VII

Precisely at eight o’clock I entered the tiny wing inhabited by the

Princess, clad in my coat, and with my hair brushed up into a crest on

top of my head. The old servant glared surlily at me, and rose

reluctantly from his bench. Merry voices resounded in the drawing-room.

I opened the door and retreated a pace in astonishment. In the middle of

the room, on a chair, stood the young Princess, holding a man’s hat in

front of her; around the chair thronged five men. They were trying to

dip their hands into the hat, but she kept raising it on high and

shaking it violently. On catching sight of me she exclaimed:--

“Stay, stay! Here’s a new guest; he must be given a ticket,”--and

springing lightly from the chair, she seized me by the lapel of my

coat.--“Come along,”--said she;--“why do you stand there? Messieurs,

allow me to make you acquainted: this is Monsieur Voldemar, the son of

our neighbour. And this,”--she added, turning to me, and pointing to the

visitors in turn,--“is Count Malévsky, Doctor Lúshin, the poet

Maidánoff, retired Captain Nirmátzky, and Byelovzóroff the hussar, whom

you have already seen. I beg that you will love and favour each other.”

I was so confused that I did not even bow to any one; in Doctor Lúshin I

recognised that same swarthy gentleman who had so ruthlessly put me to

shame in the garden; the others were strangers to me.

“Count!”--pursued Zinaída,--“write a ticket for M’sieu Voldemar.”

“That is unjust,”--returned the Count, with a slight accent,--a very

handsome and foppishly-attired man, with a dark complexion, expressive

brown eyes, a thin, white little nose, and a slender moustache over his

tiny mouth.--“He has not been playing at forfeits with us.”

“‘Tis unjust,”--repeated Byelovzóroff and the gentleman who had been

alluded to as the retired Captain,--a man of forty, horribly pockmarked,

curly-haired as a negro, round-shouldered, bow-legged, and dressed in a

military coat without epaulets, worn open on the breast.

“Write a ticket, I tell you,”--repeated the Princess.--“What sort of a

rebellion is this? M’sieu Voldemar is with us for the first time, and

to-day no law applies to him. No grumbling--write; I will have it so.”

The Count shrugged his shoulders, but submissively bowing his head, he

took a pen in his white, ring-decked hand, tore off a scrap of paper and

began to write on it.

“Permit me at least to explain to M’sieu Voldemar what it is all

about,”--began Lúshin, in a bantering tone;--“otherwise he will be

utterly at a loss. You see, young man, we are playing at forfeits; the

Princess must pay a fine, and the one who draws out the lucky ticket

must kiss her hand. Do you understand what I have told you?”

I merely glanced at him and continued to stand as though in a fog, while

the Princess again sprang upon the chair and again began to shake the

hat. All reached up to her--I among the rest.

“Maidánoff,”--said the Princess to the tall young man with a gaunt face,

tiny mole-like eyes and extremely long, black hair,--“you, as a poet,

ought to be magnanimous and surrender your ticket to M’sieu Voldemar, so

that he may have two chances instead of one.”

But Maidánoff shook his head in refusal and tossed his hair. I put in my

hand into the hat after all the rest, drew out and unfolded a ticket....

O Lord! what were my sensations when I beheld on it, “Kiss!”

“Kiss!”--I cried involuntarily.

“Bravo! He has won,”--chimed in the Princess.--“How delighted I

am!”--She descended from the chair, and gazed into my eyes so clearly

and sweetly that my heart fairly laughed with joy.--“And are you

glad?”--she asked me.

“I?” ... I stammered.

“Sell me your ticket,”--suddenly blurted out Byelovzóroff, right in my

ear.--“I’ll give you one hundred rubles for it.”

I replied to the hussar by such a wrathful look that Zinaída clapped

her hands, and Lúshin cried:--“That’s a gallant fellow!”

“But,”--he went on,--“in my capacity of master of ceremonies, I am bound

to see that all the regulations are carried out. M’sieu Voldemar, get

down on one knee. That is our rule.”

Zinaída stood before me with her head bent a little to one side, as

though the better to scrutinise me, and offered me her hand with

dignity. Things grew dim before my eyes; I tried to get down on one

knee, plumped down on both knees, and applied my lips to Zinaída’s

fingers in so awkward a manner that I scratched the tip of my nose

slightly on her nails.

“Good!”--shouted Lúshin, and helped me to rise.

The game of forfeits continued. Zinaída placed me beside her. What

penalties they did invent! Among other things, she had to impersonate a

“statue”--and she selected as a pedestal the monstrously homely

Nirmátzky, ordering him to lie flat on the floor, and to tuck his face

into his breast. The laughter did not cease for a single moment. All

this noise and uproar, this unceremonious, almost tumultuous merriment,

these unprecedented relations with strangers, fairly flew to my head;

for I was a boy who had been reared soberly, and in solitude, and had

grown up in a stately home of gentry. I became simply intoxicated, as

though with wine. I began to shout with laughter and chatter more

loudly than the rest, so that even the old Princess, who was sitting in

the adjoining room with some sort of pettifogger from the Íversky

Gate[5] who had been summoned for a conference, came out to take a look

at me. But I felt so happy that, as the saying is, I didn’t care a

farthing for anybody’s ridicule, or anybody’s oblique glances.

