“Well, that is just what I wanted to do, but I did not know how.”
“Then we will part good friends?” They gave each other a parting kiss, and that was the end of it. But this was some time before, three years ago, and now it is two years since he has renounced all such follies.
Besides his comrades and two or three professors, who recognized in him a good worker in the cause of science, his only acquaintances were in the families where he gave lessons; but he did not know the families at all. He avoided familiarity as he would fire, and he held proudly aloof from all the members of these families, except the little boys and girls who were his pupils.
III
And so Lopukhóf entered the room, saw the company sitting at the tea-table, and in their number was Viérotchka; nu! of course the company, including also Viérotchka, saw that the tutor entered the room. “Please take a seat,” said Marya Alekséyevna.—“Matrióna, bring another glass.”
“If it is meant for me, then I thank you. I don’t drink tea.”
“Matrióna, no matter about the glass. (A well-bred young man!)—Why shouldn’t you drink some? You ought to drink some!”
He looked at Marya Alekséyevna and at Viérotchka willingly, as it were; and maybe it was really willingly. Maybe he noticed that she slightly shrugged her shoulders. “And he must have seen that I blushed!”
“Thank you! I drink tea only at home.”
“After all, he is not such a savage; he came in, and he bowed easily and gracefully.” Such was the observation made at one end of the table.
“After all, if she is a trifle spoiled, then at least she blushes for her mother’s meanness,” was the observation at the other end of the table.
But Feódor soon finished his tea and went to take his lesson. The most important result of the evening was that Marya Alekséyevna formed a most favorable opinion of the tutor, because she saw that her sugarbowl would, in all probability, not suffer great loss by changing the hour of the lessons from morning to evening.
Two days later the teacher again found the family at table, and again he refused to take tea, and thus he absolutely calmed Marya Alekséyevna’s fears. But this time he saw at the table a new face—an officer, upon whom Marya Alekséyevna was assiduously fawning.
“Ah, the bridegroom!”
But the bridegroom, owing to the importance of his uniform and family, felt that it was incumbent upon him not simply to look at the tutor, but after looking at him, to measure him from head to foot with the impertinent steady stare which is adopted in fashionable society. But he had no sooner taken his measure than he began to feel that the tutor was likewise taking his measure, and, even worse, was looking straight into his eyes, and so keenly that instead of keeping up the stare the bridegroom said:—
“Your work must be hard, Monsieur Lopukhóf—I mean your medical work.”
“Yes, it is;” and he continues to look him straight in the eyes.
The bridegroom was conscious that he was fumbling with his left hand at the three upper buttons of his uniform, but he did not know the reason. Nu! when the awkwardness gets as far as the buttons, there is no other salvation than to make haste to drink his tea, and ask Marya Alekséyevna for some more.
“Your uniform, if I am not mistaken, belongs to such and such a regiment?”
“Yes, I serve in that regiment,” is Mikhaïl Ivanuitch’s reply.
“Have you been long in the service?”
“Nine years.”
“Did you begin in that regiment?”
“I did.”
“Have you a company or not?”
“No, I have none as yet. (He cross-examines me as though I were a private!)”
“Do you expect to get one soon?”
“Not very soon.”
“Hm!”
The tutor was satisfied, and ceased his examination, though he still looked straight into the imaginary private’s eyes.
“And yet—and yet,” thinks Viérotchka; and what does she mean by “and yet”? Finally she makes up her mind what she means by “and yet.” “And yet he conducts himself just as Serge did when he came with the kind Julie. How is he a savage? Why does he speak so strangely about girls? ‘that pretty girls are loved only by stupid people?’ And—and—” (why does she repeat “and”? At last she knows!) “and why didn’t he want to know anything about me? why did he say that it was not interesting?”
“Viérotchka, will you play something on the piano for Mikhaïl Ivanuitch and I,” said Marya Alekséyevna, when Viérotchka had set down her second cup.
“Certainly.”
“And if you would sing something,” adds Mikhaïl Ivanuitch, in a flattering tone.
“Certainly.”
“This ‘certainly’ sounded as though she had said, ‘I am ready to do anything to get rid of you,’ ” thinks the tutor. And now he had been sitting down with them fully five minutes; and though he had not been looking at her, yet he knows that she has not looked once at the bridegroom, except when she answered him just now. And even now she looks at him as though she were looking at her father and mother—coolly, and without the least trace of affection. “There must be something quite different from what Feódor told me. However, more than anything else she must be in reality a proud, calculating girl, who wants to enter the upper ten in order to rule and shine. It is disagreeable to her that she cannot find a better bridegroom for that purpose. But, despising the bridegroom, she yet accepts his hand because there is no other hand to lead her where she wants to go. Well, after all, this is rather interesting.”
“Feódor, hurry up and finish your tea,” remarked the mother.
“Don’t hurry him, Marya Alekséyevna; I want to listen, if Viéra Pavlovna will allow me.”
Viérotchka picked up the first music that came to hand, without looking at
