WHEN PRINCESS MARYA went into the room, Prince Vassily and his son were already in the drawing-room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne. When she walked in with her heavy step, treading on her heels, the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose, and the little princess, with a gesture indicating her to the gentlemen, said: “Here is Marie!” Princess Marya saw them all and saw them in detail. She saw the face of Prince Vassily, growing serious for an instant at the sight of her, and then hastily smiling, and the face of the little princess, scanning the faces of the guests with curiosity to detect the impression Marie was making on them. She saw Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, with her ribbon and her pretty face, turned towards him with a look of more eagerness than she had ever seen on it. But him she could not see, she could only see something large, bright-coloured, and handsome moving towards her, as she entered the room. Prince Vassily approached her first; and she kissed his bald head, as he bent over to kiss her hand, and in reply to his words said, that on the contrary, she remembered him very well. Then Anatole went up to her. She still could not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking her hand firmly, and she touched with her lips a white forehead, over which there was beautiful fair hair, smelling of pomade. When she glanced at him, she was impressed by his beauty. Anatole was standing with the thumb of his right hand at a button of his uniform, his chest squared and his spine arched; swinging one foot, with his head a little on one side, he was gazing in silence with a beaming face on the princess, obviously not thinking of her at all. Anatole was not quick-witted, he was not ready, not eloquent in conversation, but he had that faculty, so invaluable for social purposes, of composure and imperturbable assurance. If a man of no self-confidence is dumb at first making acquaintance, and betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of this dumbness and an anxiety to find something to say, the effect will be bad. But Anatole was dumb and swung his leg, as he watched the princess's hair with a radiant face. It was clear that he could be silent with the same serenity for a very long while. “If anybody feels silence awkward, let him talk, but I don't care about it,” his demeanour seemed to say. Moreover, in his manner to women, Anatole had that air, which does more than anything else to excite curiosity, awe, and even love in women, the air of supercilious consciousness of his own superiority. His manner seemed to say to them: “I know you, I know, but why trouble my head about you? You'd be pleased enough, of course!” Possibly he did not think this on meeting women (it is probable, indeed, that he did not, for he thought very little at any time), but that was the effect of his air and his manner. Princess Marya felt it, and as though to show him she did not even venture to think of inviting his attention, she turned to his father. The conversation was general and animated, thanks to the voice and the little downy lip, that flew up and down over the white teeth of the little princess. She met Prince Vassily in that playful tone so often adopted by chatty and lively persons, the point of which consists in the assumption that there exists a sort of long-established series of jokes and amusing, partly private, humorous reminiscences between the persons so addressed and oneself, even when no such reminiscences are really shared, as indeed was the case with Prince Vassily and the little princess. Prince Vassily readily fell in with this tone, the little princess embellished their supposed common reminiscences with all sorts of droll incidents that had never occurred, and drew Anatole too into them, though she had scarcely known him. Mademoiselle Bourienne too succeeded in taking a part in them, and even Princess Marya felt with pleasure that she was being made to share in their gaiety.
“Well, anyway, we shall take advantage of you to the utmost now we have got you, dear prince,” said the little princess, in French, of course, to Prince Vassily. “Here it is not as it used to be at our evenings at Annette's, where you always ran away. Do you remember our dear Annette?”
“Ah yes, but then you mustn't talk to me about politics, like Annette!”
“And our little tea-table?”
“Oh yes!”
“Why is it you never used to be at Annette's?” the little princess asked of Anatole. “Ah, I know, I know,” she said, winking; “your brother, Ippolit, has told me tales of your doings. Oh!” She shook her finger at him. “I know about your exploits in Paris too!”
“But he, Ippolit, didn't tell you, did he?” said Prince Vassily (addressing his son and taking the little princess by the arm, as though she would have run away and he were just in time to catch her); “he didn't tell you how he, Ippolit himself, was breaking his heart over our sweet princess, and how she turned him out of doors.”
“Oh! she is the pearl of women, princess,” he said, addressing Princess Marya. Mademoiselle Bourienne on her side, at the mention of Paris, did not let her chance slip for taking a share in the common stock of recollections.
She ventured to inquire if it were long since Anatole was in Paris, and how he had liked that city. Anatole very readily answered the Frenchwoman, and smiling and staring at her, he talked to her about her native country. At first sight of the pretty Mademoiselle, Anatole had decided that even here at Bleak Hills he should not be dull. “Not half bad-looking,” he thought, scrutinising her, “she's not half bad-looking, that companion! I hope she'll bring her along when we're married,” he mused; “she is a nice little thing.”
The old prince was dressing deliberately in his room, scowling and ruminating on what he was to do. The arrival of these visitors angered him. “What's Prince Vassily to me, he and his son? Prince Vassily is a braggart, an empty-headed fool, and a nice fellow the son is, I expect,” he growled to himself. What angered him was that this visit revived in his mind the unsettled question, continually thrust aside, the question in regard to which the old prince always deceived himself. That question was whether he would ever bring himself to part with his daughter and give her to a husband. The prince could never bring himself to put this question directly to himself, knowing beforehand that if he did he would have to answer it justly, but against justice in this case was ranged more than feeling, the very possibility of life. Life without Princess Marya was unthinkable to the old prince, little as in appearance he prized her. “And what is she to be married for?” he thought; “to be unhappy, beyond a doubt. Look at Liza with Andrey (and a better husband, I should fancy, it would be difficult to find nowadays), but she's not satisfied with her lot.
And who would marry her for love? She's plain and ungraceful. She'd be married for her connections, her wealth. And don't old maids get on well enough? They are happier really!” So Prince Nikolay Andreivitch mused, as he dressed, yet the question constantly deferred demanded an immediate decision. Prince Vassily had brought his son obviously with the intention of making an offer, and probably that day or the next he would ask for a direct answer. The name, the position in the world, was suitable. “Well, I'm not against it,” the prince kept saying to himself, “only let him be worthy of her. That's what we shall see. That's what we shall see,” he said aloud, “that's what we shall see,” and with his usual alert step he walked into the drawing-room, taking in the whole company in a rapid glance. He noticed the change in the dress of the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne's ribbon, and the hideous way in which Princess Marya's hair was done, and the smiles of the Frenchwoman and Anatole, and the isolation of his daughter in the general talk. “She's decked herself out like a fool!” he thought, glancing vindictively at his daughter. “No shame in her; while he doesn't care to speak to her!”
He went up to Prince Vassily.
“Well, how d'ye do, how d'ye do, glad to see you.”
“For a friend that one loves seven versts is close by,” said Prince Vassily, quoting the Russian proverb, and speaking in his usual rapid, self-confident, and familiar tone. “This is my second, I beg you to love him and welcome him, as they say.”
Prince Nikolay Andreivitch scrutinised Anatole.
“A fine fellow, a fine fellow!” he said. “Well, come and give me a kiss,” and he offered him his cheek. Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and perfect composure, waiting for some instance of the eccentricity his father had told him to expect.
The old prince sat down in his customary place in the corner of the sofa, moved up an armchair for Prince Vassily, pointed to it, and began questioning him about political affairs and news. He seemed to be listening with attention to what Prince Vassily was saying, but glanced continually at Princess Marya.
“So they're writing from Potsdam already?” He repeated Prince Vassily's last words,............