The stern, cross-eyed porter beat her with contentment, long, in silence, with a business-like air; breathing hard and covering up Liubka’s mouth with his hand.
But in the end, having become convinced, probably, that the fault was not hers, but the guest’s, he took her purse, in which was a rouble with some small change, away from her; and took as security her rather cheap little hat and small outer jacket.
Another man of forty-five years, not at all badly dressed, having tortured the girl for some two hours, paid for the room and gave her 80 kopecks; but when she started to complain, he with a ferocious face put an enormous red-haired fist up to her very nose, the first thing, and said decisively:
“You just snivel a bit more to me… I’ll snivel you… I’ll yell for the police, now, and say that you robbed me when I was sleeping.
Want me to?
Is it long since you’ve been in a station house?”
And went away.
And of such cases there were many.
On that day, when her landlords— a boatman and his wife— had refused to let her have a room and just simply threw her things out into the yard; and when she had wandered the night through on the streets, without sleep, under the rain, hiding from the policemen— only then, with aversion and shame, did she resolve to turn to Lichonin’s aid.
But Lichonin was no longer in town pusillanimously, he had gone away the very same day when the unjustly wronged and disgraced Liubka had run away from the flat.
And it was in the morning that there came into her head the desperate thought of returning into the brothel and begging forgiveness there.
“Jennechka, you’re so clever, so brave, so kind; beg Emma Edwardovna for me— the little housekeeper will listen to you,” she implored Jennka and kissed her bare shoulders and wetted them with tears.
“She won’t listen to anybody,” gloomily answered Jennka. “And you did have to tie up with a fool and a low-down fellow like that.”
“Jennechka, but you yourself advised me to,” timidly retorted Liubka.
“I advised you? … I didn’t advise you anything.
What are you lying on me for, just as though I was dead… Well, all right then— let’s go.”
Emma Edwardovna had already known for a long while about the return of Liubka; and had even seen her at that moment when she had passed through the yard of the house, looking all around her.
At soul she was not at all against taking Liubka back.
It must be said, that she had even let her go only because she had been tempted by the money, one-half of which she had appropriated for herself.
And in addition to that, she had reckoned that with the present seasonal influx of new prostitutes she would have a large choice; in which, however, she had made a mistake, because the season had terminated abruptly.
But in any case, she had firmly resolved to take Liubka.
Only it was necessary, for the preservation and rounding out of prestige, to give her a scare befittingly.
“Wha-at?” she began to yell at Liubka, scarcely having heard her out, babbling in confusion. “You want to be taken on again? … You wallowed the devil knows with whom in the streets, under the fences; and now, you scum, you’re again shoving your way into a respectable, decent establishment! … Pfui, you Russian swine!
Out! … ”
Liubka was catching her hands, aiming to kiss them, but the housekeeper roughly snatched them away.
Then, suddenly paling, with a distorted face, biting her trembling, twisted lower lip, Emma calculatingly and with good aim struck Liubka on her cheek, with all her might; from which the other went down on her knees, but got up right away, gasping for breath and stammering from the sobs.
“Darlingest, don’t beat me… Oh my dear, don’t beat me… ”
And again fell down, this time flat upon the floor.
And this systematic, malignant slaughter, in cold blood, continued for some two minutes.
Jennka, who had at first been looking on with her customary malicious, disdainful air, suddenly could not stand it; she began to squeal savagely, threw herself upon the housekeeper, clutched her by the hair, tore off her chignon and began to vociferate in a real hysterical fit:
“Fool! … Murderer! … Low-down go-between! … Thief! … ”
All the three women vociferated together, and at once enraged wails resounded through all the corridors and rooms of the establishment.
This was that general fit of grand hysterics, which takes possession of those confined in prisons, or that elemental insanity (raptus), which envelops unexpectedly and epidemically an entire lunatic asylum, from which even experienced psychiatrists grow pale.
Only after the lapse of an hour was order restored by Simeon and two comrades by profession who had come to his aid.
All the thirteen girls got it hot; but Jennka, who had gone into a real frenzy, more than the others.
The beaten-up Liubka kept on crawling before the housekeeper until she was taken back.
She knew that Jennka’s outbreak would sooner or later be reflected upon her in a cruel repayment.
Jennka sat on her bed until the very night, her legs crossed Turkish fashion; refused dinner, and chased out all her mates who went in to her.
Her eye was bruised, and she assiduously applied a five-kopeck copper to it.
From underneath the torn shirt a long, transversal scratch reddened on the neck, just like a mark from a rope.
That was where Simeon had torn off her skin in the struggle.
She sat thus, alone, with eyes that glowed in the dark like a wild beast’s, with distended nostrils, with spasmodically moving cheek-bones, and whispered wrathfully:
“Just you wait… Watch out, you damned things— I’ll show you… You’ll see yet… Ooh-ooh, you man-eaters… ”
But when the lights had been lit, and the junior housekeeper, Zociya, knocked on her door with the words:
“Miss, get dressed! … Into the drawing room!” she rapidly washed herself, dressed, put some powder on the bruise, smeared the scratch over with Creme de Simon and pink powder, and went out into the drawing room, pitiful but proud; beaten-up, but her eyes flaming with an unbearable wrathfulness and a beauty not human.
Many people, who have happened to see suicides a few hours before their horrible death, say that in their visages in those fateful hours before death they have noticed some enigmatic, mysterious, incomprehensible allurement.
And all who saw Jennka on this night, and on the next day for a few hours, for long, intently and in wonder, kept their gaze upon her.
And strangest of all (this was one of the sombre wiles of fate) was the fact that the indirect culprit of her death, the last grain of sand which draws down the pan of the scales, appeared none other than the dear, most kind, military cadet Kolya Gladishev.
Chapter 2
Kolya Gladishev was a fine, merry, bashful young lad, with a large head; pink-cheeked, with a funny little white, bent line, as though from milk, upon his upper lip, under the light down of the moustache, sprouting through for the first time; with gray, naive eyes, placed far apart; and so closely cropped, that from underneath his flaxen little bristles the skin glistened through, just as with a thoroughbred Yorkshire suckling pig.