“And you’ve got a carriage all ready? So you were sure I’d go?”
“I hired the carriage for myself, sir, but I was almost certain you’d agree to go,” Pavel Pavlovich responded with the look of a perfectly happy man.
“Eh, Pavel Pavlovich,” Velchaninov laughed somehow vexedly when they were already settled and starting out, “aren’t you a bit too sure of me?”
“But it’s not for you, Alexei Ivanovich, it’s not for you to tell me I’m a fool on account of that?” Pavel Pavlovich replied in a firm and soulful voice.
“And Liza?” thought Velchaninov, and at once dropped the thought, as if fearing some blasphemy. And suddenly he seemed so paltry to himself, so insignificant at that moment; the thought that was tempting him seemed such a small, such a nasty little thought… and he wanted at all costs to drop everything again and get out of the carriage right then, even if he had to beat Pavel Pavlovich because of it. But the man started to speak and the temptation again gripped his heart.
“Alexei Ivanovich, do you know how to judge precious stones, sir?”
“What precious stones?”
“Diamonds, sir.”
“I do.”
“I’d like to bring a little present. Guide me: should I do it, or not?”
“In my opinion, you shouldn’t.”
“But I’d very much like to, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich squirmed, “only what should I buy, sir? A whole set—that is, brooch, earrings, and bracelet—or just one thing?”
“How much do you want to spend?”
“Oh, some four or five hundred roubles, sir.”
“Oof!”
“Is it too much?” Pavel Pavlovich roused himself.
“Buy just a bracelet, for a hundred roubles.”
Pavel Pavlovich was even upset. He wanted terribly to spend more and buy the “whole” set. He insisted. They stopped at a store. It ended, however, with their buying only a bracelet, and not the one Pavel Pavlovich wanted, but one pointed out by Velchaninov. Pavel Pavlovich wanted to take both. When the shopkeeper, after asking a hundred and seventy-five roubles for the bracelet, went down to a hundred and fifty—he was even vexed; it would have been a pleasure for him to spend two hundred, had he been asked to, so much did he want to spend more.
“Never mind my being in such a hurry with presents,” he poured himself out in rapture as they drove on, “it’s not high society, it’s simple there, sir. Innocence likes little presents,” he smiled slyly and merrily. “You grinned just now, Alexei Ivanovich, at the mention of fifteen years; but that was just what hit me on the head—precisely that she still goes to school, with a little book bag in her hand, with notebooks and little pens, heh, heh! It was the little book bag that captivated my thoughts! In fact, it’s for that innocence, Alexei Ivanovich. For me it’s not so much a matter of the beauty of her face, but that innocence, sir. She giggles there in a corner with a girlfriend, and how they laugh, and my God! And over what, sir: all that laughter is because the kitty jumped from the chest onto the bed and curled up… It really smells of fresh apples there, sir! Shouldn’t I take the crape off?”
“As you like.”
“I will!” He took off his hat, tore the crape from it, and threw it out on the road. Velchaninov saw the brightest hope shinning in his face as he put his hat back on his bald head.
“But can he in fact be like this?” he thought, now genuinely angry. “Can it be that there’s no trick in his inviting me? Can he in fact be counting on my nobility?” he went on, almost offended by the last supposition. “What is he, a buffoon, a fool, or an ‘eternal husband’? But this is impossible, finally!…”
XII
AT THE ZAKHLEBININS’
The Zakhlebinins were actually a “very respectable family,” as Velchaninov had put it earlier, and Zakhlebinin himself was quite a solid official and a visible one. Everything that Pavel Pavlovich had said about their income was also true: “They live well, it seems, but if the man were to die, there would be nothing left.”
Old Zakhlebinin met Velchaninov splendidly and amicably, and from a former “enemy” turned entirely into a friend.
“My congratulations, it’s better this way,” he began speaking with a pleasant and dignified air. “I myself insisted on a peaceful settlement, and Pyotr Karlovich” (Velchaninov’s lawyer) “is pure gold in that regard. So then? You’ll get about sixty thousand and without any fuss, without temporizing, without quarrels. Otherwise the case might have dragged on for three years!”
