My weakness, let’s say.
Even more, a momentary baseness, perhaps.
But, by God, believe me, I didn’t at all want to make a mistress out of you.
I want to see you my friend, my sister, my comrade … Well, that’s nothing, then; everything will adjust itself, grow customary.
Only one mustn’t fall in spirit.
And in the meanwhile, my dear, go to the window and look out of it a bit; I just want to put myself in order.”
Liubka slightly pouted her lips and walked off to the window, turning her back on Lichonin.
All these words about friendship, brotherhood and comradeship she could not understand with her brain of a hen and her simple peasant soul.
That a student— after all, not just anybody, but an educated man, who could learn to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a judge— had taken her for maintenance flattered her imagination far more … And here, now, it turned out that he had just fulfilled his caprice, had gotten what he wanted, and was now trying to back out.
They are all like that, the men!
Lichonin hastily got up, splashed a few handfuls of water in his face, and dried himself with an old napkin.
Then he raised the blinds and threw open both window shutters.
The golden sunlight, the azure sky, the rumble of the city, the foliage of the thick linden trees and the chestnuts, the bells of the horse trams, the dry smell of the hot, dusty street— all this at once burst into the tiny garret room.
Lichonin walked up to Liubka and amicably patted her on the shoulder.
“Never mind, my joy … What’s done can’t be undone, but it’s a lesson for the future.
You haven’t yet asked tea for yourself, Liubochka?”
“No, I was waiting for you all the while.
Besides, I didn’t know who to ask.
And you’re all right, too.
Why, I heard you, after you went off with your friend, come back and stand a while near the door.
But you never even said good-bye to me.
Is that right?”
“The first family quarrel,” thought Lichonin, but thought it without malice, in jest.
The wash-up, the beauty of the gold and blue southern sky, and the naive, partly submissive, partly displeased face of Liubka, as well as the consciousness that after all he was a man, and that he and not she had to answer for the porridge he had cooked— all this together braced up his nerves and compelled him to take himself in hand.
He opened the door and roared into the darkness of the stinking corridor:
“Al-lexa-andra!
A samova-ar!
Two lo-oaves, bu-utter, and sausage!
And a small bottle of vo-odka!”
The patter of slippers was heard in the corridor, and an aged voice, even from afar, began to speak thickly:
“What are you bawling for?
What are you bawling for, eh?
Ho, ho, ho!
Like a stallion in a stall.
You ain’t little, to look at you; you’re grown up already, yet you carry on like a street boy!
Well, what do you want?”
Into the room walked a little old woman, with red-lidded eyes, like little narrow cracks, and with a face amazingly like parchment, upon which a long, sharp nose stuck downward, morosely and ominously.
This was Alexandra, the servant of old of the student bird-houses; the friend and creditor of all the students; a woman of sixty-five, argumentative, and a grumbler.
Lichonin repeated his order to her and gave her a rouble note.
But the old woman would not go away; shuffled in one place, snorted, chewed with her lips and looked inimically at the girl sitting— with her back to the light.
“What’s the matter with you now, Alexandra, that you seem ossified?” asked Lichonin, laughing. “Or are you lost in admiration?
Well, then, know: this is my cousin, my first cousin, that is— Liubov… "[18] he was confused for only a second, but immediately fired away: “Liubov Vasilievna, but for me—simply Liubochka.
I’ve known her when she was only that high,” he showed a quarter of a yard off the table. “And I pulled her ears and slapped her for her caprices over the place where the legs grow from.
And then … I caught all sorts of bugs for her … But, however … However, you go on, go on, you Egyptian mummy, you fragment of former ages!
Let one leg be here and the other there!”
But the old woman lingered.
Stamping all around herself, she barely, barely turned to the door and kept a keen, spiteful, sidelong glance on Liubka.
And at the same time she muttered with her sunken mouth:
“First cousin!
We know these first cousins!