第28章

I GET READY TO PAY SOME CALLS

On awaking next morning my first thoughts were of the affair with Kolpikoff.Once again I muttered to myself and stamped about the room, but there was no help for it.To-day was the last day that I was to spend in Moscow, and it was to be spent, by Papa's orders, in my paying a round of calls which he had written out for me on a piece of paper--his first solicitude on our account being not so much for our morals or our education as for our due observance of the convenances.On the piece of paper was written in his swift, broken hand-writing: "(1) Prince Ivan Ivanovitch WITHOUT FAIL; (2) the Iwins WITHOUT FAIL; (3) Prince Michael; (4)

the Princess Nechludoff and Madame Valakhina if you wish." Of course I was also to call upon my guardian, upon the rector, and upon the professors.

These last-mentioned calls, however, Dimitri advised me not to pay: saying that it was not only unnecessary to do so, but not the thing.However, there were the other visits to be got through.It was the first two on the list--those marked as to be paid "WITHOUT FAIL"--that most alarmed me.Prince Ivan Ivanovitch was a commander-in-chief, as well as old, wealthy, and a bachelor.Consequently, I foresaw that vis-a-vis conversation between him and myself--myself a sixteen-year-old student!--was not likely to be interesting.As for the Iwins, they too were rich--the father being a departmental official of high rank who had only on one occasion called at our house during my grandmother's time.Since her death, I had remarked that the younger Iwin had fought shy of us, and seemed to give himself airs.The elder of the pair, I had heard, had now finished his course in jurisprudence, and gone to hold a post in St.

Petersburg, while his brother Sergius (the former object of my worship) was also in St.Petersburg, as a great fat cadet in the Corps of Pages.

When I was a young man, not only did I dislike intercourse with people who thought themselves above me, but such intercourse was, for me, an unbearable torture, owing partly to my constant dread of being snubbed, and partly to my straining every faculty of my intellect to prove to such people my independence.Yet, even if I failed to fulfil the latter part of my father's instructions, I felt that I must carry out the former.I paced my room and eyed my clothes ready disposed on chairs--the tunic, the sword, and the cap.Just as I was about to set forth, old Grap called to congratulate me, bringing with him Ilinka.Grap pere was a Russianised German and an intolerably effusive, sycophantic old man who was more often than not tipsy.As a rule, he visited us only when he wanted to ask for something, and although Papa sometimes entertained him in his study, old Grap never came to dinner with us.With his subserviency and begging propensities went such a faculty of good-humour and a power of making himself at home that every one looked upon his attachment to us as a great honour.For my part, however, I never liked him, and felt ashamed when he was speaking.

I was much put out by the arrival of these visitors, and made no effort to conceal the fact.Upon Ilinka I had been so used to look down, and he so used to recognise my right to do so, that it displeased me to think that he was now as much a matriculated student as myself.In some way he appeared to me to have made a POINT of attaining that equality.I greeted the pair coldly, and, without offering them any refreshment (since it went against the grain to do so, and I thought they could ask for anything, if they wanted it, without my first inviting them to state their requirements), gave orders for the drozhki to be got ready.