THE PAINTED VEIL : and began sucking it like a child, with difficulty moving his sunken cheeks. I walked in the direction of the copse, turned to the right, kept on, kept right on as the old man had advised me, and at last got to the painted veil large village with a stone church in the new style, _i.e._ with columns, and a spacious manor-house, also with columns. While still some way off I noticed through the fine network of falling rain a cottage with a deal roof, and two chimneys, higher than the others, in all probability the dwelling of the village elder; and towards it I bent my steps in the hope of finding, in this cottage, a samovar, tea, sugar, and some not absolutely sour cream. Escorted by my half-frozen dog, I went up the steps into the outer room, opened the door, and instead of the usual
THE PAINTED VEIL : appurtenances of a cottage, I saw several tables, heaped up with papers, two red cupboards, bespattered inkstands, pewter boxes of blotting sand weighing half a hundred-weight, long penholders, and so on. At one of the tables was sitting the painted veil young man of twenty with a swollen, sickly face, diminutive eyes, a greasy-looking forehead, and long straggling locks of hair. He was dressed, as one would expect, in a grey nankin coat, shiny with wear at the waist and the collar. 'What do you want?' he asked me, flinging his head up like a horse taken unexpectedly by the nose. 'Does the bailiff live here... or--' 'This is the principal office of the manor,' he interrupted. 'I'm the clerk on duty.... Didn't you see the sign-board? That's what it was put up for.' 'Where could I dry my clothes here? Is there a samovar anywhere in the
THE PAINTED VEIL : village?' 'Samovars, of course,' replied the young man in the grey coat with dignity; 'go to Father Timofey's, or to the servants' cottage, or else to Nazar Tarasitch, or to Agrafena, the poultry-woman.' 'Who are you talking to, you blockhead? Can't you let me sleep, dummy!' shouted a voice from the next room. 'Here's a gentleman's come in to ask where he can dry himself.' 'What sort of a gentleman?' 'I don't know. With a dog and a gun.' A bedstead creaked in the next room. The door opened, and there came in a stout, short man of fifty, with a bull neck, goggle-eyes, extraordinarily round the painted veil and his whole face positively shining with sleekness. 'What is it you wish?' he asked me. 'To dry my things.' 'There's no place here.' 'I didn't know this was the counting-house; I am willing, though, to
THE PAINTED VEIL : pay...' 'Well, perhaps it could be managed here,' rejoined the fat man; 'won't you come inside here?' (He led me into another room, but not the one he had come from.) 'Would this do for you?' 'Very well.... And could I have tea and milk?' 'Certainly, at once. If you'll meantime take off your things and rest, the tea shall be got ready this the painted veil 'Whose property is this?' 'Madame Losnyakov's, Elena Nikolaevna.' He went out I looked round: against the partition separating my room from the office stood a huge leather sofa; two high-backed chairs, also covered in leather, were placed on both sides of the solitary window which looked out on the village street. On the walls, covered with a green paper with pink patterns on it, hung three immense oil paintings.
THE PAINTED VEIL : One depicted a setter-dog with a blue collar, bearing the inscription: 'This is my consolation'; at the dog's feet flowed a river; on the opposite bank of the river a hare of quite disproportionate size with ears cocked up was sitting under a pine tree. In another picture two old men were eating a melon; behind the melon was visible in the distance a Greek temple with the inscription: 'The Temple of Satisfaction.' The third picture represented the half-nude figure of a woman in a recumbent position, much the painted veil with red knees and very big heels. My dog had, with superhuman efforts, crouched under the sofa, and apparently found a great deal of dust there, as he kept sneezing violently. I went to the window. Boards had been laid across the street in a slanting direction from the manor-house to the
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