II

There were sounds of applause. The young man had finished playing.

Olga Mihalovna remembered her guests and hurried into the drawing-room.

"I have so enjoyed your playing," she said, going up to the piano.

"I have so enjoyed it. You have a wonderful talent! But don't you

think our piano's out of tune?"

At that moment the two schoolboys walked into the room, accompanied

by the student.

"My goodness! Mitya and Kolya," Olga Mihalovna drawled joyfully,

going to meet them: "How big they have grown! One would not know

you! But where is your mamma?"

"I congratulate you on the name-day," the student began in a

free-and-easy tone, "and I wish you all happiness. Ekaterina

Andreyevna sends her congratulations and begs you to excuse her.

She is not very well."

"How unkind of her! I have been expecting her all day. Is it long

since you left Petersburg?" Olga Mihalovna asked the student. "What

kind of weather have you there now?" And without waiting for an

answer, she looked cordially at the schoolboys and repeated:

"How tall they have grown! It is not long since they used to come

with their nurse, and they are at school already! The old grow older

while the young grow up. . . . Have you had dinner?"

"Oh, please don't trouble!" said the student.

"Why, you have not had dinner?"

"For goodness' sake, don't trouble!"

"But I suppose you are hungry?" Olga Mihalovna said it in a harsh,

rude voice, with impatience and vexation--it escaped her unawares,

but at once she coughed, smiled, and flushed crimson. "How tall

they have grown!" she said softly.

"Please don't trouble!" the student said once more.

The student begged her not to trouble; the boys said nothing;

obviously all three of them were hungry. Olga Mihalovna took them

into the dining-room and told Vassily to lay the table.

"How unkind of your mamma!" she said as she made them sit down.

"She has quite forgotten me. Unkind, unkind, unkind . . . you must

tell her so. What are you studying?" she asked the student.

"Medicine."

"Well, I have a weakness for doctors, only fancy. I am very sorry

my husband is not a doctor. What courage any one must have to perform

an operation or dissect a corpse, for instance! Horrible! Aren't

you frightened? I believe I should die of terror! Of course, you

drink vodka?"

"Please don't trouble."

"After your journey you must have something to drink. Though I am

a woman, even I drink sometimes. And Mitya and Kolya will drink

Malaga. It's not a strong wine; you need not be afraid of it. What

fine fellows they are, really! They'll be thinking of getting married

next."

Olga Mihalovna talked without ceasing; she knew by experience that

when she had guests to entertain it was far easier and more comfortable

to talk than to listen. When you talk there is no need to strain

your attention to think of answers to questions, and to change your

expression of face. But unawares she asked the student a serious

question; the student began a lengthy speech and she was forced to

listen. The student knew that she had once been at the University,

and so tried to seem a serious person as he talked to her.

"What subject are you studying?" she asked, forgetting that she had

already put that question to him.

"Medicine."

Olga Mihalovna now remembered that she had been away from the ladies

for a long while.

"Yes? Then I suppose you are going to be a doctor?" she said, getting

up. "That's splendid. I am sorry I did not go in for medicine myself.

So you will finish your dinner here, gentlemen, and then come into

the garden. I will introduce you to the young ladies."

She went out and glanced at her watch: it was five minutes to six.

And she wondered that the time had gone so slowly, and thought with

horror that there were six more hours before midnight, when the

party would break up. How could she get through those six hours?

What phrases could she utter? How should she behave to her husband?

There was not a soul in the drawing-room or on the verandah. All

the guests were sauntering about the garden.

"I shall have to suggest a walk in the birchwood before tea, or

else a row in the boats," thought Olga Mihalovna, hurrying to the

croquet ground, from which came the sounds of voices and laughter.

"And sit the old people down to _vint_. . . ." She met Grigory the

footman coming from the croquet ground with empty bottles.

"Where are the ladies?" she asked.

"Among the raspberry-bushes. The master's there, too."

"Oh, good heavens!" some one on the croquet lawn shouted with

exasperation. "I have told you a thousand times over! To know the

Bulgarians you must see them! You can't judge from the papers!"

Either because of the outburst or for some other reason, Olga

Mihalovna was suddenly aware of a terrible weakness all over,

especially in her legs and in her shoulders. She felt she could not

bear to speak, to listen, or to move.

"Grigory," she said faintly and with an effort, "when you have to

serve tea or anything, please don't appeal to me, don't ask me

anything, don't speak of anything. . . . Do it all yourself, and

. . . and don't make a noise with your feet, I entreat you. . . . I

can't, because . . ."

