to everything that’s said.”

At last, after a week and a half, the Headmaster’s wife paid a visit to Varvara. She arrived with her husband on a weekday at four o’clock, all dressed up, attractive-looking, bringing a perfume of violets with her⁠—altogether unexpectedly for the Peredonovs, who for some reason had expected the Khripatches on a Sunday, earlier in the day. They were dumbfounded. Varvara was in the kitchen half-dressed and dirty. She rushed away to get dressed and Peredonov received the visitors, looking as if he had been just awakened.

“Varvara will be here immediately,” he mumbled, “she’s dressing herself. She was working⁠—we have a new servant who doesn’t understand our ways. She’s a hopeless fool.”

Soon Varvara came in, dressed somehow, with a flushed, frightened face. She extended to her visitors a dirty, damp hand, and said in a voice trembling with agitation:

“You must forgive me for keeping you waiting⁠—we didn’t expect you on a weekday.”

“I seldom go out on a Sunday,” said Madame Khripatch. “There are drunkards in the street. I let my servant-maid have her day out.”

The conversation somehow started, and the kindness of the Headmaster’s wife somewhat encouraged Varvara. Madame Khripatch treated Varvara with a slight contemptuousness, but graciously⁠—as with a repented sinner who had to be treated kindly but who might still soil one’s hands. She gave Varvara several hints, as if incidentally, about clothes and housekeeping.

Varvara tried to please the Headmaster’s wife, but her red hands and chapped lips still trembled with fear. This embarrassed Madame Khripatch. She tried to be even more gracious, but an involuntary fastidiousness overcame her. By her whole attitude she showed Varvara that there could never be a close acquaintance between them. But she did this so graciously that Varvara did not understand, and imagined that she and Madame Khripatch would become great friends.

Khripatch had the look of a man out of his element, but he concealed the fact skilfully and manfully. He refused the Madeira on the ground that he was not used to drinking wine at that hour of the day. He talked about the local news, about the approaching changes in the composition of the district court. But it was very noticeable that he and Peredonov moved in different circles of local society.

They did not make a long visit. Varvara was glad when they left; they just came and went. She said with relief as she took off her clothes:

“Well, thank God they’ve gone. I didn’t know what to talk to them about. When you don’t know people you can’t tell how to get at them.”

Suddenly she remembered that when the Khripatches left they had not invited her to their house. This distressed her at first, but afterwards she thought:

“They’ll send a card with a note when to come. Gentry like them have a time for everything. I suppose I ought to have a go at French. I can’t even say ‘Pa’ and ‘Ma’ in French.”

When they got home the Headmaster’s wife said to her husband:

“She’s simply pitiful, and hopelessly vulgar; it’s utterly impossible to be on equal terms with her. There’s nothing in her to correspond with her position.”

Khripatch replied:

“She fully corresponds with her husband. I’m impatiently waiting for them to take him away from us.”

After the wedding Varvara began to drink now and then⁠—most frequently with Grushina. Once when she was a little tipsy Prepolovenskaya was at her house and Varvara blabbed about the letter. She didn’t tell everything but she hinted sufficiently clearly. This was enough for the cunning Sofya⁠—it was a sudden revelation to her.

“But why didn’t I guess it at once,” she mentally reproached herself. She told Vershina in confidence about the forged letters⁠—and from her it spread all over the town.

Prepolovenskaya could not help laughing at Peredonov’s credulousness whenever she met him.

She said to him:

“You’re very simple, Ardalyon Borisitch.”

“I’m not simple at all,” he replied, “I’m a graduate of a University.”

“You may be a graduate, but anyone who wants to can take you in.”

“I can take in everyone myself,” argued Peredonov.

Prepolovenskaya smiled slyly and left him. Peredonov was dully perplexed.

“What does she mean? It’s out of spite,” he thought. “Everyone’s my enemy.”

And he made a