When the quarrel was subsiding, as it usually did, into the first
glasses of tea, he would look up, watch us with his contemptuous blue
eyes, laugh and say: "Well, and now?... Who is it next?"--and every
one would be clumsily embarrassed.
We were often, as are all Russian companies, ridiculously amused about
nothing. At the most serious crises we would, like Gayeff in "The
Cherry Orchard," suddenly break into stupid bursts of laughter, quite
aimless but with a great deal of sincerity. Whirls of laughter would
invade our table. "Oh, do look at Goga!" some one would say, and there
we all were, perhaps for a quarter of an hour! Semyonov, strangely
enough, shared this childish habit, and there was nothing odder than
to see the man lose control of himself, double himself up, laugh until
the tears ran down his face--simply at nothing at all!
The truth is that now I was very far from hating him. There were
moments, certainly, when he was rude to the Sisters, when he was
abominably greedy, when he was ruthlessly selfish, when he poured
scorn upon me; at such times I thought him, as Trenchard has expressed
it, a "beastly" man.
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