"Yes, I am such. I always speak my mind. I cannot deceive. If Isee something to laugh at, I laugh openly. I am stupid!""What makes you speak that way?" said the woman, reproachfully, and adjusting her dress, she accidentally stroked Foma's hand, in which he held his hat. This made him look at his wrist and smile joyously and confusedly.
"You will surely be present at the dinner, won't you?" asked Medinskaya.
"Yes."
"And tomorrow at the meeting in my house?"
"Without fail!"
"And perhaps sometime you will drop in, simply on a visit, wouldn't you?""I--I thank you! I'll come!"
"I must thank you for the promise."
They became silent. In the air soared the reverently soft voice of the bishop, who recited the prayer expressively, outstretching his hand over the place where the corner-stone of the house was laid:
"May neither the wind, nor water, nor anything else bring harm unto it; may it be completed in thy benevolence, and free all those that are to live in it from all kinds of calumny.""How rich and beautiful our prayers are, are they not?" asked Medinskaya.
"Yes," said Foma, shortly, without understanding her words and feeling that he was blushing again.
"They will always be opponents of our commercial interests,"Mayakin whispered loudly and convincingly, standing beside the city mayor, not far from Foma. "What is it to them? All they want is somehow to deserve the approval of the newspaper. But they cannot reach the main point. They live for mere display, not for the organisation of life; these are their only measures: the newspapers and Sweden! [Mayakin speaks of Sweden, meaning Switzerland.--Translator's note.] The doctor scoffed at me all day yesterday with this Sweden. The public education, says he, in Sweden, and everything else there is first-class! But what is Sweden, anyway? It may be that Sweden is but a fib, is but used as an example, and that there is no education whatever or any of the other things there. And then, we don't live for the sake of Sweden, and Sweden cannot put us to test.
We have to make our lip according to our own last. Isn't it so?
And the archdeacon droned, his head thrown back:
"Eternal me-emo-ory to the founder of this ho-ouse!"Foma shuddered, but Mayakin was already by his side, and pulling him by the sleeve, asked:
"Are you going to the dinner?"
And Medinskaya's velvet-like, warm little hand glided once more over Foma's hand.
The dinner was to Foma a real torture. For the first time in his life among these uniformed people, he saw that they were eating and speaking--doing everything better than he, and he felt that between him and Medinskaya, who was seated just opposite him, was a high mountain, not a table. Beside him sat the secretary of the society of which Foma had been made an honorary member; he was a young court officer, bearing the odd name of Ookhtishchev. As if to make his name appear more absurd than it really was, he spoke in a loud, ringing tenor, and altogether--plump, short, round-faced and a lively talker--he looked like a brand new bell.
"The very best thing in our society is the patroness; the most reasonable is what we are doing--courting the patroness; the most difficult is to tell the patroness such a compliment as would satisfy her; and the most sensible thing is to admire the patroness silently and hopelessly. So that in reality, you are a member not of 'the Society of Solicitude,' and so on, but of the Society of Tantaluses, which is composed of persons bent on pleasing Sophya Medinskaya."Foma listened to his chatter, now and then looking at the patroness, who was absorbed in a conversation with the chief of the police; Foma roared in reply to his interlocutor, pretending to be busy eating, and he wished that all this would end the sooner. He felt that he was wretched, stupid, ridiculous and he was certain that everybody was watching and censuring him. This tied him with invisible shackles, thus checking his words and his thoughts. At last he went so far, that the line of various physiognomies, stretched out by the table opposite him, seemed to him a long and wavy white strip besprinkled with laughing eyes, and all these eyes were pricking him unpleasantly and painfully.
Mayakin sat near the city mayor, waved his fork in the air quickly, and kept on talking all the time, now contracting, now expanding the wrinkles of his face. The mayor, a gray-headed, red-faced, short-necked man, stared at him like a bull, with obstinate attention and at times he rapped on the edge of the table with his big finger affirmatively.
The animated talk and laughter drowned his godfather's bold speech, and Foma was unable to hear a single word of it, much more so that the tenor of the secretary was unceasingly ringing in his ears:
"Look, there, the archdeacon arose; he is filling his lungs with air;he will soon proclaim an eternal memory for Ignat Matveyich.""May I not go away?" asked Foma in a low voice.
"Why not? Everybody will understand this."
The deacon's resounding voice drowned and seemed to have crushed the noise in the hail; the eminent merchants fixed their eyes on the big, wide-open mouth, from which a deep sound was streaming forth, and availing himself of this moment, Foma arose from his seat and left the hall.
After awhile he breathed freely and, sitting in his cab, thought sadly that there was no place for him amid these people. Inwardly, he called them polished. He did not like their brilliancy, their faces, their smiles or their words, but the freedom and the cleverness of their movements, their ability to speak much and on any subject, their pretty costumes--all this aroused in him a mixture of envy and respect for them. He felt sad and oppressed at the consciousness of being unable to talk so much and so fluently as all these people, and here he recalled that Luba Mayakina had more than once scoffed at him on this account.
