“But you promised to sing, Viéra Pavlovna; if I were there, I would ask you to sing something from Rigoletto.” (This winter “La donna é mobile” was the fashionable aria.)
“If you like.”
Viérotchka sang “La donna é mobile”; then she got up and went to her room.
“No, she is not a heartless, cold girl without any soul; this is interesting.”
“Isn’t that good?” asked Mikhaïl Ivanuitch, in a simple voice, without this time taking the tutor’s measure. (“There is no need of being in strained relations with people who can examine privates. Why not speak without any pretentiousness so as not to get his ill will?”)
“Yes, very good.”
“Do you understand music?”
“Just a little.”
“Are you a musician?”
“Somewhat.”
Marya Alekséyevna overheard this talk, and a happy thought struck her.
“What do you play on, Dmitri Sergéitch?” she asked.
“The piano.”
“May we ask you to give us a tune?”
“Very willingly.”
He played a certain piece. He played passably—not badly at all.
After he had finished the lesson, Marya Alekséyevna came to him and said that they were going to have a little party the next evening; that it was her daughter’s birthday, and asked him to come round.
Of course, there is always a dearth of young men, according to the style of all such parties; but no matter. He looked closer at the girl: with her or about her there is something interesting.
“I thank you heartily.”
But the tutor was mistaken; Marya Alekséyevna had something more important in view than in finding a partner for her dancing girls.
Reader, you of course have anticipated that on this evening some explanation would take place; that Viérotchka and Lopukhóf will fall in love with each other?
Of course they will!
IV
Marya Alekséyevna wanted to give a great party on Viérotchka’s birthday, but Viérotchka begged to have no guests invited: the one wanted to show off the bridegroom; the other found such an exhibition distasteful. They compromised by having the smallest possible party, inviting only a few of their most intimate friends. They invited Pavel Konstantinuitch’s colleagues—those, of course, who had been longer in the service and were higher in position than himself—two of Marya Alekséyevna’s friends, three young girls who were more intimate with Viérotchka than any others.
As Lopukhóf looked over the assembling guests, he noticed that there was no lack of partners (kavalyer); every one of the young girls had a young man, either as candidate for bridegroom or bridegroom already. Therefore Lopukhóf was not invited in the capacity of a partner; why, then? As he thought the matter over he remembered that his playing on the piano preceded his invitation. Of course he was invited so as to save expense—to take the place of an accompanist (tapper). “All right,” he thought. “Excuse me, Marya Alekséyevna,” and he went to Pavel Konstantinuitch.
“How now, Pavel Konstantinuitch; it’s time to have a game of cards. You see it’s rather tiresome for us old people!”
“What do you want to play?”
“Anything.”
Soon a party was made up, and Lopukhóf sat down to play. The medical school on Vuiborgskaïa Street is a classical establishment for card-playing. It is not a rare occurrence in some of the rooms—that is, in the governmental students’ apartments—for a game of cards to be kept up for a day and a half without stopping. It must be admitted that the sums that change hands at the students’ card-tables are much smaller than those at the English Club; but the standard of the gamester’s art is much higher. Even Lopukhóf used to play a great deal in his day; that is, when he had no money.
“Mesdames, what shall we do? We must play by cutting in, that’s a fact; but there’ll be only seven of us left. Either a gentleman or a lady will be lacking for the quadrille.”
The first rubber was drawing to an end, when one of the girls, the liveliest of all, came flying up to Lopukhóf:—
“Monsieur Lopukhóf, you must dance.”
“On one condition,” he said, rising and bowing.
“What?”
“That you give me the first quadrille.”
“Akh! Bozhe moï! I am engaged for the first one! You are welcome to the next, though.”
Lopukhóf again made a profound bow. Two of the gentlemen took their turn in cutting in. At the third quadrille Lopukhóf asked Viérotchka. The first she had danced with Mikhaïl Ivanuitch; the second he danced with the lively girl.
Lopukhóf had been watching Viérotchka, and was now absolutely convinced of the mistake in his former idea of her being a heartless girl, coolly marrying for money a man whom she despised. He saw before him an ordinary young girl, who dances and laughs with her whole soul. Yes, to Viérotchka’s shame be it said that she was an ordinary girl who loved to dance. At first she set her face firmly against the party; but when the party was arranged—small, without any show, and consequently not a trial to her—even she, in a way that she would never have believed, forgot her melancholy. At her time of life one does not like to be melancholy; but liveliness and gayety are so natural that the least chance of self-forgetfulness brings also, for a time, forgetfulness of sorrow. Lopukhóf was now inclined in her favor, but as yet there were a good many things not clear to him.
He was getting interested in Viérotchka’s anomalous position.
“Monsieur Lopukhóf, I never expected to see you dancing,” she began.
“Why not? Is it so hard to dance?”
“For most people certainly it is not; but for you, why—yes—of course it is.”
“Why for me?”
“Because I know your secret—yours and Feódor’s; you despise women!”
“Feódor did not in the least understand my secret. I don’t despise women, but I
