already. Let us make sweet music for the honourable company!’ (Mr. Ratsch liked to display his Russian; he was continually bursting out with expressions, such as those which are strewn broadcast about the ultra-national poems of Prince Viazemsky.) ‘What do you say? Carried?’ cried Ivan Demianitch, seeing Fustov made no objection. ‘Kolka, march into the study, and look sharp with the music-stand! Olga, this way with the zither! And oblige us with candles for the stands, better-half!’ (Mr. Ratsch turned round and round in the room like a top.) ‘Piotr Gavrilitch, you like music, hey? If you don’t care for it, you must amuse yourself with conversation, only mind, not above a whisper! Ha, ha ha! But what ever’s become of that silly chap, Viktor? He ought to be here to listen too! You spoil him completely, Eleonora Karpovna.’

Eleonora Karpovna fired up angrily.

‘Aber was kann ich denn, Ivan Demianitch…’

‘All right, all right, don’t squabble! Bleibe ruhig, hast verstanden? Alexander Daviditch! at your service, sir!’

The children had promptly done as their father had told them. The music-stands were set up, the music began. I have already mentioned that Fustov played the zither extremely well, but that instrument has always produced the most distressing impression upon me. I have always fancied, and I fancy still, that there is imprisoned in the zither the soul of a decrepit Jew money-lender, and that it emits nasal whines and complaints against the merciless musician who forces it to utter sounds. Mr. Ratsch’s performance, too, was not calculated to give me much pleasure; moreover, his face became suddenly purple, and assumed a malignant expression, while his whitish eyes rolled viciously, as though he were just about to murder some one with his bassoon, and were swearing and threatening by way of preliminary, puffing out chokingly husky, coarse notes one after another. I placed myself near Susanna, and waiting for a momentary pause, I asked her if she were as fond of music as her papa.

She turned away, as though I had given her a shove, and pronounced abruptly, ‘Who?’

‘Your father,’ I repeated,’Mr. Ratsch.’

‘Mr. Ratsch is not my father.’

‘Not your father! I beg your pardon… I must have misunderstood… But I remember, Alexander Daviditch…’

Susanna looked at me intently and shyly.

‘You misunderstood Mr. Fustov. Mr. Ratsch is my stepfather.’

I was silent for a while.

‘And you don’t care for music?’ I began again.

Susanna glanced at me again. Undoubtedly there was something suggesting a wild creature in her eyes. She obviously had not expected nor desired the continuation of our conversation.

‘I did not say that,’ she brought out slowly. ‘Troo-too-too-too-too-oo-oo…’ the bassoon growled with startling fury, executing the final flourishes. I turned round, caught sight of the red neck of Mr. Ratsch, swollen like a boa-constrictor’s, beneath his projecting ears, and very disgusting I thought him.

‘But that… instrument you surely do not care for,’ I said in an undertone.

‘No… I don’t care for it,’ she responded, as though catching my secret hint.

‘Oho!’ thought I, and felt, as it were, delighted at something.

‘Susanna Ivanovna,’ Eleonora Karpovna announced suddenly in her German Russian, ‘music greatly loves, and herself very beautifully plays the piano, only she likes not to play the piano when she is greatly pressed to play.’

Susanna made Eleonora Karpovna no reply—she did not even look at her—only there was a faint movement of her eyes, under their dropped lids, in her direction. From this movement alone—this movement of her pupils—I could perceive what was the nature of the feeling Susanna cherished for the second wife of her stepfather…. And again I was delighted at something.

Meanwhile the duet was over. Fustov got up and with hesitating footsteps approached the window, near which Susanna and I were sitting, and asked her if she had received from Lengold’s the music that he had promised to order her from Petersburg.

‘Selections from Robert le Diable,’ he added, turning to me, ‘from that new opera that every one’s making such a fuss about.’

‘No, I haven’t got it yet,’ answered Susanna, and turning round with her face to the window she whispered hurriedly. ‘Please, Alexander Daviditch, I entreat you, don’t make me play to-day. I don’t feel in the mood a bit.’

‘What’s that? Robert le Diable of Meyer-beer?’ bellowed Ivan Demianitch, coming up to us: ‘I don’t mind betting it’s a first-class article! He’s a Jew, and all Jews, like all Czechs, are born musicians. Especially Jews. That’s right, isn’t it, Susanna Ivanovna? Hey? Ha, ha, ha, ha!’

In Mr. Ratsch’s last words, and this time even in his guffaw, there could be heard something more than his usual bantering tone—the desire to wound was evident. So, at least, I fancied, and so Susanna understood him. She started instinctively, flushed red, and bit her lower lip. A spot of light, like the gleam of a tear, flashed on her eyelash, and rising quickly, she went out of the room.

