The lady walked up and down the room again and mused a little.
“H’m, not married . . .” she pronounced meditatively. “H’m. Lilya and Mila, don’t sit at the window, there’s a draught! What a pity! A young man and to let himself sink to this! And all owing to what? The lack of good influence! There is no mother who would. . . . Not married? Well . . . there it is. . . . Please be so good,” the lady continued suavely after a moment’s thought, “as to go to him and ask him in my name to . . . refrain from using expressions. . . . Tell him that Madame Nashatyrin begs him. . . . Tell him she is staying with her daughters in No. 47 . . . that she has come up from her estate in the country. . . .”
“Certainly.”
“Tell him, a colonel’s lady and her daughters. He might even come and apologize. . . . We are always at home after dinner. Oh, Mila, shut the window!”
“Why, what do you want with that . . . black sheep, mamma?” drawled Lilya when the hotel-keeper had retired. “A queer person to invite! A drunken, rowdy rascal!”
“Oh, don’t say so, ma chère! You always talk like that; and there . . . sit down! Why, whatever he may be, we ought not to despise him. . . . There’s something good in everyone. Who knows,” sighed the colonel’s lady, looking her daughters up and down anxiously, “perhaps your fate is here. Change your dresses anyway. . . .”
IN A STRANGE LAND
SUNDAY, midday. A landowner, called Kamyshev, is sitting in his dining-room, deliberately eating his lunch at a luxuriously furnished table. Monsieur Champoun, a clean, neat, smoothly-shaven, old Frenchman, is sharing the meal with him. This Champoun had once been a tutor in Kamyshev’s household, had taught his children good manners, the correct pronunciation of French, and dancing: afterwards when Kamyshev’s children had grown up and become lieutenants, Champoun had become something like a bonne of the male sex. The duties of the former tutor were not complicated. He had to be properly dressed, to smell of scent, to listen to Kamyshev’s idle babble, to eat and drink and sleep—and apparently that was all. For this he received a room, his board, and an indefinite salary.