him.'
'But he says that you did not.'
'Well, I laid it across the carriage-lamps!'
'No, sir, he says that you did not do that either. You had better
confess that you took it and lashed it to shreds. I suppose poor Philip
will have to make good your mischief out of his own pocket.' The footman
(who looked a grave and honest man) seemed much put out by the affair,
and determined to sift it to the bottom on Philip's behalf.
Out of delicacy I pretended to notice nothing and turned aside, but the
other footmen present gathered round and looked approvingly at the old
servant.
'Hm--well, I DID tear it in pieces,' at length confessed Etienne,
shrinking from further explanations. 'However, I will pay for it. Did
you ever hear anything so absurd?' he added to me as he drew me towards
the drawing-room.
'But excuse me, sir; HOW are you going to pay for it? I know your ways
of paying. You have owed Maria Valericana twenty copecks these eight
months now, and you have owed me something for two years, and Peter
for--'
'Hold your tongue, will you!' shouted the young fellow, pale with rage,
'I shall report you for this.'
'Oh, you may do so,' said the footman. 'Yet it is not fair, your
highness,' he added, with a peculiar stress on the title, as he departed
with the ladies' wraps to the cloak-room. We ourselves entered the
salon.
'Quite right, footman,' remarked someone approvingly from the ball
behind us.
Grandmamma had a peculiar way of employing, now the second person
singular, now the second person plural, in order to indicate her opinion
of people. When the young Prince Etienne went up to her she addressed
him as 'YOU,' and altogether looked at him with such an expression
of contempt that, had I been in his place, I should have been utterly
crestfallen. Etienne, however, was evidently not a boy of that sort,
for he not only took no notice of her reception of him, but none of her
person either. In fact, he bowed to the company at large in a way which,
though not graceful, was at least free from embarrassment.
Sonetchka now claimed my whole attention. I remember that, as I stood
in the salon with Etienne and Woloda, at a spot whence we could both
see and be seen by Sonetchka, I took great pleasure in talking very loud
(and all my utterances seemed to me both bold and comical) and glancing
towards the door of the drawing-room, but that, as soon as ever we
happened to move to another spot whence we could neither see nor be seen
by her, I became dumb, and thought the conversation had ceased to be
enjoyable. The rooms were now full of people--among them (as at all
children's parties) a number of elder children who wished to dance and
enjoy themselves very much, but who pretended to do everything merely in
order to give pleasure to the mistress of the house.
When the Iwins arrived I found that, instead of being as delighted as
usual to meet Seriosha, I felt a kind of vexation that he should see and
be seen by Sonetchka.
XXI -- BEFORE THE MAZURKA
'HULLO, Woloda! So we are going to dance to-night,' said Seriosha,
issuing from the drawing-room and taking out of his pocket a brand new
pair of gloves. 'I suppose it IS necessary to put on gloves?'
'Goodness! What shall I do? We have no gloves,' I thought to myself.
'I must go upstairs and search about.' Yet though I rummaged in every
drawer, I only found, in one of them, my green travelling mittens, and,
in another, a single lilac-coloured glove, a thing which could be of no
use to me, firstly, because it was very old and dirty, secondly, because
it was much too large for me, and thirdly (and principally), because the
