VII
The spacious and comfortable room to which the servant conducted Nezhdanov looked out on the garden. Its windows were open and a light breeze was faintly fluttering the white blinds; they swelled out like sails, rose and fell again. Gleams of golden light glided slowly over the ceiling; the whole room was full of a fresh, rather moist fragrance of spring. Nezhdanov began by dismissing the servant, unpacking his trunk, washing and changing his clothes. The journey had utterly exhausted him; the constant presence for two whole days of a stranger, with whom he had had much varied and aimless talk, had worked upon his nerves; something bitter, not quite weariness nor quite anger, was secretly astir in the very bottom of his soul; he raged against his faint-heartedness, and still his heart sank.
He went up to the window and began looking at the garden. It was an old-world garden, of rich black soil, such a garden as one does not see this side of Moscow. It was laid out on a long, sloping hill-side, and consisted of four clearly marked divisions. In front of the house for two hundred paces stretched the flower-garden, with straight little sandy paths, groups of acacias and lilacs, and round flower-beds; on the left, past the stable-yard, right down to the threshing-floor, lay the fruit-garden closely planted with apple, pear, and plum trees, currants and raspberries; just opposite the house rose intersecting avenues of limes forming a great close quadrangle. The view on the right was bounded by the road, shut in by a double row of silver poplars; behind a clump of weeping birches could be seen the round roof of a green-house. The whole garden was in the tender green of its first spring foliage; there was no sound yet of the loud summer buzz of insects; the young leaves twittered, and chaffinches were singing somewhere, and two doves cooed continually in the same tree, and a solitary cuckoo called, shifting her place at each note; and from the distance beyond the mill-pond came the caw in chorus of the rooks, like the creaking of innumerable cart-wheels. And over all this fresh, secluded, peaceful life the white clouds floated softly, with swelling bosoms like great, lazy birds. Nezhdanov gazed, listened, drank in the air through parted chilling lips.
And his heart grew lighter; a sense of peace came upon him too.
Meanwhile, in the bedroom downstairs, there was talk about him. Sipyagin was telling his wife how he had made his acquaintance, and what Prince G. had told him, and what discussions they had had on the journey.
'A good brain!' he repeated, 'and plenty of information; it's true, he's a red republican, but, as you know, that's nothing to me; these fellows have ambition, any way. And besides, Kolya's too young to pick up any nonsense from him.'
Valentina Mihalovna listened to her husband with an affectionate though ironical smile, as though he had been confessing a rather strange, but amusing prank; it was positively agreeable to her that her seigneur et maître, so solid a man, so important an official, was still as capable of perpetrating some sudden mischievous freak as a boy of twenty. Standing before the looking-glass in a snow-white shirt and blue silk braces, Sipyagin set to brushing his hair in the English fashion with two brushes, while Valentina Mihalovna, tucking up her little shoes under her on a low Turkish lounge, began to tell him various pieces of news about the estate, about the paper factory, which─sad to say─was not doing as well as it should, about the cook, whom they would have to get rid of, about the church, off which the stucco was peeling, about Marianna, about Kallomyetsev. . .
Between the husband and wife there existed a genuine harmony and confidence; they did really live 'in love and good counsel', as they used to say in old times; and when Sipyagin, on completing his toilet, asked Valentina Mihalovna in chivalrous fashion for 'her little hand,' when she gave him both, and with tender pride watched him kissing them alternately, the feeling expressed in both faces was a fine and genuine feeling, though in her it was reflected in eyes worthy of a Raphael, in him in the commonplace 'peepers' of a civilian general.
Precisely at five o'clock Nezhdanov went down to dinner, which was announced not even by a bell, but the prolonged boom of a Chinese gong. The whole party were already assembled in the dining-room. Sipyagin, from above his high cravat, greeted him cordially once more, and assigned him a place at the table between Anna Zaharovna and Kolya. Anna Zaharovna was an old maid, the sister of Sipyagin's deceased father; she smelt of camphor, like stored-up clothes, and had an anxious and dejected air. Her position in the household was that of Kolya's nurse or governess; her wrinkled face expressed her displeasure when Nezhdanov was seated between her and her little charge. Kolya stole sidelong glances at his new neighbour; the sharp child soon guessed that his tutor was ill at ease, that he was embarrassed; he did not raise his eyes, and scarcely ate anything. Kolya was pleased at this; till then he had been afraid his tutor might turn out to be cross and severe. Valentina Mihalovna too glanced at Nezhdanov.
