She blushed all over. Decidedly her face could be extremely attractive on occasion . . . She had a simplehearted face, but not at all simpleminded, slightly pale, anemic. Her cheeks were very gaunt, even hollow, and little wrinkles were beginning to accumulate on her forehead, but there were none around her eyes yet, and her eyes, rather big and wide open, always shone with a gentle and quiet light, which had attracted me to her from the very first day. I also liked it that there was nothing sad or pinched in her face; on the contrary, its expression would even have been gay, if she hadn’t been so frequently alarmed, sometimes for no reason, getting frightened and jumping up sometimes over nothing at all, or listening fearfully to some new conversation, until she was reassured that all was still well. With her, “all was well” meant precisely that “all was as before.” If only nothing changed, if only nothing new happened, even something fortunate! . . . One might think she had somehow been frightened in childhood. Besides her eyes, I liked the elongated shape of her face, and, I believe, if her cheekbones had only been a little less wide, she might have been considered a beauty, not only in her youth, but even now as well. Now she was no more than thirty-nine years old, but her dark blond hair was already strongly streaked with gray.
Tatyana Pavlovna looked at her with decided indignation.
“Before such a whelp? To tremble like that before him! You’re a funny one, Sofya; you make me angry, that’s what!”
“Ah, Tatyana Pavlovna, why are you like this with him now! Or maybe you’re joking, eh?” my mother added, noticing something like a smile on Tatyana Pavlovna’s face. Indeed, Tatyana Pavlovna’s abuse was sometimes impossible to take seriously, but she smiled (if she did smile), of course, only at my mother, because she loved her kindness terribly and had undoubtedly noticed how happy she was just then at my submissiveness.
“I, of course, can’t help feeling it, if you yourself fall upon people, Tatyana Pavlovna, and precisely now, when I came in and said, ‘Hello, mama,’ which is something I’ve never done before,” I finally found it necessary to point out to her.
“Just imagine,” she boiled up at once, “he considers it a great deed? Should we go down on our knees to you or something, because you’ve been polite for once in your life? And as if that’s politeness! Why do you look off into the corner when you come in? As if I don’t know how you storm and rage at her! You might greet me as well, I swaddled you, I’m your godmother.”
Naturally, I disdained to reply. Just then my sister came in, and I quickly turned to her:
“Liza, I saw Vasin today, and he asked me about you. You’re acquainted?”
“Yes, we met in Luga last year,” she answered quite simply, sitting down next to me and looking at me affectionately. I don’t know why, but I thought she’d just turn bright red when I told her about Vasin. My sister was a blonde, a light blonde; her hair was quite unlike her mother’s and her father’s, but her eyes and the shape of her face were almost like her mother’s. Her nose was very straight, small, regular; however, there was another peculiarity—small freckles on her face, something my mother didn’t have at all. Of Versilov there was very little, perhaps only her slender waist, her tall stature, and something lovely in her gait. And not the least resemblance to me; two opposite poles.
“I knew himself for three months,” Liza added.
“You’re saying himself about Vasin, Liza? You ought to say him, and not himself. Excuse me, sister, for correcting you, but it distresses me that your education seems to have been quite neglected.”
“It’s mean on your part to make such observations in front of your mother,” Tatyana Pavlovna flared up, “and you’re wrong, it hasn’t been neglected.”
“I’m not saying anything about my mother,” I put in sharply. “You should know, mama, that I look upon Liza as a second you; you’ve made of her the same loveliness of kindness and character as you surely were yourself, and are now, to this day, and will be eternally . . . What I meant was external polish, all that society stupidity, which is nevertheless indispensable. I’m only indignant that Versilov, if he heard you say himself instead of him about Vasin, probably wouldn’t correct you at all—he’s so haughty and indifferent with us. That’s what infuriates me!”
“He’s a bear cub himself, and here he’s teaching us about polish. Don’t you dare, sir, to say ‘Versilov’ in front of your mother, or in my presence either—I won’t stand for it!” Tatyana Pavlovna flashed fire.
“Mama, I received my salary today, fifty roubles, here, take it please!”
I went over and gave her the money; she became alarmed at once.
“Ah, I don’t know how I can take it!” she said, as if afraid to touch the money. I didn’t understand.
“For pity’s sake, mama, if you both regard me as a son and a brother in the family, then . . .”
“Ah, I’m guilty before you, Arkady; I should confess certain things to you, but I’m so afraid of you . . .”
She said it with a timid and ingratiating smile; again I didn’t understand and interrupted her:
“By the way, do you know, mama, that the case between Andrei Petrovich and the Sokolskys was decided today in court?”
“Ah, I know!” she exclaimed, pressing her hands together fearfully in front of her (her gesture).
“Today?” Tatyana Pavlovna gave a great start. “But it can’t be, he would have told us. Did he tell you?” she turned to my mother.
“Ah, no, not that it was today, he didn’t tell me about that. I’ve been so afraid all week. Even if he loses, I’d pray only so as to have it off our shoulders and be as we were before.”
“So he didn’t tell you either, mama!” I exclaimed. “What a fellow! There’s an example of his indifference and haughtiness; what did I just tell you?”
“Decided how, how was it decided? And who told you?” Tatyana Pavlovna flung herself about. “Speak!”
“But here’s the man himself! Maybe he’ll tell us,” I announced, hearing his footsteps in the corridor, and quickly sat down near Liza.
“Brother, for God’s sake, spare mama, be patient with Andrei Petrovich . . .” my sister whispered to me.
“I will, I will, I came back with that in mind.” I pressed her hand.
Liza looked at me very mistrustfully, and she was right.
II
HE CAME IN very pleased with himself, so pleased that he didn’t find it necessary to conceal his state of mind. And in general he had become accustomed, lately, to opening himself up before us without the least ceremony, and not only to the bad in him, but even to the ridiculous, something everyone is afraid of; yet he was fully aware that we would understand everything to the last little jot. In the past year, by Tatyana Pavlovna’s observation, he had gone very much to seed in his dress; his clothes were always decent, but old and without refinement. It’s true that he was prepared to wear the same linen for two days, which even made mother upset; they considered it a sacrifice, and this whole group of devoted women looked upon it as outright heroism. The hats he wore were always soft, wide-brimmed, black; when he took his hat off in the doorway, the whole shock of his very thick but much-graying hair just sprang up on his head. I always liked looking at his hair when he took his hat off.
“Hello. Everybody’s gathered, even including him? I could hear his voice in the front hall—denouncing me, it seems?”
One of the signs that he was in a merry mood was that he began sharpening his wit on me. I didn’t reply, naturally. Lukerya came in with a whole bag of purchases and put it on the table.
“Victory, Tatyana Pavlovna! The suit is won, and, of course, the princes won’t decide to appeal. The case is mine! I at once found where to borrow a thousand roubles. Sofya, put your work down, don’t strain your eyes. Just home from work, Liza?”
“Yes, papa,” Liza replied with an affectionate look. She called him father; I wouldn’t submit to that for anything.
“Tired?”
“Yes.”
“Leave work, don’t go tomorrow; and drop it completely.”
“It’s worse for me that way, papa.”
“I ask you to . . . I dislike it terribly when women work, Tatyana Pavlovna.”
“How can they be without work? As if a woman shouldn’t work! . . .”
“I know, I know, that’s all splendid and right, and I agree beforehand; but —I mean hand work mainly. Imagine, it seems to be one of my morbid, or, better, one of my incorrect impressions from childhood. In the vague memories from when I was five or six years old, I most often remember— with disgust, of course—a conclave of clever women at a round table, stern and severe, scissors, fabrics, patterns, and a fashion plate. They all divine and opine, shaking their heads slowly and gravely, measuring and calculating, as they prepare for the cutting out. All those affectionate faces, which love me so much, suddenly become unapproachable. If I should start acting up, I’d be taken away at once. Even my poor nanny, who holds me with one hand and doesn’t respond to my crying and pulling, is mesmerized, gazing and listening as if to
