“How much do you want to spend?”
“Oh, some four or five hundred roubles, sir.”
“Oof!”
“Is it too much?” Pavel Pavlovich roused himself.
“Buy just a bracelet, for a hundred roubles.”
Pavel Pavlovich was even upset. He wanted terribly to spend more and buy the “whole” set. He insisted. They stopped at a store. It ended, however, with their buying only a bracelet, and not the one Pavel Pavlovich wanted, but one pointed out by Velchaninov. Pavel Pavlovich wanted to take both. When the shopkeeper, after asking a hundred and seventy-five roubles for the bracelet, went down to a hundred and fifty—he was even vexed; it would have been a pleasure for him to spend two hundred, had he been asked to, so much did he want to spend more.
“Never mind my being in such a hurry with presents,” he poured himself out in rapture as they drove on, “it’s not high society, it’s simple there, sir. Innocence likes little presents,” he smiled slyly and merrily. “You grinned just now, Alexei Ivanovich, at the mention of fifteen years; but that was just what hit me on the head—precisely that she still goes to school, with a little book bag in her hand, with notebooks and little pens, heh, heh! It was the little book bag that captivated my thoughts! In fact, it’s for that innocence, Alexei Ivanovich. For me it’s not so much a matter of the beauty of her face, but that innocence, sir. She giggles there in a corner with a girlfriend, and how they laugh, and my God! And over what, sir: all that laughter is because the kitty jumped from the chest onto the bed and curled up… It really smells of fresh apples there, sir! Shouldn’t I take the crape off?”
“As you like.”
“I will!” He took off his hat, tore the crape from it, and threw it out on the road. Velchaninov saw the brightest hope shinning in his face as he put his hat back on his bald head.
“But can he in fact be like this?” he thought, now genuinely angry. “Can it be that there’s no trickin his inviting me? Can he in fact be counting on my nobility?” he went on, almost offended by the last supposition. “What is he, a buffoon, a fool, or an ‘eternal husband’? But this is impossible, finally!…”
XII
AT THE ZAKHLEBININS’
The Zakhlebinins were actually a “very respectable family,” as Velchaninov had put it earlier, and Zakhlebinin himself was quite a solid official and a visible one. Everything that Pavel Pavlovich had said about their income was also true: “They live well, it seems, but if the man were to die, there would be nothing left.”
Old Zakhlebinin met Velchaninov splendidly and amicably, and from a former “enemy” turned entirely into a friend.
“My congratulations, it’s better this way,” he began speaking with a pleasant and dignified air. “I myself insisted on a peaceful settlement, and Pyotr Karlovich” (Velchaninov’s lawyer) “is pure gold in that regard. So then? You’ll get about sixty thousand and without any fuss, without temporizing, without quarrels. Otherwise the case might have dragged on for three years!”
Velchaninov was introduced at once to Mme. Zakhlebinin, a rather spread-out old lady, with a simplish and tired face. The girls also began sailing out, singly or in pairs. But far too many girls appeared; gradually some ten or twelve of them assembled—Velchaninov even lost count; some came in, others left. But among them were many friends from neighboring houses. The Zakhlebinins’ country place—a big wooden house, in some unknown but fanciful taste, added on to at various times—enjoyed the use of a big garden. But three or four other houses gave onto this garden from different sides, so that this big garden served as a common one, which naturally contributed to the closeness between the girls and their summer neighbors. From the first words of the conversation, Velchaninov noticed that he had been expected there and that his arrival in the quality of Pavel Pavlovich’s friend, wishing to become acquainted, had been all but solemnly announced. His keen, experienced eye in such matters soon discerned something even peculiar here: from the much too amiable reception of the parents, from a certain peculiar look about the girls and their dress (though, incidentally, it was a feast day), the suspicion flashed in him that Pavel Pavlovich had tricked him, and might very well have suggested here, naturally without putting it directly into words, something like the notion of him as a bored bachelor, of “good society,” with a fortune, who might very, very well suddenly decide, at last, to “put an end to it” and settle down—“the more so as he has also received an inheritance.” It seemed that the oldest Mlle. Zakhlebinin, Katerina Fedoseevna, the one who was twenty-four and of whom Pavel Pavlovich had spoken as a lovely person, had been more or less tuned to this note. She stood out among her sisters especially by her attire and some sort of original arrangement of her fluffy hair. The sisters and all the other girls looked as if they, too, already knew firmly that Velchaninov was becoming acquainted “on account of Katya” and had come to “have a look” at her. Their glances and even certain phrases that flashed by inadvertently in the course of the day, later confirmed him in this surmise. Katerina Fedoseevna was a tall blonde, plump to the point of luxuriousness, with an extremely sweet face, of an apparently quiet and unenterprising, even drowsy, character. “Strange that such a girl has stayed like this so long,” Velchaninov thought involuntarily, studying her with pleasure. “Granted she has no dowry and will soon spread out altogether, but meanwhile there are so many who love that…” The rest of the sisters were none too bad either, and among the girlfriends there flashed several amusing and even pretty little faces. This began to amuse him; and anyhow he had come with special thoughts.
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 hatedhim. 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 sternness, but he, too, was displeased. “Unnecessary, unnecessary!” he muttered didactically to Pavel Pavlovich. Nadya, since there was nothing to be done, took the case and, lowering her eyes, curtsied as little girls do, that is, she suddenly plopped down and suddenly bounced up at once, as if on a spring. One of the sisters came over to look, and Nadya gave her the case, still unopened, thereby showing that she herself did not even want to look. The bracelet was taken out and handed around; but they all looked at it silently, and some even mockingly. Only the mother murmured that it was a very nice bracelet. Pavel Pavlovich was ready to fall through the earth.