Next morning, before the usual hour for paying calls, there tripped from the portals of an orange-coloured wooden house with an attic storey and a row of blue pillars a lady in an elegant plaid cloak. With her came a footman in a many-caped greatcoat and a polished top hat with a gold band. Hastily, but gracefully, the lady ascended the steps let down from a koliaska which was standing before the entrance, and as soon as she had done so the footman shut her in, put up the steps again, and, catching hold of the strap behind the vehicle, shouted to the coachman, “Right away!” The reason of all this was that the lady was the possessor of a piece of intelligence that she was burning to communicate to a fellow-creature. Every moment she kept looking out of the carriage window, and perceiving, with almost speechless vexation, that, as yet, she was but half-way on her journey. The fronts of the houses appeared to her longer than usual, and in particular did the front of the white stone hospital, with its rows of narrow windows, seem interminable to a degree which at length forced her to ejaculate: “Oh, the cursed building! Positively there is no end to it!” Also, she twice adjured the coachman with the words, “Go quicker, Andrusha! You are a horribly long time over the journey this morning.” But at length the goal was reached, and the koliaska stopped before a one-storied wooden mansion, dark grey in colour, and having white carvings over the windows, a tall wooden fence and narrow garden in front of the latter, and a few meagre trees looming white with an incongruous coating of road dust. In the windows of the building were also a few flower pots and a parrot that kept alternately dancing on the floor of its cage and hanging on to the ring of the same with its beak. Also, in the sunshine before the door two pet dogs were sleeping. Here there lived the lady’s bosom friend. As soon as the bosom friend in question learnt of the newcomer’s arrival, she ran down into the hall, and the two ladies kissed and embraced one another. Then they adjourned to the drawing-room.
“How glad I am to see you!” said the bosom friend. “When I heard some one arriving I wondered who could possibly be calling so early. Parasha declared that it must be the Vice-Governor’s wife, so, as I did not want to be bored with her, I gave orders that I was to be reported ‘not at home.’”
For her part, the guest would have liked to have proceeded to business by communicating her tidings, but a sudden exclamation from the hostess imparted (temporarily) a new direction to the conversation.
“What a pretty chintz!” she cried, gazing at the other’s gown.
“Yes, it IS pretty,” agreed the visitor. “On the other hand, Praskovia Thedorovna thinks that —”
In other words, the ladies proceeded to indulge in a conversation on the subject of dress; and only after this had lasted for a considerable while did the visitor let fall a remark which led her entertainer to inquire:
“And how is the universal charmer?”
“My God!” replied the other. “There has been SUCH a business! In fact, do you know why I am here at all?” And the visitor’s breathing became more hurried, and further words seemed to be hovering between her lips like hawks preparing to stoop upon their prey. Only a person of the unhumanity of a “true friend” would have had the heart to interrupt her; but the hostess was just such a friend, and at once interposed with:
“I wonder how any one can see anything in the man to praise or to admire. For my own part, I think — and I would say the same thing straight to his face — that he is a perfect rascal.”
“Yes, but do listen to what I have got to tell you.”
“Oh, I know that some people think him handsome,” continued the hostess, unmoved; “but I say that he is nothing of the kind — that, in particular, his nose is perfectly odious.”
“Yes, but let me finish what I was saying.” The guest’s tone was almost piteous in its appeal.
“What is it, then?”
“You cannot imagine my state of mind! You see, this morning I received a visit from Father Cyril’s wife — the Archpriest’s wife — you know her, don’t you? Well, whom do you suppose that fine gentleman visitor of ours has turned out to be?”
“The man who has built the Archpriest a poultry-run?”
“Oh dear no! Had that been all, it would have been nothing. No. Listen to what Father Cyril’s wife had to tell me. She said that, last night, a lady landowner named Madame Korobotchka arrived at the Archpriest’s house — arrived all pale and trembling — and told her, oh, such things! They sound like a piece out of a book. That is to say, at dead of night, just when every one had retired to rest, there came the most dreadful knocking imaginable, and some one screamed out, ‘Open the gates, or we will break them down!’ Just think! After this, how any one can say that the man is charming I cannot imagine.”
“Well, what of Madame Korobotchka? Is she a young woman or good looking?”
“Oh dear no! Quite an old woman.”
“Splendid indeed! So he is actually engaged to a person like that? One may heartily commend the taste of our ladies for having fallen in love with him!”
