The Torrents of Spring
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