‘And very likely you are right. I don’t wish to deny that I have in fact sometimes given you just grounds for dissatisfaction’ (“my greys!” flashed through Anna Vassilyevna’s head), ‘though you must yourself allow, that in the condition, as you are aware, of your constitution——’
‘And I make no complaint against you, Nikolai Artemyevitch.’
‘C’est possible. In any case, I have no intention of justifying myself. Time will justify me. But I regard it as my duty to prove to you that I understand my duties, and know how to care for—for the welfare of the family entrusted—entrusted to me.’
‘What’s the meaning of all this?’ Anna Vassilyevna was thinking. (She could not guess that the preceding evening at the English club a discussion had arisen in a corner of the smoking-room as to the incapacity of Russians to make speeches. ‘Which of us can speak? Mention any one!’ one of the disputants had exclaimed. ‘Well, Stahov, for instance,’ had answered the other, pointing to Nikolai Artemyevitch, who stood up on the spot almost squealing with delight.)
‘For instance,’ pursued Nikolai Artemyevitch, ‘my daughter Elena. Don’t you consider that the time has come for her to take a decisive step along the path—to be married, I mean to say. All these intellectual and philanthropic pursuits are all very well, but only up to a certain point, up to a certain age. It’s time for her to drop her mistiness, to get out of the society of all these artists, scholars, and Montenegrins, and do like everybody else.’
‘How am I to understand you?’ asked Anna Vassilyevna.
‘Well, if you will kindly listen,’ answered Nikolai Artemyevitch, still with the same dropping of the corners of his lips, ‘I will tell you plainly, without beating about the bush. I have made acquaintance, I have become intimate with this young man, Mr. Kurnatovsky, in the hope of having him for a son-in-law. I venture to think that when you see him, you will not accuse me of partiality or precipitate judgment.’ (Nikolai Artemyevitch was admiring his own eloquence as he talked.) ‘Of excellent education—educated in the highest legal college—excellent manners, thirty-three years old, and upper-secretary, a councillor, and a Stanislas cross on his neck. You, I hope, will do me the justice to allow that I do not belong to the number of those pères de famille who are mad for position; but you yourself told me that Elena Nikolaevna likes practical business men; Yegor Andreyevitch is in the first place a business man; now on the other side, my daughter has a weakness for generous actions; so let me tell you that Yegor Andreyevitch, directly he had attained the possibility—you understand me—the possibility of living without privation on his salary, at once gave up the yearly income assigned him by his father, for the benefit of his brothers.’
‘Who is his father?’ inquired Anna Vassilyevna.
‘His father? His father is a man well-known in his own line, of the highest moral character, un vrai stoïcien, a retired major, I think, overseer of all the estates of the Count B——’
‘Ah!’ observed Anna Vassilyevna.