I went into my room and I, too, lay down.
I had nothing to do, and I did not want to read.
I was not surprised and I was not indignant. I only racked my brains to think why this deception was necessary.
It is only boys in their teens who deceive their mistresses like that.
How was it that a man who had thought and read so much could not imagine anything more sensible?
I must confess I had by no means a poor opinion of his intelligence.
I believe if he had had to deceive his minister or any other influential person he would have put a great deal of skill and energy into doing so; but to deceive a woman, the first idea that occurred to him was evidently good enough. If it succeeded--well and good; if it did not, there would be no harm done--he could tell some other lie just as quickly and simply, with no mental effort.
At midnight when the people on the floor overhead were moving their chairs and shouting hurrah to welcome the New Year, Zinaida Fyodorovna rang for me from the room next to the study.
Languid from lying down so long, she was sitting at the table, writing something on a scrap of paper.
"I must send a telegram," she said, with a smile. "Go to the station as quick as you can and ask them to send it after him."
Going out into the street, I read on the scrap of paper:
"May the New Year bring new happiness.
Make haste and telegraph; I miss you dreadfully.
It seems an eternity.
I am only sorry I can't send a thousand kisses and my very heart by telegraph.
Enjoy yourself, my darling. -- ZINA."
I sent the telegram, and next morning I gave her the receipt.
Chapter IX.
The worst of it was that Orlov had thoughtlessly let Polya, too, into the secret of his deception, telling her to bring his shirts to Sergievsky Street.
After that, she looked at Zinaida Fyodorovna with a malignant joy and hatred I could not understand, and was never tired of snorting with delight to herself in her own room and in the hall.
"She's outstayed her welcome; it's time she took herself off!" she would say with zest. "She ought to realise that herself. . . ."
She already divined by instinct that Zinaida Fyodorovna would not be with us much longer, and, not to let the chance slip, carried off everything she set her eyes on--smelling-bottles, tortoise-shell hairpins, handkerchiefs, shoes!
On the day after New Year's Day, Zinaida Fyodorovna summoned me to her room and told me in a low voice that she missed her black dress.
And then she walked through all the rooms, with a pale, frightened, and indignant face, talking to herself:
"It's too much!
It's beyond everything.
Why, it's unheard-of insolence!"
At dinner she tried to help herself to soup, but could not--her hands were trembling.
Her lips were trembling, too.
She looked helplessly at the soup and at the little pies, waiting for the trembling to pass off, and suddenly she could not resist looking at Polya.
"You can go, Polya," she said. "Stepan is enough by himself."
"I'll stay; I don't mind," answered Polya.
"There's no need for you to stay.
You go away altogether," Zinaida Fyodorovna went on, getting up in great agitation. "You may look out for another place.
You can go at once."
"I can't go away without the master's orders.
He engaged me.
It must be as he orders."
"You can take orders from me, too!
I am mistress here!" said Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she flushed crimson.
"You may be the mistress, but only the master can dismiss me.
It was he engaged me."
"You dare not stay here another minute!" cried Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she struck the plate with her knife. "You are a thief!
Do you hear?"
Zinaida Fyodorovna flung her dinner-napkin on the table, and with a pitiful, suffering face, went quickly out of the room.
Loudly sobbing and wailing something indistinct, Polya, too, went away.
The soup and the grouse got cold.
And for some reason all the restaurant dainties on the table struck me as poor, thievish, like Polya.
Two pies on a plate had a particularly miserable and guilty air.
"We shall be taken back to the restaurant to-day," they seemed to be saying, "and to-morrow we shall be put on the table again for some official or celebrated singer."