‘How’s that? Not going?’ said Petrov, blushing and seeking his wife with his eyes. ‘Annetta, Annetta!’ he said loudly, and on his thin, white neck the thick tendons strained like ropes.
Anna Pavlovna came over.
‘How is it you sent word to the princess that we weren’t going?’ he whispered to her vexedly, having lost his voice.
‘Good morning, Princess!’ Anna Pavlovna said with a false smile, so unlike her former manner. ‘How nice to make your acquaintance.’ She turned to the prince. ‘You’ve long been expected, Prince.’
‘How is it you sent word to the princess that we weren’t going?’ the painter rasped in a still angrier whisper, obviously vexed still more that his voice had failed him and he could not give his speech the expression he wanted.
‘Ah, my God! I thought we weren’t going,’ his wife answered irritably.
‘How so, when ...’ He started coughing and waved his hand.
The prince tipped his hat and walked on with his daughter.
‘Ahh,’ he sighed deeply, ‘how unfortunate!’
‘Yes, papa,’ Kitty replied. ‘You should know that they have three children, no servants, and almost no means. He gets something from the Academy,’ she told him animatedly, trying to stifle the agitation that arose in her owing to the odd change in Anna Pavlovna’s manner towards her.
‘And here’s Mme Stahl,’ said Kitty, pointing to a bath-chair in which something lay, dressed in something grey and blue, propped on pillows under an umbrella.
This was Mme Stahl. Behind her stood the stalwart, sullen German hired-man who wheeled her around. Beside her stood a blond Swedish count whom Kitty knew by name. Several sick people lingered about the bath-chair, gazing at this lady as at something extraordinary.
The prince went up to her. And Kitty noticed at once the disturbing flicker of mockery in his eyes. He went up to Mme Stahl and addressed her extremely courteously and pleasantly, in that excellent French which so few speak nowadays.
‘I do not know whether you remember me, but I must remind you of myself in order to thank you for your kindness to my daughter,’ he said to her, removing his hat and not putting it back on.
‘Prince Alexander Shcherbatsky,’ said Mme Stahl, raising to him her heavenly eyes, in which Kitty noticed displeasure. ‘I’m delighted. I’ve come to love your daughter so.’
‘You are still unwell?’
‘I’m used to it by now,’ said Mme Stahl, and she introduced the prince and the Swedish count to each other.
‘You’ve changed very little,’ the prince said to her. ‘I have not had the honour of seeing you for some ten or eleven years.’
‘Yes, God gives the cross and the strength to bear it. I often wonder why this life drags on so ... From the other side!’ she said irritably to Varenka, who had wrapped the rug round her legs in the wrong way.
‘So as to do good, most likely,’ the prince said, laughing with his eyes.
‘That is not for us to judge,’ said Mme Stahl, noticing the nuance in the prince’s expression. ‘So you’ll send me that book, my gentle Count? I’ll be much obliged.’ She turned to the young Swede.
‘Ah!’ cried the prince, seeing the Moscow colonel standing near by, and, with a bow to Mme Stahl, he walked on with his daughter and the Moscow colonel, who joined them.
‘There’s our aristocracy, Prince!’ said the Moscow colonel, wishing to be sarcastic, as he had a grudge against Mme Stahl for not being acquainted with him.
‘The same as ever,’ replied the prince.
‘You knew her before her illness, Prince, that is, before she took to her bed?’
‘Yes. She took to it in my time.’
‘They say she hasn’t got up for ten years.’
‘She doesn’t get up because she’s stubby-legged. She has a very bad figure ...’
‘Papa, it can’t be!’ cried Kitty.
‘Wicked tongues say so, my little friend. And your Varenka does catch it too,’ he added. ‘Ah, these ailing ladies!’
‘Oh, no, papa!’ Kitty protested hotly. ‘Varenka adores her. And besides, she does so much good! Ask anybody you like! Everybody knows her and Aline Stahl.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, pressing her arm with his elbow. ‘But it’s better to do it so that, if you ask, nobody knows.’
Kitty fell silent, not because she had nothing to say, but because she did not want to disclose her secret thoughts even to her father. Strangely, however, despite having prepared herself not to submit to her father’s opinion, not to let him into her sanctuary, she felt that the divine image of Mme Stahl that she had carried in her soul for a whole month had vanished irretrievably, as the figure made by a flung-off dress vanishes once you see how the dress is lying. There remained only a stubby-legged woman who stayed lying down because of her bad figure and tormented the docile Varenka for not tucking in her rug properly. And by no effort of imagination could she bring back the former Mme Stahl.
XXXV
The prince imparted his cheerful state of mind to his household, to his acquaintances, and even to the German landlord with whom the Shcherbatskys were staying.
