MY father was forty-eight when he took as his second wife Avdotia
Vassilievna Epifanov.
I suspect that when, that spring, he had departed for the country with
the girls, he had been in that communicatively happy, sociable mood in
which gamblers usually find themselves who have retired from play after
winning large stakes. He had felt that he still had a fortune left to
him which, so long as he did not squander it on gaming, might be
used for our advancement in life. Moreover, it was springtime, he was
unexpectedly well supplied with ready money, he was alone, and he had
nothing to do. As he conversed with Jakoff on various matters, and
remembered both the interminable suit with the Epifanovs and Avdotia’s
beauty (it was a long while since he had seen her), I can imagine him
saying: “How do you think we ought to act in this suit, Jakoff? My idea
is simply to let the cursed land go. Eh? What do you think about it?”
I can imagine, too, how, thus interrogated, Jakoff twirled his fingers
behind his back in a deprecatory sort of way, and proceeded to argue
that it all the same, “Peter Alexandritch, we are in the right.”
Nevertheless, I further conjecture, Papa ordered the dogcart to be got
ready, put on his fashionable olive-coloured driving-coat, brushed up
the remnants of his hair, sprinkled his clothes with scent, and, greatly
pleased to think that he was acting a la seignior (as well as, even
more, revelling in the prospect of soon seeing a pretty woman), drove
off to visit his neighbours.
I can imagine, too, that when the flustered housemaid ran to inform
Peter Vassilievitch that Monsieur Irtenieff himself had called, Peter
answered angrily, “Well, what has he come for?” and, stepping softly
about the house, first went into his study to put on his old soiled
jacket, and then sent down word to the cook that on no account
whatever--no, not even if she were ordered to do so by the mistress
herself--was she to add anything to luncheon.
Since, later, I often saw Papa with Peter, I can form a very good idea
of this first interview between them. I can imagine that, despite Papa’s
proposal to end the suit in a peaceful manner, Peter was morose and
resentful at the thought of having sacrificed his career to his mother,
and at Papa having done nothing of the kind--a by no means surprising
circumstance, Peter probably said to himself. Next, I can see Papa
taking no notice of this ill-humour, but cracking quips and jests, while
Peter gradually found himself forced to treat him as a humorist with
whom he felt offended one moment and inclined to be reconciled the next.
Indeed, with his instinct for making fun of everything, Papa often used
to address Peter as “Colonel;” and though I can remember Peter once
replying, with an unusually violent stutter and his face scarlet
with indignation, that he had never been a c-c-colonel, but only a
l-l-lieutenant, Papa called him “Colonel” again before another five
minutes were out.
Lubotshka told me that, up to the time of Woloda’s and my arrival from
Moscow, there had been daily meetings with the Epifanovs, and that
things had been very lively, since Papa, who had a genius for arranging,
everything with a touch of originality and wit, as well as in a simple
and refined manner, had devised shooting and fishing parties and
fireworks for the Epifanovs’ benefit. All these festivities--so said
Lubotshka--would have gone off splendidly but for the intolerable Peter,
who had spoilt everything by his puffing and stuttering. After our
coming, however, the Epifanovs only visited us twice, and we went once
to their house, while after St. Peter’s Day (on which, it being Papa’s
nameday, the Epifanovs called upon us in common with a crowd of other
guests) our relations with that family came entirely to an end, and, in
future, only Papa went to see them.
During the brief period when I had opportunities of seeing Papa and
Dunetchka (as her mother called Avdotia) together, this is what I
remarked about them. Papa remained unceasingly in the same buoyant mood
as had so greatly struck me on the day after our arrival. So gay and
youthful and full of life and happy did he seem that the beams of
his felicity extended themselves to all around him, and involuntarily
communicated to them a similar frame of mind. He never stirred from
Avdotia’s side so long as she was in the room, but either kept on plying
her with sugary-sweet compliments which made me feel ashamed for him
or, with his gaze fixed upon her with an air at once passionate and
complacent, sat hitching his shoulder and coughing as from time to time
he smiled and whispered something in her ear. Yet throughout he wore
the same expression of raillery as was peculiar to him even in the most
serious matters.
As a rule, Avdotia herself seemed to catch the infection of the
happiness which sparkled at this period in Papa’s large blue eyes; yet
there were moments also when she would be seized with such a fit of
shyness that I, who knew the feeling well, was full of sympathy and
compassion as I regarded her embarrassment. At moments of this kind she
seemed to be afraid of every glance and every movement--to be supposing
that every one was looking at her, every one thinking of no one but
her, and that unfavourably. She would glance timidly from one person to
another, the colour coming and going in her cheeks, and then begin
to talk loudly and defiantly, but, for the most part, nonsense; until
presently, realising this, and supposing that Papa and every one else
had heard her, she would blush more painfully than ever. Yet Papa never
noticed her nonsense, for he was too much taken up with coughing and
with gazing at her with his look of happy, triumphant devotion. I
noticed, too, that, although these fits of shyness attacked Avdotia,
without any visible cause, they not infrequently ensued upon Papa’s
mention of one or another young and beautiful woman. Frequent
transitions from depression to that strange, awkward gaiety of hers
to which I have referred before the repetition of favourite words and
turns of speech of Papa’s; the continuation of discussions with others
which Papa had already begun--all these things, if my father had not
been the principal actor in the matter and I had been a little older,
would have explained to me the relations subsisting between him and
Avdotia. At the time, however, I never surmised them--no, not even when
Papa received from her brother Peter a letter which so upset him that
not again until the end of August did he go to call upon the Epifanovs’.
Then, however, he began his visits once more, and ended by informing
us, on the day before Woloda and I were to return to Moscow, that he was
about to take Avdotia Vassilievna Epifanov to be his wife.