Chapter 18

THE VALAKHIN FAMILY

Accordingly I set off alone. My first call on the route lay at
the Valakhin mansion. It was now three years since I had seen
Sonetchka, and my love for her had long become a thing of the
past, yet there still lingered in my heart a sort of clear,
touching recollection of our bygone childish affection. At
intervals, also, during those three years, I had found myself
recalling her memory with such force and vividness that I had
actually shed tears, and imagined myself to be in love with her
again, but those occasions had not lasted more than a few minutes
at a time, and had been long in recurring.

I knew that Sonetchka and her mother had been abroad--that, in
fact, they had been so for the last two years. Also, I had heard
that they had been in a carriage accident, and that Sonetchka's
face had been so badly cut with the broken glass that her beauty
was marred. As I drove to their house, I kept recalling the old
Sonetchka to my mind, and wondering what she would look like when
I met her. Somehow I imagined that, after her two years' sojourn
abroad, she would look very tall, with a beautiful waist, and,
though sedate and imposing, extremely attractive. Somehow, also,
my imagination refused to picture her with her face disfigured
with scars, but, on the contrary, since I had read somewhere of a
lover who remained true to his adored one in spite of her
disfigurement with smallpox, strove to imagine that I was in love
with Sonetchka, for the purpose of priding myself on holding to
my troth in spite of her scars--Yet, as a matter of fact, I was
not really in love with her during that drive, but having once
stirred up in myself old MEMORIES of love, felt PREPARED to fall
into that condition, and the more so because, of late, my
conscience had often been pricking me for having discarded so
many of my old flames.

The Valakhins lived in a neat little wooden mansion approached by
a courtyard. I gained admittance by ringing a bell (then a rarity
in Moscow), and was received by a mincing, smartly-attired page.
He either could not or made no attempt to inform me whether there
was any one at home, but, leaving me alone in the dark hall, ran
off down a still darker corridor. For a long time I waited in
solitude in this gloomy place, out of which, in addition to the
front door and the corridor, there only opened a door which at
the moment was closed. Rather surprised at the dismal appearance
of the house, I came to the conclusion that the reason was that
its inmates were still abroad. After five minutes, however, the
door leading into the salon was opened by the page boy, who then
conducted me into a neat, but not richly furnished, drawing-room,
where presently I was