Velchaninov was introduced at once to Mme. Zakhlebinin, a rather spread-out old lady, with a simplish and tired face. The girls also began sailing out, singly or in pairs. But far too many girls appeared; gradually some ten or twelve of them assembled—Velchaninov even lost count; some came in, others left. But among them were many friends from neighboring houses. The Zakhlebinins’ country place—a big wooden house, in some unknown but fanciful taste, added on to at various times—enjoyed the use of a big garden. But three or four other houses gave onto this garden from different sides, so that this big garden served as a common one, which naturally contributed to the closeness between the girls and their summer neighbors. From the first words of the conversation, Velchaninov noticed that he had been expected there and that his arrival in the quality of Pavel Pavlovich’s friend, wishing to become acquainted, had been all but solemnly announced. His keen, experienced eye in such matters soon discerned something even peculiar here: from the much too amiable reception of the parents, from a certain peculiar look about the girls and their dress (though, incidentally, it was a feast day), the suspicion flashed in him that Pavel Pavlovich had tricked him, and might very well have suggested here, naturally without putting it directly into words, something like the notion of him as a bored bachelor, of “good society,” with a fortune, who might very, very well suddenly decide, at last, to “put an end to it” and settle down—“the more so as he has also received an inheritance.” It seemed that the oldest Mlle. Zakhlebinin, Katerina Fedoseevna, the one who was twenty-four and of whom Pavel Pavlovich had spoken as a lovely person, had been more or less tuned to this note. She stood out among her sisters especially by her attire and some sort of original arrangement of her fluffy hair. The sisters and all the other girls looked as if they, too, already knew firmly that Velchaninov was becoming acquainted “on account of Katya” and had come to “have a look” at her. Their glances and even certain phrases that flashed by inadvertently in the course of the day, later confirmed him in this surmise. Katerina Fedoseevna was a tall blonde, plump to the point of luxuriousness, with an extremely sweet face, of an apparently quiet and unenterprising, even drowsy, character. “Strange that such a girl has stayed like this so long,” Velchaninov thought involuntarily, studying her with pleasure. “Granted she has no dowry and will soon spread out altogether, but meanwhile there are so many who love that…” The rest of the sisters were none too bad either, and among the girlfriends there flashed several amusing and even pretty little faces. This began to amuse him; and anyhow he had come with special thoughts.
Nadezhda Fedoseevna, the sixth one, the schoolgirl and supposed fiancée of Pavel Pavlovich, made them wait. Velchaninov waited for her with impatience, marveling at himself and chuckling inwardly. Finally she appeared, and not without effect, accompanied by a pert and sharp girlfriend, Marya Nikitishna, a brunette with a laughing face, of whom, as it turned out at once, Pavel Pavlovich was extremely afraid. This Marya Nikitishna, already a girl of twenty-three, a barterer and even a wit, was governess of the little children in the family of some neighbors and acquaintances, and had long been considered like one of their own at the Zakhlebinins’, where the girls valued her terribly. It was evident that she was also especially necessary now for Nadya. From the first glance, Velchaninov could see that the girls, and even the girlfriends, were all against Pavel Pavlovich, while from the second moment after Nadya’s appearance, he decided that she hated him. He also noticed that Pavel Pavlovich did not perceive
it at all, or else did not wish to perceive it. Indisputably, Nadya was better than all her sisters—a small brunette with the air of a wild thing and the boldness of a nihilist; a thievish little demon with fiery eyes, a lovely, though often wicked, smile, amazing lips and teeth, slim, slender, with a nascent thought in the ardent expression of her face, at the same time still quite childish. Her fifteen years spoke in her every step, her every word. It turned out later that Pavel Pavlovich had actually seen her for the first time with an oilcloth book bag in her hand, but now she no longer carried it.
The giving of the bracelet was a complete failure and even produced a disagreeable impression. Pavel Pavlovich, as soon as he saw his fiancée come in, approached her at once with a grin. He offered his gift under the pretext of “the agreeable pleasure felt by him the previous time on the occasion of the agreeable romance sung by Nadezhda Fedoseevna at the piano…” He became flustered, did not finish, and stood like a lost man, reaching out and thrusting into Nadezhda Fedoseevna’s hand the case with the bracelet, while she, not wanting to take it, and blushing with shame and wrath, kept putting her hands behind her back. She boldly turned to her mother, whose face expressed embarrassment, and said loudly:
“I don’t want to take it, Maman!”
