And when the champagne had been drunk, Tamara said: “And now, my dear mistress and preceptress, I would request something from you. …”
“By all means! I am very glad to have you do so. I feel that you will no more ask for any sentimental foolishness. I agree beforehand.”
“D’you see,” Tamara continued, “I understand very well that my position will be partly that of a servant. …”
“The position of my assistant,” Emma kindly corrected her.
“Merci,” Tamara inclined her head. “But you yourself have said that in rare, especially interesting cases I must be the most tantalising and expensive lure?”
“Absolutely so.”
“That is precisely why I’m going to ask you for a small advance. You must agree that I am supposed to dress as a maid in a rich house, but with a special, provoking, tempting chic. Lace, perfumes …”
Emma fell into raptures.
“O, my dear Tamara! You catch my thoughts in their flight.”
“I am happy. But still, it will be necessary for me to busy myself with my wardrobe—and that as soon as possible; but, to my regret. …”
“Akh, my dear—I shan’t be niggardly for such things—how much do you need?”
“I think … some two hundred roubles?” said Tamara hesitatingly.
“Take three hundred!”
Tamara hypocritically kissed Emma.
As she was going away from Emma, she reflected, with a malevolent smile:
“And so we’ll bury like a human being a woman dear to us.”
They say that dead people bring luck. If there is any foundation at all in this superstition, then on this Saturday it could not have told plainer: the influx of visitors was out of the ordinary, even for a Saturday night. True, the girls, passing through the corridor or past the room that had been Jennka’s increased their steps; timorously glanced at it sidelong, out of the corner of the eye; while others even crossed themselves. But late in the night the fear of death somehow subsided, grew bearable. All the rooms were occupied, while in the drawing room a new violinist was trilling without cease—a free-and-easy, clean-shaven young man, whom the pianist with the cataract had searched out somewhere and brought with him.
The appointment of Tamara as housekeeper was received with cold perplexity, with taciturn dryness. But, having bided her time, Tamara managed to whisper to Little White Manka:
“Listen, Manya! You tell them all that they shouldn’t pay any attention to the fact that I’ve been chosen housekeeper. It’s got to be so. But let them do as they wish, only don’t let them trip me up. I am as before—their friend and intercessor … And further on we’ll see.”
VII
On the next day, on Sunday, Tamara had a multitude of cares. She had become possessed by a firm and undeviating thought of burying her friend despite all circumstances, in the way that one’s nearest and dearest are buried—in a Christian manner, with all the sad solemnity of the burial of secular persons.
She belonged to the number of those strange persons who underneath an external indolent calmness, careless taciturnity, egotistical withdrawal into one’s self, conceal within them unusual energy; always as though slumbering with half an eye, guarding itself from unnecessary expenditure; but ready in one moment to become animated and to rush forward without reckoning the obstacles.
At twelve o’clock she descended in a cab into the old town; rode through it into a little narrow street giving out upon a square where fairs were held; and stopped near a rather dirty tearoom, having ordered the cabby to wait. In the room she made inquiries of a boy, red-haired, with a badger haircut and the parting slicked down with butter, if Senka the Depot had not come here? The serving lad, who, judging by his refined and gallant readiness, had already known Tamara for a long time, answered that “Nohow, ma’am; they—Semën Ignatich—had not been in yet, and probably would not be here soon seein’ as how yesterday they had the pleasure of going on a spree at the Transvaal, and had played at billiards until six in the morning; and that now they, in all probabilities, are at home, in the Half Way House rooms, and if the young lady will give the word, then it’s possible to hop over to them this here minute.”
Tamara asked for paper and pencil, and wrote a few words right on the spot. Then she gave the note to the waiter, together with a half-rouble piece for a tip, and rode away.
The following visit was to the artiste Rovinskaya, living, as Tamara had known even before, in the city’s most aristocratic hotel—Europe—where she occupied several rooms in a consecutive suite. To obtain an interview with the singer was not very easy: the doorman below said that it looked as if Ellena Victorovna was not at home; while her own personal maid, who came out in answer to Tamara’s knocking, declared that madam had a headache, and that she was not receiving anyone. Again Tamara was compelled to write on a piece of paper:
“I come to you from her who once, in a house which is not spoken of loudly, cried, standing before you on her knees, after you had sung the ballad of Dargomyzhsky. Your kind treatment of her was so splendid. Do you remember? Do not fear—she has no need of anyone’s help now: yesterday she died. But you can do one very important deed in her memory, which will be almost no trouble to you at all. While I—am that very person who permitted herself to say a few bitter truths to the baroness T⸺, who was then with you; for which truths I am remorseful and apologize even now.”
“Hand this over!” she ordered the chambermaid.
She returned after two minutes.
“The madam requests you. They apologize very much that they will receive you not fully dressed.”
She escorted Tamara, opened a door before her, and quietly shut it after she had gone in.
The great artiste was lying upon an enormous ottoman, covered with a beautiful Tekin rug and a multitude of little silk pillows,
