They had been sitting silently for a time. Nina seemed sad; Sonia and Vera sulky. It was twilight, but no one had thought of switching on the light. No one would dance. I played the piano for a while, and then stopped.
“What is the matter, Nina?” I asked.
She was silent, and then said in her childish open manner, “Oh, Papa and Fanny Ivanovna.”
“What have they done?”
“They are always quarrelling, always, always, always.”
I paused, hating to appear intrusive.
“You know,” she said in that half humorous, half serious way she had of speaking, and then paused a little, and then decided to have it out.
“Papa and Fanny Ivanovna are not … legally married.”
“I know,” I said.
“How did you know?”
“I suspected it.”
“Did Vera tell you?”
“I didn’t!” cried Vera in loud protest. She was fourteen, but tried to look two years older, and indeed succeeded. “I’d never dream of telling such a thing.”
She was shocked and angry at the unjust accusation so provokingly flung at her. It had seemed to me for some time past that there was no love wasted between Vera and her two elder sisters. Vera was different.
“We can’t stand this any longer,” said Sonia. “I am sick to death of their quarrelling. Day and night, day and night.… If they’d only stop at least when we have guests. But no, they are worse than ever then.”
I could bear her out there — that is, if I were really classed as a guest. For I was, rather, what Nikolai Vasilievich called “svoy chelovek,” one of the family, so to speak, and in my presence Nikolai Vasilievich and Fanny Ivanovna certainly let themselves go. They were like cat and dog. There was no mercy shown, no gallantry displayed. Nikolai Vasilievich gibed at her, imitating her murderous Russian with a malicious skill that set the room shrieking with laughter. Fanny Ivanovna, her white face flushing in patches of unwholesome pink, would writhe with pain, and, having gathered her forces, give back as good as she got. Nikolai Vasilievich would snatch out some isolated word that she had mispronounced and, adding some pepper of his own, would fling it into the audience of friends and strangers that he had asked to dinner, and so pluck out the sting at her expense.
“I’m sick of home,” Sonia said. “I shall run away.”
“How can you run away?”
“I’ll marry and run away.”
“No one will marry her,” said Vera from her perch in the far corner.
Nina sat mute, wearing her natural expression, half serious, half ironic.
“What do they quarrel about?”
Nina looked up at Sonia. “Shall I tell?”
“Of course.”
“Aha!” Vera cried maliciously. “Aha!”
“You shut up!” said Sonia.
Nina looked vaguely at the window.
“Papa wants to marry again.”
The rustle of Fanny Ivanovna’s approach was heralded through the air.
She appeared.
“Andrei Andreiech!” she cried. She always greeted me in this way, with acclamation. “How d’you do!”
“How dark! Nina! Vera! Sonia! Why don’t you light up the elektrichno!”
“How many times, Fanny Ivanovna,” said Sonia sternly, “have I told you that it is not elektrichno, but elektrichestvo?”
“Ach! It’s all the same.”
“It’s not all the same, Fanny Ivanovna.”
“Andrei Andreiech! What news?”
“None, I am afraid, Fanny Ivanovna.”
“Has Nikolai Vasilievich come?”
“You know he never comes,” said Sonia, “and yet you always keep supper waiting.”
“I’m tired of waiting for Papa,” Nina said petulantly, lying back on the sofa and swinging her pretty legs.
“He is later and later every day,” came from Vera’s perch. “Fanny Ivanovna, I’m hungry.”
Sonia was really angry. “I would rather he didn’t come at all, than just come to sleep here. Let him stay there, Fanny Ivanovna. Let him!”
“Ach! I think he might still come if we waited a little longer. Are you very hungry, Andrei Andreiech?”
“Say yes! Say yes!” cried the three sisters. I was amazed at this open display of hostility towards their own father, especially from Sonia. I understood the look in Fanny Ivanovna’s eyes.
“No, Fanny Ivanovna,” I said, “not at all.”
“Well, then we’ll wait just a little longer. He promised to come.”
There was a ring at the bell.
“It’s Nikolai Vasilievich!” cried Fanny Ivanovna.
But Nina shook her head. “Papa never rings so timidly. It must be Pàvel Pàvlovich.”
The three sisters sprang off their perches and dashed into the hall.
“Ah!” we heard Sonia’s voice.
“Who is it?… Kniaz?” shouted Fanny Ivanovna.
“No,” came the answer, “the other one.”
“Oh, the Baron. They are both Pàvel Pàvlovichi,” sighed Fanny Ivanovna as though the fact distressed her; but it was really because she disapproved of them both that she sighed.
Baron Wunderhausen as barons do in Russia, came from the Baltic Provinces, spoke Russian and German equally well, excelled in French, knew English, was polite, cunning and adaptable to any circumstances, had big calf’s eyes, was habitually somewhat over-dressed, twenty-five years of age, and had a billet in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He came regularly every evening, made love with his eyes, and we danced.…
We danced, and then had supper, having given Nikolai Vasilievich up as we gave him up regularly every evening after waiting for him for two hours. His absence annoyed everybody, for they suspected where he was.
“I am going away,” said Nina as she danced with me.
“Going away? Where?”
“To Moscow,” she said, looking up. She had a wonderful way of looking up at you when she danced. She had a charming way of speaking quietly, enigmatically, half humorously, half lovingly.
“For always?” I cried in dismay.
In answer she held up two fingers behind my head which was supposed to give me the appearance of a horned devil, and laughed. I revelled in her laughter.
“For how long?” I asked.
“Two months.”
“Why?”
“To see Mama.”
“I didn’t know you had a Mama in Moscow.”
“I have,” she made the obvious answer and I smiled, and she laughed and again held up the devil’s horns.
“What is she doing in Moscow?” I asked, and felt it was a somewhat silly question.
“Living,” she replied. And it seemed to me that she blushed. And for some reason that blush seemed to tell me that there, too, there was trouble.
“Who are you going with?”
“Vera. She is going back for good. Mama wants to keep her.”
“Aren’t you sorry?”
“No.”
“Good God!” I cried.
“I am sorry to leave Sonia.”
“But you are coming back to her?” I asked anxiously.
“Yes, but I am sorry to leave her, all the same. I am sorry to leave Fanny Ivanovna,” she added.
“And Papa?”
She reflected a little. “No,” she whispered.
“And whom else?” I persisted, smiling into her eyes and trying to press my own claims.
“I won’t tell,” she said.
“When are you going?”
“To-morrow morning. We only decided last night, Fanny Ivanovna and I,” she said quietly, “that I should go.”
“To take Vera to Moscow?”