“Take it and say thank you,” the father said with calm sternness, but he, too, was displeased. “Unnecessary, unnecessary!” he muttered didactically to Pavel Pavlovich. Nadya, since there was nothing to be done, took the case and, lowering her eyes, curtsied as little girls do, that is, she suddenly plopped down and suddenly bounced up at once, as if on a spring. One of the sisters came over to look, and Nadya gave her the case, still unopened, thereby showing that she herself did not even want to look. The bracelet was taken out and handed around; but they all looked at it silently, and some even mockingly. Only the mother murmured that it was a very nice bracelet. Pavel Pavlovich was ready to fall through the earth.
Velchaninov came to the rescue.
He suddenly started talking, loudly and eagerly, seizing the first thought that came to him, and before five minutes had passed, he already held the attention of everyone in the drawing room. He had learned magnificently the art of babbling in society, that is, the art of appearing perfectly simple-hearted and at the same time making it seem that he took his listeners for people as simple-hearted as himself. With extreme naturalness he could pretend, when necessary, to be the merriest and happiest of men. He knew how to place very deftly a witty and provocative phrase, a merry hint, a funny quip, and to do it as if quite inadvertently, as if without noticing—whereas the witticism, the quip, and the conversation itself had been prepared long ago, learned, and put to use more than once. But at the present moment his art was seconded by nature itself: he felt that he was in the spirit, that something was drawing him; he felt in himself a complete and triumphant assurance that in a few moments all these eyes would be turned on him, that all these people would be listening only to him, talking only to him, laughing only at what he said. And indeed laughter was soon heard, others gradually mixed in the conversation—he had perfect command of the skill of drawing others into a conversation—and three or four voices could already be heard talking at once. The dull and tired face of Mrs. Zakhlebinin lit up almost with joy; the same with Katerina Fedoseevna, who listened and looked as if mesmerized. Scowling, Nadya studied him keenly; one could note that she had been prejudiced against him. This fired Velchaninov up still more. The “wicked” Marya Nikitishna did manage to slip into the conversation a rather pointed barb on his account; she invented and insisted that Pavel Pavlovich had recommended him there the day before as a childhood friend of his, thus adding—and hinting at it clearly—a whole seven extra years to his age. Yet the wicked Marya Nikitishna liked him, too. Pavel Pavlovich was decidedly taken aback. He had, of course, some notion of the resources his friend possessed, and in the beginning was even glad of his success, giggling along and mixing in the conversation himself; but for some reason he gradually began to lapse as if into reflection, even, finally, into despondency, which showed clearly on his alarmed physiognomy.
“Well, you’re the sort of guest who doesn’t need to be entertained,” old Zakhlebinin cheerily decided at last, getting up from his chair to go to his room upstairs, where, despite the feast day, he had a few business papers ready for going over, “and, imagine, I considered you the gloomiest hypochondriac of all our young people. How wrong one can be!”
In the drawing room stood a grand piano; Velchaninov asked who studied music, and suddenly turned to Nadya.
“You sing, it seems?”
“Who told you so?” Nadya snapped.
“Pavel Pavlovich said so earlier.”
“Not so; I only sing for a joke; I have no voice.”
“I have no voice either, but I do sing.”
“So you’ll sing for us? Well, then I’ll sing for you, too,” Nadya flashed her eyes, “only not now, but after dinner. I can’t stand music,” she added, “I’m sick of this piano; all this playing and singing here from morning till night—Katya’s more than enough herself.”
Velchaninov seized on the phrase at once, and it turned out that Katerina Fedoseevna was the only one of them all who seriously studied piano. He immediately turned to her with a request to play. Everyone was evidently pleased that he had turned to Katya, and Maman even blushed with satisfaction. Katerina Fedoseevna rose, smiling, and went to the grand piano, but suddenly, unexpectedly for herself, blushed all over, and suddenly felt terribly ashamed that, big as she was, already twenty-four years old, and so plump, here she was blushing like a little girl—and all this was written on her face as she sat down to play. She played something by Haydn, and played it very accurately, though without expression; but she turned shy. When she finished, Velchaninov started praising terribly, not her but Haydn, and especially the little piece she had played—and she was obviously so pleased, she listened so gratefully and happily to this praise not of herself but of Haydn, that Velchaninov involuntarily looked at her more gently and attentively. “Eh, aren’t you a nice one?” shone in his eyes—and everyone understood this glance as if at once, especially Katerina Fedoseevna herself.
