Chapter 19

THE KORNAKOFFS

MY second call on the route lay at the Kornakoffs', who lived on
the first floor of a large mansion facing the Arbat. The
staircase of the building looked extremely neat and orderly, yet
in no way luxurious--being lined only with drugget pinned down
with highly-polished brass rods. Nowhere were there any flowers
or mirrors to be seen. The salon, too, with its polished floor,
which I traversed on my way to the drawing-room, was decorated in
the same cold, severe, unostentatious style. Everything in it
looked bright and solid, but not new, and pictures, flower-
stands, and articles of bric-a-brac were wholly absent. In the
drawing-room I found some of the young princesses seated, but
seated with the sort of correct, "company" air about them which
gave one the impression that they sat like that only when guests
were expected.

"Mamma will be here presently," the eldest of them said to me as
she seated herself by my side. For the next quarter of an hour,
this young lady entertained me with such an easy flow of small-
talk that the conversation never flagged a moment. Yet somehow
she made so patent the fact that she was just entertaining me
that I felt not altogether pleased. Amongst other things, she
told me that their brother Stephen (whom they called Etienne, and
who had been two years at the College of Cadets) had now received
his commission. Whenever she spoke of him, and more particularly
when she told me that he had flouted his mother's wishes by
entering the Hussars, she assumed a nervous air, and immediately
her sisters, sitting there in silence, also assumed a nervous
air. When, again, she spoke of my grandmother's death, she
assumed a MOURNFUL air, and immediately the others all did the
same. Finally, when she recalled how I had once struck St. Jerome
and been expelled from the room, she laughed and showed her bad
teeth, and immediately all the other princesses laughed and
showed their bad teeth too.

Next, the Princess-Mother herself entered--a little dried-up
woman, with a wandering glance and a habit of always looking at
somebody else when she was addressing one. Taking my hand, she
raised her own to my lips for me to kiss it--which otherwise, not
supposing it to be necessary, I should not have done.

"How pleased I am to see you!" she said with her usual clearness
of articulation as she gazed at her daughters. "And how like your
mother you look! Does he not, Lise?"

Lise assented, though I knew for a fact that I did not resemble
my mother in the least.

"And what a grown-up you have become! My Etienne, you will
remember, is your second cousin. No, not second cousin--what is
it, Lise? My