'He looks like a student,' was her thought, 'and he's not seen much of the world; but his face is interesting and the colour of his hair's original, like that apostle whom the old Italian masters always depict as red-haired; and his hands are clean.' Every one at the table indeed glanced at Nezhdanov and, as it were, had pity on him, leaving him in peace for the present; he was conscious of this and was glad of it, and at the same time, for some reason or other, irritated. The conversation at table was kept up by Kallomyetsev and Sipyagin. They talked about the provincial council, the governor, the highway-rates, the terms of redemption, their common acquaintances in Petersburg and Moscow, of Mr. Katkov's school then just beginning to become influential, the difficulty of getting workmen, fines and damage caused by cattle, but also of Bismarck, of the war of 1866 and of Napoleon III., whom Kallomyetsev dubbed a capital fellow. The young kammerjunker gave expression to the most retrograde opinions; he went so far at last as to propose─ostensibly as a joke, it's true─the toast given by a gentleman, a friend of his, at a certain birthday banquet: 'I drink to the only principles I acknowledge,' the ardent landowner had exclaimed, 'to the knout and to Roederer!'
Valentina Mihalovna frowned, and observed that this quotation was de très mauvais goût. Sipyagin, on the contrary, expressed the most liberal opinions; amicably, and rather carelessly, he opposed Kallomyetsev; he even jeered at him a little.
'Your apprehensions in regard to the emancipation, my dear Semyon Petrovitch', he said to him, among other things, 'remind me of a memorial drawn up by our respected and excellent friend Alexey Ivanitch Tveritinov in 1860, and read by him everywhere in the Petersburg drawing-rooms. There was one particularly nice sentence describing how the liberated peasant would infallibly go, torch in hand, over the face of the whole country. You should have seen dear good Alexey Ivanitch, with distended cheeks and round eyes, bringing out of his infantine mouth, "T-t-torch! t-t-torch! he will go about t-torch in hand!" Well, the emancipation is an accomplished fact. . . . Where is the peasant with the torch?'
'Tveritinov,' Kallomyetsev answered in a gloomy tone, 'was only so far wrong that it's not peasants but other people who are going about with torches.'
At those words Nezhdanov, who till that instant had hardly noticed Marianna─she was sitting at the further diagonal corner─suddenly exchanged glances with her and at once felt that they─that sullen girl and he─were of the same faith, of the same camp. She had made no impression of any kind on him when Sipyagin had introduced him to her; why was it her eye he caught at this moment? He put the question to himself at that point: Wasn't it shameful, wasn't it disgraceful to sit and listen to such opinions without protesting, giving grounds by his silence for believing that he shared them? A second time Nezhdanov glanced at Marianna, and he fancied that he read the answer to his question in her eyes: 'Wait a little,' they seemed to say, 'it's not time now . . . it's not worth while . . . later on; there's always time. . . .'
It was pleasant to him to think that she understood him. He listened again to the conversation. . . . Valentina Mihalovna had taken her husband's place and was speaking out even more freely, even more radically than he. She could not comprehend, 'positively could not com-pre-hend,' how a man of education, still young, could adhere to old-fashioned conventionalism like that!
'I am sure, though,' she added, 'that you only say so for the sake of a paradox! As for you, Alexey Dmitritch,' she turned with a cordial smile to Nezhdanov (he was inwardly amazed that she knew his name and his father's), 'I know you don't share Semyon Petrovitch's apprehensions; Boris described to me your talks with him on the journey'.
Nezhdanov flushed, bent over his plate, and muttered something unintelligible; he was not so much shy as unaccustomed to exchange remarks with such distinguished personages. Madame Sipyagin still smiled upon him; her husband supported her patronisingly. . . . But Kallomyetsev deliberately stuck his round eyeglass between his nose and his eyebrow, and stared at the student who dared not to share his 'apprehensions.' But to confuse Nezhdanov in that way was a difficult task; on the contrary, he drew himself up at once, and stared in his turn at the fashionable official; and just as suddenly as he had felt a comrade in Marianna, he felt a foe in Kallomyetsev! And Kallomyetsev was conscious of it; he dropped his eyeglass, turned away, and tried to laugh . . . but unsuccessfully; only Anna Zaharovna, who secretly adored him, inwardly took his part, and was still more indignant at the uninvited neighbour who was separating her from Kolya.
