From the first, the member of this company who struck me the most was
Lubov Sergievna, who, holding a lapdog in her arms and wearing stout
laced boots, was the last of the four ladies to ascend the staircase,
and twice stopped to gaze at me intently and then kiss her little dog.
She was anything but good-looking, since she was red-haired, thin,
short, and slightly crooked. What made her plain face all the plainer
was the queer way in which her hair was parted to one side (it looked
like the wigs which bald women contrive for themselves). However much I
should have liked to applaud my friend, I could not find a single comely
feature in her. Even her brown eyes, though expressive of good-humour,
were small and dull--were, in fact, anything but pretty; while her hands
(those most characteristic of features), were though neither large nor
ill-shaped, coarse and red.
As soon as we reached the verandah, each of the ladies, except Dimitri’s
sister Varenika--who also had been regarding me attentively out of
her large, dark-grey eyes--said a few words to me before resuming her
occupation, while Varenika herself began to read aloud from a book which
she held on her lap and steadied with her finger.
The Princess Maria Ivanovna was a tall, well-built woman of forty. To
judge by the curls of half-grey hair which descended below her cap one
might have taken her for more, but as soon as ever one observed the
fresh, extraordinarily tender, and almost wrinkleless face, as well
as, most of all, the lively, cheerful sparkle of the large eyes, one
involuntarily took her for less. Her eyes were black and very frank, her
lips thin and slightly severe, her nose regular and slightly inclined to
the left, and her hands ringless, large, and almost like those of a man,
but with finely tapering fingers. She wore a dark-blue dress fastened
to the throat and sitting closely to her firm, still youthful waist--a
waist which she evidently pinched. Lastly, she held herself very
upright, and was knitting a garment of some kind. As soon as I stepped
on to the verandah she took me by the hand, drew me to her as though
wishing to scrutinise me more closely, and said, as she gazed at me with
the same cold, candid glance as her son’s, that she had long known me
by report from Dimitri, and that therefore, in order to make my
acquaintance thoroughly, she had invited me to stay these twenty-four
hours in her house.
“Do just as you please here,” she said, “and stand on no ceremony
whatever with us, even as we shall stand on none with you. Pray walk,
read, listen, or sleep as the mood may take you.”
Sophia Ivanovna was an old maid and the Princess’s younger sister,
though she looked the elder of the two. She had that exceedingly
overstuffed appearance which old maids always present who are short
of stature but wear corsets. It seemed as though her healthiness had
shifted upwards to the point of choking her, her short, fat hands
would not meet below her projecting bust, and the line of her waist was
scarcely visible at all.
Notwithstanding that the Princess Maria Ivanovna had black hair and
eyes, while Sophia Ivanovna had white hair and large, vivacious,
tranquilly blue eyes (a rare combination), there was a great likeness
between the two sisters, for they had the same expression, nose, and
lips. The only difference was that Sophia’s nose and lips were a trifle
coarser than Maria’s, and that, when she smiled, those features inclined
towards the right, whereas Maria’s inclined towards the left. Sophia, to
judge by her dress and coiffure, was still youthful at heart, and would
never have displayed grey curls, even if she had possessed them. Yet at
first her glance and bearing towards me seemed very proud, and made me
nervous, whereas I at once felt at home with the Princess. Perhaps it
was only Sophia’s stoutness and a certain resemblance to portraits of
Catherine the Great that gave her, in my eyes, a haughty aspect, but at
all events I felt quite intimidated when she looked at me intently and
said, “Friends of our friends are our friends also.” I became reassured
and changed my opinion about her only when, after saying those words,
she opened her mouth and sighed deeply. It may be that she owed her
habit of sighing after every few words--with a great distention of the
mouth and a slight drooping of her large blue eyes--to her stoutness,
yet it was none the less one which expressed so much good-humour that
I at once lost all fear of her, and found her actually attractive. Her
eyes were charming, her voice pleasant and musical, and even the flowing
lines of her fullness seemed to my youthful vision not wholly lacking in
beauty.
I had imagined that Lubov Sergievna, as my friend’s friend, would at
once say something friendly and familiar to me; yet, after gazing at me
fixedly for a while, as though in doubt whether the remark she was about
to make to me would not be too friendly, she at length asked me what
faculty I was in. After that she stared at me as before, in evident
hesitation as to whether or not to say something civil and familiar,
until, remarking her perplexity, I besought her with a look to speak
freely. Yet all she then said was, “They tell me the Universities pay
very little attention to science now,” and turned away to call her
little dog.
