The Eternal Husband and Other Stories by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics
ISBN: 9780307793614
Goodreads: 11268526
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Published: 1997-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

XII

AT THE ZAKHLEBININS’

The Zakhlebinins were actually a “very respectable family,” as Velchaninov had put it earlier, and Zakhlebinin himself was quite a solid official and a visible one. Everything that Pavel Pavlovich had said about their income was also true: “They live well, it seems, but if the man were to die, there would be nothing left.”

Old Zakhlebinin met Velchaninov splendidly and amicably, and from a former “enemy” turned entirely into a friend.

“My congratulations, it’s better this way,” he began speaking with a pleasant and dignified air. “I myself insisted on a peaceful settlement, and Pyotr Karlovich” (Velchaninov’s lawyer) “is pure gold in that regard. So then? You’ll get about sixty thousand and without any fuss, without temporizing, without quarrels. Otherwise the case might have dragged on for three years!”

Velchaninov was introduced at once to Mme. Zakhlebinin, a rather spread-out old lady, with a simplish and tired face. The girls also began sailing out, singly or in pairs. But far too many girls appeared; gradually some ten or twelve of them assembled—Velchaninov even lost count; some came in, others left. But among them were many friends from neighboring houses. The Zakhlebinins’ country place—a big wooden house, in some unknown but fanciful taste, added on to at various times—enjoyed the use of a big garden. But three or four other houses gave onto this garden from different sides, so that this big garden served as a common one, which naturally contributed to the closeness between the girls and their summer neighbors. From the first words of the conversation, Velchaninov noticed that he had been expected there and that his arrival in the quality of Pavel Pavlovich’s friend, wishing to become acquainted, had been all but solemnly announced. His keen, experienced eye in such matters soon discerned something even peculiar here: from the much too amiable reception of the parents, from a certain peculiar look about the girls and their dress (though, incidentally, it was a feast day), the suspicion flashed in him that Pavel Pavlovich had tricked him, and might very well have suggested here, naturally without putting it directly into words, something like the notion of him as a bored bachelor, of “good society,” with a fortune, who might very, very well suddenly decide, at last, to “put an end to it” and settle down—“the more so as he has also received an inheritance.” It seemed that the oldest Mlle. Zakhlebinin, Katerina Fedoseevna, the one who was twenty-four and of whom Pavel Pavlovich had spoken as a lovely person, had been more or less tuned to this note. She stood out among her sisters especially by her attire and some sort of original arrangement of her fluffy hair. The sisters and all the other girls looked as if they, too, already knew firmly that Velchaninov was becoming acquainted “on account of Katya” and had come to “have a look” at her. Their glances and even certain phrases that flashed by inadvertently in the course of the day, later confirmed him in this surmise.

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