II
Marya Alekséyevna knew what was spoken at the theatre, but she did not yet know what followed that conversation.
At the very time that she was getting more and more angry with her daughter, and, in consequence of having put too much rum in her punch, was snoring in her daughter’s room, Mikhaïl Ivanuitch Storeshnikof was taking supper in a certain fashionable restaurant with the other young gentlemen who had accompanied him to the box.
There was still a fourth person in the company—a French girl who came with the officer. The supper was almost ended.
“Monsieur Storeshnik.”
Storeshnikof felt greatly set up. The French girl addressed him for the third time during the supper.
“Monsieur Storeshnik! Allow me to address you so. It sounds better and is much easier to speak. I did not think that I was going to be the only lady in your company; I hoped to see Adèle here. That would have been charming, I see her so seldom.”
“Adèle unfortunately has quarrelled with me.”
The officer wanted to say something, but he did not speak.
“Don’t believe him, Mademoiselle Julie,” said the civilian. “He does not dare to tell you the truth; he thinks that you will not like it when you find out that he has given up a French girl for a Russian.”
“I don’t know why it was we came here,” said the officer.
“Why, yes, Serge; it was because Jean asked us. And it has been very pleasant for me to get acquainted with Monsieur Storeshnikof. No, Monsieur Storeshnikof; fy, what bad taste you show! I should never have said anything if you had deserted Adèle for that Circassian beauty in whose box you were sitting; but to give up a French girl for a Russian! I imagine her: colorless eyes, colorless, thin hair, a vacant, colorless face. I beg pardon; not colorless, but as you call it, blood with cream [krof so slivkami], and by that you mean a dish which only your Eskimo can take into their mouths.—Jean, let that sinner against grace have the ashtray. Let him scatter ashes on his wicked head!”
“You have spoken so much nonsense, Julie, that it ought to be your head, not his, that should be sown with ashes,” said the officer. “It happens that the very girl whom you called the Circassian was the Russian.”
“You are making sport of me!”
“A genuine Russian,” said the officer.
“Impossible!”
“You are quite wrong, my dear Julie, if you think that our nation has only one type of beauty, like your own. You have a great many blondes, but we, Julie, are a mixture of nations. We have the white-haired like the Finns—”
“Yes, yes, the Finns,” said the French girl.
“And those with black hair, who are even darker than Italians; Tartars and Mongolians—”
“Yes, yes, Tartars and Mongolians; I know about them,” said the French girl again.
“And all of them have given us a share of their blood. We have blondes, whom you may despise, but they are only a local type; a very common type, to be sure, but not predominating.”
“That’s strange. But she is lovely. Why doesn’t she go on the stage? By the way, gentlemen, I only speak of what I have seen. There remains a very important question—her foot. Your great poet Karasen, I have been told, said that in all Russia there could not be found five pair of small, straight little feet.”
“Julie! it was not Karasen who said that, and you had better call him Karamzin. Karamzin was a historian, and he wasn’t a Russian, but a Tartar. Now, here’s a new proof of the variety of our types. It was Pushkin who spoke about the little feet. His poetry was very good in its day, but now it has lost a large part of its value. By the way, the Eskimo live in America, and our savages who drink the blood of elans are called Samoyeds.”
“Thank you, Serge. Karamzin, historian; Pushkin, I know; Eskimo, in America; the Russians are Samoyeds; yes, Samoyeds. That is such a lovely word: Sa-mo-ye-dui! Now I shall remember it. Now, gentlemen, I shall ask Serge to tell me all this again when we are alone. It is a very profitable subject for conversation; besides, science is my hobby. I was born to be a Madame Staël, gentlemen. But this is an episode entirely out of the track. Let us return to the question—her foot.”
“If you will allow me to call upon you tomorrow, Mademoiselle Julie, I shall have the honor of bringing you her shoe.”
“Bring it. I will try it on. That appeals to my curiosity.”
Storeshnikof was enraptured. Why? Because he had got into Jean’s wake, and Jean was in Serge’s wake, and Julie—she was one of the most prominent of the French ladies among all the French ladies of Serge’s society. It was an honor, a great honor.
“I don’t care anything about her foot,” said Jean; “but I as a practical man am interested in something beside her foot. I want to see if she has a pretty figure.”
“Her figure is very pretty,” said Storeshnikof, who was encouraged by the praise given his taste, and who thought at the same time that he could give Julie a compliment. He had not dared to do so before. “Her figure is charming, although to praise another woman’s figure here is certainly blasphemy.”
“Ha! ha! ha! this gentleman wants to make a compliment on my figure! I am neither a hypocrite nor a liar, Monsieur Storeshnik, and I don’t praise myself, nor can I endure that others should flatter what is bad in me. Thank God, I have something for which I can honestly be praised. But my figure! ha! ha! ha! Jean, you can tell him whether my figure is worth praising. Jean, why don’t you speak? Your hand, Monsieur Storeshnik.” She seized his hand. “See here! Now you will know that I am not all that I seem! I have to wear a padded dress, just as I wear a petticoat, not because I like it. No, in my opinion it would be better without such hypocrisy, but because it is the fashion. But a woman who has lived as I have, and how have I lived Monsieur Storeshnik? I am a saint now compared to what I have been; such a woman cannot preserve her beauty!”
