Chapter 10

He began to talk—at first reluctantly, unskilfully—but afterwards he talked more freely, chattered away in fact. Maria Nikolaevna was a very good listener; and moreover she seemed herself so frank, that she led others unconsciously on to frankness. She possessed that great gift of “intimateness”—_le terrible don de la familiarité_—to which Cardinal Retz refers. Sanin talked of his travels, of his life in Petersburg, of his youth…. Had Maria Nikolaevna been a lady of fashion, with refined manners, he would never have opened out so; but she herself spoke of herself as a “good fellow,” who had no patience with ceremony of any sort; it was in those words that she characterised herself to Sanin. And at the same time this “good fellow” walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this “good fellow” walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which—for the undoing of us poor weak sinful men—only Slav natures are possessed, and but few of them, and those never of pure Slav blood, with no foreign alloy. Sanin’s walk with Maria Nikolaevna, Sanin’s talk with Maria Nikolaevna lasted over an hour. And they did not stop once; they kept walking about the endless avenues of the park, now mounting a hill and admiring the view as they went, and now going down into the valley, and getting hidden in the thick shadows,—and all the while arm-in-arm. At times Sanin felt positively irritated; he had never walked so long with Gemma, his darling Gemma … but this lady had simply taken possession of him, and there was no escape! “Aren’t you tired?” he said to her more than once. “I never get tired,” she answered. Now and then they met other people walking in the park; almost all of them bowed—some respectfully, others even cringingly. To one of them, a very handsome, fashionably dressed dark man, she called from a distance with the best Parisian accent, “_Comte, vous savez, il ne faut pas venir me voir—ni aujourd’hui ni demain_.” The man took off his hat, without speaking, and dropped a low bow.

“Who’s that?” asked Sanin with the bad habit of asking questions characteristic of all Russians.

“Oh, a Frenchman, there are lots of them here … He’s dancing attendance on me too. It’s time for our coffee, though. Let’s go home; you must be hungry by this time, I should say. My better half must have got his eye-peeps open by now.”

“Better half! Eye-peeps!” Sanin repeated to himself … “And speaks French so well … what a strange creature!”

Maria Nikolaevna was not mistaken. When she went back into the hotel with Sanin, her “better half” or “dumpling” was already seated, the invariable fez on his head, before a table laid for breakfast.

“I’ve been waiting for you!” he cried, making a sour face. “I was on the point of having coffee without you.”

“Never mind, never mind,” Maria Nikolaevna responded cheerfully. “Are you angry? That’s good for you; without that you’d turn into a mummy altogether. Here I’ve brought a visitor. Make haste and ring! Let us have coffee—the best coffee—in Saxony cups on a snow-white cloth!”

She threw off her hat and gloves, and clapped her hands.

Polozov looked at her from under his brows.

“What makes you so skittish to-day, Maria Nikolaevna?” he said in an undertone.

“That’s no business of yours, Ippolit Sidoritch! Ring! Dimitri Pavlovitch, sit down and have some coffee for the second time. Ah, how nice it is to give orders! There’s no pleasure on earth like it!”

“When you’re obeyed,” grumbled her husband again.

“Just so, when one’s obeyed! That’s why I’m so happy! Especially with you. Isn’t it so, dumpling? Ah, here’s the coffee.”

On the immense tray, which the waiter brought in, there lay also a playbill. Maria Nikolaevna snatched it up at once.

“A drama!” she pronounced with indignation, “a German drama. No matter; it’s better than a German comedy. Order a box for me—_baignoire_—or no … better the _Fremden-Loge_,” she turned to the waiter. “Do you hear: the _Fremden-Loge_ it must be!”

“But if the _Fremden-Loge_ has been already taken by his excellency, the director of the town (_seine Excellenz der Herr Stadt-Director_),” the waiter ventured to demur.

“Give his excellency ten _thalers_, and let the box be mine! Do you hear!”

The waiter bent his head humbly and mournfully.

“Dimitri Pavlovitch, you will go with me to the theatre? the German actors are awful, but you will go … Yes? Yes? How obliging you are! Dumpling, are you not coming?

“You settle it,” Polozov observed into the cup he had lifted to his lips.

