get together to look each other over. Many do it with genuine pleasure and come only for that; but there are also those who come just for the music. Scandals are extraordinarily rare, though, incidentally, they do occur even on weekdays. But, then, there's no doing without them.
This time the evening was lovely, and there was a good-sized audience. All the places near the orchestra were taken. Our company sat down in chairs a little to one side, close to the far left-hand door of the vauxhall. The crowd and the music revived Lizaveta Prokofyevna somewhat and distracted the young ladies; they managed to exchange glances with some of their acquaintances and to nod their heads amiably to others from afar; managed to look over the dresses, to notice some oddities, discuss them, and smile mockingly. Evgeny Pavlovich also bowed rather often. People already paid attention to Aglaya and the prince, who were still together. Soon some young men of their acquaintance came over to the mama and the young ladies; two or three stayed to talk; they were all friends of Evgeny Pavlovich. Among them was one young and very handsome officer, very gay, very talkative; he hastened to strike up a conversation with Aglaya and tried as hard as he could to attract her attention. Aglaya was very gracious with him and laughed easily. Evgeny Pavlovich asked the prince's permission to introduce him to this friend; the prince barely understood what they wanted to do with him, but the introductions were made, the two men bowed and shook hands with each other. Evgeny Pavlovich's friend asked a question, but the prince seemed not to answer it, or muttered something to himself so strangely that the officer gave him a very intent look, then glanced at Evgeny Pavlovich, realized at once why he had thought up this acquaintance, smiled faintly, and turned again to Aglaya. Evgeny Pavlovich alone noticed that Aglaya unexpectedly blushed at that.
The prince did not even notice that other people were talking and paying court to Aglaya; he even all but forgot at moments that he was sitting next to her. Sometimes he wanted to go away somewhere, to disappear from there completely, and he would even have liked some dark, deserted place, only so that he could be alone with his thoughts and no one would know where he was. Or at least to be in his own home, on the terrace, but so that nobody else was there, neither Lebedev nor his children; to throw himself on his sofa, bury his face in his pillow, and lie there like that for a day, a night, another day. At moments he imagined the mountains,
and precisely one familiar spot in the mountains that he always liked to remember and where he had liked to walk when he still lived there, and to look down from there on the village, on the white thread of the waterfall barely glittering below, on the white clouds, on the abandoned old castle. Oh, how he wanted to be there now and to think about one thing—oh! all his life only about that—it would be enough for a thousand years! And let them, let them forget all about him here. Oh, it was even necessary, even better, that they not know him at all, and that this whole vision be nothing but a dream. And wasn't it all the same whether it was a dream or a reality? Sometimes he would suddenly begin studying Aglaya and for five minutes could not tear his gaze from her face; but his gaze was all too strange: it seemed he was looking at her as if at an object a mile away, or as if at her portrait and not at herself.
"Why are you looking at me like that, Prince?" she said suddenly, interrupting her merry conversation and laughter with those around her. "I'm afraid of you; I keep thinking you want to reach your hand out and touch my face with your finger, in order to feel it. Isn't it true, Evgeny Pavlych, that he looks like that?"
The prince listened, seeming to be surprised that he was being addressed, realized it, though he may not quite have understood, did not reply, but, seeing that she and all the others were laughing, suddenly extended his mouth and began to laugh himself. The laughter increased around him; the officer, who must have been a man who laughed easily, simply burst with laughter. Aglaya suddenly whispered wrathfully to herself:
"Idiot!"
"Lord! Can she really . . . such a ... is she going completely crazy?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna rasped to herself.
"It's a joke. It's the same kind of joke as with the 'poor knight,' " Alexandra whispered firmly in her ear, "and nothing more! She's poking fun at him again, in her own way. Only the joke has gone too far; it must be stopped, maman!Earlier she was clowning like an actress, frightening us for the fun of it . . ."
"It's a good thing she landed on such an idiot," Lizaveta Prokofyevna whispered to her. Her daughter's observation made her feel better all the same.
The prince, however, heard that he had been called an idiot, and gave a start, but not because he had been called an idiot. The "idiot" he forgot at once. But in the crowd, not far from where he
was sitting, somewhere to the side—he would not have been able to show in what precise place and in what spot—a face flashed, a pale face with dark, curly hair, with a familiar, a very familiar, smile and gaze—flashed and disappeared. It might well have been that he only imagined it; of the whole apparition he was left with the impression of the crooked smile, the eyes, and the pale green, foppish tie that the gentleman who flashed was wearing. Whether this gentleman disappeared in the crowd or slipped into the vaux-hall, the prince also could not have determined.
But a moment later he suddenly began looking quickly and uneasily around him; this first apparition might be the herald and forerunner of a second. That was surely the case. Could he have forgotten the possibility of a meeting when they set out for the vauxhall? True, as he walked to the vauxhall, he seemed not at all aware that he was going there—he was in such a state. If he had been or could have been more attentive, he might have noticed a quarter of an hour ago that Aglaya, every so often and also as if uneasily, glanced furtively about, as though looking for something around her. Now, when his uneasiness had become quite noticeable, Aglaya's agitation and uneasiness also grew, and each time he looked behind him, she almost at once looked around as well. The resolution of their anxiety soon followed.
From the same side door to the vauxhall near which the prince and all the Epanchin company had placed themselves, a whole crowd, at least ten people, suddenly emerged. At the head of the crowd were three women; two of them were remarkably good-looking, and there was nothing strange in so many admirers following after them. But both the admirers and the women—all this was something peculiar, something quite unlike the rest of the public gathered for the music. Nearly everyone noticed them at once, but the greater part tried to pretend that they had not seen them at all, and perhaps only some of the young people smiled at them, commenting to each other in low voices. Not to see them at all was impossible; they made themselves conspicuous, talked loudly, laughed. One might suppose that many of them were drunk, though by the look of it some were smartly and elegantly dressed; but alongside them there were rather strange-looking people, in strange clothes, with strangely inflamed faces; there were several military men among them; not all of them were young; some were dressed comfortably in loose and elegantly made clothes, with signet rings and cuff links, in magnificent, pitch-black wigs and
side-whiskers, and with a particularly noble, though somewhat squeamish, expression on their faces—the sort of people, however, who are avoided like the plague in society. Among our suburban societies, of course, there are some that are distinguished by an extraordinary decorum and enjoy a particularly good reputation; but even the most cautious person cannot protect himself at every moment against a brick falling from a neighboring house. This brick was now preparing to fall upon the decorous public that had gathered for the music.