“Nevertheless, it is not as you suppose. Think, now! Armed with weapons from head to foot, he called upon this old woman, and said: ‘Sell me any souls of yours which have lately died.’ Of course, Madame Korobotchka answered, reasonably enough: ‘I cannot sell you those souls, seeing that they have departed this world;’ but he replied: ‘No, no! They are NOT dead. ’Tis I who tell you that — I who ought to know the truth of the matter. I swear that they are still alive.’ In short, he made such a scene that the whole village came running to the house, and children screamed, and men shouted, and no one could tell what it was all about. The affair seemed to me so horrible, so utterly horrible, that I trembled beyond belief as I listened to the story. ‘My dearest madam,’ said my maid, Mashka, ‘pray look at yourself in the mirror, and see how white you are.’ ‘But I have no time for that,’ I replied, ‘as I must be off to tell my friend, Anna Grigorievna, the news.’ Nor did I lose a moment in ordering the koliaska. Yet when my coachman, Andrusha, asked me for directions I could not get a word out — I just stood staring at him like a fool, until I thought he must think me mad. Oh, Anna Grigorievna, if you but knew how upset I am!”
“What a strange affair!” commented the hostess. “What on earth can the man have meant by ‘dead souls’? I confess that the words pass my understanding. Curiously enough, this is the second time I have heard speak of those souls. True, my husband avers that Nozdrev was lying; yet in his lies there seems to have been a grain of truth.”
“Well, just think of my state when I heard all this! ‘And now,’ apparently said Korobotchka to the Archpriest’s wife, ‘I am altogether at a loss what to do, for, throwing me fifteen roubles, the man forced me to sign a worthless paper — yes, me, an inexperienced, defenceless widow who knows nothing of business.’ That such things should happen! TRY and imagine my feelings!”
“In my opinion, there is in this more than the dead souls which meet the eye.”
“I think so too,” agreed the other. As a matter of fact, her friend’s remark had struck her with complete surprise, as well as filled her with curiosity to know what the word “more” might possibly signify. In fact, she felt driven to inquire: “What do YOU suppose to be hidden beneath it all?”
“No; tell me what YOU suppose?”
“What I suppose? I am at a loss to conjecture.”
“Yes, but tell me what is in your mind?”
Upon this the visitor had to confess herself nonplussed; for, though capable of growing hysterical, she was incapable of propounding any rational theory. Consequently she felt the more that she needed tender comfort and advice.
“Then THIS is what I think about the dead souls,” said the hostess. Instantly the guest pricked up her ears (or, rather, they pricked themselves up) and straightened herself and became, somehow, more modish, and, despite her not inconsiderable weight, posed herself to look like a piece of thistledown floating on the breeze.
“The dead souls,” began the hostess.
“Are what, are what?” inquired the guest in great excitement.
“Are, are —”
“Tell me, tell me, for heaven’s sake!”
“They are an invention to conceal something else. The man’s real object is, is — TO ABDUCT THE GOVERNOR’S DAUGHTER.”
So startling and unexpected was this conclusion that the guest sat reduced to a state of pale, petrified, genuine amazement.
“My God!” she cried, clapping her hands, “I should NEVER have guessed it!”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I guessed it as soon as ever you opened your mouth.”
“So much, then, for educating girls like the Governor’s daughter at school! Just see what comes of it!”
“Yes, indeed! And they tell me that she says things which I hesitate even to repeat.”
“Truly it wrings one’s heart to see to what lengths immorality has come.”
“Some of the men have quite lost their heads about her, but for my part I think her not worth noticing.”
“Of course. And her manners are unbearable. But what puzzles me most is how a travelled man like Chichikov could come to let himself in for such an affair. Surely he must have accomplices?”
“Yes; and I should say that one of those accomplices is Nozdrev.”
“Surely not?”
“CERTAINLY I should say so. Why, I have known him even try to sell his own father! At all events he staked him at cards.”
“Indeed? You interest me. I should never had thought him capable of such things.”
“I always guessed him to be so.”
The two ladies were still discussing the matter with acumen and success when there walked into the room the Public Prosecutor — bushy eyebrows, motionless features, blinking eyes, and all. At once the ladies hastened to inform him of the events related, adducing therewith full details both as to the purchase of dead souls and as to the scheme to abduct the Governor’s daughter; after which they departed in different directions, for the purpose of raising the rest of the town. For the execution of this undertaking not more than half an hour was required. So thoroughly did they succeed in throwing dust in the public’s eyes that for a while every one — more especially the army of public officials — was placed in the position of a schoolboy who, while still asleep, has had a bag of pepper thrown in his face by a party of more early-rising comrades. The questions now to be debated resolved themselves into two — namely, the question of the dead souls and the question of the Governor’s daughter. To this end two parties were formed — the men’s party and the feminine sect............