They went into Anna Nicolayevna’s favorite sitting-room, a square chamber furnished and decorated in tan, in no particular style, but with an eye to the combined suggestions of old-time solidity and latter-day elegance. It was the embodiment of rest and silence, an effect to which two life-sized bronze statues—a Diana and a Venus de Medici—and the drowsy ticking of an ancient clock contributed not a little. It was known as the English room because its former furnishings had been modelled after London standards.
Pavel painted Pievakin as a penitent, broken spirit till Anna Nicolayevna’s eyes grew red.
“Still, maybe he does hold dangerous views?” she asked.
“Dangerous nothing! It’s all nonsense. He’s more loyal than Novikoff anyhow, for Novikoff is a soulless, attitudinising nincompoop, while he is the kindliest, most conscientious, most soulful man in the world.”
“Unfortunately all this has nothing to do with loyalty,” she said, sadly. “This is a very queer world, Pasha. It’s just like those wretches who would do away with czars to be warm-hearted and good to everybody. They don’t believe there ought to be rich and poor, either. When you come across a man of this sort keep away from him, Pasha.”
“But what has that got to do with Pievakin?” he shouted. “The very sight of a Nihilist would be enough to frighten him out of his wits. I want you to tell it all to uncle, mamman. Give him no peace until he promises you to write to the curator about the poor old man.”
The governor of Miroslav was a Boulatoff, being a cousin of Pavel’s deceased father; but he was also related to the young man by marriage to his mother’s sister, who had died less than a year ago. Anna Nicolayevna promised to see her brother-in-law the next morning, but Pavel would not wait. He pleaded, he charged her with heartlessness, tapping the thick rug with his foot and shaking all over as he spoke, until she agreed to go at once.
While she was gone Pavel and Kostia went into the ball room and played “hunter and partridge,” a game of the gymnasium boys’ inventing. They had not been many minutes at it before Pavel had forgotten all about the errand on which he had despatched his mother and the vast ball room echoed with his voluminous laughter. His great pleasure was to tease Kostia until the little boy’s mouth would begin to twitch, and then to shake his finger at him and say: “Better not cry, Kostia, or you know what I am going to call you.” Whereupon Kostia would make a desperate effort to look nonchalantly grave and Pavel would burst into a new roar of merriment.
Anna Nicolayevna came back converted to a rigorous point of view, and although her son had no difficulty in convincing her once again that Pievakin deserved mercy, he made up his mind to see his uncle himself, and he did so the very next morning.
Governor Boulatoff was a massive, worn, blinking old satrap, shrewd, tight-fisted, and, what was quite unusual for a man of his class, with an eye to business. His nose was extremely broad and fleshy, his hair was elaborately dressed, and altogether he looked like a successful old comedian. Bribe-giving was as universal in Miroslav as tipping was in its leading café. One could not turn round without showing “gratitude.” The wheels of government would not move in the desired direction unless they were greased, the price of this “grease” or “gratitude” varying all the way from a ten-copeck piece to ten or fifteen thousand rubles. Governor Boulatoff, who had come to Miroslav a ruined man, was now the largest land-owner in the province. Whenever he was in need of ready cash he would galvanize into a new lease of life some defunct piece of anti-Jewish legislation. This was known among the other officials as “pressing the spring”—the spring of the Jewish pocketbook, that is, the invariable effect of the proceeding being the appearance of a delegation with a snug piece of Jewish “gratitude.” He was continually sneering at the powers behind the throne, and mildly striving for recognition; yet so comfortable did he feel in this city of gardens, card-playing and “gratitude,” from which “the Czar was too far off and God too high up,” that he was in mortal fear lest the promotion which he coveted should come in the form of a transfer to a more important province.