Shortly afterwards the dinner came to an end. The party moved on to the terrace to drink coffee; Sipyagin and Kallomyetsev lighted cigars. Sipyagin offered Nezhdanov a genuine regalia, but he refused it.
'Ah! to be sure!' cried Sipyagin; 'I'd forgotten; you only smoke your cigarettes!'
'Curious taste,' Kallomyetsev observed, between his teeth.
Nezhdanov almost exploded. 'I know the difference between a regalia and a cigarette well enough, but I don't care to be under obligations,' almost broke from his lips. . . . He restrained himself; but at once scored this second piece of insolence as a 'debt' to pay back against his enemy.
'Marianna!' Madame Sipyagin observed all at once, in a loud voice, 'you need not stand on ceremony before a stranger . . . you may smoke your cigarette, and welcome. Besides,' she added, turning towards Nezhdanov, 'I have heard that in your set all the young ladies smoke?'
'Quite so', Nezhdanov answered drily. It was the first word he had spoken to Madame Sipyagin.
'Well, I don't smoke,' she went on, with an ingratiating light in her velvety eyes. . . . 'I am behind the age.'
In a leisurely, circumspect fashion, as though in defiance of her aunt, Marianna drew out a cigarette and a box of matches, and began smoking. Nezhdanov, too, smoked a cigarette, lighting it from Marianna's.
It was an exquisite evening. Kolya and Anna Zaharovna went off into the garden; the rest of the party remained about an hour longer on the terrace, enjoying the air. The conversation became rather lively. . .. Kallomyetsev attacked literature; Sipyagin on that point, too, showed himself a liberal, championed the independence of literature, pointed out its utility, and even referred to Chateaubriand and the fact that the Emperor Alexander Pavlovitch had bestowed on him the order of St. Andrei the First-Called! Nezhdanov did not take part in this discussion; Madame Sipyagin looked at him with an expression which seemed on one hand to approve of his discreet reserve, and on the other, to be a little surprised at it.
Every one went back to the drawing-room for tea.
'We have a very bad habit, Alexey Dmitritch,' said Sipyagin to Nezhdanov; we play cards every evening, and what's more, a prohibited game . . . think of that! I won't invite you to join us . . . but Marianna will be so good as to play us something on the piano. You're fond of music, I hope, eh?' And without waiting for an answer, Sipyagin picked up a pack of cards. Marianna sat down to the piano, and played neither well nor ill a few of Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words.' 'Charmant! charmant! quel toucher!' Kallomyetsev, from a distance, shrieked as though he had been scalded; but this ejaculation was vociferated rather from politeness; and Nezhdanov too, in spite of the hope expressed by Sipyagin, had no passion for music.
Meanwhile Sipyagin and his wife, Kallomyetsev and Anna Zaharovna, had sat down to cards. . .. Kolya came to say good-night, and after receiving a blessing from his parents and a large glass of milk instead of tea, he went off to bed; his father shouted after him that to-morrow he would begin his lessons with Alexey Dmitritch. Soon afterwards, seeing that Nezhdanov was hanging aimlessly about in the middle of the room, turning over the leaves of a photograph album with an embarrassed air, Sipyagin told him not to stand on ceremony, but to go and rest, as he must certainly be tired after the journey; that the great principle of his house was freedom.
Nezhdanov availed himself of this permission, and, saying good-night to every one, went away; in the doorway he stumbled against Marianna, and, again looking into her eyes, was again convinced that he should find a comrade in her, though she did not smile, but positively frowned upon him.
He found his room all filled with fragrant freshness; the windows had stood open the whole day. In the garden just opposite his windows, the nightingale was trilling its soft, melodious lay; there was a warm, dull glow in the night sky above the rounded tree-tops; it was the moon making ready to float upwards. Nezhdanov lighted a candle; the grey night-moths flew in from the garden in showers, and went towards the light, while the wind blew them back and set the candle's bluish-yellow light flickering.
'Strange!' thought Nezhdanov, as he lay in his bed. . . . 'They seem good people, liberal, positively human . . . but I feel so sick at heart. The kammerherr . . . kammerjunker. . . Well, morning brings good counsel. . . . It's no good sentimentalising.'
But at that instant, in the garden a watchman knocked loudly and persistently on his board, and a long drawn-out shout was heard:
'Li-isten there-re!'
'Ri-i-ight! ' answered another lugubrious voice.
'Ugh! mercy on us!─it's like being in prison!'