Futility Read Free

“Fanny Ivanovna, I’m hungry.”
    Sonia was really angry. “I would rather he didn’t come at all, than just come to sleep here. Let him stay there, Fanny Ivanovna. Let him!”
    “
Ach!
I think he might still come if we waited a little longer. Are you very hungry, Andrei Andreiech?”
    “Say yes! Say yes!” cried the three sisters. I was amazed at this open display of hostility towards their own father, especially from Sonia. I understood the look in Fanny Ivanovna’s eyes.
    “No, Fanny Ivanovna,” I said, “not at all.”
    “Well, then we’ll wait just a little longer. He
promised
to come.”
    There was a ring at the bell.
    “It’s Nikolai Vasilievich!” cried Fanny Ivanovna.
    But Nina shook her head. “Papa never rings so timidly. It must be Pàvel Pàvlovich.”
    The three sisters sprang off their perches and dashed into the hall.
    “Ah!” we heard Sonia’s voice.
    “Who is it?… Kniaz?” shouted Fanny Ivanovna.
    “No,” came the answer, “the other one.”
    “Oh, the Baron. They are both Pàvel Pàvlovichi,” sighed Fanny Ivanovna as though the fact distressed her; but it was really because she disapproved of them both that she sighed.
    Baron Wunderhausen as barons do in Russia, came from the Baltic Provinces, spoke Russian and German equally well, excelled in French, knew English, was polite, cunning and adaptable to any circumstances, had big calf’s eyes, was habitually somewhat over-dressed, twenty-five years of age, and had a billet in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He came regularly every evening, made love with his eyes, and we danced.…
    We danced, and then had supper, having given Nikolai Vasilievich up as we gave him up regularly every evening after waiting for him for two hours. His absence annoyed everybody, for they suspected where he was.
    “I am going away,” said Nina as she danced with me.
    “Going away? Where?”
    “To Moscow,” she said, looking up. She had a wonderfulway of looking up at you when she danced. She had a charming way of speaking quietly, enigmatically, half humorously, half lovingly.
    “For always?” I cried in dismay.
    In answer she held up two fingers behind my head which was supposed to give me the appearance of a horned devil, and laughed. I revelled in her laughter.
    “For how long?” I asked.
    “Two months.”
    “Why?”
    “To see Mama.”
    “I didn’t know you had a Mama in Moscow.”
    “I have,” she made the obvious answer and I smiled, and she laughed and again held up the devil’s horns.
    “What is she doing in Moscow?” I asked, and felt it was a somewhat silly question.
    “Living,” she replied. And it seemed to me that she blushed. And for some reason that blush seemed to tell me that there, too, there was trouble.
    “Who are you going with?”
    “Vera. She is going back for good. Mama wants to keep her.”
    “Aren’t you sorry?”
    “No.”
    “Good God!” I cried.
    “I am sorry to leave Sonia.”
    “But you are coming back to her?” I asked anxiously.
    “Yes, but I am sorry to leave her, all the same. I am sorry to leave Fanny Ivanovna,” she added.
    “And Papa?”
    She reflected a little. “No,” she whispered.
    “And whom else?” I persisted, smiling into her eyes and trying to press my own claims.
    “I won’t tell,” she said.
    “When are you going?”
    “To-morrow morning. We only decided last night, Fanny Ivanovna and I,” she said quietly, “that I should go.”
    “To take Vera to Moscow?”
    She smiled enigmatically. We danced two rounds before she answered.
    “That’s what we tell Papa.”
    I looked at Sonia, as she passed us with her partner, “hesitating” marvellously. She made a
moue
at me and smiled. I knew that she was happy. The Baron danced with that characteristic air of his which conveyed that it gave him pleasure to give pleasure.
IV
    I SAW THEM OFF NEXT MORNING IN THE DESOLATING atmosphere of the Nicholas Station on a cold November morning. They were wrapped in heavy