第34章

Finally, she did not "ENTERTAIN" me.Unfortunately, the answers which I returned to her questions concerning my relations seemed to afford her a painful interest, and to remind her of happier days: with the result that when, presently, her son left the room, she gazed at me in silence for a moment, and then burst into tears.As I sat there in mute bewilderment, I could not conceive what I had said to bring this about.At first I felt sorry for her as she sat there weeping with downcast eyes.Next I began to think to myself: "Ought I not to try and comfort her, and how ought that to be done?" Finally, I began to feel vexed with her for placing me in such an awkward position."Surely my appearance is not so moving as all that?" I reflected."Or is she merely acting like this to see what I shall do under the circumstances?"

"Yet it would not do for me to go," I continued to myself, for that would look too much as though I were fleeing to escape her tears." Accordingly I began fidgeting about on my seat, in order to remind her of my presence.

"Oh, how foolish of me!" at length she said, as she gazed at me for a moment and tried to smile."There are days when one weeps for no reason whatever." She felt about for her handkerchief, and then burst out weeping more violently than before.

"Oh dear! How silly of me to be for ever crying like this! Yet I was so fond of your mother! We were such friends! We-we--"

At this point she found her handkerchief, and, burying her face in it, went on crying.Once more I found myself in the same protracted dilemma.Though vexed, I felt sorry for her, since her tears appeared to be genuine--even though I also had an idea that it was not so much for my mother that she was weeping as for the fact that she was unhappy, and had known happier days.How it would all have ended I do not know, had not her son reappeared and said that his father desired to see her.Thereupon she rose, and was just about to leave the room, when the General himself entered.He was a small, grizzled, thick-set man, with bushy black eyebrows, a grey, close-cropped head, and a very stern, haughty expression of countenance.

I rose and bowed to him, but the General (who was wearing three stars on his green frockcoat) not only made no response to my salutation, but scarcely even looked at me; so that all at once I felt as though I were not a human being at all, but only some negligible object such as a settee or window; or, if I were a human being, as though I were quite indistinguishable from such a negligible object.

"Then you have not yet written to the Countess, my dear?" he said to his wife in French, and with an imperturbable, yet determined, expression on his countenance.

"Good-bye, Monsieur Irtenieff," Madame said to me, in her turn, as she made a proud gesture with her head and looked at my eyebrows just as her son had done.I bowed to her, and again to her husband, but my second salutation made no more impression upon him than if a window had just been opened or closed.

Nevertheless the younger Iwin accompanied me to the door, and on the way told me that he was to go to St.Petersburg University, since his father had been appointed to a post in that city (and young Iwin named a very high office in the service).

"Well, his Papa may do whatsoever he likes," I muttered to myself as I climbed into the drozhki, "but at all events I will never set foot in that house again.His wife weeps and looks at me as though I were the embodiment of woe, while that old pig of a General does not even give me a bow.However, I will get even with him some day." How I meant to do that I do not know, but my words nevertheless came true.

Afterwards, I frequently found it necessary to remember the advice of my father when he said that I must cultivate the acquaintanceship of the Iwins, and not expect a man in the position of General Iwin to pay any attention to a boy like myself.But I had figured in that position long enough.