“Do you know what, you stay at home. You always go to sleep at the theatre, and you don’t understand much German. I’ll tell you what you’d better do, write an answer to the overseer—you remember, about our mill … about the peasants’ grinding. Tell him that I won’t have it, and I won’t and that’s all about it! There’s occupation for you for the whole evening.”

“All right,” answered Polozov.

“Well then, that’s first-rate. You’re a darling. And now, gentlemen, as we have just been speaking of my overseer, let’s talk about our great business. Come, directly the waiter has cleared the table, you shall tell me all, Dimitri Pavlovitch, about your estate, what price you will sell it for, how much you want paid down in advance, everything, in fact! (At last, thought Sanin, thank God!) You have told me something about it already, you remember, you described your garden delightfully, but dumpling wasn’t here…. Let him hear, he may pick a hole somewhere! I’m delighted to think that I can help you to get married, besides, I promised you that I would go into your business after lunch, and I always keep my promises, isn’t that the truth, Ippolit Sidoritch?”

Polozov rubbed his face with his open hand. “The truth’s the truth. You don’t deceive any one.”

“Never! and I never will deceive any one. Well, Dimitri Pavlovitch, expound the case as we express it in the senate.”

XXXVII

Sanin proceeded to expound his case, that is to say, again, a second time, to describe his property, not touching this time on the beauties of nature, and now and then appealing to Polozov for confirmation of his “facts and figures.” But Polozov simply gasped and shook his head, whether in approval or disapproval, it would have puzzled the devil, one might fancy, to decide. However, Maria Nikolaevna stood in no need of his aid. She exhibited commercial and administrative abilities that were really astonishing! She was familiar with all the ins-and-outs of farming; she asked questions about everything with great exactitude, went into every point; every word of hers went straight to the root of the matter, and hit the nail on the head. Sanin had not expected such a close inquiry, he had not prepared himself for it. And this inquiry lasted for fully an hour and a half. Sanin experienced all the sensations of the criminal on his trial, sitting on a narrow bench confronted by a stern and penetrating judge. “Why, it’s a cross-examination!” he murmured to himself dejectedly. Maria Nikolaevna kept laughing all the while, as though it were a joke; but Sanin felt none the more at ease for that; and when in the course of the “cross-examination” it turned out that he had not clearly realised the exact meaning of the words “repartition” and “tilth,” he was in a cold perspiration all over.

“Well, that’s all right!” Maria Nikolaevna decided at last. “I know your estate now … as well as you do. What price do you suggest per soul?” (At that time, as every one knows, the prices of estates were reckoned by the souls living as serfs on them.)

“Well … I imagine … I could not take less than five hundred roubles for each,” Sanin articulated with difficulty. O Pantaleone, Pantaleone, where were you! This was when you ought to have cried again, “Barbari!”

Maria Nikolaevna turned her eyes upwards as though she were calculating.

“Well?” she said at last. “I think there’s no harm in that price. But I reserved for myself two days’ grace, and you must wait till to-morrow. I imagine we shall come to an arrangement, and then you will tell me how much you want paid down. And now, _basta cosi_!” she cried, noticing Sanin was about to make some reply. “We’ve spent enough time over filthy lucre … _à demain les affaires_. Do you know what, I’ll let you go now … (she glanced at a little enamelled watch, stuck in her belt) … till three o’clock … I must let you rest. Go and play roulette.”

“I never play games of chance,” observed Sanin.

“Really? Why, you’re a paragon. Though I don’t either. It’s stupid throwing away one’s money when one’s no chance. But go into the gambling saloon, and look at the faces. Very comic ones there are there. There’s one old woman with a rustic headband and a moustache, simply delicious! Our prince there’s another, a good one too. A majestic figure with a nose like an eagle’s, and when he puts down a _thaler_, he crosses himself under his waistcoat. Read the papers, go a walk, do what you like, in fact. But at three o’clock I expect you … _de pied ferme_. We shall have to dine a little earlier. The theatre among these absurd Germans begins at half-past six. She held out her hand. “_Sans rancune, n’est-ce pas?_”

“Really, Maria Nikolaevna, what reason have I to be annoyed?”

“Why, because I’ve been tormenting you. Wait a little, you’ll see. There’s worse to come,” she added, fluttering her eyelids, and all her dimples suddenly came out on her flushing cheeks. “Till we meet!”

