"Go and enjoy yourself.Tell them to dance, to make merry, 'let the stove and cottage dance'; as we had it last time," she kept exclaiming.She was tremendously excited.And Mitya hastened to obey her.The chorus were in the next room.The room in which they had been sitting till that moment was too small, and was divided in two by cotton curtains, behind which was a huge bed with a puffy feather mattress and a pyramid of cotton pillows.In the four rooms for visitors there were beds.Grushenka settled herself just at the door.Mitya set an easy chair for her.She had sat in the same place to watch the dancing and singing "the time before," when they had made merry there.All the girls who had come had been there then; the Jewish band with fiddles and zithers had come, too, and at last the long expected cart had arrived with the wines and provisions.
Mitya bustled about.All sorts of people began coming into the room to look on, peasants and their women, who had been roused from sleep and attracted by the hopes of another marvellous entertainment such as they had enjoyed a month before.Mitya remembered their faces, greeting and embracing everyone he knew.He uncorked bottles and poured out wine for everyone who presented himself.Only the girls were very eager for the champagne.The men preferred rum, brandy, and, above all, hot punch.Mitya had chocolate made for all the girls, and ordered that three samovars should be kept boiling all night to provide tea and punch for everyone to help himself.
An absurd chaotic confusion followed, but Mitya was in his natural element, and the more foolish it became, the more his spirits rose.If the peasants had asked him for money at that moment, he would have pulled out his notes and given them away right and left.This was probably why the landlord, Trifon Borissovitch, kept hovering about Mitya to protect him.He seemed to have given up all idea of going to bed that night; but he drank little, only one glass of punch, and kept a sharp look-out on Mitya's interests after his own fashion.He intervened in the nick of time, civilly and obsequiously persuading Mitya not to give away "cigars and Rhine wine," and, above all, money to the peasants as he had done before.He was very indignant, too, at the peasant girls drinking liqueur, and eating sweets.
"They're a lousy lot, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," he said."I'd give them a kick, every one of them, and they'd take it as an honour-that's all they're worth!"
Mitya remembered Andrey again, and ordered punch to be sent out to him."I was rude to him just now," he repeated with a sinking, softened voice.Kalgonov did to drink, and at first did not care for the girls singing; but after he had drunk a couple of glasses of champagne he became extraordinarily lively, strolling about the room, laughing and praising the music and the songs, admiring everyone and everything.Maximov, blissfully drunk, never left his side.
Grushenka, too, was beginning to get drunk.Pointing to Kalganov, she said to Mitya:
"What a dear, charming boy he is!"
And Mitya, delighted, ran to kiss Kalgonov and Maximov.Oh, great were his hopes! She had said nothing yet, and seemed, indeed, purposely to refrain from speaking.But she looked at him from time to time with caressing and passionate eyes.At last she suddenly gripped his hand and drew him vigorously to her.She was sitting at the moment in the low chair by the door.
"How was it you came just now, eh? Have you walked in!...I was frightened.So you wanted to give me up to him, did you? Did you really want to?""I didn't want to spoil your happiness!" Mitya faltered blissfully.But she did not need his answer.
"Well, go and enjoy yourself..." she sent him away once more.
"Don't cry, I'll call you back again."
He would run away and she listened to the singing and looked at the dancing, though her eyes followed him wherever he went.But in another quarter of an hour she would call him once more and again he would run back to her.
"Come, sit beside me, tell me, how did you hear about me, and my coming here yesterday? From whom did you first hear it?"And Mitya began telling her all about it, disconnectedly, incoherently, feverishly.He spoke strangely, often frowning, and stopping abruptly.
"What are you frowning at?" she asked.
"Nothing....I left a man ill there.I'd give ten years of my life for him to get well, to know he was all right!""Well, never mind him, if he's ill.So you meant to shoot yourself to-morrow! What a silly boy! What for? I like such reckless fellows as you," she lisped, with a rather halting tongue."So you would go any length for me, eh? Did you really mean to shoot yourself to-morrow, you stupid? No, wait a little.To-morrow I may have something to say to you....I won't say it to-day, but to-morrow.You'd like it to be to-day? No, I don't want to to-day.Come, go along now, go and amuse yourself."Once, however, she called him, as it were, puzzled and uneasy.
"Why are you sad? I see you're sad....Yes, I see it," she added, looking intently into his eyes."Though you keep kissing the peasants and shouting, I see something.No, be merry.I'm merry; you be merry, too....I love somebody here.Guess who it is.Ah, look, my boy has fallen asleep, poor dear, he's drunk."She meant Kalganov.He was, in fact, drunk, and had dropped asleep for a moment, sitting on the sofa.But he was not merely drowsy from drink; he felt suddenly dejected, or, as he said, "bored." He was intensely depressed by the girls' songs, which, as the drinking went on, gradually became coarse and more reckless.And the dances were as bad.Two girls dressed up as bears, and a lively girl, called Stepanida, with a stick in her hand, acted the part of keeper, and began to "show them.""Look alive, Marya, or you'll get the stick!
The bears rolled on the ground at last in the most unseemly fashion, amid roars of laughter from the closely-packed crowd of men and women.
