It was just ten o'clock as the guests assembled from the town and the neighbouring estates. They were received in the drawing-room.
Taper, the priest's son, commenced playing a polka, and the ladies went into the ballroom; the old butler and two footmen brought wax candles and basins of water, and the old ladies began to tell fortunes. A troupe of mummers tumbled in, a bear performed tricks, a Little Russian dulcimer-player sang songs.
The mummers brought in with them the smell of frost, furs, and napthaline. One of them emitted a cock's crow, and they danced a Russian dance. It was all merry and bright, a tumultuous, boisterous revel, as in the old Russian aristocracy days. There was a smell of burning wax, candle-grease, and burning paper.
Kseniya Ippolytovna was the soul of gaiety; she laughed and jested cheerfully as she waltzed with a Lyceum student, a General's son. She had re-dressed her hair gorgeously, and wore a pearl necklace round her throat. The old men sat round card-tables in the lounge, talking on local topics.
At half past eleven a footman opened the door leading into the dining-room and solemnly announced that supper was served. They supped and toasted, ate and drank amid the clatter of knives, forks, dishes, and spoons. Kseniya made Arkhipov, Polunin, a General and a Magistrate sit beside her.
At midnight, just as they were expecting the clock to chime, Kseniya Ippolytovna rose to propose a toast; in her right hand was a glass; her left was flung back behind her plaited hair; she held her head high. All the guests at once rose to their feet.
"I am a woman," she cried aloud. "I drink to ourselves, to women, to the gentle, to the homely, to happiness and purity! To motherhood! I drink to the sacred--" she broke off abruptly, sat down and hung her head.
Somebody cried: "Hurrah!" To someone else it seemed that Kseniya was weeping. The clock began to chime, the guests shouted "Hurrah!" clinked glasses, and drank.
Then they sang, while some rose and carried round glasses to those of the guests who were still sober and those who were only partially intoxicated. They bowed. They sang _The Goblets_, and the basses thundered:
"Drink to the dregs! Drink to the dregs!" Kseniya Ippolytovna offered her first glass to Polunin. She stood in front of him with a tray, curtseyed without lifting her eyes and sang. Polunin rose, colouring with embarrassment:
