The Eternal Husband

  Nadezhda Fedoseevna, the sixth one, the schoolgirl and supposed fiancee of Pavel Pavlovich, made them wait. Velchaninov waited for her with impatience, marveling at himself and chuckling inwardly. Finally she appeared, and not without effect, accompanied by a pert and sharp girlfriend, Marya Nikitishna, a brunette with a laughing face, of whom, as it turned out at once, Pavel Pavlovich was extremely afraid. This Marya Nikitishna, already a girl of twenty-three, a ban-terer and even a wit, was governess of the little children in the family of some neighbors and acquaintances, and had long been considered like one of their own at the Zakhlebinins', where the girls valued her terribly. It was evident that she was also especially necessary now for Nadya. From the first glance, Velchaninov could see that the girls, and even the girlfriends, were all against Pavel Paviovich, while from the second moment after Nadya's appearance, he decided that she hated him. He also noticed that Pavel Pavlovich did not perceive it at all, or else did not wish to perceive it. Indisputably, Nadya was better than all her sisters—a small brunette with the air of a wild thing and the boldness of a nihilist; a thievish little demon with fiery eyes, a lovely, though often wicked, smile, amazing lips and teeth, slim, slender, with a nascent thought in the ardent expression of her face, at the same time still quite childish. Her fifteen years spoke in her every step, her every word. It turned out later that Pavel Pavlovich had actually seen her for the first time with an oilcloth book bag in her hand, but now she no longer carried it.

  The giving of the bracelet was a complete failure and even produced a disagreeable impression. Pavel Pavlovich, as soon as he saw his fiancee come in, approached her at once with a grin. He offered his gift under the pretext of "the agreeable pleasure felt by him the previous time on the occasion of the agreeable romance sung by Nadezhda Fedoseevna at the piano...” He became flustered, did not finish, and stood like a lost man, reaching out and thrusting into Nadezhda Fedoseevna's hand the case with the bracelet, while she, not wanting to take it, and blushing with shame and wrath, kept putting her hands behind her back. She boldly turned to her mother, whose face expressed embarrassment, and said loudly:

  "I don't want to take it, Maman!"

  "Take it and say thank you," the father said with calm sternness, but he, too, was displeased. "Unnecessary, unnecessary!" he muttered didactically to Pavel Pavlovich. Nadya, since there was nothing to be done, took the case and, lowering her eyes, curtsied as little girls do, that is, she suddenly plopped down and suddenly bounced up at once, as if on a spring. One of the sisters came over to look, and Nadya gave her the case, still unopened, thereby showing that she herself did not even want to look. The bracelet was taken out and handed around; but they all looked at it silently, and some even mockingly. Only the mother murmured that it was a very nice bracelet. Pavel Pavlovich was ready to fall through the earth.

  Velchaninov came to the rescue.

  He suddenly started talking, loudly and eagerly, seizing the first thought that came to him, and before five minutes had passed, he already held the attention of everyone in the drawing room. He had learned magnificently the art of babbling in society, that is, the art of appearing perfectly simple-hearted and at the same time making it seem that he took his listeners for people as simple-hearted as himself. With extreme naturalness he could pretend, when necessary, to be the merriest and happiest of men. He knew how to place very deftly a witty and provocative phrase, a merry hint, a funny quip, and to do it as if quite inadvertently, as if without noticing—whereas the witticism, the quip, and the conversation itself had been prepared long ago, learned, and put to use more than once. But at the present moment his art was seconded by nature itself: he felt that he was in the spirit, that something was drawing him; he felt in himself a complete and triumphant assurance that in a few moments all these eyes would be turned on him, that all these people would be listening only to him, talking only to him, laughing only at what he said. And indeed laughter was soon heard, others gradually mixed in the conversation—he had perfect command of the skill of drawing others into a conversation—and three or four voices could already be heard talking at once. The dull and tired face of Mrs. Zakhlebinin lit up almost with joy; the same with Katerina Fedoseevna, who listened and looked as if mesmerized. Scowling, Nadya studied him keenly; one could note that she had been prejudiced against him. This fired Velchaninov up still more. The "wicked" Marya Nikitishna did manage to slip into the conversation a rather pointed barb on his account; she invented and insisted that Pavel Pavlovich had recommended him there the day before as a childhood friend of his, thus adding—and hinting at it clearly—a whole seven extra years to his age. Yet the wicked Marya Nikitishna liked him, too. Pavel Pavlovich was decidedly taken aback. He had, of course, some notion of the resources his friend possessed, and in the beginning was even glad of his success, giggling along and mixing in the conversation himself; but for some reason he gradually began to lapse as if into reflection, even, finally, into despondency, which showed clearly on his alarmed physiognomy.

  "Well, you're the sort of guest who doesn't need to be entertained," old Zakhlebinin cheerily decided at last, getting up from his chair to go to his room upstairs, where, despite the feast day, he had a few business papers ready for going over, "and, imagine, I considered you the gloomiest hypochondriac of all our young people. How wrong one can be!"

  In the drawing room stood a grand piano; Velchaninov asked who studied music, and suddenly turned to Nadya.

  "You sing, it seems?"

  "Who told you so?" Nadya snapped.

  "Pavel Pavlovich said so earlier."

  "Not so; I only sing for a joke; I have no voice."

  "I have no voice either, but I do sing."

  "So you'll sing for us? Well, then I'll sing for you, too," Nadya flashed her eyes, "only not now, but after dinner. I can't stand music," she added, "I'm sick of this piano; all this playing and singing here from morning till night—Katya's more than enough herself."

  Velchaninov seized on the phrase at once, and it turned out that Katerina Fedoseevna was the only one of them all who seriously studied piano. He immediately turned to her with a request to play. Everyone was evidently pleased that he had turned to Katya, and Maman even blushed with satisfaction. Katerina Fedoseevna rose, smiling, and went to the grand piano, but suddenly, unexpectedly for herself, blushed all over, and suddenly felt terribly ashamed that, big as she was, already twenty-four years old, and so plump, here she was blushing like a little girl—and all this was written on her face as she sat down to play. She played something by Haydn, and played it very accurately, though without expression; but she turned shy. When she finished, Velchaninov started praising terribly, not her but Haydn, and especially the little piece she had played—and she was obviously so pleased, she listened so gratefully and happily to this praise not of herself but of Haydn, that Velchaninov involuntarily looked at her more gently and attentively. "Eh, aren't you a nice one?" shone in his eyes—and everyone understood this glance as if at once, especially Katerina Fedoseevna herself.

  "A nice garden you've got," he suddenly addressed them all, looking through the glass door to the balcony. "You know, let's all go out to the garden!"

  "Let's go, let's go!" came joyful squeals—just as if he had guessed the main general wish.

  They were in the garden until dinner. Mrs. Zakhlebinin, who had long been wanting to sleep, also could not help herself and went out with everyone else, but sensibly stayed to sit and rest on the balcony, where she dozed off at once. In the garden, the mutual relations between Velchaninov and all the girls became friendlier still. He noticed that two or three very young men joined them from neighboring houses; one was a university student, another merely a high school boy. These two sprang over at once each to his own girl, and it was evident that they had come for their sake; the third "young man," a very gloomy and ruffled twenty-year-old boy in enormous blue spectacles, began hurriedly and frowningly exchanging whispers with Marya Nikitishna and Nadya. He sternly looked
Velchaninov over and seemed to consider it his duty to treat him with extraordinary disdain. Some girls suggested that they go ahead and start playing. To Velchaninov's question about what games they played, they replied that they played all games, including fox and hounds, but that in the evening they would play proverbs, that is, where everybody sits down and one person stands apart for a while; all those sitting down choose a proverb, for instance: "Slow and steady wins the race," and when the person is called back, each one in turn has to prepare and tell him a sentence. The first one has to give a sentence containing the word "slow," the second a sentence containing the word "steady," and so on. And the person has to pick out all these words and from them guess the proverb.

  "It must be great fun," observed Velchaninov.

  "Oh, no, it's quite boring," two or three voices answered at once.

  "Or else we play theater," Nadya observed, addressing him. "See that big tree with the bench around it? There, behind the tree, is like backstage, the actors sit there—say, a king, a queen, a princess, a young man—whatever anyone likes; each one comes out whenever he has a mind to and says whatever occurs to him, and something or other comes out."

  "But how nice!" Velchaninov praised once more.

  "Oh, no, it's quite boring! Each time it comes out as fun in the beginning, but by the end it turns senseless each time, because nobody knows how to finish; though maybe with you it would be more amusing. And we thought you were Pavel Pavlovich's friend, but it turns out he was simply boasting. I'm very glad you came . . . owing to a certain circumstance," she looked very seriously and meaningly at Velchaninov and at once stepped over beside Marya Nikitishna.

  "There'll be a game of proverbs this evening," one girlfriend, whom he had scarcely noticed till then and had not yet exchanged a word with, whispered confidentially to Velchaninov, "and this evening everybody will laugh at Pavel Pavlo-vich, so you must, too."

  "Ah, how nice of you to come, we're so bored here otherwise," another girlfriend said to him amiably, one he had not yet noticed at all, and who appeared from God knows where, a little redhead with freckles, her face flushed in a terribly funny way from walking and the heat.

  Pavel Pavlovich's uneasiness grew greater and greater. In the garden, toward the end, Velchaninov succeeded completely in becoming close with Nadya; she no longer peered at him scowlingly as earlier and seemed to have set aside the idea of studying him more closely, but laughed, jumped, squealed, and even seized him by the hand once or twice; she was terribly happy, and went on paying not the slightest attention to Pavel Pavlovich, as if not noticing him. Velchaninov was convinced that there existed a positive conspiracy against Pavel Pavlovich; Nadya and a crowd of girls would draw Velchaninov to one side, while other girlfriends under various pretexts lured Pavel Pavlovich to the other; but he would tear away and at once run headlong straight to them—that is, to Velchaninov and Nadya—and suddenly thrust his bald and anxiously eavesdropping head between them. Toward the end, he was not even embarrassed; the naivety of his gestures and movements was at times astonishing. Velchaninov could not help paying special attention once again to Katerina Fedoseevna; by then it had, of course, become clear to her that he had come not at all for her sake and was already much too interested in Nadya; but her face was as sweet and good-natured as before. She seemed to be happy in the fact alone that she, too, was near them and could listen to what the new visitor was saying; she herself, poor dear, had never known how to mix adroitly in conversation.

  "And how nice your sister Katerina Fedoseevna is!" Velchaninov suddenly said to Nadya on the quiet.

  "Katya? Why, there couldn't be a kinder soul than hers! She's an angel for us all, I'm in love with her," the girl replied rapturously.

  Finally, at five o'clock, dinner was served, and it was also very noticeable that the dinner had been prepared not in the usual way, but especially for the visitor. There were two or three dishes obviously in addition to what was usually served, rather sophisticated ones, and one of them something altogether unfamiliar, so that no one could even put a name to it. Besides the usual table wines, a bottle of Tokay also appeared, obviously thought up for the visitor; toward the end of dinner champagne was served for some reason. Old Zakhlebinin, having drunk one glass too many, was in the most sunny-minded mood and was ready to laugh at everything Velchaninov said. The end was that Pavel Pavlovich finally could not help himself: carried away by the competition, he also suddenly decided to utter some pun, and so he did: from the end of the table where he sat by Mme. Zakhlebinin, the loud laughter of overjoyed girls suddenly came.

  "Papa, Papa! Pavel Pavlovich has also made a pun," two of the middle Zakhlebinin girls cried with one voice, "he says we're 'young misses one always misses . .

  "Ah, so he's punning, too? Well, what pun has he made?" the old man responded in a solemn voice, turning patronizingly to Pavel Pavlovich and smiling beforehand at the anticipated pun.

  "But that's what he said, that we're 'young misses one always misses.' "

  "Y-yes! Well, so what?" the old man still did not understand and smiled still more good-naturedly in anticipation.

  "Oh, Papa, what's the matter with you, you don't understand! It's misses and then misses; misses is the same as misses, misses one always misses...”

  "Ahhh!" the perplexed old man drew out. "Hm! Well, he'll do better next time!" and the old man laughed gaily.

  "Pavel Pavlovich, one can't have all perfections at once!" Marya Nikitishna taunted him loudly. "Ah, my God, he's choking on a bone!" she exclaimed, jumping up from her chair.

  Turmoil even ensued, but that was just what Marya Nikitishna wanted. Pavel Pavlovich had only swallowed his wine the wrong way, after grabbing it to conceal his embarrassment, but Marya Nikitishna insisted and swore up and down that it was "a fishbone, that she'd seen it herself, and one can die from that."

  "Thump him on the back!" someone shouted.

  "In fact, that's the best thing!" Zakhlebinin loudly approved, but volunteers had already turned up: Marya Nikitishna, the redheaded girlfriend (also invited for dinner), and, finally, the terribly frightened mother of the family in person—they all wanted to thump Pavel Pavlovich on the back. Pavel Pavlovich jumped up from the table to evade them and spent a whole minute insisting that it was merely wine that had gone down the wrong way, and that the coughing would soon pass—before they finally figured out that it was all Marya Nikitishna's pranks.

  "Well, aren't you the little mischief, though!...” Mme. Zakhlebinin observed sternly to Marya Nikitishna—but was at once unable to help herself and burst into such laughter as rarely happened with her, which also produced an effect of a sort. After dinner they all went out to the balcony to have coffee.

  "Such fine days we're having!" the old man benevolently praised nature, looking out at the garden with pleasure. "Only we could use a little rain . . . Well, I'll go and rest. Have fun, have fun, God bless you! And you have fun, too!" he slapped Pavel Pavlovich on the shoulder as he went out.

  When everyone had gone down to the garden again, Pavel Pavlovich suddenly rushed over to Velchaninov and tugged him by the sleeve.

  "For one moment, sir," he whispered impatiently.

  They walked to a solitary side path in the garden.

  "No, excuse me this time, sir, no, this time I won't let you...” he whispered, spluttering fiercely and grabbing Velchaninov's sleeve.

  "What? How's that?" Velchaninov asked, making big eyes. Pavel Pavlovich stood silently gazing at him, moving his lips, and smiled fiercely.

  "Where have you gone? Where are you? Everything's ready!" the girls' calls and impatient voices were heard. Velchaninov shrugged and went back to the company. Pavel Pavlovich went running after him.

  "I bet he asked you for a handkerchief," Marya Nikitishna said, "last time he also forgot it."