Soon she was able to assure herself with her own eyes of the truth of this information. Variashski walked with Mdme. Tchereshneff, he rode with her and went out shooting eagles with her (yes, she went out shooting—that showed what sort of woman she was!), he went to tea with her, played with her boy, in fact, they were hardly ever apart. This made our ladies very, very much cooler towards Variashski. Of course mamma did not in the least wish him to compromise her daughter in the way he was compromising Mdme. Tchereshneff. But then he would never dare to. Mimotchka and Mdme. Tchereshneff were two quite different people. Mimotchka might have admirers, but she must not be talked about. And then to allow a doctor to pay you attention too, a man to whom you would give ten roubles for a visit, and who you could dismiss like a hairdresser. Mamma was really surprised at Mdme. Tchereshneff!... If only Mimotchka had liked, of course, she could have found something better.... Yes, if only she had wished it, the whole division would have been at her feet.... And princes besides! But, a doctor.... A man whom you paid for his visits!... And mamma had thought him such a serious, respectable man!... Certainly he was no longer very young. And to spend whole days at Mdme. Tchereshneff's; à son âge! ... It was evidently true what Doctor Shavronski said about Variashski's going out in a fez and with a pipe in his mouth, followed by a train of eight ladies, who were all in love with him.... What things one does hear and see!... And Doctor Variashski's proceedings so cooled mamma's and Mimotchka's feelings towards him that it was positively decided to pay him a hundred roubles and not a hundred and fifty. Mamma had even ceased believing in him as if he were the Almighty.
Kislovodsk was preparing for the season. The prices in the hotels had already gone up in expectation of the invalids who were making cures in other places and had to come on here to finish off, and for a rest after the strictness of the régime.
"Kislovodsk," says Lermontoff, "is the scene of the dénouement of all the love stories begun at the foot of Beshtau, Mashouka, and Jeleznaia."
Here, in general, accounts are wound up, intrigues unravelled, and deceptions unmasked; doctors count over their fees, and the invalids prove their newly acquired health; in a word, here, in the Narzan-laden atmosphere, the grand finale of the watering season is played out.
Kislovodsk was preparing for the season. And meanwhile, in the other stations, all kinds of love affairs were beginning and developing, and would be wound up at Kislovodsk. Widows suffering from ennui, wives separated from their husbands, dissatisfied wives, giddy, volatile, sentimental old maids, and would-be brides—all these swarmed and crowded at the Jeleznovodsk springs, and, having drawn from them fresh health and courage, threw out lines and nets right and left. And fishes, both large and small, nibbled and were entangled in them.
And so the day came when Doctor Ivanoff's first three patients migrated from Jeleznovodsk to Kislovodsk, and Doctor Grazianski's seven patients moved over from Piatigorsk to Jeleznovodsk, where the season was at its full height. The invalids had got better, they had made acquaintance with each other, and were well amused as they let themselves be drawn into the usual idle, though frivolously busy, watering-place life. The evenings got darker, the stars brighter, and the storms more frequent.
Mimotchka was not dull. She had got even prettier, and was looking blooming. She hadn't any flirtation going on, oh no! Did her heart beat too calmly, or was all around her unworthy of passion? Neither one nor the other. Simply she was too well brought up for any deviation from the path of duty. And although all around her, under her very eyes, couples met, smiled, and flirted, although she was surrounded by an atmosphere of love-making, Mimotchka was perfectly cool and calm. What were all these bakers' and farmers' wives to her? What did she care about all these people that swarmed and crawled on the grass under the sun's rays like beetles and grasshoppers? They might live as they liked, she would live as she "ought." And, proud in the knowledge of her irreproachableness and inaccessibility, Mimotchka, young, fresh, and pretty, tripped lightly and gracefully through the green alleys, without paying the slightest attention either to the approving and admiring glances directed at her, or to the meetings with him, with
l'homme au chien (although he had grown ever so much handsomer!).
No, Mimotchka had not the least shade of a flirtation, and, together with mamma, made fun of their neighbour on the adjoining balcony, a young widow from Smolensk, who, although she was still wearing mourning, said to her acquaintances, "Yes, I am not against a flirtation, only I don't want to take the initiative." And when, soon after, a young officer of the line[13] took to visiting her, mamma called him "the officer with the initiative." And what a nuisance he was to them! He spat and coughed and smoked cigarette after cigarette, and the worst possible cigarettes too, while the widow, in a languishing voice, sang about