“According to you wisdom lies in keeping these rules before one’s eyes as the guiding thread of life, in which case I am not wise, I have not ‘received this baptism.’”
An emotion closely related to sadness shone in her eyes, as she gazed upwards for a moment before she entered the house. Raisky anxiously told himself that she was as enigmatic as night itself, and he wondered what was the origin of these foreign ideas and whether her young life was already darkened.
CHAPTER XII
On Sunday Tatiana Markovna had guests for the second breakfast. The covers had been removed from the purple damask-covered chairs in the reception room. Yakob had rubbed the eyes of the family portraits with a damp rag, and they appeared to look forth more sharply than on ordinary days. The freshly waxed floors shone. Yakob himself paraded in a dress coat and a white necktie, while Egorka, Petrushka and Stepka, the latter of whom had been fetched from the village and had not yet found his legs, had been put into old liveries which did not fit them and smelt of moth. The dining-room and the reception room had been fumigated just before the meal.
Tatiana Markovna herself, in a silk dress and shawl, with her cap on the back of her head, sat on the divan. Near her the guests had taken their places in accordance with their rank and dignity. The place of honour was occupied by Niel Andreevich Tychkov, in a dress coat with an order, an important old gentleman whose eyebrows met in his great fat face, while his chin was lost in his cravat. The consciousness of his dignity appeared in every gesture and in his condescending speech. Next him sat the invariably modest Tiet Nikonich, also in a dress coat, with a glance of devotion for Tatiana Markovna, and a smile for all. Then followed the priest in a silk gown with a broad embroidered girdle, the councillors of the local court, the colonel of the garrison, ladies from the town; young officials who stood talking in undertones in a corner; young girls, friends of Marfinka, who timidly clasped their damp hands and continually changed colour; finally a proprietor from the neighbourhood with three half-grown sons.
When the company had already been assembled for some little time at the breakfast-table, Raisky entered. He felt that he was playing the rôle of an actor, fresh to the place, making his first appearance on the provincial stage after the most varying reports had been spread about him.
Tatiana Markovna introduced him as “My nephew, the son of my late niece Sfonichka,” though everybody knew who he was. Several people stood up to greet him. Niel Andreevich, who expected that he would come and speak to him, gave him a friendly smile; the ladies pulled their dresses straight and glanced at the mirror; the young officials who were standing eating off their plates in the corner shifted from one foot to the other; and the young girls blushed still more and pressed their hands as if danger threatened.
Raisky bowed to the assembled guests, and sat down beside his aunt on the divan.