“I have the honour of addressing the Princess Zasyekin?”
“I am the Princess Zasyekin; and you are the son of Mr. V.?”
“Yes. I have come to you with a message from my mother.”
“Sit down, please. Vonifaty, where are my keys, have you seen them?”
I communicated to Madame Zasyekin my mother’s reply to her note. She
heard me out, drumming with her fat red fingers on the window-pane, and
when I had finished, she stared at me once more.
“Very good; I’ll be sure to come,” she observed at last. “But how young
you are! How old are you, may I ask?”
“Sixteen,” I replied, with an involuntary stammer.
The princess drew out of her pocket some greasy papers covered with
writing, raised them right up to her nose, and began looking through
them.
“A good age,” she ejaculated suddenly, turning round restlessly on her
chair. “And do you, pray, make yourself at home. I don’t stand on
ceremony.”
“No, indeed,” I thought, scanning her unprepossessing person with a
disgust I could not restrain.
At that instant another door flew open quickly, and in the doorway
stood the girl I had seen the previous evening in the garden. She
lifted her hand, and a mocking smile gleamed in her face.
“Here is my daughter,” observed the princess, indicating her with her
elbow. “Zinotchka, the son of our neighbour, Mr. V. What is your name,
allow me to ask?”
“Vladimir,” I answered, getting up, and stuttering in my excitement.
“And your father’s name?”
“Petrovitch.”
“Ah! I used to know a commissioner of police whose name was Vladimir
Petrovitch too. Vonifaty! don’t look for my keys; the keys are in my
pocket.”
The young girl was still looking at me with the same smile, faintly
fluttering her eyelids, and putting her head a little on one side.
“I have seen Monsieur Voldemar before,” she began. (The silvery note of
her voice ran through me with a sort of sweet shiver.) “You will let me
call you so?”
“Oh, please,” I faltered.
“Where was that?” asked the princess.
The young princess did not answer her mother.
“Have you anything to do just now?” she said, not taking her eyes off
me.
“Oh, no.”
“Would you like to help me wind some wool? Come in here, to me.”
She nodded to me and went out of the drawing-room. I followed her.
In the room we went into, the furniture was a little better, and was
arranged with more taste. Though, indeed, at the moment, I was scarcely
capable of noticing anything; I moved as in a dream and felt all
through my being a sort of intense blissfulness that verged on
imbecility.
The young princess sat down, took out a skein of red wool and,
motioning me to a seat opposite her, carefully untied the skein and
laid it across my hands. All this she did in silence with a sort of
droll deliberation and with the same bright sly smile on her slightly
parted lips. She began to wind the wool on a bent card, and all at once
she dazzled me with a glance so brilliant and rapid, that I could not
help dropping my eyes. When her eyes, which were generally half closed,
opened to their full extent, her face was completely transfigured; it
was as though it were flooded with light.
“What did you think of me yesterday, M’sieu Voldemar?” she asked after
a brief pause. “You thought ill of me, I expect?”
“I … princess … I thought nothing … how can I?…” I answered in
confusion.
“Listen,” she rejoined. “You don’t know me yet. I’m a very strange
person; I like always to be told the truth. You, I have just heard, are
sixteen, and I am twenty-one: you see I’m a great deal older than you,
and so you ought always to tell me the truth … and to do what I tell
you,” she added. “Look at me: why don’t you look at me?”
I was still more abashed; however, I raised my eyes to her. She smiled,
not her former smile, but a smile of approbation. “Look at me,” she
said, dropping her voice caressingly: “I don’t dislike that … I like
your face; I have a presentiment we shall be friends. But do you like
me?” she added slyly.
“Princess …” I was beginning.
“In the first place, you must call me Zinaïda Alexandrovna, and in the
second place it’s a bad habit for children”—(she corrected herself)
“for young people—not to say straight out what they feel. That’s all
very well for grown-up people. You like me, don’t you?”
Though I was greatly delighted that she talked so freely to me, still I
was a little hurt. I wanted to show her that she had not a mere boy to
deal with, and assuming as easy and serious an air as I could, I
observed, “Certainly. I like you very much, Zinaïda Alexandrovna; I
have no wish to conceal it.”
She shook her head very deliberately. “Have you a tutor?” she asked
suddenly.
“No; I’ve not had a tutor for a long, long while.”