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"Who is here?" asked Nyuta, going into the arbour. "Ah, it is you, Volodya? What are you doing here? Thinking? And how can you go on thinking, thinking, thinking? . . . That's the way to go out of your mind!" Volodya got up and looked in a dazed way at Nyuta. She had only just come back from bathing.
For the first time since Mamma's death, Grandmamma drank champagne, and weeps with joy as she looks at Volodya, who henceforth rode in his own equipage, receives friends in his own rooms, smokes tobacco, goes to balls. But soon another incident happened which is engraven on memory. The dear old Grandmamma was growing daily weaker, and one morning the announcement thrilled us that she was dead.
"Oh, what are you saying, Ellena Victorovna!" said Chaplinsky with a tender reproach. "Abandon compliments, Volodya! I know myself that I'm still young and beautiful of body, but, really, it seems to me at times that I am ninety. So worn out has my soul become. I continue. I say, that during all my life only three strong impressions have sunk into my soul.
"But do you know, Volodya, why you are such a clumsy seal? Because you don't devote yourself to the ladies. Why don't you? It's true there are no girls here, but there is nothing to prevent your flirting with the married ladies! Why don't you flirt with me, for instance?" Volodya listened and scratched his forehead in acute and painful irresolution.
But after supper the ladies did not go for a walk in the garden, but went on playing cards. They played till one o'clock at night, and then broke up to go to bed. "How stupid it all is!" Volodya thought with vexation as he got into bed. "But never mind; I'll wait till to-morrow . . . to-morrow in the arbour. It doesn't matter. . . ."
In using these expressions we do not lie or exaggerate, but simply express our delight, just as a mother does not lie when she calls her child "my golden one." It is the feeling of beauty that speaks in us, and beauty cannot endure what is commonplace and trivial; it induces us to make comparisons which Volodya may, with his intellect, pull to pieces, but which he will understand with his heart.
Volodya ran back and dashed out into the open air. "How could they talk of it aloud!" he wondered in agony, clasping his hands and looking up to the sky in horror. "They talk aloud in cold blood . . . and maman laughed! . . . Maman! My God, why didst Thou give me such a mother? Why?" But he had to go to the house, come what might.
Combing his hair before the looking-glass, and looking at his ugly face, pale from his sleepless night, he thought: "It's perfectly true . . . an ugly duckling!" When maman saw him and was horrified that he was not at his examination, Volodya said: "I overslept myself, maman. . . . But don't worry, I will get a medical certificate." Madame Shumihin and Nyuta waked up at one o'clock.
After he had gone away maman began telling the music teacher how she had been staying at the Shumihins', and how warmly they welcomed her. "Lili Shumihin is a relation of mine, you know," she said. "Her late husband, General Shumihin, was a cousin of my husband. And she was a Baroness Kolb by birth. . . ." "Maman, that's false!" said Volodya irritably. "Why tell lies?"
She was always laughing, a desperate flirt, fond of nothing but balls and young men, and all of a sudden off she went to surprise every one!" "That's not true," said Volodya, turning down the collar of his fur coat and showing his handsome face. "It wasn't a case of par dépit; it was simply horrible, if you like. Her brother Dmitri was sent to penal servitude, and they don't know where he is now.
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