Zinaída continued to display a preference for me and never let me leave

her side. In one forfeit I was made to sit by her, covered up with one

and the same silk kerchief: I was bound to tell her _my secret_. I

remember how our two heads found themselves suddenly in choking,

semi-transparent, fragrant gloom; how near and softly her eyes sparkled

in that gloom, and how hotly her parted lips breathed; and her teeth

were visible, and the tips of her hair tickled and burned me. I

maintained silence. She smiled mysteriously and slyly, and at last

whispered to me: “Well, what is it?” But I merely flushed and laughed,

and turned away, and could hardly draw my breath. We got tired of

forfeits, and began to play “string.” Good heavens! what rapture I felt

when, forgetting myself with gaping, I received from her a strong, sharp

rap on my fingers; and how afterward I tried to pretend that I was

yawning with inattention, but she mocked at me and did not touch my

hands, which were awaiting the blow!

But what a lot of other pranks we played that same evening! We played on

the piano, and sang, and danced, and represented a gipsy camp. We

dressed Nirmátzky up like a bear, and fed him with water and salt. Count

Malévsky showed us several card tricks, and ended by stacking the cards

and dealing himself all the trumps at whist; upon which Lúshin “had the

honour of congratulating him.” Maidánoff declaimed to us fragments from

his poem, “The Murderer” (this occurred in the very thick of

romanticism), which he intended to publish in a black binding, with the

title in letters of the colour of blood. We stole his hat from the knees

of the pettifogger from the Íversky Gate, and made him dance the kazák

dance by way of redeeming it. We dressed old Vonifáty up in a mob-cap,

and the young Princess put on a man’s hat.... It is impossible to

recount all we did. Byelovzóroff alone remained most of the time in a

corner, angry and frowning.... Sometimes his eyes became suffused with

blood, he grew scarlet all over and seemed to be on the very point of

swooping down upon all of us and scattering us on all sides, like chips;

but the Princess glanced at him, menaced him with her finger, and again

he retired into his corner.

We were completely exhausted at last. The old Princess was equal to

anything, as she put it,--no shouts disconcerted her,--but she felt

tired and wished to rest. At midnight supper was served, consisting of a

bit of old, dry cheese and a few cold patties filled with minced ham,

which seemed to us more savoury than any pasty; there was only one

bottle of wine, and that was rather queer:--dark, with a swollen neck,

and the wine in it left an after-taste of pinkish dye; however, no one

drank it. Weary and happy to exhaustion, I emerged from the wing; a

thunder-storm seemed to be brewing; the black storm-clouds grew larger

and crept across the sky, visibly altering their smoky outlines. A light

breeze was uneasily quivering in the dark trees, and somewhere beyond

the horizon the thunder was growling angrily and dully, as though to

itself.

I made my way through the back door to my room. My nurse-valet was

sleeping on the floor and I was obliged to step over him; he woke up,

saw me, and reported that my mother was angry with me, and had wanted to

send after me again, but that my father had restrained her. I never went

to bed without having bidden my mother good night and begged her

blessing. There was no help for it! I told my valet that I would undress

myself and go to bed unaided,--and extinguished the candle. But I did

not undress and I did not go to bed.

I seated myself on a chair and sat there for a long time, as though

enchanted. That which I felt was so new and so sweet.... I sat there,

hardly looking around me and without moving, breathing slowly, and only

laughing silently now, as I recalled, now inwardly turning cold at the

thought that I was in love, that here it was, that love. Zinaída’s face

floated softly before me in the darkness--floated, but did not float

away; her lips still smiled as mysteriously as ever, her eyes gazed

somewhat askance at me, interrogatively, thoughtfully and tenderly ...

as at the moment when I had parted from her. At last I rose on tiptoe,

stepped to my bed and cautiously, without undressing, laid my head on

the pillow, as though endeavouring by the sharp movement to frighten off

that wherewith I was filled to overflowing....

I lay down, but did not even close an eye. I speedily perceived that

certain faint reflections kept constantly falling into my room.... I

raised myself and looked out of the window. Its frame was distinctly

defined from the mysteriously and confusedly whitened panes. “‘Tis the

thunder-storm,”--I thought,--and so, in fact, there was a thunder-storm;

but it had passed very far away, so that even the claps of thunder were

not audible; only in the sky long, indistinct, branching flashes of

lightning, as it were, were uninterruptedly flashing up. They were not

flashing up so much as they were quivering and twitching, like the wing

of a dying bird. I rose, went to the window, and stood there until

morning.... The lightning-flashes never ceased for a moment; it was what

is called a pitch-black night. I gazed at the dumb, sandy plain, at the

dark mass of the Neskútchny Park, at the yellowish façades of the

distant buildings, which also seemed to be trembling at every faint

flash.... I gazed, and could not tear myself away; those dumb

lightning-flashes, those restrained gleams, seemed to be responding to

the dumb and secret outbursts which were flaring up within me also.

Morning began to break; the dawn started forth in scarlet patches. With

the approach of the sun the lightning-flashes grew paler and paler; they

quivered more and more infrequently, and vanished at last, drowned in

the sobering and unequivocal light of the breaking day.

And my lightning-flashes vanished within me also. I felt great fatigue

and tranquillity ... but Zinaída’s image continued to hover triumphantly

over my soul. Only it, that image, seemed calm; like a flying swan from

the marshy sedges, it separated itself from the other ignoble figures

which surrounded it, and as I fell asleep, I bowed down before it for

the last time in farewell and confiding adoration....

Oh, gentle emotions, soft sounds, kindness and calming of the

deeply-moved soul, melting joy of the first feelings of love,--where are

ye, where are ye?