Part 45

“What’s that for?” my mother demanded. “You’re not a student yet, and God knows whether you’ll get through the examination. And you’ve not long had a new jacket! You can’t throw it away!”

“There will be visitors,” I murmured almost in despair.

“What nonsense! fine visitors indeed!”

I had to submit. I changed my tail-coat for my jacket, but I did not take off the necktie. The princess and her daughter made their appearance half an hour before dinner-time; the old lady had put on, in addition to the green dress with which I was already acquainted, a yellow shawl, and an old-fashioned cap adorned with flame-coloured ribbons. She began talking at once about her money difficulties, sighing, complaining of her poverty, and imploring assistance, but she made herself at home; she took snuff as noisily, and fidgeted and lolled about in her chair as freely as ever. It never seemed to have struck her that she was a princess. Zinaïda on the other hand was rigid, almost haughty in her demeanour, every inch a princess. There was a cold immobility and dignity in her face. I should not have recognised it; I should not have known her smiles, her glances, though I thought her exquisite in this new aspect too. She wore a light barége dress with pale blue flowers on it; her hair fell in long curls down her cheek in the English fashion; this style went well with the cold expression of her face. My father sat beside her during dinner, and entertained his neighbour with the finished and serene courtesy peculiar to him. He glanced at her from time to time, and she glanced at him, but so strangely, almost with hostility. Their conversation was carried on in French; I was surprised, I remember, at the purity of Zinaïda’s accent. The princess, while we were at table, as before made no ceremony; she ate a great deal, and praised the dishes. My mother was obviously bored by her, and answered her with a sort of weary indifference; my father faintly frowned now and then. My mother did not like Zinaïda either. “A conceited minx,” she said next day. “And fancy, what she has to be conceited about, avec sa mine de grisette!”

“It’s clear you have never seen any grisettes,” my father observed to her.

“Thank God, I haven’t!”

“Thank God, to be sure … only how can you form an opinion of them, then?”

To me Zinaïda had paid no attention whatever. Soon after dinner the princess got up to go.

“I shall rely on your kind offices, Maria Nikolaevna and Piotr Vassilitch,” she said in a doleful sing-song to my mother and father. “I’ve no help for it! There were days, but they are over. Here I am, an excellency, and a poor honour it is with nothing to eat!”

My father made her a respectful bow and escorted her to the door of the hall. I was standing there in my short jacket, staring at the floor, like a man under sentence of death. Zinaïda’s treatment of me had crushed me utterly. What was my astonishment, when, as she passed me, she whispered quickly with her former kind expression in her eyes: “Come to see us at eight, do you hear, be sure….” I simply threw up my hands, but already she was gone, flinging a white scarf over her head.

VII

At eight o’clock precisely, in my tail-coat and with my hair brushed up into a tuft on my head, I entered the passage of the lodge, where the princess lived. The old servant looked crossly at me and got up unwillingly from his bench. There was a sound of merry voices in the drawing-room. I opened the door and fell back in amazement. In the middle of the room was the young princess, standing on a chair, holding a man’s hat in front of her; round the chair crowded some half a dozen men. They were trying to put their hands into the hat, while she held it above their heads, shaking it violently. On seeing me, she cried, “Stay, stay, another guest, he must have a ticket too,” and leaping lightly down from the chair she took me by the cuff of my coat “Come along,” she said, “why are you standing still? Messieurs, let me make you acquainted: this is M’sieu Voldemar, the son of our neighbour. And this,” she went on, addressing me, and indicating her guests in turn, “Count Malevsky, Doctor Lushin, Meidanov the poet, the retired captain Nirmatsky, and Byelovzorov the hussar, whom you’ve seen already. I hope you will be good friends.” I was so confused that I did not even bow to any one; in Doctor Lushin I recognised the dark man who had so mercilessly put me to shame in the garden; the others were unknown to me.

“Count!” continued Zinaïda, “write M’sieu Voldemar a ticket.”

“That’s not fair,” was objected in a slight Polish accent by the count, a very handsome and fashionably dressed brunette, with expressive brown eyes, a thin little white nose, and delicate little moustaches over a tiny mouth. “This gentleman has not been playing forfeits with us.”

“It’s unfair,” repeated in chorus Byelovzorov and the gentleman described as a retired captain, a man of forty, pock-marked to a hideous degree, curly-headed as a negro, round-shouldered, bandy-legged, and dressed in a military coat without epaulets, worn unbuttoned.

“Write him a ticket, I tell you,” repeated the young princess. “What’s this mutiny? M’sieu Voldemar is with us for the first time, and there are no rules for him yet. It’s no use grumbling—write it, I wish it.”

The count shrugged his shoulders but bowed submissively, took the pen in his white, ring-bedecked fingers, tore off a scrap of paper and wrote on it.

“At least let us explain to Mr. Voldemar what we are about,” Lushin began in a sarcastic voice, “or else he will be quite lost. Do you see, young man, we are playing forfeits? the princess has to pay a forfeit, and the one who draws the lucky lot is to have the privilege of kissing her hand. Do you understand what I’ve told you?”

I simply stared at him, and continued to stand still in bewilderment, while the young princess jumped up on the chair again, and again began waving the hat. They all stretched up to her, and I went after the rest.

“Meidanov,” said the princess to a tall young man with a thin face, little dim-sighted eyes, and exceedingly long black hair, “you as a poet ought to be magnanimous, and give up your number to M’sieu Voldemar so that he may have two chances instead of one.”

But Meidanov shook his head in refusal, and tossed his hair. After all the others I put my hand into the hat, and unfolded my lot…. Heavens! what was my condition when I saw on it the word, Kiss!

“Kiss!” I could not help crying aloud.

“Bravo! he has won it,” the princess said quickly. “How glad I am!” She came down from the chair and gave me such a bright sweet look, that my heart bounded. “Are you glad?” she asked me.

“Me?” … I faltered.

“Sell me your lot,” Byelovzorov growled suddenly just in my ear. “I’ll give you a hundred roubles.”

I answered the hussar with such an indignant look, that Zinaïda clapped her hands, while Lushin cried, “He’s a fine fellow!”

“But, as master of the ceremonies,” he went on, “it’s my duty to see that all the rules are kept. M’sieu Voldemar, go down on one knee. That is our regulation.”

Zinaïda stood in front of me, her head a little on one side as though to get a better look at me; she held out her hand to me with dignity. A mist passed before my eyes; I meant to drop on one knee, sank on both, and pressed my lips to Zinaïda’s fingers so awkwardly that I scratched myself a little with the tip of her nail.