FOR a cultivated man to be ignorant of foreign languages is a great
inconvenience. Vorotov became acutely conscious of it when, after
taking his degree, he began upon a piece of research work.
"It's awful," he said, breathing hard (although he was only twenty-six
he was fat, heavy, and suffered from shortness of breath).
"It's awful! Without languages I'm like a bird without wings. I
might just as well give up the work."
And he made up his mind at all costs to overcome his innate laziness,
and to learn French and German; and began to look out for a teacher.
One winter noon, as Vorotov was sitting in his study at work, the
servant told him that a young lady was inquiring for him.
"Ask her in," said Vorotov.
And a young lady elaborately dressed in the last fashion walked in.
She introduced herself as a teacher of French, Alice Osipovna
Enquête, and told Vorotov that she had been sent to him by one of
his friends.
"Delighted! Please sit down," said Vorotov, breathing hard and
putting his hand over the collar of his nightshirt (to breathe more
freely he always wore a nightshirt at work instead of a stiff linen
one with collar). "It was Pyotr Sergeitch sent you? Yes, yes . . .
I asked him about it. Delighted!"
As he talked to Mdlle. Enquête he looked at her shyly and with
curiosity. She was a genuine Frenchwoman, very elegant and still
quite young. Judging from her pale, languid face, her short curly
hair, and her unnaturally slim waist, she might have been eighteen;
but looking at her broad, well-developed shoulders, the elegant
lines of her back and her severe eyes, Vorotov thought that she was
not less than three-and-twenty and might be twenty-five; but then
again he began to think she was not more than eighteen. Her face
looked as cold and business-like as the face of a person who has
come to speak about money. She did not once smile or frown, and
only once a look of perplexity flitted over her face when she learnt
that she was not required to teach children, but a stout grown-up
man.
"So, Alice Osipovna," said Vorotov, "we'll have a lesson every
evening from seven to eight. As regards your terms--a rouble a
lesson--I've nothing to say against that. By all means let it be
a rouble. . . ."
And he asked her if she would not have some tea or coffee, whether
it was a fine day, and with a good-natured smile, stroking the baize
of the table, he inquired in a friendly voice who she was, where
she had studied, and what she lived on.
With a cold, business-like expression, Alice Osipovna answered that
she had completed her studies at a private school and had the diploma
of a private teacher, that her father had died lately of scarlet
fever, that her mother was alive and made artificial flowers; that
she, Mdlle. Enquête, taught in a private school till dinnertime,
and after dinner was busy till evening giving lessons in different
good families.
She went away leaving behind her the faint fragrance of a woman's
clothes. For a long time afterwards Vorotov could not settle to
work, but, sitting at the table stroking its green baize surface,
he meditated.
"It's very pleasant to see a girl working to earn her own living,"
he thought. "On the other hand, it's very unpleasant to think that
poverty should not spare such elegant and pretty girls as Alice
Osipovna, and that she, too, should have to struggle for existence.
It's a sad thing!"
Having never seen virtuous Frenchwomen before, he reflected also
that this elegantly dressed young lady with her well-developed
shoulders and exaggeratedly small waist in all probability followed
another calling as well as giving French lessons.
The next evening when the clock pointed to five minutes to seven,
Mdlle. Enquête appeared, rosy from the frost. She opened Margot,
which she had brought with her, and without introduction began:
"French grammar has twenty-six letters. The first letter is called
_A_, the second _B_ . . ."
"Excuse me," Vorotov interrupted, smiling. "I must warn you,
mademoiselle, that you must change your method a little in my case.
You see, I know Russian, Greek, and Latin well. . . . I've studied
comparative philology, and I think we might omit Margot and pass
straight to reading some author."
And he explained to the French girl how grown-up people learn
languages.
"A friend of mine," he said, "wanting to learn modern languages,
laid before him the French, German, and Latin gospels, and read
them side by side, carefully analysing each word, and would you
believe it, he attained his object in less than a year. Let us do
the same. We'll take some author and read him."
The French girl looked at him in perplexity. Evidently the suggestion
seemed to her very naïve and ridiculous. If this strange proposal
had been made to her by a child, she would certainly have been angry
and have scolded it, but as he was a grown-up man and very stout
and she could not scold him, she only shrugged her shoulders hardly
perceptibly and said:
"As you please."
Vorotov rummaged in his bookcase and picked out a dog's-eared French
book.
"Will this do?"
"It's all the same," she said.
"In that case let us begin, and good luck to it! Let's begin with
the title . . . 'Mémoires.'"
"Reminiscences," Mdlle. Enquête translated.
With a good-natured smile, breathing hard, he spent a quarter of
an hour over the word "Mémoires," and as much over the word _de_,
and this wearied the young lady. She answered his questions languidly,
grew confused, and evidently did not understand her pupil well, and
did not attempt to understand him. Vorotov asked her questions, and
at the same time kept looking at her fair hair and thinking:
"Her hair isn't naturally curly; she curls it. It's a strange thing!
She works from morning to night, and yet she has time to curl her
hair."
At eight o'clock precisely she got up, and saying coldly and dryly,
"Au revoir, monsieur," walked out of the study, leaving behind her
the same tender, delicate, disturbing fragrance. For a long time
again her pupil did nothing; he sat at the table meditating.
During the days that followed he became convinced that his teacher
was a charming, conscientious, and precise young lady, but that she
was very badly educated, and incapable of teaching grown-up people,
and he made up his mind not to waste his time, to get rid of her,
and to engage another teacher. When she came the seventh time he
took out of his pocket an envelope with seven roubles in it, and
holding it in his hand, became very confused and began:
"Excuse me, Alice Osipovna, but I ought to tell you . . . I'm under
painful necessity . . ."