“A nice garden you’ve got,” he suddenly addressed them all, looking through the glass door to the balcony. “You know, let’s all go out to the garden!”
“Let’s go, let’s go!” came joyful squeals—just as if he had guessed the main general wish.
They were in the garden until dinner. Mrs. Zakhlebinin, who had long been wanting to sleep, also could not help herself and went out with everyone else, but sensibly stayed to sit and rest on the balcony, where she dozed off at once. In the garden, the mutual relations between Velchaninov and all the girls became friendlier still. He noticed that two or three very young men joined them from neighboring houses; one was a university student, another merely a high school boy. These two sprang over at once each to his own girl, and it was evident that they had come for their sake; the third “young man,” a very gloomy and ruffled twenty-year-old boy in enormous blue spectacles, began hurriedly and frowningly exchanging whispers with Marya Nikitishna and Nadya. He sternly looked Velchaninov over and seemed to consider it his duty to treat him with extraordinary disdain. Some girls suggested that they go ahead and start playing. To Velchaninov’s question about what games they played, they replied that they played all games, including fox and hounds, but that in the evening they would play proverbs, that is, where everybody sits down and one person stands apart for a while; all those sitting down choose a proverb, for instance: “Slow and steady wins the race,” and when the person is called back, each one in turn has to prepare and tell him a sentence. The first one has to give a sentence containing the word “slow,” the second a sentence containing the word “steady,” and so on. And the person has to pick out all these words and from them guess the proverb.
“It must be great fun,” observed Velchaninov.
“Oh, no, it’s quite boring,” two or
three voices answered at once.
“Or else we play theater,” Nadya observed, addressing him. “See that big tree with the bench around it? There, behind the tree, is like backstage, the actors sit there—say, a king, a queen, a princess, a young man—whatever anyone likes; each one comes out whenever he has a mind to and says whatever occurs to him, and something or other comes out.”
“But how nice!” Velchaninov praised once more.
“Oh, no, it’s quite boring! Each time it comes out as fun in the beginning, but by the end it turns senseless each time, because nobody knows how to finish; though maybe with you it would be more amusing. And we thought you were Pavel Pavlovich’s friend, but it turns out he was simply boasting. I’m very glad you came… owing to a certain circumstance,” she looked very seriously and meaningly at Velchaninov and at once stepped over beside Marya Nikitishna.
“There’ll be a game of proverbs this evening,” one girlfriend, whom he had scarcely noticed till then and had not yet exchanged a word with, whispered confidentially to Velchaninov, “and this evening everybody will laugh at Pavel Pavlovich, so you must, too.”
“Ah, how nice of you to come, we’re so bored here otherwise,” another girlfriend said to him amiably, one he had not yet noticed at all, and who appeared from God knows where, a little redhead with freckles, her face flushed in a terribly funny way from walking and the heat.
Pavel Pavlovich’s uneasiness grew greater and greater. In the garden, toward the end, Velchaninov succeeded completely in becoming close with Nadya; she no longer peered at him scowlingly as earlier and seemed to have set aside the idea of studying him more closely, but laughed, jumped, squealed, and even seized him by the hand once or twice; she was terribly happy, and went on paying not the slightest attention to Pavel Pavlovich, as if not noticing him. Velchaninov was convinced that there existed a positive conspiracy against Pavel Pavlovich; Nadya and a crowd of girls would draw Velchaninov to one side, while other girlfriends under various pretexts lured Pavel Pavlovich to the other; but he would tear away and at once run headlong straight to them—that is, to Velchaninov and Nadya—and suddenly thrust his bald and anxiously eavesdropping head between them. Toward the end, he was not even embarrassed; the naivete of his gestures and movements was at times astonishing. Velchaninov could not help paying special attention once again to Katerina Fedoseevna; by then it had, of course, become clear to her that he had come not at all for her sake and was already much too interested in Nadya; but her face was as sweet and good-natured as before. She seemed to be happy in the fact alone that she, too, was near them and could listen to what the new visitor was saying; she herself, poor dear, had never known how to mix adroitly in conversation.
The Eternal Husband and Other Stories Page 19