Sanin bowed and went out. A merry laugh rang out after him, and in the looking-glass which he was passing at that instant, the following scene was reflected: Maria Nikolaevna had pulled her husband’s fez over his eyes, and he was helplessly struggling with both hands.

XXXVIII

Oh, what a deep sigh of delight Sanin heaved, when he found himself in his room! Indeed, Maria Nikolaevna had spoken the truth, he needed rest, rest from all these new acquaintances, collisions, conversations, from this suffocating atmosphere which was affecting his head and his heart, from this enigmatical, uninvited intimacy with a woman, so alien to him! And when was all this taking place? Almost the day after he had learnt that Gemma loved him, after he had become betrothed to her. Why, it was sacrilege! A thousand times he mentally asked forgiveness of his pure chaste dove, though he could not really blame himself for anything; a thousand times over he kissed the cross she had given him. Had he not the hope of bringing the business, for which he had come to Wiesbaden, to a speedy and successful conclusion, he would have rushed off headlong, back again, to sweet Frankfort, to that dear house, now his own home, to her, to throw himself at her loved feet…. But there was no help for it! The cup must be drunk to the dregs, he must dress, go to dinner, and from there to the theatre…. If only she would let him go to-morrow!

One other thing confounded him, angered him; with love, with tenderness, with grateful transport he dreamed of Gemma, of their life together, of the happiness awaiting him in the future, and yet this strange woman, this Madame Polozov persistently floated—no! not floated, poked herself, so Sanin with special vindictiveness expressed it—_poked herself_ in and faced his eyes, and he could not rid himself of her image, could not help hearing her voice, recalling her words, could not help being aware even of the special scent, delicate, fresh and penetrating, like the scent of yellow lilies, that was wafted from her garments. This lady was obviously fooling him, and trying in every way to get over him … what for? what did she want? Could it be merely the caprice of a spoiled, rich, and most likely unprincipled woman? And that husband! What a creature he was! What were his relations with her? And why would these questions keep coming into his head, when he, Sanin, had really no interest whatever in either Polozov or his wife? Why could he not drive away that intrusive image, even when he turned with his whole soul to another image, clear and bright as God’s sunshine? How, through those almost divine features, dare _those others_ force themselves upon him? And not only that; those other features smiled insolently at him. Those grey, rapacious eyes, those dimples, those snake-like tresses, how was it all that seemed to cleave to him, and to shake it all off, and fling it away, he was unable, had not the power?

Nonsense! nonsense! to-morrow it would all vanish and leave no trace…. But would she let him go to-morrow?

Yes…. All these question he put to himself, but the time was moving on to three o’clock, and he put on a black frockcoat and after a turn in the park, went in to the Polozovs!

He found in their drawing-room a secretary of the legation, a very tall light-haired German, with the profile of a horse, and his hair parted down the back of his head (at that time a new fashion), and … oh, wonder! whom besides? Von Dönhof, the very officer with whom he had fought a few days before! He had not the slightest expectation of meeting him there and could not help being taken aback. He greeted him, however.

“Are you acquainted?” asked Maria Nikolaevna who had not failed to notice Sanin’s embarrassment.

“Yes … I have already had the honour,” said Dönhof, and bending a little aside, in an undertone he added to Maria Nikolaevna, with a smile, “The very man … your compatriot … the Russian …”

“Impossible!” she exclaimed also in an undertone; she shook her finger at him, and at once began to bid good-bye both to him and the long secretary, who was, to judge by every symptom, head over ears in love with her; he positively gaped every time he looked at her. Dönhof promptly took leave with amiable docility, like a friend of the family who understands at half a word what is expected of him; the secretary showed signs of restiveness, but Maria Nikolaevna turned him out without any kind of ceremony.

“Get along to your sovereign mistress,” she said to him (there was at that time in Wiesbaden a certain princess di Monaco, who looked surprisingly like a _cocotte_ of the poorer sort); “what do you want to stay with a plebeian like me for?”

“Really, dear madam,” protested the luckless secretary, “all the princesses in the world….”

But Maria Nikolaevna was remorseless, and the secretary went away, parting and all.

Maria Nikolaevna was dressed that day very much “to her advantage,” as our grandmothers used to say. She wore a pink glacé silk dress, with sleeves _à la Fontange_, and a big diamond in each ear. Her eyes sparkled as much as her diamonds; she seemed in a good humour and in high spirits.

