"There really is a disagreeable smell," she said, raising her eyebrows. "What can it be from?
Stepan, open the pane in the drawing-room, and light the fire."
With much bustle and many exclamations, she went through all the rooms, rustling her skirts and squeezing the sprayer with a hissing sound.
And Orlov was still out of humour; he was obviously restraining himself not to vent his ill-temper aloud. He was sitting at the table and rapidly writing a letter.
After writing a few lines he snorted angrily and tore it up, then he began writing again.
"Damn them all!" he muttered. "They expect me to have an abnormal memory!"
At last the letter was written; he got up from the table and said, turning to me:
"Go to Znamensky Street and deliver this letter to Zinaida Fyodorovna Krasnovsky in person.
But first ask the porter whether her husband -- that is, Mr. Krasnovsky -- has returned yet.
If he has returned, don't deliver the letter, but come back.
Wait a minute! . . .
If she asks whether I have any one here, tell her that there have been two gentlemen here since eight o'clock, writing something."
I drove to Znamensky Street.
The porter told me that Mr. Krasnovsky had not yet come in, and I made my way up to the third storey.
The door was opened by a tall, stout, drab-coloured flunkey with black whiskers, who in a sleepy, churlish, and apathetic voice, such as only flunkeys use in addressing other flunkeys, asked me what I wanted.
Before I had time to answer, a lady dressed in black came hurriedly into the hall.
She screwed up her eyes and looked at me.
"Is Zinaida Fyodorovna at home?" I asked.
"That is me," said the lady.
"A letter from Georgy Ivanitch."
She tore the letter open impatiently, and holding it in both hands, so that I saw her sparkling diamond rings, she began reading.
I made out a pale face with soft lines, a prominent chin, and long dark lashes.
From her appearance I should not have judged the lady to be more than five and twenty.
"Give him my thanks and my greetings," she said when she had finished the letter. "Is there any one with Georgy Ivanitch?" she asked softly, joyfully, and as though ashamed of her mistrust.
"Two gentlemen," I answered. "They're writing something."
"Give him my greetings and thanks," she repeated, bending her head sideways, and, reading the letter as she walked, she went noiselessly out.
I saw few women at that time, and this lady of whom I had a passing glimpse made an impression on me.
As I walked home I recalled her face and the delicate fragrance about her, and fell to dreaming.
By the time I got home Orlov had gone out.
Chapter II.
And so my relations with my employer were quiet and peaceful, but still the unclean and degrading element which I so dreaded on becoming a footman was conspicuous and made itself felt every day.
I did not get on with Polya.
She was a well-fed and pampered hussy who adored Orlov because he was a gentleman and despised me because I was a footman.
Probably, from the point of view of a real flunkey or cook, she was fascinating, with her red cheeks, her turned-up nose, her coquettish glances, and the plumpness, one might almost say fatness, of her person.
She powdered her face, coloured her lips and eyebrows, laced herself in, and wore a bustle, and a bangle made of coins.
She walked with little ripping steps; as she walked she swayed, or, as they say, wriggled her shoulders and back.
The rustle of her skirts, the creaking of her stays, the jingle her bangle and the vulgar smell of lip salve, toilet vinegar, and scent stolen from her master, aroused me whilst I was doing the rooms with her in the morning a sensation as though I were taking part with her in some abomination.
Either because I did not steal as she did, or because I displayed no desire to become her lover, which she probably looked upon as an insult, or perhaps because she felt that I was a man of a different order, she hated me from the first day.
My inexperience, my appearance --so unlike a flunkey--and my illness, seemed to her pitiful and excited her disgust.
I had a bad cough at that time, and sometimes at night I prevented her from sleeping, as our rooms were only divided by a wooden partition, and every morning she said to me:
"Again you didn't let me sleep.
You ought to be in hospital instead of in service."
She so genuinely believed that I was hardly a human being, but something infinitely below her, that, like the Roman matrons who were not ashamed to bathe before their slaves, she sometimes went about in my presence in nothing but her chemise.
Once when I was in a happy, dreamy mood, I asked her at dinner (we had soup and roast meat sent in from a restaurant every day)
"Polya, do you believe in God?"
"Why, of course!"
"Then," I went on, "you believe there will be a day of judgment, and that we shall have to answer to God for every evil action?"
She gave me no reply, but simply made a contemptuous grimace, and, looking that time at her cold eyes and over-fed expression, I realised that for her complete and finished personality no God, no conscience, no laws existed, and that if I had had to set fire to the house, to murder or to rob, I could not have hired a better accomplice.
In my novel surroundings I felt very uncomfortable for the first week at Orlov's before I got used to being addressed as "thou," and being constantly obliged to tell lies (saying "My master is not at home" when he was).
In my flunkey's swallow-tail I felt as though I were in armour.