As soon as Anna Fedorovna learned that the officer of hussars was the son
of Count Feódor Turbin, she was thrown into a great state of excitement.
"Oh! great heavens![83] he is my darling! Danílo! run, hurry, tell them the
lady invites them to stay at her house," she cried, in great agitation, and
hastening to the servants' room. "Lízanka! Ustiushka! You must have your
room put in order, Liza. You can go into your uncle's room; and you,
brother,--brother, you can sleep to-night in the parlor. It's for only one
night."
[Footnote 83: _bátiuzhki moï!_]
"That's nothing, sister! I would sleep on the floor."
"He must be a handsome fellow, I think, if he's like his father. Only let
me see him, the turtle-dove! You shall see for yourself, Liza. Ah! his
father was handsome! Where shall we put the table? Let it go there," said
Anna Fedorovna, running about here and there. "There now, bring in two
beds; get one from the overseer, and get from the _étagère_ the glass
candlestick which my brother gave me for my birthday, and put in a wax
candle."
At last all was ready. Liza, in spite of her mother's interference,
arranged her room in her own way for the two officers.
She brought out clean linen sheets, fragrant of mignonnette, and had the
beds made; she ordered a carafe of water and candles near it on the little
table. She burned scented paper in the girls' room, and moved her own
little bed into her uncle's chamber.
Anna Fedorovna gradually became calm, and sat down again in her usual
place; she even took out her cards; but instead of shuffling them, she
leaned on her fat elbow, and gave herself up to her thoughts.
"How time has gone! how time has gone!" she exclaimed in a whisper. "It is
long! long! isn't it? I seem to see him now! _Akh!_ he was a scamp!"
And the tears came into her eyes. "Now here is Lízanka, but she isn't at
all what I was at her age. She is a nice girl; but no, not quite....
"Lízanka, you had better wear your mousselin-de-laine dress this evening."
"But are you going to invite them down-stairs, mamasha? You had better not
do it," rejoined Liza, with a feeling of invincible agitation at the
thought of seeing the officers. "You had better not, mamasha!"
In point of fact, she did not so much desire to see them, as she felt
apprehensive of some painful pleasure awaiting her, as it seemed to her.
"Perhaps they themselves would like to make our acquaintance, Lízotchka,"
said Anna Fedorovna, glancing at her daughter's hair, and at the same time
thinking, "No, not such hair as I had at her age. No, Lízotchka, how much I
could wish for you!" And she really wished something very excellent for her
daughter, but she could scarcely look forward to a match with the count;
she could not desire such a relationship as she herself had formed with his
father; but that something good would come of it, she wished very, very
much for her daughter. She possibly had the desire to live over again in
her daughter's happiness all the life which she lived with the late count.
The old cavalryman was also somewhat excited by the count's coming. He went
to his room, and shut himself up in it. At the end of a quarter of an hour,
he re-appeared dressed in a Hungarian coat and blue pantaloons; and with a
troubled-happy expression of countenance, such as a girl wears when she
puts on her first ball-dress, he started for the room assigned to the
guests.
"We shall have a glimpse of some of the hussars of to-day, sister. The late
count was indeed a genuine hussar. We shall see! we shall see!"
The officers had by this time come in by the back entrance, and were in the
room that had been put at their service.
"There now," said the count, stretching himself out in his dusty boots on
the bed which had just been made for him, "if we aren't better off here
than we were there in that hovel with the cockroaches!"
"Better? of course; but think what obligations we are putting ourselves
under to the people here."
"What rubbish! You must always be a practical man. They are mighty glad to
have us, of course. Fellow!" cried the count, "ask some one to put a
curtain up at this window, else there'll be a draught in the night."
At this moment the old man came in to make the acquaintance of the
officers. Though he was somewhat confused, he did not fail to tell how he
had been a comrade of the late count's, who had been very congenial to him,
and he even went so far as to say that more than once he had been under
obligations to the late count. Whether he meant, in speaking of the
obligations to the late count, a reference to the hundred rubles which the
count had borrowed and never returned, or to his throwing him into the
snow-drift, or to the slap in the face, the old man failed to explain.
