"And this beauty," he said to himself, "was my mistress." He felt honestly pleased to think this, at the same time being anxious to show off before Volochine, while yet bitterly conscious of an irrevocable loss.
Lida languidly addressed her mother.
"There is some one who wants to speak to you," she said.
"Oh! I can"t go now," replied Maria Ivanovna.
"But they are waiting," persisted Lida, almost hysterically.
Maria Ivanovna got up quickly.
Sanine watched Lida, and his nostrils were dilated.
"Won"t you come into the garden? It"s so hot in here," said Lida, and without looking round to see if they were coming, she walked out through the veranda.
As if hypnotized, the men followed her, bound, seemingly, with the tresses of her hair, so that she could draw them whither she wished.
Volochine walked first, ensnared by her beauty, and apparently oblivious of aught else.
Lida sat down in the rocking-chair under the linden-tree and stretched out her pretty little feet clad in black open-work stockings and tan shoes. It was as if she had two natures; the one overwhelmed with modesty and shame, the other, full of self-conscious coquetry. The first nature prompted her to look with disgust upon men, and life, and herself.
"Well, Pavel Lvovitsch," she asked, as her eyelids drooped, "What impression has our poor little out-of-the-way town made upon you?"
"The impression which probably he experiences who in the depth of the forest suddenly beholds a radiant flower," replied Volochine, rubbing his hands.
Then began talk which was thoroughly vapid and insincere, the spoken being false, and the unspoken, true. Sanine sat silently listening to this mute but sincere conversation, as expressed by faces, hands, feet and tremulous accents. Lida was unhappy, Volochine longed for all her beauty, while Sarudine loathed Lida, Sanine, Volochine, and the world generally. He wanted to go, yet he could not make a move. He was for doing something outrageous, yet he could only smoke cigarette after cigarette, while dominated by the desire to proclaim Lida his mistress to all present.
"And how do you like being here? Are you not sorry to have left Petersburg behind you?" asked Lida, suffering meanwhile intense torture, and wondering why she did not get up and go.
"_Mais au contraire_!" lisped Volochine, as he waved his hand in a finicking fashion and gazed ardently at Lida.
"Come! come! no pretty speeches!" said Lida, coquettishly, while to Sarudine her whole being seemed to say:
"You think that I am wretched, don"t you? and utterly crushed? But I am nothing of the kind, my friend. Look at me!"
"Oh, Lidia Petrovna!" said Sarudine, "you surely don"t call that a pretty speech!"
"I beg your pardon?" asked Lida drily, as if she had not heard, and then, in a different tone, she again addressed Volochine.
"Do tell me something about life in Petersburg. Here, we don"t live, we only vegetate."
Sarudine saw that Volochine was smiling to himself, as if he did not believe that the former had ever been on intimate terms with Lida.
"Ah! Ah! Ah! Very good!" he said to himself, as he bit his lip viciously.
"Oh! our famous Petersburg life!" Volochine, who chattered with ease, looked like a silly little monkey babbling of things that it did not comprehend.
"Who knows?" he thought to himself, his gaze riveted on Lida"s beautiful form.
"I a.s.sure you on my word of honour that our life is extremely dull and colourless. Until to-day I thought that life, generally, was always dull, whether in the town or in the country."
"Not really!" exclaimed Lida, as she half closed her eyes.
"What makes life worth living is ... a beautiful woman! And the women in big towns! If you could only see what they were like! Do you know, I feel convinced that if the world is ever saved it will be by beauty."
This last phrase Volochine unexpectedly added, believing it to be most apt and illuminating. The expression of his face was one of stupidity and greed, as he kept reverting to his pet theme, Woman. Sarudine alternately flushed and pale with jealousy, found it impossible to remain in one place, but walked restlessly up and down the path.
"Our women are all alike ... stereotyped and made-up. To find one whose beauty is worthy of adoration, it is to the provinces that one must go, where the soil, untilled as yet, produces the most splendid flowers."
Sanine scratched the nape of his neck, and crossed his legs.
"Ah! of what good is it if they bloom here, since there is no one worthy to pluck them?" replied Lida.
"Aha!" thought Sanine, suddenly becoming interested, "so that"s what she"s driving at!"
This word-play, where sentiment and grossness were so obviously involved, he found extremely diverting.
"Is it possible?"
"Why, of course! I mean what I say, who is it that plucks our unfortunate blossoms? What men are those whom we set up as heroes?"
rejoined Lida bitterly.
"Aren"t you rather too hard upon us?" asked Sarudine.
"No, Lidia Petrovna is right!" exclaimed Volochine, but, glancing at Sarudine, his eloquence suddenly subsided. Lida laughed outright.
Filled with shame and grief and revenge, her burning eyes were set on her seducer, and seemed to pierce him through and through. Volochine again began to babble, while Lida interrupted him with laughter that concealed her tears.
"I think that we ought to be going," said Sarudine, at last, who felt that the situation was becoming intolerable. He could not tell why, but everything, Lida"s laughter, her scornful eyes and trembling hands were all to him as so many secret boxes on the ear. His growing hatred of her, and his jealousy of Volochine as well as the consciousness of all that he had lost, served to exhaust him utterly.
"Already?" asked Lida.
Volochine smiled sweetly, licking his lips with the tip of his tongue.
"It can"t be helped! Victor Sergejevitsch apparently is not quite himself," he said in a mocking tone, proud of his conquest.
So they took their leave; and, as Sarudine bent over Lida"s hand, he whispered:
"This is good-bye!"
Never had he hated Lida as much as at this moment.
In Lida"s heart there arose a vague, fleeting desire to bid tender farewell to all those bygone hours of love which had once been theirs.
But this feeling she swiftly repressed, as she said in a loud, harsh voice:
"Good-bye! _Bon voyage_! Don"t forget us, Pavel Lvovitsch!"
As they were going, Volochine"s remark could be distinctly heard.
"How charming she is! She intoxicates one, like champagne!"