All that evening she spoke only in disjointed fragments of this
kind--fragments which had no connection either with the point or with
one another; yet I had such faith in Dimitri, and he so often kept
looking from her to me with an expression which mutely asked me, “Now,
what do you think of that?” that, though I entirely failed to persuade
myself that in Lubov Sergievna there was anything to speak of, I could
not bear to express the thought, even to myself.
As for the last member of the family, Varenika, she was a well-developed
girl of sixteen. The only good features in her were a pair of dark-grey
eyes,--which, in their expression of gaiety mingled with quiet
attention, greatly resembled those of her aunt--a long coil of flaxen
hair, and extremely delicate, beautiful hands.
“I expect, Monsieur Nicolas, you find it wearisome to hear a story begun
from the middle?” said Sophia Ivanovna with her good-natured sigh as she
turned over some pieces of clothing which she was sewing. The reading
aloud had ceased for the moment because Dimitri had left the room on
some errand or another.
“Or perhaps you have read Rob Roy before?” she added.
At that period I thought it incumbent upon me, in virtue of my student’s
uniform, to reply in a very “clever and original” manner to every
question put to me by people whom I did not know very well, and regarded
such short, clear answers as “Yes,” “No,” “I like it,” or “I do not care
for it,” as things to be ashamed of. Accordingly, looking down at my new
and fashionably-cut trousers and the glittering buttons of my tunic, I
replied that I had never read Rob Roy, but that it interested me greatly
to hear it, since I preferred to read books from the middle rather than
from the beginning.
“It is twice as interesting,” I added with a self-satisfied smirk;
“for then one can guess what has gone before as well as what is to come
after.”
The Princess smiled what I thought was a forced smile, but one which I
discovered later to be her only one.
“Well, perhaps that is true,” she said. “But tell me, Nicolas (you will
not be offended if I drop the Monsieur)--tell me, are you going to be in
town long? When do you go away?”
“I do not know quite. Perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps not for some while
yet,” I replied for some reason or another, though I knew perfectly well
that in reality we were to go to-morrow.
“I wish you could stop longer, both for your own sake and for
Dimitri’s,” she said in a meditative manner. “At your age friendship is
a weak thing.”
I felt that every one was looking at me, and waiting to see what I
should say--though certainly Varenika made a pretence of looking at
her aunt’s work. I felt, in fact, as though I were being put through an
examination, and that it behoved me to figure in it as well as possible.
“Yes, to ME Dimitri’s friendship is most useful,” I replied, “but to HIM
mine cannot be of any use at all, since he is a thousand times better
than I.” (Dimitri could not hear what I said, or I should have feared
his detecting the insincerity of my words.)
Again the Princess smiled her unnatural, yet characteristically natural,
smile.
“Just listen to him!” she said. “But it is YOU who are the little
monster of perfection.”
“‘Monster of perfection,’” I thought to myself. “That is splendid. I
must make a note of it.”
“Yet, to dismiss yourself, he has been extraordinarily clever in that
quarter,” she went on in a lower tone (which pleased me somehow) as she
indicated Lubov Sergievna with her eyes, “since he has discovered in our
poor little Auntie” (such was the pet name which they gave Lubov) “all
sorts of perfections which I, who have known her and her little dog for
twenty years, had never yet suspected. Varenika, go and tell them to
bring me a glass of water,” she added, letting her eyes wander again.
Probably she had bethought her that it was too soon, or not entirely
necessary, to let me into all the family secrets. “Yet no--let HIM go,
for he has nothing to do, while you are reading. Pray go to the door, my
friend,” she said to me, “and walk about fifteen steps down the passage.
Then halt and call out pretty loudly, ‘Peter, bring Maria Ivanovna a
glass of iced water’”--and she smiled her curious smile once more.
“I expect she wants to say something about me in my absence,” I thought
to myself as I left the room. “I expect she wants to remark that she can
see very clearly that I am a very, very clever young man.”
Hardly had I taken a dozen steps when I was overtaken by Sophia
Ivanovna, who, though fat and short of breath, trod with surprising
lightness and agility.
“Merci, mon cher,” she said. “I will go and tell them myself.”