Chapter 25

I BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE NECHLUDOFFS

WHEN I returned to the verandah, I found that they were not
talking of me at all, as I had anticipated. On the contrary,
Varenika had laid aside the book, and was engaged in a heated
dispute with Dimitri, who, for his part, was walking up and down
the verandah, and frowningly adjusting his neck in his collar as
he did so. The subject of the quarrel seemed to be Ivan
Yakovlevitch and superstition, but it was too animated a
difference for its underlying cause not to be something which
concerned the family much more nearly. Although the Princess and
Lubov Sergievna were sitting by in silence, they were following
every word, and evidently tempted at times to take part in the
dispute; yet always, just when they were about to speak, they
checked themselves, and left the field clear for the two
principles, Dimitri and Varenika. On my entry, the latter glanced
at me with such an indifferent air that I could see she was
wholly absorbed in the quarrel and did not care whether she spoke
in my presence or not. The Princess too looked the same, and was
clearly on Varenika's side, while Dimitri began, if anything, to
raise his voice still more when I appeared, and Lubov Sergievna,
for her part, observed to no one in particular: "Old people are
quite right when they say, 'Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse
pouvait.'"

Nevertheless this quotation did not check the dispute, though it
somehow gave me the impression that the side represented by the
speaker and her friend was in the wrong. Although it was a little
awkward for me to be present at a petty family difference, the
fact that the true relations of the family revealed themselves
during its progress, and that my presence did nothing to hinder
that revelation, afforded me considerable gratification.

How often it happens that for years one sees a family cover
themselves over with a conventional cloak of decorum, and
preserve the real relations of its members a secret from every
eye! How often, too, have I remarked that, the more impenetrable
(and therefore the more decorous) is the cloak, the harsher are
the relations which it conceals! Yet, once let some unexpected
question--often a most trivial one (the colour of a woman's hair,
a visit, a man's horses, and so forth)--arise in that family
circle, and without any visible cause there will also arise an
ever-growing difference, until in time the cloak of decorum
becomes unequal to confining the quarrel within due bounds, and,
to the dismay of the disputants and the astonishment of the
auditors, the real and ill-adjusted relations of the family are
laid bare, and the cloak, now useless for concealment, is bandied
from hand to hand