spare any money in order to set up swell furnishings;
and you will have rooms with silk furniture and with
genuine, beautiful rugs. Your guests will no longer
be demanding beer, but only genteel Bordeaux and Burgundy
wines and champagne. Remember, that a rich, substantial,
elderly man never likes your common, ordinary, coarse
love. He requires Cayenne pepper; he requires
not a trade, but an art, and you will soon acquire
this. At Treppel’s they take three roubles
for a visit and ten roubles for a night ... I
will establish it so, that you will receive five roubles
for a visit and twenty-five for a night. They
will present you with gold and diamonds. I will
contrive it so, that you won’t have to pass
on into establishments of a lower sort, und so weiter
... right down to the soldiers’ filthy den.
No! Deposits will be put away and saved with
me for each one of you every month; and will be put
away in your name in a banker’s office, where
there will increase interest upon them, and interest
upon interest. And then, if a girl feels herself
tired, or wants to marry a respectable man, there
will always be at her disposal not a large, but a
sure capital. So is it done in the best establishments
in Riga, and everywhere abroad. Let no one say
about me, that Emma Edwardovna is a spider, a vixen,
a cupping glass. But for disobedience, for laziness,
for notions, for lovers on the side, I will punish
cruelly and, like nasty weeds, will throw out—on
the street, or still worse. Now I have said all
that I had to. Nina, come near me. And all
the rest of you come up in turn.”
Ninka irresolutely walked right up to Emma Edwardovna—and
even staggered back in amazement: Emma Edwardovna
was extending her right hand to her, with the fingers
lowered downward, and slowly nearing it to Ninka’s
lips.
“Kiss it! ...” impressively and firmly
pronounced Emma Edwardovna, narrowing her eyes and
with head thrown back, in the magnificent pose of
a princess ascending her throne.
Ninka was so bewildered that her right arm gave a
jerk in order to make the sign of the cross; but she
corrected herself, loudly smacked the extended hand,
and stepped aside. Following her Zoe, Henrietta,
Vanda and others stepped up also. Tamara alone
continued to stand near the wall with her back to the
mirror; that mirror into which Jennka so loved to
gaze, in gone-by times, admiring herself as she walked
back and forth through the drawing room.
Emma Edwardovna let the imperious, obstinate gaze
of a boa-constrictor rest upon her; but the hypnosis
did not work. Tamara bore this gaze without turning
away, without flinching; but without any expression
on her face. Then the new proprietress put down
her hand, produced on her face something resembling
a smile, and said hoarsely:
“And with you, Tamara, I must have a little
talk separately, eye to eye. Let’s go!”
“I hear you, Emma Edwardovna!” calmly
answered Tamara.