“I overslept, mamma, but don’t worry; I can give them a certificate from the doctor.”
Madame Shumikin and Nyuta woke at one o’clock. Volodia heard the former throw open her window with a bang, and heard Nyuta’s ringing laugh answer her rough voice. He saw the dining-room door flung open and the nieces and dependents, among whom was his mother, troop in to lunch. He saw Nyuta’s freshly washed face, and beside it the black eyebrows and beard of the architect, who had just come.
Nyuta was in Little Russian costume, and this was not becoming to her and made her look clumsy. The architect made some vulgar, insipid jests, and Volodia thought that there were a terrible lot of onions in the stew that day. He also thought that Nyuta was laughing loudly and looking in his direction on purpose to let him understand that the memory of last night did not worry her in the least, and that she scarcely noticed the presence at table of the ugly duckling.
At four o’clock Volodia and his mother drove to the station. The lad’s sordid memories, his sleepless night, and the pangs of his conscience aroused in him a feeling of painful and gloomy anger. He looked at his mother’s thin profile, at her little nose, and at the rain-coat that had been a gift to her from Nyuta, and muttered:
“Why do you powder your face? It does not become you at all! You try to look pretty, but you don’t pay your debts, and you smoke cigarettes that aren’t yours! It’s disgusting! I don’t like you, no, I don’t, I don’t!”
So he insulted her, but she only rolled her eyes in terror and, throwing up her hands, said in a horrified whisper:
“What are you saying? Heavens, the coachman will hear you! Do hush, he can hear everything!”
“I don’t like you! I don’t like you!” he went on, struggling for breath. “You are without morals or heart. Don’t dare to wear that rain-coat again, do you hear me? If you do, I’ll tear it to shreds!”
“Control yourself, child!” wept his mother. “The coachman will hear you!”
“Where is my father’s fortune? Where is your own? You have squandered them both. I am not ashamed of my poverty, but I am ashamed of my mother. I blush whenever the boys at school ask me about you.”