BEFORE THE MAZURKA
"HULLO, Woloda! So we are going to dance to-night," said
Seriosha, issuing from the drawing-room and taking out of his
pocket a brand new pair of gloves. "I suppose it IS necessary to
put on gloves? "
"Goodness! What shall I do? We have no gloves," I thought to
myself. "I must go upstairs and search about." Yet though I
rummaged in every drawer, I only found, in one of them, my green
travelling mittens, and, in another, a single lilac-coloured
glove, a thing which could be of no use to me, firstly, because
it was very old and dirty, secondly, because it was much too
large for me, and thirdly (and principally), because the middle
finger was wanting--Karl having long ago cut it off to wear over a
sore nail.
However, I put it on--not without some diffident contemplation of
the blank left by the middle finger and of the ink-stained edges
round the vacant space.
"If only Natalia Savishna had been here," I reflected, "we
should certainly have found some gloves. I can't go downstairs in
this condition. Yet, if they ask me why I am not dancing, what am
I to say? However, I can't remain here either, or they will be
sending upstairs to fetch me. What on earth am I to do?" and I
wrung my hands.
"What are you up to here?" asked Woloda as he burst into the
room. "Go and engage a partner. The dancing will be beginning
directly."
"Woloda," I said despairingly, as I showed him my hand with
two fingers thrust into a single finger of the dirty glove,
"Woloda, you, never thought of this."
"Of what? " he said impatiently. "Oh, of gloves," he added with
a careless glance at my hand. "That's nothing. We can ask
Grandmamma what she thinks about it," and without further ado he
departed downstairs. I felt a trifle relieved by the coolness
with which he had met a situation which seemed to me so grave,
and hastened back to the drawing-room, completely forgetful of
the unfortunate glove which still adorned my left hand.
Cautiously approaching Grandmamma's arm-chair, I asked her in a
whisper:
"Grandmamma, what are we to do? We have no gloves."
"What, my love?"
"We have no gloves," I repeated, at the same time bending over
towards her and laying both hands on the arm of her chair,
" But what is that? " she cried as she caught hold of my left
hand. "Look, my dear! " she continued, turning to Madame
Valakhin. "See how smart this young man has made himself to
dance with your daughter!"
As Grandmamma persisted in retaining hold of my hand and gazing
with a mock air of gravity and interrogation at all around her,
curiosity was soon aroused, and a general roar of laughter
ensued.
I should have been infuriated at the thought that Seriosha was
present to see this, as I scowled with embarrassment and
struggled hard to free my hand, had it not been that somehow
Sonetchka's laughter (and she was laughing to such a degree that
the tears were standing in her eyes and the curls dancing about
her lovely face) took away my feeling of humiliation. I felt that
her laughter was not satirical, but only natural and free; so
that, as we laughed together and looked at one another, there
seemed to begin a kind of sympathy between us. Instead of turning
out badly, therefore, the episode of the glove served only to set
me at my ease among the dreaded circle of guests, and to make me
cease to feel oppressed with shyness. The sufferings of shy
people proceed only from the doubts which they feel concerning
the opinions of their fellows. No sooner are those opinions
expressed (whether flattering or the reverse) than the agony
disappears.
How lovely Sonetchka looked when she was dancing a quadrille as
my vis-a-vis, with, as her partner, the loutish Prince Etienne!
How charmingly she smiled when, en chaine, she accorded me her
hand! How gracefully the curls, around her head nodded to the
rhythm, and how naively she executed the jete assemble with her
little feet!
In the fifth figure, when my partner had to leave me for the
other side and I, counting the beats, was getting ready to dance
my solo, she pursed her lips gravely and looked in another
direction; but her fears for me were groundless. Boldly I
performed the chasse en avant and chasse en arriere glissade,
until, when it came to my turn to move towards her and I, with a
comic gesture, showed her the poor glove with its crumpled
fingers, she laughed heartily, and seemed to move her tiny feet
more enchantingly than ever over the parquetted floor.
How well I remember how we formed the circle, and how, without
withdrawing her hand from mine, she scratched her little nose
with her glove! All this I can see before me still. Still can I
hear the quadrille from "The Maids of the Danube" to which we
danced that night.
The second quadrille, I danced with Sonetchka herself; yet when
we went to sit down together during the interval, I felt overcome
with shyness and as though I had nothing to say. At last, when my
silence had lasted so long that I began to be afraid that she
would think me a stupid boy, I decided at all hazards to
counteract such a notion.
"Vous etes une habitante de Moscou?" I began, and, on receiving
an affirmative answer, continued. "Et moi, je n'ai encore jamais
frequente la capitale" (with a particular emphasis on the word
"frequente"). Yet I felt that, brilliant though this
introduction might be as evidence of my profound knowledge of the
French language, I could not long keep up the conversation in
that manner. Our turn for dancing had not yet arrived, and
silence again ensued between us. I kept looking anxiously at her
in the hope both of discerning what impression I had produced and
of her coming to my aid.
"Where did you get that ridiculous glove of yours?" she asked
me all of a sudden, and the question afforded me immense
satisfaction and relief. I replied that the glove belonged to
Karl Ivanitch, and then went on to speak ironically of his
appearance, and to describe how comical he looked in his red cap,
and how he and his green coat had once fallen plump off a horse
into a pond.
The quadrille was soon over. Yet why had I spoken ironically of
poor Karl Ivanitch? Should I, forsooth, have sunk in Sonetchka's
esteem if, on the contrary, I had spoken of him with the love and
respect which I undoubtedly bore him?
The quadrille ended, Sonetchka said, "Thank you," with as lovely
an expression on her face as though I had really conferred, upon
her a favour. I was delighted. In fact I hardly knew myself for
joy and could not think whence I derived such case and confidence
and even daring.
"Nothing in the world can abash me now," I thought as I wandered
carelessly about the salon. "I am ready for anything."
Just then Seriosha came and requested me to be his vis-a-vis.
"Very well," I said. "I have no partner as yet, but I can soon
find one."
Glancing round the salon with a confident eye, I saw that every
lady was engaged save one--a tall girl standing near the drawing-
room door. Yet a grown-up young man was approaching her-probably
for the same purpose as myself! He was but two steps from her,
while I was at the further end of the salon. Doing a glissade
over the polished floor, I covered the intervening space, and in
a brave, firm voice asked the favour of her hand in the
quadrille. Smiling with a protecting air, the young lady accorded
me her hand, and the tall young man was left without a partner. I
felt so conscious of my strength that I paid no attention to his
irritation, though I learnt later that he had asked somebody who
the awkward, untidy boy was who, had taken away his lady from
him.
