Half an hour later he returned home to his room, and when, at the sound of the gong, he appeared in the drawing room, the dark-eyed stranger whom he had seen in the wood was already there. Sipiagin introduced Nejdanov to him as his beaufrère’a, Valentina Mihailovna’s brother—Sergai Mihailovitch Markelov.
“I hope you will get to know each other and be friends, gentlemen,” Sipiagin exclaimed with the amiable, stately, though absent-minded smile characteristic of him.
Markelov bowed silently; Nejdanov responded in a similar way, and Sipiagin, throwing back his head slightly and shrugging his shoulders, walked away, as much as to say, “I’ve brought you together, but whether you become friends or not is a matter of equal indifference to me!”
Valentina Mihailovna came up to the silent pair, standing motionless, and introduced them to each other over again; she then turned to her brother with that peculiarly bright, caressing expression which she seemed able to summon at will into her wonderful eyes.
“Why, my dear Serge, you’ve quite forgotten us! You did not even come on Kolia’s nameday. Are you so very busy? My brother is making some sort of new arrangement with his peasants,” she remarked, turning to Nejdanov. “So very original—three parts of everything for them and one for himself; even then he thinks that he gets more than his share.”
“My sister is fond of joking,” Markelov said to Nejdanov in his turn, “but I am prepared to agree with her; for one man to take a quarter of what belongs to a hundred, is certainly too much.”
“Do you think that I am fond of joking, Alexai Dmitritch?” Madame Sipiagina asked with that same caressing softness in her voice and in her eyes.
Nejdanov was at a loss for a reply, but just then Kollomietzev was announced. The hostess went to meet him, and a few moments later a servant appeared and announced in a sing-song voice that dinner was ready.
At dinner Nejdanov could not keep his eyes off Mariana and Markelov. They sat side by side, both with downcast eyes, compressed lips, and an expression of gloomy severity on their angry faces. Nejdanov wondered how Markelov could possibly be Madame Sipiagina’s brother; they were so little like each other. There was only one point of resemblance between them, their dark complexions; but the even colour of Valentina Mihailovna’s face, arms, and shoulders constituted one of her charms, while in her brother it reached to that shade of swarthiness which polite people call “bronze,” but which to the Russian eye suggests a brown leather boot-leg.
Markelov had curly hair, a somewhat hooked nose, thick lips, sunken cheeks, a narrow chest, and sinewy hands. He was dry and sinewy all over, and spoke in a curt, harsh, metallic voice. The sleepy look in his eyes, the gloomy expression, denoted a bilious temperament! He ate very little, amused himself by making bread pills, and every now and again would fix his eyes on Kollomietzev. The latter had just returned from town, where he had been to see the governor upon a rather unpleasant matter for himself, upon which he kept a tacit silence, but was very voluble about everything else. Sipiagin sat on him somewhat when he went a little too far, but laughed a good deal at his anecdotes and bon mots, although he thought qu’il est un affreux réactionnaire. Kollomietzev declared, among other things, how he went into raptures at what the peasants, oui, oui! les simples mougiks! call lawyers. “Liars! Liars!” he shouted with delight. “Ce peuple russe est délicieux!” He then went on to say how once, when going through a village school, he asked one of the children what a babugnia was, and nobody could tell him, not even the teacher himself. He then asked what a pithecus was, and no one knew even that, although he had quoted the poet Himnitz, ‘The weakwitted pithecus that mocks the other beasts.’ Such is the deplorable condition of our peasant schools!