And suddenly she burst into tears—“My beauty! My beauty! my lost innocence! Oh God, why was I born?”
“You lie, gentlemen!” she cried, jumping up and pounding with her fist on the table. “You are slanderers. You are low fellows. She is not his mistress. He is trying to buy her. I saw how she turned away from him; how she burned with indignation and with scorn. It was contemptible.”
“Yes,” said the civilian, lazily stretching himself, “you have boasted a little prematurely, Storeshnikof; you have not caught your fish yet, and yet you said that she was yours, and that you had broken with Adèle so as to deceive us the better. Yes, you gave us a very good description, but you described to us what you had not seen yet; however, it’s no matter. A week sooner or later makes no difference. You must not be discouraged about drawing on your imagination for stories. You will get on even better than you thought. I have been there; you will be satisfied.”
Storeshnikof was beside himself with anger. “No, Mademoiselle Julie, you are mistaken; I venture to assure you that you are mistaken in your conclusion; forgive me for daring to contradict you, but she is my mistress. That was an ordinary lover’s quarrel because she was jealous; she saw that I was sitting in Mademoiselle Mathilde’s box during the first act; that’s all.”
“That’s a lie, my dear, that’s a lie,” said Jean, yawning.
“I don’t tell lies! I don’t tell lies!”
“Prove it. I am a positive man, and I don’t believe anything without proofs.”
“What proofs can I bring you?”
“Now here you are backing out, and you as good as confess that you lie. What proofs? As if it would be hard to show them. Now, then, here’s for you: tomorrow we will meet here again at supper. Mademoiselle Julie will be good enough to bring her Serge; I shall bring my dear little Berthe; you bring her. If you bring her, I am the loser, the supper shall be at my expense. If you don’t bring her, you shall be driven out from our circle in disgrace.—Jean, touch the bell.” The servant appeared. “Simon, be good enough to get supper for six people tomorrow; one just like the one that I had when Berthe and I were married at your house—do you remember?—before Christmas, and have it in this very room!”
“How could I ever forget such a supper, Monsieur? It shall be done.” The servant went out.
“You contemptible, miserable men! Two years I lived as a bad woman in a house with prostitutes and thieves, and never once did I meet three such low people as you are! Mon Dieu! what sort of people do I have to live with in society? Why must I suffer such disgrace, O God!” She fell on her knees: “O God, I am a feeble woman! I could bear hunger, but in Paris the winters were so cold. The cold was so bitter, and the temptations were so overpowering. I wanted to live; I wanted to love. O God, that was no sin! Why art thou punishing me so? Deliver me from this band. Lift me out of this mire. Give me strength to become even a bad woman again in Paris; I ask of Thee nothing else: I deserve nothing else. Only deliver me from these men, from these contemptible men!”
She jumped up, and ran to the officer: “Serge, are you too like the rest? No, you are better.”
“Better?” repeated the officer, phlegmatically.
“Isn’t this thing contemptible?”
“It is, Julie.”
“And you don’t protest? You allow it? You agree to it? You share in it?”
“Sit on my knee, my dear Julie.” He began to caress her, and she grew calmer. “How I love you at such moments! You are a glorious woman. Now, why don’t you consent to go through the marriage ceremony with me? How many times have I asked you to? Give your consent.”
“Marriage? the bridle? conventionality? Never! I have forbidden you to mention such absurdities. Don’t get me angry. But Serge, dear Serge, forbid him; he is afraid of you. Save her!”
“Julie, be calmer. This is impossible. If not he, then somebody else; what difference does it make? Just look here. Jean is already thinking of getting her away from him, and there are thousands of such Jeans, as you know well. It is impossible to save the daughter when her mother is anxious to sell her. ‘You can’t knock down a wall with your forehead,’ we Russians say. We are a clever people, Julie. You see how calmly I live, accepting this Russian principle of ours.”
“Never! You are a slave! The French woman is free. The French woman struggles, may fall, but still she struggles. I will not allow this. Who is she? Where does she live? Do you know?”
“I know.”
“Let us go to her. I am going to warn her.”
“What! at one o’clock at night? No, let us go home.—Au revoir! Jean.—Au revoir! Storeshnikof.—Of course, you will not expect Julie and me at your supper, tomorrow. You see how excited she is. And I also, to tell you the truth, don’t like this business at all. Of course, my opinion has nothing to do with you. Au revoir!”
“What a crazy Frenchwoman!” said the civilian, stretching himself and yawning, as the officer and Julia left. “A very piquante woman, but this is too much. It is very pleasant to see a nice little woman get warmed up; but I would not live with her four hours, let alone four years. Of course, Storeshnikof, our supper will not be destroyed by her caprice. I shall bring Paul and Mathilde in their place. And now it’s time to go home. I have got to call on Berthe, and then I must go and see the little Lottchen, who is mighty pretty.”