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Nadezhda Fedoseevna, the sixth one, the schoolgirl and supposed fiancée of Pavel Pavlovich, made them wait. Velchaninov waited for her with impatience, marveling at himself and chuckling inwardly. Finally she appeared, and not without effect, accompanied by a pert and sharp girlfriend, Marya Nikitishna, a brunette with a laughing face, of whom, as it turned out at once, Pavel Pavlovich was extremely afraid. This Marya Nikitishna, already a girl of twenty-three, a barterer and even a wit, was governess of the little children in the family of some neighbors and acquaintances, and had long been considered like one of their own at the Zakhlebinins’, where the girls valued her terribly. It was evident that she was also especially necessary now for Nadya. From the first glance, Velchaninov could see that the girls, and even the girlfriends, were all against Pavel Pavlovich, while from the second moment after Nadya’s appearance, he decided that she hated him. He also noticed that Pavel Pavlovich did not perceive it at all, or else did not wish to perceive it. Indisputably, Nadya was better than all her sisters—a small brunette with the air of a wild thing and the boldness of a nihilist; a thievish little demon with fiery eyes, a lovely, though often wicked, smile, amazing lips and teeth, slim, slender, with a nascent thought in the ardent expression of her face, at the same time still quite childish. Her fifteen years spoke in her every step, her every word. It turned out later that Pavel Pavlovich had actually seen her for the first time with an oilcloth book bag in her hand, but now she no longer carried it.
The giving of the bracelet was a complete failure and even produced a disagreeable impression. Pavel Pavlovich, as soon as he saw his fiancée come in, approached her at once with a grin. He offered his gift under the pretext of “the agreeable pleasure felt by him the previous time on the occasion of the agreeable romance sung by Nadezhda Fedoseevna at the piano…” He became flustered, did not finish, and stood like a lost man, reaching out and thrusting into Nadezhda Fedoseevna’s hand the case with the bracelet, while she, not wanting to take it, and blushing with shame and wrath, kept putting her hands behind her back. She boldly turned to her mother, whose face expressed embarrassment, and said loudly:
“I don’t want to take it, Maman!”
“Take it and say thank you,” the father said with calm ster
Velchaninov came to the rescue.
He suddenly started talking, loudly and eagerly, seizing the first thought that came to him, and before five minutes had passed, he already held the attention of everyone in the drawing room. He had learned magnificently the art of babbling in society, that is, the art of appearing perfectly simple-hearted and at the same time making it seem that he took his listeners for people as simple-hearted as himself. With extreme naturalness he could pretend, when necessary, to be the merriest and happiest of men. He knew how to place very deftly a witty and provocative phrase, a merry hint, a fu
“Well, you’re the sort of guest who doesn’t need to be entertained,” old Zakhlebinin cheerily decided at last, getting up from his chair to go to his room upstairs, where, despite the feast day, he had a few business papers ready for going over, “and, imagine, I considered you the gloomiest hypochondriac of all our young people. How wrong one can be!”
In the drawing room stood a grand piano; Velchaninov asked who studied music, and suddenly turned to Nadya.
“You sing, it seems?”
“Who told you so?” Nadya snapped.
“Pavel Pavlovich said so earlier.”
“Not so; I only sing for a joke; I have no voice.”
“I have no voice either, but I do sing.”
“So you’ll sing for us? Well, then I’ll sing for you, too,” Nadya flashed her eyes, “only not now, but after di
Velchaninov seized on the phrase at once, and it turned out that Katerina Fedoseevna was the only one of them all who seriously studied piano. He immediately turned to her with a request to play. Everyone was evidently pleased that he had turned to Katya, and Maman even blushed with satisfaction. Katerina Fedoseevna rose, smiling, and went to the grand piano, but suddenly, unexpectedly for herself, blushed all over, and suddenly felt terribly ashamed that, big as she was, already twenty-four years old, and so plump, here she was blushing like a little girl—and all this was written on her face as she sat down to play. She played something by Haydn, and played it very accurately, though without expression; but she turned shy. When she finished, Velchaninov started praising terribly, not her but Haydn, and especially the little piece she had played—and she was obviously so pleased, she listened so gratefully and happily to this praise not of herself but of Haydn, that Velchaninov involuntarily looked at her more gently and attentively. “Eh, aren’t you a nice one?” shone in his eyes—and everyone understood this glance as if at once, especially Katerina Fedoseevna herself.
“A nice garden you’ve got,” he suddenly addressed them all, looking through the glass door to the balcony. “You know, let’s all go out to the garden!”
“Let’s go, let’s go!” came joyful squeals—just as if he had guessed the main general wish.
They were in the garden until di