She made Sanin sit beside her, and began talking to him about Paris, where she was intending to go in a few days, of how sick she was of Germans, how stupid they were when they tried to be clever, and how inappropriately clever sometimes when they were stupid; and suddenly, point-blank, as they say—_à brûle pourpoint_—asked him, was it true that he had fought a duel with the very officer who had been there just now, only a few days ago, on account of a lady?

“How did you know that?” muttered Sanin, dumfoundered.

“The earth is full of rumours, Dimitri Pavlovitch; but anyway, I know you were quite right, perfectly right, and behaved like a knight. Tell me, was that lady your betrothed?”

Sanin slightly frowned …

“There, I won’t, I won’t,” Maria Nikolaevna hastened to say. “You don’t like it, forgive me, I won’t do it, don’t be angry!” Polozov came in from the next room with a newspaper in his hand. “What do you want? Or is dinner ready?”

“Dinner’ll be ready directly, but just see what I’ve read in the _Northern Bee_ … Prince Gromoboy is dead.”

Maria Nikolaevna raised her head.

“Ah! I wish him the joys of Paradise! He used,” she turned to Sanin, “to fill all my rooms with camellias every February on my birthday. But it wasn’t worth spending the winter in Petersburg for that. He must have been over seventy, I should say?” she said to her husband.

“Yes, he was. They describe his funeral in the paper. All the court were present. And here’s a poem too, of Prince Kovrizhkin’s on the occasion.”

“That’s nice!”

“Shall I read them? The prince calls him the good man of wise counsel.”

“No, don’t. The good man of wise counsel? He was simply the goodman of Tatiana Yurevna. Come to dinner. Life is for the living. Dimitri Pavlovitch, your arm.”

The dinner was, as on the day before, superb, and the meal was a very lively one. Maria Nikolaevna knew how to tell a story … a rare gift in a woman, and especially in a Russian one! She did not restrict herself in her expressions; her countrywomen received particularly severe treatment at her hands. Sanin was more than once set laughing by some bold and well-directed word. Above all, Maria Nikolaevna had no patience with hypocrisy, cant, and humbug. She discovered it almost everywhere. She, as it were, plumed herself on and boasted of the humble surroundings in which she had begun life. She told rather queer anecdotes of her relations in the days of her childhood, spoke of herself as quite as much of a clodhopper as Natalya Kirilovna Narishkin. It became apparent to Sanin that she had been through a great deal more in her time than the majority of women of her age.

Polozov ate meditatively, drank attentively, and only occasionally cast first on his wife, then on Sanin, his lightish, dim-looking, but, in reality, very keen eyes.

“What a clever darling you are!” cried Maria Nikolaevna, turning to him; “how well you carried out all my commissions in Frankfort! I could give you a kiss on your forehead for it, but you’re not very keen after kisses.”

“I’m not,” responded Polozov, and he cut a pine-apple with a silver knife.

Maria Nikolaevna looked at him and drummed with her fingers on the table. “So our bet’s on, isn’t it?” she said significantly.

“Yes, it’s on.”

“All right. You’ll lose it.”

Polozov stuck out his chin. “Well, this time you mustn’t be too sanguine, Maria Nikolaevna, maybe you will lose.”

“What is the bet? May I know?” asked Sanin.

“No … not now,” answered Maria Nikolaevna, and she laughed.

It struck seven. The waiter announced that the carriage was ready. Polozov saw his wife out, and at once waddled back to his easy-chair.

“Mind now! Don’t forget the letter to the overseer,” Maria Nikolaevna shouted to him from the hall.

“I’ll write, don’t worry yourself. I’m a business-like person.”

XXXIX

In the year 1840, the theatre at Wiesbaden was a poor affair even externally, and its company, for affected and pitiful mediocrity, for studious and vulgar commonplaceness, not one hair’s-breadth above the level, which might be regarded up to now as the normal one in all German theatres, and which has been displayed in perfection lately by the company in Carlsruhe, under the “illustrious” direction of Herr Devrient. At the back of the box taken for her “Serenity Madame von Polozov” (how the waiter devised the means of getting it, God knows, he can hardly have really bribed the stadt-director!) was a little room, with sofas all round it; before she went into the box, Maria Nikolaevna asked Sanin to draw up the screen that shut the box off from the theatre.

