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simply come to see you.”
His brother’s timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His lips twitched.
“Oh, so that’s it?” he said. “Well, come in; sit down. Like some
supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop a minute. Do you
know who this is?” he said, addressing his brother, and indicating the
gentleman in the jerkin: “This is Mr. Kritsky, my friend from Kiev, a
very remarkable man. He’s persecuted by the police, of course, be-
cause he’s not a scoundrel.”
And he looked round in the way he always did at everyone in the
room. Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was moving to
go, he shouted to her, “Wait a minute, I said.” And with the inability to
express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he
began, with another look round at everyone, to tell his brother Kritsky’s
story: how he had been expelled from the university for starting a
benefit society for the poor students and Sunday schools; and how he
had afterwards been a teacher in a peasant school, and how he had
been driven out of that too, and had afterwards been condemned for
something.
“You’re of the Kiev university?” said Konstantin Levin to Kritsky, to
break the awkward silence that followed.
“Yes, I was of Kiev,” Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.
“And this woman,” Nikolay Levin interrupted him, pointing to her,
“is the partner of my life, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a bad
house,” and he jerked his neck saying this; “but I love her and respect
her, and any one who wants to know me,” he added, raising his voice
and knitting his brows, “I beg to love her and respect her. She’s just the
same as my wife, just the same. So now you know whom you’ve to do
with. And if you think you’re lowering yourself, well, here’s the floor,
there’s the door.”
And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.
“Why I should be lowering myself, I don’t understand.”
“Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits
and wine.... No, wait a minute.... No, it doesn’t matter.... Go along.”