Short Fiction, Leonid Andreyev [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

great white hall with its gilded chairs and mirrors was ready for the reception of guests, and all the fires were lighted. The pianist was sitting beside the piano, a dapper young man in a black frock coat⁠—for it was an expensive house. He was smoking, carefully flicking the ash of his cigarette so as not to soil the carpet, and glancing over the music. In the corner near the darkened dining room there sat all arow, on three chairs, three girls whispering to one another.

As he entered with the manageress, two of the girls rose, but the third remained sitting; the two who rose were very décolletée, the third wore a deep black frock. The two looked at him straight, with a look of invitation, half indifferent, half weary; but the third turned aside. Her profile was calm and simple, like that of any proper young maiden⁠—a thoughtful face. Apparently she had been telling a story to the others, and the others had been listening, and now she was continuing the train of thought, telling the rest in silence.

And just because she was silent and reflective and did not look at him, because she had the appearance of a proper woman, he chose her. Never before having been to a brothel he did not know that in every well equipped house of this sort there are one or two such women, dressed in black like nuns or young widows, with pale faces, unrouged, even stern, their task being to provide an illusion of propriety to those who seek it⁠—but when they go with a man to their room, drinking and becoming like the rest, or even worse⁠—brawling and breaking the china, dancing about, undressing and dancing into the hall naked, and even killing men who are too importunate. Such are the women with whom drunken students fall in love, whom they persuade to begin new, honourable lives.

But of all this he knew nothing. And when she rose reluctantly, and looked at him with displeased and averted eyes, glancing at him sharply out of her pale and colourless face, he thought once again, “How very proper she is!”⁠—and felt some relief. But, keeping up the dissimulation, constant, unavoidable, which caused him to have two lives and made his life a stage, he balanced himself elegantly on his feet from his heels to his toes, snapped his fingers, and said to the girl with the careless air of a habitual debauchee:⁠—

“Well, what about it, my dear? Shall we pay you a visit, now, eh? Where is your little nest?”

“Now⁠—at once?” the girl asked, surprised, and raised her eyebrows. He smiled gaily, disclosing even rows of strong straight teeth, blushed deeply, and replied:

“Certainly. Why lose valuable time?”

“There will be some music soon. We can dance.”

“Dance, my fair charmer? Silly twiddles⁠—catching oneself by the tail. As to the music, it can be heard from up there?”

She looked at him and smiled.

“Fairly well.”

She was beginning to like him. He had prominent cheek bones and was clean shaven; his cheeks and the lower part of the mouth, under the clean-cut lips, were slightly blue, as when dark-bearded men shave. He had fine dark eyes, although in expression a little too unswerving; and they moved slowly and heavily, as though every movement were a great distance to be traversed. But despite his shaven face and easy manner, she reasoned, he did not resemble an actor, but rather an acclimatized foreigner.

“You are not a German?” she asked.

“Nnno. Not quite. I mean, I am an Englishman. Do you like Englishmen?”

“But what good Russian you speak! I should never have guessed!”

He recollected his British passport and the affected accent he had been using lately, and he blushed again at the thought of having forgotten to keep up the pretence as he ought to have done. Then with a slight frown, and assuming a businesslike dryness of tone in which a certain amount of weariness was perceptible, he took the girl by the elbow and led her along swiftly.

“No, I am a Russian, Russian. Now, where are we to go? Show me! This way?”

The large mirror showed the full-length figures of the pair sharply and clearly⁠—she in black, pale, and at that distance very pretty; he also in black, and just as pale.

Under the glare of the electric lights hanging from the ceiling his wide forehead and the hard mass of his prominent cheeks were peculiarly pale; and both in his face and the girl’s, where the eyes should have been, there were mysterious, fascinating hollows. And so strange was the picture of such a black stern couple against the white walls, reflected in the broad gilded mirror, that he was startled, and stopped short by the thought: “Like a bride and bridegroom.” And, as his imagination was dulled by want of sleep, and his thoughts brusque and inconsequent, the next moment, looking at the stern pair in mourning black, he thought: “As at a funeral.” And both notions were equally unpleasant.

Apparently his feelings were shared by the girl. She silently, wonderingly glanced at herself and him, him and herself; she tried to wink⁠—but the mirror would not respond to so slight a movement, and in the same dull and obstinate manner persisted in picturing this black shamefast couple. And perhaps this pleased the girl, or recalled something of herself, something sad, for she smiled gently, and lightly pressed his clenched hand.

“What a couple!” she said reflectively, and for some reason or other the dark bow of her eyelashes, with the fine curve of their droop, became more noticeable.

This he did not observe, but resolutely dragged the girl along with him, she tapping her way on high French heels on the parquet flooring.

There was a corridor, as there always is, and narrow dark little rooms with open doors. At one of them inscribed above in irregular handwriting, “Liuba,” they entered.

“And now, Liuba,” he said, looking round and unconsciously rubbing his hands one over the other, as though carefully washing them