Ada, or Ador: A Family Chronicle

He found both girls and their governess in one of the ‘nursery parlors,’ a delightful sitting room with a balcony on which Mlle Larivière was sitting at a charmingly ornamented Pembroke table and reading with mixed feelings and furious annotations the third shooting script of Les Enfants Maudits. At a larger round table in the middle of the inner room, Lucette under Ada’s direction was trying to learn to draw flowers; several botanical atlases, large and small, were lying about. Everything appeared as it always used to be, the little nymphs and goats on the painted ceiling, the mellow light of the day ripening into evening, the remote dreamy rhythm of Blanche’s ‘linen-folding’ voice humming ‘Malbrough’ (...ne sait quand reviendra, ne sait quand reviendra) and the two lovely heads, bronze-black and copper-red, inclined over the table. Van realized that he must simmer down before consulting Ada — or indeed before telling her he wished to consult her. She looked gay and elegant; she was wearing his diamonds for the first time; she had put on a new evening dress with jet gleams, and — also for the first time — transparent silk stockings.

He sat down on a little sofa, took at random one of the open volumes and stared in disgust at a group of brilliantly pictured gross orchids whose popularity with bees depended, said the text, ‘on various attractive odors ranging from the smell of dead workers to that of a tomcat.’ Dead soldiers might smell even better.

In the meantime obstinate Lucette kept insisting that the easiest way to draw a flower was to place a sheet of transparent paper over the picture (in the present case a red-bearded pogonia, with indecent details of structure, a plant peculiar to the Ladoga bogs) and trace the outline of the thing in colored inks. Patient Ada wanted her to copy not mechanically but ‘from eye to hand and from hand to eye,’ and to use for model a live specimen of another orchid that had a brown wrinkled pouch and purple sepals; but after a while she gave in cheerfully and set aside the crystal vaselet holding the Lady’s Slipper she had picked. Casually, lightly, she went on to explain how the organs of orchids work — but all Lucette wanted to know, after her whimsical fashion, was: could k boy bee impregnate a girl flower through something, through his gaiters or woolies or whatever he wore?

‘You know,’ said Ada in a comic nasal voice, turning to Van, ‘you know, that child has the dirtiest mind imaginable and now she is going to be mad at me for saying this and sob on the Larivière bosom, and complain she has been pollinated by sitting on your knee.’

‘But I can’t speak to Belle about dirty things,’ said Lucette quite gently and reasonably.

‘What’s the matter with you, Van?’ inquired sharp-eyed Ada.

‘Why do you ask?’ inquired Van in his turn.

‘Your ears wiggle and you clear your throat.’

‘Are you through with those horrible flowers?’

‘Yes. I’m going to wash my hands. We’ll meet downstairs. Your tie is all crooked.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Van.

‘Mon page, mon beau page,

— Mironton-mironton-mirontaine —

Mon page, mon beau page...’

Downstairs, Jones was already taking down the dinner gong from its hook in the hall.

‘Well, what’s the matter?’ she asked when they met a minute later on the drawing-room terrace.

‘I found this in my jacket,’ said Van.

Rubbing her big front teeth with a nervous forefinger, Ada read and reread the note.

‘How do you know it’s meant for you?’ she asked, giving him back the bit of copybook paper.

‘Well, I’m telling you,’ he yelled.

‘Tishe (quiet!)!’ said Ada.

‘I’m telling you I found it here,’ (pointing at his heart).

‘Destroy and forget it,’ said Ada.

‘Your obedient servant,’ replied Van.

41

Pedro had not yet returned from California. Hay fever and dark glasses did not improve G.A. Vronsky’s appearance. Adorno, the star of Hate, brought his new wife, who turned out to have been one of the old (and most beloved wives) of another guest, a considerably more important comedian, who after supper bribed Bouteillan to simulate the arrival of a message necessitating his immediate departure. Grigoriy Akimovich went with him (having come with him in the same rented limousine), leaving Marina, Ada, Adorno and his ironically sniffing Marianne at a card table. They played biryuch, a variety of whist, till a Ladore taxi could be obtained, which was well after 1:00 a.m.