“How can I make their acquaintance?” was my first thought when I waked
in the morning. I went out in the garden before morning tea, but I did
not go too near the fence, and saw no one. After drinking tea, I walked
several times up and down the street before the house, and looked into
the windows from a distance…. I fancied her face at a curtain, and I
hurried away in alarm.
“I must make her acquaintance, though,” I thought, pacing distractedly
about the sandy plain that stretches before Neskutchny park … “but how,
that is the question.” I recalled the minutest details of our meeting
yesterday; I had for some reason or other a particularly vivid
recollection of how she had laughed at me…. But while I racked my
brains, and made various plans, fate had already provided for me.
In my absence my mother had received from her new neighbour a letter on
grey paper, sealed with brown wax, such as is only used in notices from
the post-office or on the corks of bottles of cheap wine. In this
letter, which was written in illiterate language and in a slovenly
hand, the princess begged my mother to use her powerful influence in
her behalf; my mother, in the words of the princess, was very intimate
with persons of high position, upon whom her fortunes and her
children’s fortunes depended, as she had some very important business
in hand. “I address myself to you,” she wrote, “as one gentlewoman to
another gentlewoman, and for that reason am glad to avail myself of the
opportunity.” Concluding, she begged my mother’s permission to call
upon her. I found my mother in an unpleasant state of indecision; my
father was not at home, and she had no one of whom to ask advice. Not
to answer a gentlewoman, and a princess into the bargain, was
impossible. But my mother was in a difficulty as to how to answer her.
To write a note in French struck her as unsuitable, and Russian
spelling was not a strong point with my mother herself, and she was
aware of it, and did not care to expose herself. She was overjoyed when
I made my appearance, and at once told me to go round to the
princess’s, and to explain to her by word of mouth that my mother would
always be glad to do her excellency any service within her powers, and
begged her to come to see her at one o’clock. This unexpectedly rapid
fulfilment of my secret desires both delighted and appalled me. I made
no sign, however, of the perturbation which came over me, and as a
preliminary step went to my own room to put on a new necktie and tail
coat; at home I still wore short jackets and lay-down collars, much as
I abominated them.