Sanine | Page 8

was a slight shade of irony in his tone.
"Lidia Petrovna would make anybody eloquent," said Tanaroff the silent, as he tried to help Lida to take off her hat, and in so doing ruffled her hair. She pretended to be vexed, laughing all the while.
"What?" drawled Sanine. "Are you eloquent too?"
"Oh! let them be!" whispered Novikoff, hypocritically, though secretly pleased.
Lida frowned at Sanine, to whom her dark eyes plainly said:
"Don't imagine that I cannot see what these people are. I intend to please myself. I am not a fool any more than you are, and I know what I am about."
Sanine smiled at her.
At last the hat was removed, which Tanaroff solemnly placed on the table.
"Look! Look what you've done to me, Andrei Pavlovitch!" cried Lida half peevishly, half coquettishly. "You've got my hair into such a tangle! Now I shall have to go indoors."
"I'm so awfully sorry!" stammered Tanaroff, in confusion.
Lida rose, gathered up her skirts, and ran indoors laughing, followed by the glances of all the men. When she had gone they seemed to breathe more freely, without that nervous sense of restraint which men usually experience in the presence of a pretty young woman. Sarudine lighted a cigarette which he smoked with evident gusto. One felt, when he spoke, that he habitually took the lead in a conversation, and that what he thought was something quite different from what he said.
"I have just been persuading Lidia Petrovna to study singing seriously. With such a voice, her career is assured."
"A fine career, upon my word!" sullenly rejoined Novikoff, looking aside.
"What is wrong with it?" asked Sarudine, in genuine amazement, removing the cigarette from his lips.
"Why, what's an actress? Nothing else but a harlot!" replied Novikoff, with sudden heat. Jealousy tortured him; the thought that the young woman whose body he loved could appear before other men in an alluring dress that would exhibit her charms in order to provoke their passions.
"Surely it is going too far to say that," replied Sarudine, raising his eyebrows.
Novikoff's glance was full of hatred. He regarded Sarudine as one of those men who meant to rob him of his beloved; moreover, his good looks annoyed him.
"No, not in the least too far," he retorted. "To appear half nude on the stage and in some voluptuous scene exhibit one's personal charms to those who in an hour or so take their leave as they would of some courtesan after paying the usual fee! A charming career indeed!"
"My friend," said Sanine, "every woman in the first instance likes to be admired for her personal charms."
Novikoff shrugged his shoulders irritably.
"What a silly, coarse statement!" said he.
"At any rate, coarse or not, it's the truth," replied Sanine. "Lida would be most effective on the stage, and I should like to see her there."
Although in the others this speech roused a certain instinctive curiosity, they all felt ill at ease. Sarudine, who thought himself more intelligent and tactful than the rest, deemed it his duty to dispel this vague feeling of embarrassment.
"Well, what do you think the young lady ought to do? Get married? Pursue a course of study, or let her talent be lost? That would be a crime against nature that had endowed her with its fairest gift."
"Oh!" exclaimed Sanine, with undisguised sarcasm, "till now the idea of such a crime had never entered my head."
Novikoff laughed maliciously, but replied politely enough to Sarudine.
"Why a crime? A good mother or a female doctor is worth a thousand times more than an actress."
"Not at all!" said Tanaroff, indignantly.
"Don't you find this sort of talk rather boring?" asked Sanine.
Sarudine's rejoinder was lost in a fit of coughing. They all of them really thought such a discussion tedious and unnecessary; and yet they all felt somewhat offended. An unpleasant silence reigned.
Lida and Maria Ivanovna appeared on the verandah. Lida had heard her brother's last words, but did not know to what they referred.
"You seem to have soon become bored!" cried she, laughing. "Let us go down to the river. It is charming there, now."
As she passed in front of the men, her shapely figure swayed slightly, and there was a look of dark mystery in her eyes that seemed to say something, to promise something.
"Go for a walk till supper-time," said Maria Ivanovna.
"Delighted," exclaimed Sarudine. His spurs clinked, as he offered Lida his arm.
"I hope that I may be allowed to come too," said Novikoff, meaning to be satirical, though his face wore a tearful expression.
"Who is there to prevent you?" replied Lida, smiling, at him over her shoulder.
"Yes, you go, too," exclaimed Sanine. "I would come with you if she were not so thoroughly convinced that I am her brother."
Lida winced somewhat, and glanced swiftly at Sanine, as she laughed, a short, nervous laugh.
Maria Ivanovna was obviously displeased.
"Why