I will try not to have him appear here.
I accept your proposition.”
“And that’s splendid!” said Emma Edwardovna, get ting up. “Now let us conclude our agreement with one good, sweet kiss.”
And she again embraced and took to kissing Tamara hard; who, with her downcast eyes and naive, tender face, seemed now altogether a little girl.
But, having freed herself, finally, from the proprietress, she asked in Russian:
“You see, Emma Edwardovna, that I agree in everything with you, but for that I beg you to fulfill one request of mine.
It will not cost you anything.
Namely, I hope that you will allow me and the other girls to escort the late Jennie to the cemetery.”
Emma Edwardovna made a wry face.
“Oh, if you want to, my darling Tamara, I have nothing against your whim.
Only what for?
This will not help the dead person and will not make her alive.
Only sentimentalism alone will come out of it … But very well!
Only, however, you know yourself that in accordance with your law suicides are not buried, or— I don’t know with certainty— it seems they throw them into some dirty hole beyond the cemetery.”
“No, do allow me to do as I want to myself.
Let it be my whim, but concede it to me, my darling, dear, bewitching Emma Edwardovna!
But then, I promise you that this will be my last whim.
After this I will be like a wise and obedient soldier at the disposal of a talented general.”
“Is’ Gut!” Emma Edwardovna gave in with a sigh. “I can not deny you in anything, my child.
Let me press your hand.
Let us toil and labour together for the common good.”
And, having opened the door, she called out across the drawing room into the entrance-hall:
“Simeon!”
And when Simeon appeared in the room, she ordered him weightily and triumphantly:
“Bring us a bottle of champagne here, but the real thing— Rederer demi sec, and as cool as possible.
Step lively!” she ordered the porter, who was gaping at her with popping eyes. “We will drink with you, Tamara, to the new business, to our brilliant and beautiful future.”
They say that dead people bring luck.
If there is any foundation at all in this superstition, then on this Saturday it could not have told plainer: the influx of visitors was out of the ordinary, even for a Saturday night.
True, the girls, passing through the corridor or past the room that had been Jennka’s increased their steps; timorously glanced at it sidelong, out of the corner of the eye; while others even crossed themselves.
But late in the night the fear of death somehow subsided, grew bearable.
All the rooms were occupied, while in the drawing room a new violinist was trilling without cease— a free-and-easy, clean-shaven young man, whom the pianist with the cataract had searched out somewhere and brought with him.
The appointment of Tamara as housekeeper was received with cold perplexity, with taciturn dryness.
But, having bided her time, Tamara managed to whisper to Little White Manka:
“Listen, Manya!
You tell them all that they shouldn’t pay any attention to the fact that I’ve been chosen housekeeper.
It’s got to be so.
But let them do as they wish, only don’t let them trip me up.
I am as before— their friend and intercessor … And further on we’ll see.”
Chapter 7
On the next day, on Sunday, Tamara had a multitude of cares.
She had become possessed by a firm and undeviating thought to bury her friend despite all circumstances, in the way that nearest friends are buried— in a Christian manner, with all the sad solemnity of the burial of secular persons.
She belonged to the number of those strange persons who underneath an external indolent calmness, careless taciturnity, egotistical withdrawal into one’s self, conceal within them unusual energy; always as though slumbering with half an eye, guarding itself from unnecessary expenditure; but ready in one moment to become animated and to rush forward without reckoning the obstacles.
At twelve o’clock she descended in a cab into the old town; rode through it into a little narrow street giving out upon a square where fairs were held; and stopped near a rather dirty tea-room, having ordered the cabby to wait.
In the room she made inquiries of a boy, red-haired, with a badger hair-cut and the parting slicked down with butter, if Senka the Depot had not come here?
The serving lad, who, judging by his refined and gallant readiness, had already known Tamara for a long time, answered that “Nohow, ma’am; they— Semen Ignatich— had not been in yet, and probably would not be here soon seein’ as how yesterday they had the pleasure of going on a spree at the Transvaal, and had played at billiards until six in the morning; and that now they, in all probabilities, are at home, in the Half Way House rooms, and if the young lady will give the word, then it’s possible to hop over to them this here minute.”
Tamara asked for paper and pencil, and wrote a few words right on the spot.
Then she gave the note to the waiter, together with a half-rouble piece for a tip, and rode away.
The following visit was to the artiste Rovinskaya, living, as Tamara had known even before, in the city’s most aristocratic hotel— Europe— where she occupied several rooms in a consecutive suite.
To obtain an interview with the singer was not very easy: the doorman below said that it looked as if Ellena Victorovna was not at home; while her own personal maid, who came out in answer to Tamara’s knocking, declared that madam had a headache, and that she was not receiving any one.
Again Tamara was compelled to write on a piece of paper: