Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin happened to be a distant cousin of hers. His father had been a government official in Moscow. His brothers had entered cadets’ corps; he was the youngest, his mother’s darling, and of delicate constitution; he stopped at home. They intended him for the university, and strained every effort to keep him at the gymnasium. From his early years he began to show an inclination for sculpture. The ponderous senator, Volgin, saw a statuette of his one day at his aunt’s—he was then sixteen—and declared that he intended to protect this youthful genius. The sudden death of Shubin’s father very nearly effected a complete transformation in the young man’s future. The senator, the patron of genius, made him a present of a bust of Homer in plaster, and did nothing more. But Anna Vassilyevna helped him with money, and at nineteen he scraped through into the university in the faculty of medicine. Pavel felt no inclination for medical science, but, as the university was then constituted, it was impossible for him to enter in any other faculty. Besides, he looked forward to studying anatomy. But he did not complete his anatomical studies; at the end of the first year, and before the examination, he left the university to devote himself exclusively to his vocation. He worked zealously, but by fits and starts; he used to stroll about the country round Moscow sketching and modelling portraits of peasant girls, and striking up acquaintance with all sorts of people, young and old, of high and low degree, Italian models and Russian artists. He would not hear of the Academy, and recognised no one as a teacher. He was possessed of unmistakeable talent; it began to be talked about in Moscow. His mother, who came of a good Parisian family, a kindhearted and clever woman, had taught him French thoroughly and had toiled and thought for him day and night. She was proud of him, and when, while still young in years, she died of consumption, she entreated Anna Vassilyevna to take him under her care. He was at that time twenty-one. Anna Vassilyevna carried out her last wish; a small room in the lodge of the country villa was given up to him.
IV
“Come to dinner, come along,” said the lady of the house in a plaintive voice, and they all went into the dining-room. “Sit beside me, Zoé,” added Anna Vassilyevna, “and you, Hélène, take our guest; and you, Paul, please don’t be naughty and tease Zoé. My head aches today.”
Shubin again turned his eyes up to the ceiling; Zoé responded with a half-smile. This Zoé, or, to speak more precisely, Zoya Nikitishna Mueller, was a pretty, fair-haired, half-Russian German girl, with a little nose rather wide at the end, and tiny red lips. She sang Russian ballads fairly well and could play various pieces, both lively and sentimental, very correctly on the piano. She dressed with taste, but in a rather childish style, and even over-precisely. Anna Vassilyevna had taken her as a companion for her daughter, and she kept her almost constantly at her side. Elena did not complain of that; she was absolutely at a loss what to say to Zoya when she happened to be left alone with her.
The dinner lasted rather a long time; Bersenyev talked with Elena about university life, and his own plans and hopes; Shubin listened without speaking, ate with an exaggerated show of greediness, and now and then threw comic glances of despair at Zoya, who responded always with the same phlegmatic smile. After dinner, Elena with Bersenyev and Shubin went into the garden; Zoya looked after them, and, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, sat down to the piano. Anna Vassilyevna began: “Why don’t you go for a walk, too?” but, without waiting for a reply, she added: “Play me something melancholy.”
“ ‘La dernière pensée de Weber’?” suggested Zoya.
“Ah, yes, Weber,” replied Anna Vassilyevna. She sank into an easy chair, and the tears started on to her eyelashes.
Meanwhile, Elena led the two friends to an arbour of acacias, with a little wooden table in the middle, and seats round. Shubin looked round, and, whispering “Wait a minute!” he ran off, skipping and hopping to his own room, brought back a piece of clay, and began modelling a bust of Zoya, shaking his head and muttering and laughing to himself.
“At his old tricks again,” observed Elena, glancing at his work. She turned to Bersenyev, with whom she was continuing the conversation begun at dinner.
“My old tricks!” repeated Shubin. “It’s a subject that’s simply inexhaustible! Today, particularly, she drove me out of all patience.”
“Why so?” inquired Elena. “One would think you were speaking of some spiteful, disagreeable old woman. She is a pretty young girl.”
“Of course,” Shubin broke in, “she is pretty, very pretty; I am sure that no one who meets her could fail to think: that’s someone I should like to—dance a polka with; I’m sure, too, that she knows that, and is pleased. … Else, what’s the meaning of those modest simpers, that discreet air? There, you know what I mean,” he muttered between his teeth. “But now you’re absorbed in something else.”
And breaking up the bust of Zoya, Shubin set hastily to modelling and kneading the clay again with an air of vexation.
“So it is your wish to be a professor?” said Elena to Bersenyev.
“Yes,” he answered, squeezing his red hands between his knees. “That’s my cherished dream. Of course I know very