‘Where are you off to, Susanna Ivanovna?’ Mr. Ratsch bawled after her.

‘Let her be, Ivan Demianitch, ‘put in Eleonora Karpovna. ‘Wenn sie einmal so et was im Kopfe hat…’

‘A nervous temperament,’Ratsch pronounced, rotating on his heels, and slapping himself on the haunch, ‘suffers with the plexus solaris. Oh! you needn’t look at me like that, Piotr Gavrilitch! I’ve had a go at anatomy too, ha, ha! I’m even a bit of a doctor! You ask Eleonora Karpovna… I cure all her little ailments! Oh, I’m a famous hand at that!’

‘You must for ever be joking, Ivan Demianitch,’ the latter responded with displeasure, while Fustov, laughing and gracefully swaying to and fro, looked at the husband and wife.

‘And why not be joking, mein Mütterchen?’ retorted Ivan Demianitch. ‘Life’s given us for use, and still more for beauty, as some celebrated poet has observed. Kolka, wipe your nose, little savage!’

IX

‘I was put in a very awkward position this evening through your doing,’ I said the same evening to Fustov, on the way home with him. ‘You told me that that girl—what’s her name?—Susanna, was the daughter of Mr. Ratsch, but she’s his stepdaughter.’

‘Really! Did I tell you she was his daughter? But… isn’t it all the same?’

‘That Ratsch,’ I went on…. ‘O Alexander, how I detest him! Did you notice the peculiar sneer with which he spoke of Jews before her? Is she… a Jewess?’

Fustov walked ahead, swinging his arms; it was cold, the snow was crisp, like salt, under our feet.

‘Yes, I recollect, I did hear something of the sort,’ he observed at last…. ‘Her mother, I fancy, was of Jewish extraction.’

‘Then Mr. Ratsch must have married a widow the first time?’

‘Probably.’

‘H’m!… And that Viktor, who didn’t come in this evening, is his stepson too?’

‘No… he’s his real son. But, as you know, I don’t enter into other people’s affairs, and I don’t like asking questions. I’m not inquisitive.’

I bit my tongue. Fustov still pushed on ahead. As we got near home, I overtook him and peeped into his face.

‘Oh!’ I queried, ‘is Susanna really so musical?’

Fustov frowned.

‘She plays the piano well, ‘he said between his teeth. ‘Only she’s very shy, I warn you!’ he added with a slight grimace. He seemed to be regretting having made me acquainted with her.

I said nothing and we parted.

X

Next morning I set off again to Fustov’s. To spend my mornings at his rooms had become a necessity for me. He received me cordially, as usual, but of our visit of the previous evening—not a word! As though he had taken water into his mouth, as they say. I began turning over the pages of the last number of the Telescope.

A person, unknown to me, came into the room. It turned out to be Mr. Ratsch’s son, the Viktor whose absence had been censured by his father the evening before.

He was a young man, about eighteen, but already looked dissipated and unhealthy, with a mawkishly insolent grin on his unclean face, and an expression of fatigue in his swollen eyes. He was like his father, only his features were smaller and not without a certain prettiness. But in this very prettiness there was something offensive. He was dressed in a very slovenly way; there were buttons off his undergraduate’s coat, one of his boots had a hole in it, and he fairly reeked of tobacco.

‘How d’ye do,’ he said in a sleepy voice, with those peculiar twitchings of the head and shoulders which I have always noticed in spoilt and conceited young men. ‘I meant to go to the University, but here I am. Sort of oppression on my chest. Give us a cigar.’ He walked right across the room, listlessly dragging his feet, and keeping his hands in his trouser-pockets, and sank heavily upon the sofa.

‘Have you caught cold?’ asked Fustov, and he introduced us to each other. We were both students, but were in different faculties.

‘No!… Likely! Yesterday, I must own…’ (here Ratsch junior smiled, again not without a certain prettiness, though he showed a set of bad teeth) ‘I was drunk, awfully drunk. Yes’—he lighted a cigar and cleared his throat—’Obihodov’s farewell supper.’

‘Where’s he going?’

‘To the Caucasus, and taking his young lady with him. You know the black-eyed girl, with the freckles. Silly fool!’

‘Your father was asking after you yesterday,’ observed Fustov.

Viktor spat aside. ‘Yes, I heard about it. You were at our den yesterday. Well, music, eh?’

‘As usual.’

‘And she… with a new visitor’ (here he pointed with his head in my direction) ‘she gave herself airs, I’ll be bound. Wouldn’t play, eh?’

‘Of whom are you speaking?’ Fustov asked.

‘Why, of the most honoured Susanna Ivanovna, of course!’

Viktor lolled still more comfortably, put his arm up round his head, gazed at his own