After tea the company went to the sitting room, and the princess was asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole leaned on his elbow before her next to Mlle Bourienne, and his eyes, laughing and joyful, looked at Princess Marya. Princess Marya felt his gaze upon her with tormenting and joyful excitement. Her favorite sonata transported her into her innermost poetic world, and the gaze she felt upon her endowed that world with still greater poetry. Anatole’s gaze, though directed at her, referred not to her but to the movements of Mlle Bourienne’s little foot, which he touched just then with his own foot under the pianoforte. Mlle Bourienne was also looking at the princess, and in her beautiful eyes there was an expression of frightened joy and hope which was also new for Princess Marya.
“How she loves me!” thought Princess Marya. “How happy I am now, and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Can it be—a husband?” she thought, not daring to look up at his face, still feeling that same gaze directed at her.
In the evening, when they all began to disperse after supper, Anatole kissed Princess Marya’s hand. She did not know herself how she had boldness enough, but she glanced straight at the beautiful face as it approached her nearsighted eyes. After the princess, he went to kiss Mlle Bourienne’s hand (this was improper, but he did everything so confidently and simply), and Mlle Bourienne blushed and glanced fearfully at the princess.
“Quelle délicatesse!”*250 thought the princess. “Can Amélie” (that was Mlle Bourienne’s name) “really think I could be jealous of her and not appreciate her pure affection for and devotion to me?” She went over to Mlle Bourienne and kissed her warmly. Anatole went to kiss the little princess’s hand.
“Non, non, non! Quand votre père m’écrira, que vous vous conduisez bien, je vous donnerai ma main à baiser. Pas avant.”†251
And, raising her finger and smiling, she left the room.
V
They all dispersed and, except for Anatole, who fell asleep as soon as he lay down, it was long before anyone slept that night.
“Can it be that he’s my husband, precisely this stranger, this handsome, kind man—above all, kind,” thought Princess Marya, and fear, which hardly ever came to her, came over her now. She was afraid to look around; she fancied someone was standing there behind the screen, in the dark corner. And that someone was he—the devil—and he was this man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red mouth.
She rang for the maid and asked her to sleep in her room.
Mlle Bourienne spent a long time that evening walking in the winter garden, vainly waiting for someone and now smiling at someone, now waxing tearful, touched in her imagination by the words of sa pauvre mère reproaching her for her fall.
The little princess grumbled at her maid because the bed was not right. It was impossible for her to lie either on her side or on her front. Everything was heavy and awkward. Her belly got in her way. It got in her way more than ever precisely today, because Anatole’s presence transported her more vividly into another time, when it was not there, and everything was light and merry for her. She sat in an armchair in her bed-jacket and nightcap. Katya, sleepy and with her braid tangled, plumped up and turned the heavy featherbed for the third time, muttering something.
“I told you, it’s all bumps and hollows,” the little princess repeated. “I’d be glad to fall asleep myself, so it’s not my fault.” And her voice quavered, like the voice of a child who is about to cry.
The old prince was also awake. Tikhon, through his sleep, heard him pacing about angrily and snorting through his nose. It seemed to the old prince that he was offended for his daughter. The offense was most painful because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter, whom he loved more than himself. He told himself that he would think over the whole matter again and find what was fair and ought to be done, but instead he only irritated himself more.
“The first comer turns up—and her father and everything’s forgotten, and she runs, does her hair up, and wags her tail, and isn’t like herself at all! Glad to abandon her father! She knew I’d notice. Snort…snort…snort…As if I don’t see that this fool is only looking at Bourrienka (she must be thrown out)! And how can she not have enough pride to realize it! If she has no pride for herself, at least she could have it for me. She must be shown that that blockhead doesn’t even give her a thought, but is only looking at Bourienne. She has no pride, but I’ll show her that she…”
By telling his daughter that she was mistaken, that Anatole intended to pay court to Bourienne, the old prince knew he would rouse Princess Marya’s amour propre, and his cause (the wish not to part with his daughter) would be won, and that calmed him down. He called Tikhon and began to undress.
“The devil brought them here!” he thought, as Tikhon slipped a nightgown over his dry old man’s body, the chest overgrown with gray hair. “I didn’t invite them. They’ve come to upset my life. And there’s not much left of it.”
“Devil take them!” he said, while the shirt still covered his head.
Tikhon knew the prince’s habit of sometimes expressing his thoughts aloud, and therefore with an unchanged face met the irately questioning gaze of the face that emerged from the shirt.
“Gone to bed?” asked the prince.
Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew his master’s train of thought. He guessed that he was being asked about Prince Vassily and his son.
“They’ve gone to bed and put out the lights, if you please, Your Excellency.”
“No need, no need…” the prince said quickly and, putting his feet into his slippers and his arms through the sleeves of his dressing gown, he went to the sofa on which he slept.
Though nothing had yet been said between Anatole and Mlle Bourienne, they understood each other perfectly in regard to the first part of the romance, before the appearance of the pauvre mère, understood that they had much to tell each other in secret, and therefore in the morning they both sought an occasion to see each other alone. When Princess Marya went at the usual hour to see her father, Mlle Bourienne met with Anatole in the winter garden.
Princess Marya came to her father’s door that day with particular trepidation. It seemed to her not only that everyone knew her fate was to be decided that day, but that they also knew what she thought about it. She read that expression on the face of Tikhon, and on the face of Prince Vassily’s valet, who met her in the corridor while carrying hot water and bowed low to her.
The old prince was extremely gentle and painstaking in dealing with his daughter that morning. Princess Marya knew this painstaking expression of her father’s very well. It was the expression he had on his face in the moments when his dry hands clenched into fists from vexation at Princess Marya’s not understanding a problem in arithmetic, and, getting up, he would step away from her and in a soft voice repeat the same words several times.
He got down to business straightaway and began the conversation in a formal tone.
“A proposal has been made to me concerning you, miss,” he said, smiling unnaturally. “You have guessed, I believe,” he went on, “that Prince Vassily came here and brought with him his pupil” (for some reason Prince Nikolai Andreich called Anatole a pupil), “not just for my good pleasure. A proposal was made to me yesterday concerning you. And since you know my rules, I am referring it to you.”