'Admit that you are wrong!' cried Varya. 'Own up!'
But some young ladies came in, and the argument dropped of itself. They all went into the drawing-room. Varya sat down at the piano and began playing dances. They danced first a waltz, then a polka, then a quadrille with a grand chain which Captain Polyansky led through all the rooms, then a waltz again.
During the dancing the old men sat in the drawing-room, smoking and looking at the young people. Among them was Shebaldin, the director of the municipal bank, who was famed for his love of literature and dramatic art. He had founded the local Musical and Dramatic Society, and took part in the performances himself, confining himself, for some reason, to playing comic footmen or to reading in a sing-song voice 'The Woman who was a Sinner.' His nickname in the town was 'the Mummy,' as he was tall, very lean and scraggy, and always had a solemn air and a fixed, lustreless eye. He was so devoted to the dramatic art that he even shaved his moustache and beard, and this made him still more like a mummy.
After the grand chain, he shuffled up to Nikitin sideways, coughed, and said:
'I had the pleasure of being present during the argument at tea. I fully share your opinion. We are of one mind, and it would be a great pleasure to me to talk to you. Have you read Lessing on the dramatic art of Hamburg?'
'No, I haven't.'
Shebaldin was horrified, and waved his hands as though he had burnt his fingers, and saying nothing more, staggered back from Nikitin. Shebaldin's appearance, his question, and his surprise, struck Nikitin as funny, but he thought none the less:
'It really is awkward. I am a teacher of literature, and to this day I've not read Lessing. I must read him.'
Before supper the whole company, old and young, sat down to play 'fate.' They took two packs of cards: one pack was dealt round to the company, the other was laid on the table face downwards.
'The one who has this card in his hand,' old Shelestov began solemnly, lifting the top card of the second pack, 'is fated to go into the nursery and kiss nurse.
The pleasure of kissing the nurse fell to the lot of Shebaldin. They all crowded round him, took him to the nursery, and laughing and clapping their hands, made him kiss the nurse. There was a great uproar and shouting.
'Not so ardently!' cried Shelestov with tears of laughter. 'Not so ardently!'
It was Nikitin's 'fate' to hear the confessions of all. He sat on a chair in the middle of the drawing-room. A shawl was brought and put over his head. The first who came to confess to him was Varya.
'I know your sins,' Nikitin began, looking in the darkness at her stern profile. 'Tell me, madam, how do you explain your walking with Polyansky every day? Oh, it's not for nothing she walks with an hussar!'
'That's poor,' said Varya, and walked away.
Then under the shawl he saw the shine of big motionless eyes, caught the lines of a dear profile in the dark, together with a familiar, precious fragrance which reminded Nikitin of Masha's room.
'Marie Godefroi,' he said, and did not know his own voice, it was so soft and tender, 'what are your sins?'
Masha screwed up her eyes and put out the tip of her tongue at him, then she laughed and went away. And a minute later she was standing in the middle of the room, clapping her hands and crying:
'Supper, supper, supper!'
And they all streamed into the dining-room. At supper Varya had another argument, and this time with her father. Polyansky ate stolidly, drank red wine, and described to Nikitin how once in a winter campaign he had stood all night up to his knees in a bog; the enemy was so near that they were not allowed to speak or smoke, the night was cold and dark, a piercing wind was blowing. Nikitin listened and stole side-glances at Masha. She was gazing at him immovably, without blinking, as though she was pondering something or was lost in a reverie. . . . It was pleasure and agony to him both at once.
'Why does she look at me like that?' was the question that fretted him. 'It's awkward. People may notice it. Oh, how young, how naive she is!'
The party broke up at midnight. When Nikitin went out at the gate, a window opened on the first-floor, and Masha showed herself at it.
'Sergey Vassilitch!' she called.
'What is it?'
'I tell you what . . .' said Masha, evidently thinking of something to say. 'I tell you what. . . Polyansky said he would come in a day or two with his camera and take us all. We must meet here.'
'Very well.'
Masha vanished, the window was slammed, and some one immediately began playing the piano in the house.
'Well, it is a house!' thought Nikitin while he crossed the street. 'A house in which there is no moaning except from Egyptian pigeons, and they only do it because they have no other means of expressing their joy!'
But the Shelestovs were not the only festive household. Nikitin had not gone two hundred paces before he heard the strains of a piano from another house. A little further he met a peasant playing the balalaika at the gate. In the gardens the band struck up a potpourri of Russian songs.
Nikitin lived nearly half a mile from the Shelestoys' in a flat of eight rooms at the rent of three hundred roubles a year, which he shared with his colleague Ippolit Ippolititch, a teacher of geography and history. When Nikitin went in this Ippolit Ippolititch, a snub-nosed, middle-aged man with a reddish beard, with a coarse, good-natured, unintellectual face like a workman's, was sitting at the table correcting his pupils' maps. He considered that the most important and necessary part of the study of geography was the drawing of maps, and of the study of history the learning of dates: he would sit for nights together correcting in blue pencil the maps drawn by the boys and girls he taught, or making chronological tables.
