‘You ought to visit the old castle,’ Potugin went on; ‘I especially
advise a drive to----’
‘The Saxon Switzerland----’ Kapitolina Markovna was beginning.
The blare of wind instruments floated up the avenue; it was the Prussian
military band from Rastadt (in 1862 Rastadt was still an allied
fortress), beginning its weekly concert in the pavilion. Kapitolina
Markovna got up.
‘The music!’ she said; ‘the music _à la Conversation_!... We must go
there. It’s four o’clock now ... isn’t it? Will the fashionable world be
there now?’
‘Yes,’ answered Potugin: ‘this is the most fashionable time, and the
music is excellent.’
‘Well, then, don’t let us linger. Tanya, come along.’
‘You allow me to accompany you?’ asked Potugin, to Litvinov’s
considerable astonishment; it was not possible for it even to enter his
head that Irina had sent Potugin.
Kapitolina Markovna simpered.
‘With the greatest pleasure--M’sieu ... M’sieu----’
‘Potugin,’ he murmured, and he offered her his arm.
Litvinov gave his to Tatyana, and both couples walked towards the
Konversation Hall.
Potugin went on talking with Kapitolina Markovna. But Litvinov walked
without uttering a word; yet twice, without any cause, he smiled, and
faintly pressed Tatyana’s arm against his. There was a falsehood in
those demonstrations, to which she made no response, and Litvinov was
conscious of the lie. They did not express a mutual confidence in the
close union of two souls given up to one another; they were a temporary
substitute--for words which he could not find. That unspoken something
which was beginning between them grew and gained strength. Once more
Tatyana looked attentively, almost intently, at him.
It was the same before the Konversation Hall at the little table round
which they all four seated themselves, with this sole difference, that,
in the noisy bustle of the crowd, the clash and roar of the music,
Litvinov’s silence seemed more comprehensible. Kapitolina Markovna
became quite excited; Potugin hardly had time to answer her questions,
to satisfy her curiosity. Luckily for him, there suddenly appeared in
the mass of moving figures the lank person and everlastingly leaping
eyes of Madame Suhantchikov. Kapitolina Markovna at once recognised her,
invited her to their table, made her sit down, and a hurricane of words
arose.
Potugin turned to Tatyana, and began a conversation with her in a soft,
subdued voice, his face bent slightly down towards her with a very
friendly expression; and she, to her own surprise, answered him easily
and freely; she was glad to talk with this stranger, this outsider,
while Litvinov sat immovable as before, with the same fixed and
unpleasant smile on his lips.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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