'And you don't care for music?' I began again.
Susanna glanced at me again. Undoubtedly there was something suggesting
a wild creature in her eyes. She obviously had not expected nor desired
the continuation of our conversation.
'I did not say that,' she brought out slowly.
'Troo-too-too-too-too-oo-oo...' the bassoon growled with startling fury,
executing the final flourishes. I turned round, caught sight of the red
neck of Mr. Ratsch, swollen like a boa-constrictor's, beneath his
projecting ears, and very disgusting I thought him.
'But that... instrument you surely do not care for,' I said in an
undertone.
'No... I don't care for it,' she responded, as though catching my secret
hint.
'Oho!' thought I, and felt, as it were, delighted at something.
'Susanna Ivanovna,' Eleonora Karpovna announced suddenly in her German
Russian, 'music greatly loves, and herself very beautifully plays the
piano, only she likes not to play the piano when she is greatly pressed
to play.'
Susanna made Eleonora Karpovna no reply--she did not even look at
her--only there was a faint movement of her eyes, under their dropped
lids, in her direction. From this movement alone--this movement of her
pupils--I could perceive what was the nature of the feeling Susanna
cherished for the second wife of her stepfather.... And again I was
delighted at something.
Meanwhile the duet was over. Fustov got up and with hesitating footsteps
approached the window, near which Susanna and I were sitting, and asked
her if she had received from Lengold's the music that he had promised to
order her from Petersburg.
'Selections from _Robert le Diable,_' he added, turning to me,
'from that new opera that every one's making such a fuss about.'
'No, I haven't got it yet,' answered Susanna, and turning round with her
face to the window she whispered hurriedly. 'Please, Alexander
Daviditch, I entreat you, don't make me play to-day. I don't feel in the
mood a bit.'
'What's that? Robert le Diable of Meyer-beer?' bellowed Ivan Demianitch,
coming up to us: 'I don't mind betting it's a first-class article! He's
a Jew, and all Jews, like all Czechs, are born musicians. Especially
Jews. That's right, isn't it, Susanna Ivanovna? Hey? Ha, ha, ha, ha!'
In Mr. Ratsch's last words, and this time even in his guffaw, there
could be heard something more than his usual bantering tone--the desire
to wound was evident. So, at least, I fancied, and so Susanna understood
him. She started instinctively, flushed red, and bit her lower lip. A
spot of light, like the gleam of a tear, flashed on her eyelash, and
rising quickly, she went out of the room.
'Where are you off to, Susanna Ivanovna?' Mr. Ratsch bawled after her.
'Let her be, Ivan Demianitch, 'put in Eleonora Karpovna. 'Wenn sie
einmal so et was im Kopfe hat...'
'A nervous temperament,'Ratsch pronounced, rotating on his heels, and
slapping himself on the haunch, 'suffers with the _plexus solaris._
Oh! you needn't look at me like that, Piotr Gavrilitch! I've had a go
at anatomy too, ha, ha! I'm even a bit of a doctor! You ask Eleonora
Karpovna... I cure all her little ailments! Oh, I'm a famous hand at
that!'
'You must for ever be joking, Ivan Demianitch,' the latter responded
with displeasure, while Fustov, laughing and gracefully swaying to and
fro, looked at the husband and wife.
'And why not be joking, mein Mütterchen?' retorted Ivan Demianitch.
'Life's given us for use, and still more for beauty, as some celebrated
poet has observed. Kolka, wipe your nose, little savage!'