'But, Maria Nikolaevna, what interest can there be for you …'
'Stop, stop. You don't understand me. I don't want to flirt with you.' Maria Nikolaevna shrugged her shoulders. 'He's got a betrothed like an antique statue, is it likely I am going to flirt with him? But you've something to sell, and I'm the purchaser. I want to know what your goods are like. Well, of course, you must show what they are like. I don't only want to know what I'm buying, but whom I'm buying from. That was my father's rule. Come, begin … come, if not from childhood—come now, have you been long abroad? And where have you been up till now? Only don't walk so fast, we're in no hurry.'
'I came here from Italy, where I spent several months.'
'Ah, you feel, it seems, a special attraction towards everything Italian. It's strange you didn't find your lady-love there. Are you fond of art? of pictures? or more of music?'
'I am fond of art…. I like everything beautiful.'
'And music?'
'I like music too.'
'Well, I don't at all. I don't care for anything but Russian songs—and that in the country and in the spring—with dancing, you know … red shirts, wreaths of beads, the young grass in the meadows, the smell of smoke … delicious! But we weren't talking of me. Go on, tell me.'
Maria Nikolaevna walked on, and kept looking at Sanin. She was tall—her face was almost on a level with his face.
He began to talk—at first reluctantly, unskilfully—but afterwards he talked more freely, chattered away in fact. Maria Nikolaevna was a very good listener; and moreover she seemed herself so frank, that she led others unconsciously on to frankness. She possessed that great gift of 'intimateness'—le terrible don de la familiarité—to which Cardinal Retz refers. Sanin talked of his travels, of his life in Petersburg, of his youth…. Had Maria Nikolaevna been a lady of fashion, with refined manners, he would never have opened out so; but she herself spoke of herself as a 'good fellow,' who had no patience with ceremony of any sort; it was in those words that she characterised herself to Sanin. And at the same time this 'good fellow' walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this 'good fellow' walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which—for the undoing of us poor weak sinful men—only Slav natures are possessed, and but few of them, and those never of pure Slav blood, with no foreign alloy. Sanin's walk with Maria Nikolaevna, Sanin's talk with Maria Nikolaevna lasted over an hour. And they did not stop once; they kept walking about the endless avenues of the park, now mounting a hill and admiring the view as they went, and now going down into the valley, and getting hidden in the thick shadows,—and all the while arm-in-arm. At times Sanin felt positively irritated; he had never walked so long with Gemma, his darling Gemma … but this lady had simply taken possession of him, and there was no escape! 'Aren't you tired?' he said to her more than once. 'I never get tired,' she answered. Now and then they met other people walking in the park; almost all of them bowed—some respectfully, others even cringingly. To one of them, a very handsome, fashionably dressed dark man, she called from a distance with the best Parisian accent, 'Comte, vous savez, il ne faut pas venir me voir—ni aujourd'hui ni demain.' The man took off his hat, without speaking, and dropped a low bow.
'Who's that?' asked Sanin with the bad habit of asking questions characteristic of all Russians.
'Oh, a Frenchman, there are lots of them here … He's dancing attendance on me too. It's time for our coffee, though. Let's go home; you must be hungry by this time, I should say. My better half must have got his eye-peeps open by now.'
'Better half! Eye-peeps!' Sanin repeated to himself … 'And speaks
French so well … what a strange creature!'
* * * * *
Maria Nikolaevna was not mistaken. When she went back into the hotel with Sanin, her 'better half or 'dumpling' was already seated, the invariable fez on his head, before a table laid for breakfast.
'I've been waiting for you!' he cried, making a sour face. 'I was on the point of having coffee without you.'
'Never mind, never mind,' Maria Nikolaevna responded cheerfully. 'Are you angry? That's good for you; without that you'd turn into a mummy altogether. Here I've brought a visitor. Make haste and ring! Let us have coffee—the best coffee—in Saxony cups on a snow-white cloth!'
She threw off her hat and gloves, and clapped her hands.
Polozov looked at her from under his brows.
'What makes you so skittish to-day, Maria Nikolaevna?' he said in an undertone.
'That's no business of yours, Ippolit Sidoritch! Ring! Dimitri Pavlovitch, sit down and have some coffee for the second time. Ah, how nice it is to give orders! There's no pleasure on earth like it!'
'When you're obeyed,' grumbled her husband again.
'Just so, when one's obeyed! That's why I'm so happy! Especially with you. Isn't it so, dumpling? Ah, here's the coffee.'
On the immense tray, which the waiter brought in, there lay also a playbill. Maria Nikolaevna snatched it up at once.
'A drama!' she pronounced with indignation, 'a German drama. No matter; it's better than a German comedy. Order a box for me—baignoire—or no … better the Fremden-Loge,' she turned to the waiter. 'Do you hear: the Fremden-Loge it must be!'
'But if the Fremden-Loge has been already taken by his excellency, the director of the town (seine Excellenz der Herr Stadt-Director),' the waiter ventured to demur.
'Give his excellency ten thalers, and let the box be mine! Do you hear!'
The waiter bent his head humbly and mournfully.
'Dimitri Pavlovitch, you will go with me to the theatre? the German actors are awful, but you will go … Yes? Yes? How obliging you are! Dumpling, are you not coming?
'You settle it,' Polozov observed into the cup he had lifted to his lips.
'Do you know what, you stay at home. You always go to sleep at the theatre, and you don't understand much German. I'll tell you what you'd better do, write an answer to the overseer—you remember, about our mill … about the peasants' grinding. Tell him that I won't have it, and I won't and that's all about it! There's occupation for you for the whole evening.'
'All right,' answered Polozov.
'Well then, that's first-rate. You're a darling. And now, gentlemen, as we have just been speaking of my overseer, let's talk about our great business. Come, directly the waiter has cleared the table, you shall tell me all, Dimitri Pavlovitch, about your estate, what price you will sell it for, how much you want paid down in advance, everything, in fact! (At last, thought Sanin, thank God!) You have told me something about it already, you remember, you described your garden delightfully, but dumpling wasn't here…. Let him hear, he may pick a hole somewhere! I'm delighted to think that I can help you to get married, besides, I promised you that I would go into your business after lunch, and I always keep my promises, isn't that the truth, Ippolit Sidoritch?'
Polozov rubbed his face with his open hand. 'The truth's the truth.
You don't deceive any one.'
'Never! and I never will deceive any one. Well, Dimitri Pavlovitch, expound the case as we express it in the senate.'
XXXVII
Sanin proceeded to expound his case, that is to say, again, a second time, to describe his property, not touching this time on the beauties of nature, and now and then appealing to Polozov for confirmation of his 'facts and figures.' But Polozov simply gasped and shook his head, whether in approval or disapproval, it would have puzzled the devil, one might fancy, to decide. However, Maria Nikolaevna stood in no need of his aid. She exhibited commercial and administrative abilities that were really astonishing! She was familiar with all the ins-and-outs of farming; she asked questions about everything with great exactitude, went into every point; every word of hers went straight to the root of the matter, and hit the nail on the head. Sanin had not expected such a close inquiry, he had not prepared himself for it. And this inquiry lasted for fully an hour and a half. Sanin experienced all the sensations of the criminal on his trial, sitting on a narrow bench confronted by a stern and penetrating judge. 'Why, it's a cross-examination!' he murmured to himself dejectedly. Maria Nikolaevna kept laughing all the while, as though it were a joke; but Sanin felt none the more at ease for that; and when in the course of the 'cross-examination' it turned out that he had not clearly realised the exact meaning of the words 'repartition' and 'tilth,' he was in a cold perspiration all over.