The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

had perfect command of the skill of drawing others into a conversation—and three or four voices could already be heard talking at once. The dull and tired face of Mrs. Zakhlebinin lit up almost with joy; the same with Katerina Fedoseevna, who listened and looked as if mesmerized. Scowling, Nadya studied him keenly; one could note that she had been prejudiced against him. This fired Velchaninov up still more. The “wicked” Marya Nikitishna did manage to slip into the conversation a rather pointed barb on his account; she invented and insisted that Pavel Pavlovich had recommended him there the day before as a childhood friend of his, thus adding—and hinting at it clearly—a whole seven extra years to his age. Yet the wicked Marya Nikitishna liked him, too. Pavel Pavlovich was decidedly taken aback. He had, of course, some notion of the resources his friend possessed, and in the beginning was even glad of his success, giggling along and mixing in the conversation himself; but for some reason he gradually began to lapse as if into reflection, even, finally, into despondency, which showed clearly on his alarmed physiognomy.

“Well, you’re the sort of guest who doesn’t need to be entertained,” old Zakhlebinin cheerily decided at last, getting up from his chair to go to his room upstairs, where, despite the feast day, he had a few business papers ready for going over, “and, imagine, I considered you the gloomiest hypochondriac of all our young people. How wrong one can be!”

In the drawing room stood a grand piano; Velchaninov asked who studied music, and suddenly turned to Nadya.

“You sing, it seems?”

“Who told you so?” Nadya snapped.

“Pavel Pavlovich said so earlier.”

“Not so; I only sing for a joke; I have no voice.”

“I have no voice either, but I do sing.”

“So you’ll sing for us? Well, then I’ll sing for you, too,” Nadya flashed her eyes, “only not now, but after dinner. I can’t stand music,” she added, “I’m sick of this piano; all this playing and singing here from morning till night— Katya’s more than enough herself.”

Velchaninov seized on the phrase at once, and it turned out that Katerina Fedoseevna was the only one of them all who seriously studied piano. He immediately turned to her with a request to play. Everyone was evidently pleased that he had turned to Katya, and Maman even blushed with satisfaction. Katerina Fedoseevna rose, smiling, and went to the grand piano, but suddenly, unexpectedly for herself, blushed all over, and suddenly felt terribly ashamed that, big as she was, already twenty-four years old, and so plump, here she was blushing like a little girl—and all this was written on her face as she sat down to play. She played something by Haydn, and played it very accurately, though without expression; but she turned shy. When she finished, Velchaninov started praising terribly, not her but Haydn, and especially the little piece she had played—and she was obviously so pleased, she listened so gratefully and happily to this praise not of herself but of Haydn, that Velchaninov involuntarily looked at her more gently and attentively. “Eh, aren’t you a nice one?” shone in his eyes —and everyone understood this glance as if at once, especially Katerina Fedoseevna herself.

“A nice garden you’ve got,” he suddenly addressed them all, looking through the glass door to the balcony. “You know, let’s all go out to the garden!”

“Let’s go, let’s go!” came joyful squeals—just as if he had guessed the main general wish.

They were in the garden until dinner. Mrs. Zakhlebinin, who had long been wanting to sleep, also could not help herself and went out with everyone else, but sensibly stayed to sit and rest on the balcony, where she dozed off at once. In the garden, the mutual relations between Velchaninov and all the girls became friendlier still. He noticed that two or three very young men joined them from neighboring houses; one was a university student, another merely a high school boy. These two sprang over at once each to his own girl, and it was evident that they had come for their sake; the third “young man,” a very gloomy and ruffled twenty-year-old boy in enormous blue spectacles, began hurriedly and frowningly exchanging whispers with Marya Nikitishna and Nadya. He sternly looked Velchaninov over and seemed to consider it his duty to treat him with extraordinary disdain. Some girls suggested that they go ahead and start playing. To Velchaninov’s question about what games they played, they replied that they played all games, including fox and hounds, but that in the evening they would play proverbs, that is, where everybody sits down and one person stands apart for a while; all those sitting down choose a proverb, for instance: “Slow and steady wins the race,” and when the person is called back, each one in turn has to prepare and tell him a sentence. The first one has to give a sentence containing the word “slow,” the second a sentence containing the word “steady,” and so on. And the person has to pick out all these words and from them guess the proverb.

“It must be great fun,” observed Velchaninov.

“Oh, no, it’s quite boring,” two or three voices answered at once.

“Or else we play theater,” Nadya observed, addressing him. “See that big tree with the bench around it? There, behind the tree, is like backstage, the actors sit there—say, a king, a queen, a princess, a young man—whatever anyone likes; each one comes out whenever he has a mind to and says whatever occurs to him, and something or other comes out.”

“But how nice!” Velchaninov praised once more.

“Oh, no, it’s quite boring! Each time it comes out as fun in the beginning, but by the end it turns senseless each time, because nobody knows how to finish; though maybe with you it would be more amusing. And we thought you were Pavel Pavlovich’s friend, but it turns out he was simply boasting. I’m very glad you came… owing to a certain circumstance,” she looked very seriously and meaningly at Velchaninov and at once stepped over beside Marya Nikitishna.

“There’ll be a game of proverbs this evening,” one girlfriend, whom he had scarcely noticed till then and had not yet exchanged a word with, whispered confidentially to Velchaninov, “and this evening everybody will laugh at Pavel Pavlovich, so you must, too.”

“Ah, how nice of you to come, we’re so bored here otherwise,” another girlfriend said to him amiably, one he had not yet noticed at all, and who appeared from God knows where, a little redhead with freckles, her face flushed in a terribly funny way from walking and the heat.

Pavel Pavlovich’s uneasiness grew greater and greater. In the garden, toward the end, Velchaninov succeeded completely in becoming close with Nadya; she no longer peered at him scowlingly as earlier and seemed to have set aside the idea of studying him more closely, but laughed, jumped, squealed, and even seized him by the hand once or twice; she was terribly happy, and went on paying not the slightest attention to Pavel Pavlovich, as if not noticing him. Velchaninov was convinced that there existed a positive conspiracy against Pavel Pavlovich; Nadya and a crowd of girls would draw Velchaninov to one side, while other girlfriends under various pretexts lured Pavel Pavlovich to the other; but he would tear away and at once run headlong straight to them—that is, to Velchaninov