“I don’t want to be seen,” she said, “or else they’ll be swarming round directly, you know.” She made him sit down beside her with his back to the house so that the box seemed to be empty. The orchestra played the overture from the _Marriage of Figaro_. The curtain rose, the play began.

It was one of those numerous home-raised products in which well-read but talentless authors, in choice, but dead language, studiously and cautiously enunciated some “profound” or “vital and palpitating” idea, portrayed a so-called tragic conflict, and produced dulness … an Asiatic dulness, like Asiatic cholera. Maria Nikolaevna listened patiently to half an act, but when the first lover, discovering the treachery of his mistress (he was dressed in a cinnamon-coloured coat with “puffs” and a plush collar, a striped waistcoat with mother-of-pearl buttons, green trousers with straps of varnished leather, and white chamois leather gloves), when this lover pressed both fists to his bosom, and poking his two elbows out at an acute angle, howled like a dog, Maria Nikolaevna could not stand it.

“The humblest French actor in the humblest little provincial town acts better and more naturally than the highest German celebrity,” she cried in indignation; and she moved away and sat down in the little room at the back. “Come here,” she said to Sanin, patting the sofa beside her. “Let’s talk.”

Sanin obeyed.

Maria Nikolaevna glanced at him. “Ah, I see you’re as soft as silk! Your wife will have an easy time of it with you. That buffoon,” she went on, pointing with her fan towards the howling actor (he was acting the part of a tutor), “reminded me of my young days; I, too, was in love with a teacher. It was my first … no, my second passion. The first time I fell in love with a young monk of the Don monastery. I was twelve years old. I only saw him on Sundays. He used to wear a short velvet cassock, smelt of lavender water, and as he made his way through the crowd with the censer, used to say to the ladies in French, ‘_Pardon, excusez_’ but never lifted his eyes, and he had eyelashes like that!” Maria Nikolaevna marked off with the nail of her middle finger quite half the length of the little finger and showed Sanin. “My tutor was called—Monsieur Gaston! I must tell you he was an awfully learned and very severe person, a Swiss,—and with such an energetic face! Whiskers black as pitch, a Greek profile, and lips that looked like cast iron! I was afraid of him! He was the only man I have ever been afraid of in my life. He was tutor to my brother, who died … was drowned. A gipsy woman has foretold a violent death for me too, but that’s all moonshine. I don’t believe in it. Only fancy Ippolit Sidoritch with a dagger!”

“One may die from something else than a dagger,” observed Sanin.

“All that’s moonshine! Are you superstitious? I’m not a bit. What is to be, will be. Monsieur Gaston used to live in our house, in the room over my head. Sometimes I’d wake up at night and hear his footstep—he used to go to bed very late—and my heart would stand still with veneration, or some other feeling. My father could hardly read and write himself, but he gave us an excellent education. Do you know, I learnt Latin!”

“You? learnt Latin?”

“Yes; I did. Monsieur Gaston taught me. I read the _Æneid_ with him. It’s a dull thing, but there are fine passages. Do you remember when Dido and Æneas are in the forest?…”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” Sanin answered hurriedly. He had long ago forgotten all his Latin, and had only very faint notions about the _Æneid_.

Maria Nikolaevna glanced at him, as her way was, a little from one side and looking upwards. “Don’t imagine, though, that I am very learned. Mercy on us! no; I’m not learned, and I’ve no talents of any sort. I scarcely know how to write … really; I can’t read aloud; nor play the piano, nor draw, nor sew—nothing! That’s what I am—there you have me!”

She threw out her hands. “I tell you all this,” she said, “first, so as not to hear those fools (she pointed to the stage where at that instant the actor’s place was being filled by an actress, also howling, and also with her elbows projecting before her) and secondly, because I’m in your debt; you told me all about yourself yesterday.”

“It was your pleasure to question me,” observed Sanin.

Maria Nikolaevna suddenly turned to him. “And it’s not your pleasure to know just what sort of woman I am? I can’t wonder at it, though,” she went on, leaning back again on the sofa cushions. “A man just going to be married, and for love, and after a duel…. What thoughts could he have for anything else?”