第187章

In his mood of doglike submissiveness all feeling of rivalry had died away.

Grushenka's mood and the enigmatic tone of some of her words he completely failed to grasp.All he understood, with thrilling heart, was that she was kind to him, that she had forgiven him, and made him sit by her.He was beside himself with delight, watching her sip her glass of champagne.The silence of the company seemed somehow to strike him, however, and he looked round at everyone with expectant eyes.

"Why are we sitting here though, gentlemen? Why don't you begin doing something?" his smiling eyes seemed to ask.

"He keeps talking nonsense, and we were all laughing," Kalgonov began suddenly, as though divining his thought, and pointing to Maximov.

Mitya immediately stared at Kalgonov and then at Maximov "He's talking nonsense?" he laughed, his short, wooden laugh, seeming suddenly delighted at something- "ha ha!""Yes.Would you believe it, he will have it that all our cavalry officers in the twenties married Polish women.That's awful rot, isn't it?""Polish women?" repeated Mitya, perfectly ecstatic.

Kalgonov was well aware of Mitya's attitude to Grushenka, and he guessed about the Pole, too, but that did not so much interest him, perhaps did not interest him at all; what he was interested in was Maximov.He had come here with Maximov by chance, and he met the Poles here at the inn for the first time in his life.Grushenka he knew before, and had once been with someone to see her; but she had not taken to him.But here she looked at him very affectionately: before Mitya's arrival, she had been making much of him, but he seemed somehow to be unmoved by it.He was a boy, not over twenty, dressed like a dandy, with a very charming fair-skinned face, and splendid thick, fair hair.From his fair face looked out beautiful pale blue eyes, with an intelligent and sometimes even deep expression, beyond his age indeed, although the young man sometimes looked and talked quite like a child, and was not at all ashamed of it, even when he was aware of it himself.As a rule he was very wilful, even capricious, though always friendly.Sometimes there was something fixed and obstinate in his expression.He would look at you and listen, seeming all the while to be persistently dreaming over something else.

Often he was listless and lazy; at other times he would grow excited, sometimes, apparently, over the most trivial matters.

"Only imagine, I've been taking him about with me for the last four days," he went on, indolently drawling his words, quite naturally though, without the slightest affectation."Ever since your brother, do you remember, shoved him off the carriage and sent him flying.That made me take an interest in him at the time, and I took him into the country, but he keeps talking such rot I'm ashamed to be with him.I'm taking him back.""The gentleman has not seen Polish ladies, and says what is impossible," the Pole with the pipe observed to Maximov.

He spoke Russian fairly well, much better, anyway, than he pretended.If he used Russian words, he always distorted them into a Polish form.

"But I was married to a Polish lady myself," tittered Maximov.

"But did you serve in the cavalry? You were talking about the cavalry.Were you a cavalry officer?" put in Kalgonov at once.

"Was he a cavalry officer indeed? Ha ha!" cried Mitya, listening eagerly, and turning his inquiring eyes to each as he spoke, as though there were no knowing what he might hear from each.

"No, you see," Maximov turned to him."What I mean is that those pretty Polish ladies...when they danced the mazurka with our Uhlans...when one of them dances a mazurka with a Uhlan she jumps on his knee like a kitten...a little white one...and the pan-father and pan-mother look on and allow it...They allow it...and next day the Uhlan comes and offers her his hand....That's how it is...offers her his hand, he he!" Maximov ended, tittering.

"The pan is a lajdak!"* the tall Pole on the chair growled suddenly and crossed one leg over the other.Mitya's eye was caught by his huge greased boot, with its thick, dirty sole.The dress of both the Poles looked rather greasy.

* Scoundrel.

"Well, now it's lajdak! What's he scolding about?" said Grushenka, suddenly vexed.

"Pani Agrippina, what the gentleman saw in Poland were servant girls, and not ladies of good birth," the Pole with the pipe observed to Grushenka.

"You can reckon on that," the tall Pole snapped contemptuously.

"What next! Let him talk! People talk, why hinder them? It makes it cheerful," Grushenka said crossly.

"I'm not hindering them, pani," said the Pole in the wig, with a long look at Grushenka, and relapsing into dignified silence he sucked his pipe again.

"No, no.The Polish gentleman spoke the truth." Kalgonov got excited again, as though it were a question of vast import."He's never been in Poland, so how can he talk about it? I suppose you weren't married in Poland, were you?""No, in the Province of Smolensk.Only, a Uhlan had brought her to Russia before that, my future wife, with her mamma and her aunt, and another female relation with a grown-up son.He brought her straight from Poland and gave her up to me.He was a lieutenant in our regiment, a very nice young man.At first he meant to marry her himself.But he didn't marry her, because she turned out to be lame.""So you married a lame woman?" cried Kalganov.

"Yes.They both deceived me a little bit at the time, and concealed it.I thought she was hopping; she kept hopping....Ithought it was for fun."

"So pleased she was going to marry you!" yelled Kalganov, in a ringing, childish voice.

"Yes, so pleased.But it turned out to be quite a different cause.