However, the count was very urbane with the old cavalryman, and thanked him
for his hospitality.
"You must excuse us if it is not very luxurious, count,"--he almost said
"your excellency," as he had got out of the habit of meeting with men of
rank. "My sister's house is rather small. As for the window here, we will
find something to serve as a curtain right away, and it will be
first-rate," added the little old man; and under the pretext of going for a
curtain, but really because he wanted to give his report about the officers
as quickly as possible, he left the room. The pretty little Ustiushka came,
bringing her mistress's shawl to serve as a curtain. She was also
commissioned to ask if the gentlemen would not like some tea.
The cheerful hospitality had had a manifestly beneficent influence upon the
count's spirits. He laughed and jested with Ustiushka gayly, and went to
such lengths that she even called him a bad man; he asked her if her
mistress was pretty, and in reply to her question whether he would like
some tea, replied that she might please bring him some, but above all, as
his supper was not ready, he would like some vodka now, and a little lunch,
and some sherry if there was any.
The old uncle was in raptures over the young count's politeness, and
praised to the skies the young generation of officers, saying that the men
of the present day were far preferable to those of the past.
Anna Fedorovna could not agree to that,--no one could be any better than
Count Feódor Ivánovitch,--and she was beginning to grow seriously angry,
and remarked dryly, "For you, brother, the one who flatters you last is the
best! Without any question, the men of our time are better educated, but
still Feódor Ivánovitch could dance the schottische, and was so amiable
that everybody in his day, you might say, was stupid compared to him! only
he did not care for any one else beside me. Oh, certainly there were fine
men in the old time!"
At this moment came the message requesting the vodka, the lunch, and the
sherry.
"There now, just like you, brother! You never do things right. We ought to
have had supper prepared.... Liza, attend to it, that's my darling."
Liza hastened to the storeroom for mushrooms and fresh cream butter, and
told the cook to prepare beef cutlets.
"How much sherry is there? Haven't you any left, brother?"
"No, sister; I never have had any."
"What! no sherry? but what is it you drink in your tea?"
"That is rum, Anna Fedorovna."
"Isn't that the same thing? Give them some of that. It is all the same,
it'll make no difference. Or would it not be better to invite them down
here, brother? You know all about it. They would not be offended, I
imagine, would they?"
The cavalryman assured her that he would answer for it that the count, in
his goodness of heart, would not decline, and that he would certainly bring
them.
Anna Fedorovna went off to put on, for some reason or other, her gros-grain
dress and a new cap; but Liza was so busy that she had no time to take off
her pink gingham dress with wide sleeves. Moreover, she was terribly
wrought up; it seemed to her that something astonishing, like a very low
black cloud, was sweeping down upon her soul.
This count-hussar, this handsome fellow, seemed to her an absolutely novel
and unexpected but beautiful creature. His character, his habits, his
words, it seemed to her, must be something extraordinary, such as had never
come into the range of her experience. All that he thought and said must be
bright and true; all that he did must be honorable; his whole appearance
must be beautiful. She could have no doubt of that. If he had demanded not
merely a lunch and sherry, but even a bath in spirits of salvia, she would
not have been surprised, she would not have blamed him, and she would have
been convinced that this was just and reasonable.
The count immediately accepted when the cavalryman brought him his sister's
invitation; he combed his hair, put on his coat, and took his cigar-case.
"Will you come?" he asked of Polózof.
"Indeed we had better not go," replied the cornet; "_ils feront des frais
pour nous recevoir_."
"Rubbish! it will make them happy. Besides, I have been making
inquiries ... there's a pretty daughter here.... Come along," said the
count in French.
"_Je vous en prie, messieurs_," said the cavalryman, merely for the sake of
giving them to understand that he also could speak French, and understood
what the officers were saying.