“Terribly?” she repeated in a displeased voice. “I’ve been hearing terrible things about you.”
Sasha lifted his eyebrows and looked at his aunt with innocent, uncomprehending eyes.
“There’s one master, Peredonov, here,” he complained, “who has invented the tale that I’m a girl. He’s been annoying me, and then the Headmaster scolded me because I had got to know the Routilov girls. As if I went there to steal things! And what business is it of theirs?”
“He’s quite the same child that he was before,” thought his aunt in perplexity, “or has he become spoilt and corrupted so that he can deceive one even with his face?”
She shut herself in with Kokovkina and talked to her for a long time. She came out looking quite grave. Then she went to the Headmaster. She returned quite upset. She showered reproaches on Sasha. Sasha cried but firmly assured her that it was all an invention, that he did not permit himself any liberties with the Routilov girls. His aunt did not believe him. She scolded him, wept and threatened to give him a good whipping at once—that is today, as soon as she had seen these girls. Sasha kept crying and assuring her that nothing wrong had happened, and that it was all very exaggerated.
His aunt, angry and bloated with tears, went to the Routilovs.
As she waited in the Routilovs’ drawing-room, Ekaterina Ivanovna felt very agitated. She wanted to throw herself on the sisters at once with the severest reproaches which she had prepared beforehand. But their peaceful, pretty drawing-room aroused peaceful thoughts in her against her will, and softened her vexation. The unfinished embroidery left lying about, the keepsakes, the engravings on the walls, the carefully trained plants at the windows, the absence of dust and the homelike appearance of the room were not at all what one would expect in an unrespectable house; there was everything that is valued by housewives the world over—surely with such surroundings the young owners of such a drawing-room could not have corrupted her innocent young Sasha. All the conjectures she had made about Sasha seemed to her ridiculously absurd. On the other hand, Sasha’s explanations about his doings at the Routilovs seemed reasonable; they read, chatted, joked, laughed and played—they wanted to get up an amateur play, but Olga Vassilyevna would not allow him to take part.
The three sisters felt apprehensive. They did not yet know whether Sasha’s masquerading had remained a secret. But there were three of them and they all felt solicitous for one another. This gave them courage. All three of them gathered in Liudmilla’s room and deliberated in whispers.
“We must go down to her,” said Valeria. “It’s rude to keep her waiting.”
“Let her cool off a little,” replied Darya indifferently, “or she’ll go for us.”
The sisters scented themselves with clematis. They came in tranquil, cheerful, attractive, pretty as always; they filled the drawing-room with their charming chatter and gaiety. Ekaterina Ivanovna was immediately fascinated by them.
“So these are the corrupters!” she thought, with vexation at the school pedagogues. But then she thought that perhaps they were assuming this modesty. She decided not to yield to their fascination.
“You must forgive me, young ladies, but I have something serious to discuss with you,” she said, trying to make her voice dry and businesslike.
The sisters made her sit down and kept up a gay chatter.
“Which of you—” Ekaterina Ivanovna began irresolutely.
Liudmilla, as if she were a graceful hostess trying to get a visitor out of a difficulty, said cheerfully:
“It was I who spent most of the time with your nephew. We have similar views and tastes in many things.”
“Your nephew is a very charming boy,” said Darya, as if she were confident that her praise would please the visitor.
“Really most charming, and so entertaining,” said Liudmilla.
Ekaterina Ivanovna felt more and more awkward. She suddenly realised that she had no reasonable cause for complaint and this made her angry—Liudmilla’s last words gave her an opportunity to express her vexation—she said angrily:
“He may be an entertainment to you but to him—”
But Darya interrupted her and said in a sympathetic voice:
“Oh, I can see that those silly Peredonovian tales have reached you. Of course, you know that he’s quite mad? The Headmaster does not even allow him to go to the gymnasia now. They’re only waiting for an alienist to examine him and then he will be dismissed from the school.”
“But, allow me,” Ekaterina Ivanovna interrupted her with increasing irritation. “I am not interested in this schoolmaster but in my nephew. I have heard that you—pardon me—are corrupting him.”
And having thrown out this decisive word in her anger with the sisters, Ekaterina Ivanovna at once saw that she had gone too far. The sisters exchanged glances of such well-simulated perplexity and indignation that cleverer people than Ekaterina Ivanovna would have been taken in—they flushed and exclaimed altogether:
“That’s pleasant!”
“How terrible!”
“That’s something new!”
“Madam,” said Darya coldly, “you are not over choice in your expressions. Before you make use of such words you should find out whether they are fitting!”
“Of course, one can understand that,” said Liudmilla, with the look of a charming girl forgiving an injury, “he’s not a stranger to you. Naturally, you can’t help being disturbed by this stupid gossip. Even strangers like ourselves were sorry for him and had to be kind to him. But everything in our town is made a crime at once. You have no idea what terrible, terrible people live here!”
“Terrible people,” repeated Valeria quietly, in a clear, fragile voice and shivered from head to foot as if she had come in contact with something unclean.
“You ask him yourself,” said Darya. “Just look at him; he’s still a mere child. Perhaps you have got used to his naivete, but one can see better from the outside that he’s quite an unspoiled boy.”
The sisters lied with such assurance and tranquillity that it was impossible not to believe them. Why not? Lies have often more
