The Torrents of Spring
no end of lawsuits and affairs on hand—_de vilaines affaires
d’argent_—and must be a very troublesome and litigious person. My
mother added, however, that she had asked her and her daughter to
dinner the next day (hearing the word “daughter” I buried my nose in my
plate), for after all she was a neighbour and a person of title. Upon
this my father informed my mother that he remembered now who this lady
was; that he had in his youth known the deceased Prince Zasyekin, a
very well-bred, but frivolous and absurd person; that he had been
nicknamed in society “_le Parisien_,” from having lived a long while in
Paris; that he had been very rich, but had gambled away all his
property; and for some unknown reason, probably for money, though
indeed he might have chosen better, if so, my father added with a cold
smile, he had married the daughter of an agent, and after his marriage
had entered upon speculations and ruined himself utterly.
“If only she doesn’t try to borrow money,” observed my mother.
“That’s exceedingly possible,” my father responded tranquilly. “Does
she speak French?”
“Very badly.”
“H’m. It’s of no consequence anyway. I think you said you had asked the
daughter too; some one was telling me she was a very charming and
cultivated girl.”
“Ah! Then she can’t take after her mother.”
“Nor her father either,” rejoined my father. “He was cultivated indeed,
but a fool.”
My mother sighed and sank into thought. My father said no more. I felt
very uncomfortable during this conversation.
After dinner I went into the garden, but without my gun. I swore to
myself that I would not go near the Zasyekins’ garden, but an
irresistible force drew me thither, and not in vain. I had hardly
reached the fence when I caught sight of Zinaïda. This time she was
alone. She held a book in her hands, and was coming slowly along the
path. She did not notice me.
I almost let her pass by; but all at once I changed my mind and
coughed.
She turned round, but did not stop, pushed back with one hand the broad
blue ribbon of her round straw hat, looked at me, smiled slowly, and
again bent her eyes on the book.
I took off my cap, and after hesitating a moment, walked away with a
heavy heart. “_Que suis-je pour elle?_” I thought (God knows why) in
French.
Familiar footsteps sounded behind me; I looked round, my father came up
to me with his light, rapid walk.
“Is that the young princess?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“Why, do you know her?”
“I saw her this morning at the princess’s.”
My father stopped, and, turning sharply on his heel, went back. When he
was on a level with Zinaïda, he made her a courteous bow. She, too,
bowed to him, with some astonishment on her face, and dropped her book.
I saw how she looked after him. My father was always irreproachably
dressed, simple and in a style of his own; but his figure had never
struck me as more graceful, never had his grey hat sat more becomingly
on his curls, which were scarcely perceptibly thinner than they had
once been.
I bent my steps toward Zinaïda, but she did not even glance at me; she
picked up her book again and went away.
VI
The whole evening and the following day I spent in a sort of dejected
apathy. I remember I tried to work and took up Keidanov, but the boldly
printed lines and pages of the famous text-book passed before my eyes
in vain. I read ten times over the words: “Julius Caesar was
distinguished by warlike courage.” I did not understand anything and
threw the book aside. Before dinner-time I pomaded myself once more,
and once more put on my tail-coat and necktie.
“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.
“Well done!” cried Lushin, and helped me to get up.
The game of forfeits went on. Zinaïda sat me down beside her. She
invented all sorts of extraordinary forfeits! She had among other
things to represent a “statue,” and she chose as a pedestal the hideous
Nirmatsky, told him to bow down in an arch, and bend his head down on
his breast. The laughter never paused for an instant. For me, a boy
constantly brought up in the seclusion of a dignified manor-house, all
this noise and uproar, this unceremonious, almost riotous gaiety, these
relations with unknown persons, were simply intoxicating. My head went
round, as though from wine. I began laughing and talking louder than