Seeing the envelope, the French girl guessed what was meant, and
for the first time during their lessons her face quivered and her
cold, business-like expression vanished. She coloured a little, and
dropping her eyes, began nervously fingering her slender gold chain.
And Vorotov, seeing her perturbation, realised how much a rouble
meant to her, and how bitter it would be to her to lose what she
was earning.
"I ought to tell you," he muttered, growing more and more confused,
and quavering inwardly; he hurriedly stuffed the envelope into his
pocket and went on: "Excuse me, I . . . I must leave you for ten
minutes."
And trying to appear as though he had not in the least meant to get
rid of her, but only to ask her permission to leave her for a short
time, he went into the next room and sat there for ten minutes. And
then he returned more embarrassed than ever: it struck him that she
might have interpreted his brief absence in some way of her own,
and he felt awkward.
The lessons began again. Yorotov felt no interest in them. Realising
that he would gain nothing from the lessons, he gave the French
girl liberty to do as she liked, asking her nothing and not
interrupting her. She translated away as she pleased ten pages
during a lesson, and he did not listen, breathed hard, and having
nothing better to do, gazed at her curly head, or her soft white
hands or her neck and sniffed the fragrance of her clothes. He
caught himself thinking very unsuitable thoughts, and felt ashamed,
or he was moved to tenderness, and then he felt vexed and wounded
that she was so cold and business-like with him, and treated him
as a pupil, never smiling and seeming afraid that he might accidentally
touch her. He kept wondering how to inspire her with confidence and
get to know her better, and to help her, to make her understand how
badly she taught, poor thing.
One day Mdlle. Enquête came to the lesson in a smart pink dress,
slightly _décolleté_, and surrounded by such a fragrance that she
seemed to be wrapped in a cloud, and, if one blew upon her, ready
to fly away into the air or melt away like smoke. She apologised
and said she could stay only half an hour for the lesson, as she
was going straight from the lesson to a dance.
He looked at her throat and the back of her bare neck, and thought
he understood why Frenchwomen had the reputation of frivolous
creatures easily seduced; he was carried away by this cloud of
fragrance, beauty, and bare flesh, while she, unconscious of his
thoughts and probably not in the least interested in them, rapidly
turned over the pages and translated at full steam:
"'He was walking the street and meeting a gentleman his friend and
saying, "Where are you striving to seeing your face so pale it makes
me sad."'"
The "Mémoires" had long been finished, and now Alice was translating
some other book. One day she came an hour too early for the lesson,
apologizing and saying that she wanted to leave at seven and go to
the Little Theatre. Seeing her out after the lesson, Vorotov dressed
and went to the theatre himself. He went, and fancied that he was
going simply for change and amusement, and that he was not thinking
about Alice at all. He could not admit that a serious man, preparing
for a learned career, lethargic in his habits, could fling up his
work and go to the theatre simply to meet there a girl he knew very
little, who was unintelligent and utterly unintellectual.
Yet for some reason his heart was beating during the intervals, and
without realizing what he was doing, he raced about the corridors
and foyer like a boy impatiently looking for some one, and he was
disappointed when the interval was over. And when he saw the familiar
pink dress and the handsome shoulders under the tulle, his heart
quivered as though with a foretaste of happiness; he smiled joyfully,
and for the first time in his life experienced the sensation of
jealousy.
Alice was walking with two unattractive-looking students and an
officer. She was laughing, talking loudly, and obviously flirting.
Vorotov had never seen her like that. She was evidently happy,
contented, warm, sincere. What for? Why? Perhaps because these men
were her friends and belonged to her own circle. And Vorotov felt
there was a terrible gulf between himself and that circle. He bowed
to his teacher, but she gave him a chilly nod and walked quickly
by; she evidently did not care for her friends to know that she had
pupils, and that she had to give lessons to earn money.
After the meeting at the theatre Vorotov realised that he was in
love. . . . During the subsequent lessons he feasted his eyes on
his elegant teacher, and without struggling with himself, gave full
rein to his imaginations, pure and impure. Mdlle. Enquête's face
did not cease to be cold; precisely at eight o'clock every evening
she said coldly, "Au revoir, monsieur," and he felt she cared nothing
about him, and never would care anything about him, and that his
position was hopeless.
Sometimes in the middle of a lesson he would begin dreaming, hoping,
making plans. He inwardly composed declarations of love, remembered
that Frenchwomen were frivolous and easily won, but it was enough
for him to glance at the face of his teacher for his ideas to be
extinguished as a candle is blown out when you bring it into the
wind on the verandah. Once, overcome, forgetting himself as though
in delirium, he could not restrain himself, and barred her way as
she was going from the study into the entry after the lesson, and,
gasping for breath and stammering, began to declare his love:
"You are dear to me! I . . . I love you! Allow me to speak."
And Alice turned pale--probably from dismay, reflecting that after
this declaration she could not come here again and get a rouble a
lesson. With a frightened look in her eyes she said in a loud
whisper:
"Ach, you mustn't! Don't speak, I entreat you! You mustn't!"
And Vorotov did not sleep all night afterwards; he was tortured by
shame; he blamed himself and thought intensely. It seemed to him
that he had insulted the girl by his declaration, that she would
not come to him again.
He resolved to find out her address from the address bureau in the
morning, and to write her a letter of apology. But Alice came without
a letter. For the first minute she felt uncomfortable, then she
opened a book and began briskly and rapidly translating as usual:
"'Oh, young gentleman, don't tear those flowers in my garden which
I want to be giving to my ill daughter. . . .'"
She still comes to this day. Four books have already been translated,
but Vorotov knows no French but the word "Mémoires," and when he
is asked about his literary researches, he waves his hand, and
without answering, turns the conversation to the weather.