The Count's other hare—Nadenka Kalinin—was honoured that evening by the Count's special attention. The whole evening he hovered around her, he told her anecdotes, he was witty, he flirted with her, and she, pale and exhausted, drew her lips to one side in a forced smile. The justice of the peace, Kalinin, watched them all the time, stroking his beard and coughing importantly. That the Count was paying court to his daughter was agreeable to him. “He has a Count as son-in-law!” What thought could be sweeter for a provincial bon-vivant? From the moment that the Count began to pay court to his daughter he had grown at least three feet in height in his own estimation. And with what stately glances he measured me, how maliciously he coughed when he talked to me! “So you stood on ceremonies and went away—it was all one to us! Now we have a Count!”
The day after the party I was again at the Count's estate. This time I did not talk with Sasha but with her brother, the schoolboy. The boy led me into the garden and poured out his whole soul to me. These confidences were the result of my questions as to how he got on with his “new mother.”
“She's your good acquaintance,” he began, nervously unbuttoning his uniform. “You will repeat it to her; but I don't care. You may tell her whatever you like! She's spiteful, she's base!”
He told me that Olga had taken his room from him, she had sent away their old nurse who had served at Urbenin's for ten years, she was always screaming about something and always angry.
“Yesterday you admired sister Sasha's hair.… Hadn't she pretty hair? Just like flax! This morning she cut it all off!”
“That was jealousy,” I thus explained to myself Olga's invasion into the hairdresser's domain.
“She was evidently envious that you had praised Sasha's hair and not her own,” the boy said in confirmation of my thought. “She worries papasha, too. Papasha is spending a terrible lot of money on her, and is neglecting his work.… He has again begun to drink! Again! She's a little fool.… She cries all day that she has to live in poverty in such a small house. Is it papasha's fault that he has little money?”
The boy told me many sad things. He saw that which his blinded father did not see or did not want to see. In the poor boy's opinion his father was wronged, his sister was wronged, his old nurse had been wronged. He had been deprived of his little den where he had been used to occupy himself with his books, and feed the goldfinches he had caught. Everybody had been wronged, everybody was laughed at by his stupid and all-powerful stepmother! But the poor boy could not have imagined the terrible wrong that his young stepmother would inflict on his family, and of which I was witness that very evening after my talk with him. Everything else grew dim before that wrong, the cropping of Sasha's hair appeared as a mere trifle in comparison with it.
XVIII
Late at night I was sitting with the Count. As usual, we were drinking. The Count was quite drunk, I only slightly.