Without finishing, she walked on towards the croquet lawn, but on

the way she thought of the ladies, and turned towards the

raspberry-bushes. The sky, the air, and the trees looked gloomy

again and threatened rain; it was hot and stifling. An immense flock

of crows, foreseeing a storm, flew cawing over the garden. The paths

were more overgrown, darker, and narrower as they got nearer the

kitchen garden. In one of them, buried in a thick tangle of wild

pear, crab-apple, sorrel, young oaks, and hopbine, clouds of tiny

black flies swarmed round Olga Mihalovna. She covered her face with

her hands and began forcing herself to think of the little creature

. . . . There floated through her imagination the figures of Grigory,

Mitya, Kolya, the faces of the peasants who had come in the morning

to present their congratulations.

She heard footsteps, and she opened her eyes. Uncle Nikolay Nikolaitch

was coming rapidly towards her.

"It's you, dear? I am very glad . . ." he began, breathless. "A

couple of words. . . ." He mopped with his handkerchief his red

shaven chin, then suddenly stepped back a pace, flung up his hands

and opened his eyes wide. "My dear girl, how long is this going

on?" he said rapidly, spluttering. "I ask you: is there no limit

to it? I say nothing of the demoralizing effect of his martinet

views on all around him, of the way he insults all that is sacred

and best in me and in every honest thinking man--I will say nothing

about that, but he might at least behave decently! Why, he shouts,

he bellows, gives himself airs, poses as a sort of Bonaparte, does

not let one say a word. . . . I don't know what the devil's the

matter with him! These lordly gestures, this condescending tone;

and laughing like a general! Who is he, allow me to ask you? I ask

you, who is he? The husband of his wife, with a few paltry acres

and the rank of a titular who has had the luck to marry an heiress!

An upstart and a _junker_, like so many others! A type out of

Shtchedrin! Upon my word, it's either that he's suffering from

megalomania, or that old rat in his dotage, Count Alexey Petrovitch,

is right when he says that children and young people are a long

time growing up nowadays, and go on playing they are cabmen and

generals till they are forty!"

"That's true, that's true," Olga Mihalovna assented. "Let me pass."

"Now just consider: what is it leading to?" her uncle went on,

barring her way. "How will this playing at being a general and a

Conservative end? Already he has got into trouble! Yes, to stand

his trial! I am very glad of it! That's what his noise and shouting

has brought him to--to stand in the prisoner's dock. And it's not

as though it were the Circuit Court or something: it's the Central

Court! Nothing worse could be imagined, I think! And then he has

quarrelled with every one! He is celebrating his name-day, and look,

Vostryakov's not here, nor Yahontov, nor Vladimirov, nor Shevud,

nor the Count. . . . There is no one, I imagine, more Conservative

than Count Alexey Petrovitch, yet even he has not come. And he never

will come again. He won't come, you will see!"

"My God! but what has it to do with me?" asked Olga Mihalovna.

"What has it to do with you? Why, you are his wife! You are clever,

you have had a university education, and it was in your power to

make him an honest worker!"

"At the lectures I went to they did not teach us how to influence

tiresome people. It seems as though I should have to apologize to

all of you for having been at the University," said Olga Mihalovna

sharply. "Listen, uncle. If people played the same scales over and

over again the whole day long in your hearing, you wouldn't be able

to sit still and listen, but would run away. I hear the same thing

over again for days together all the year round. You must have pity

on me at last."

Her uncle pulled a very long face, then looked at her searchingly

and twisted his lips into a mocking smile.

"So that's how it is," he piped in a voice like an old woman's. "I

beg your pardon!" he said, and made a ceremonious bow. "If you have

fallen under his influence yourself, and have abandoned your

convictions, you should have said so before. I beg your pardon!"

"Yes, I have abandoned my convictions," she cried. "There; make the

most of it!"

"I beg your pardon!"

Her uncle for the last time made her a ceremonious bow, a little

on one side, and, shrinking into himself, made a scrape with his

foot and walked back.

"Idiot!" thought Olga Mihalovna. "I hope he will go home."

She found the ladies and the young people among the raspberries in

the kitchen garden. Some were eating raspberries; others, tired of

eating raspberries, were strolling about the strawberry beds or

foraging among the sugar-peas. A little on one side of the raspberry

bed, near a branching appletree propped up by posts which had been

pulled out of an old fence, Pyotr Dmitritch was mowing the grass.

His hair was falling over his forehead, his cravat was untied. His

watch-chain was hanging loose. Every step and every swing of the

scythe showed skill and the possession of immense physical strength.

Near him were standing Lubotchka and the daughters of a neighbour,

Colonel Bukryeev--two anaemic and unhealthily stout fair girls,

Natalya and Valentina, or, as they were always called, Nata and

Vata, both wearing white frocks and strikingly like each other.

Pyotr Dmitritch was teaching them to mow.

"It's very simple," he said. "You have only to know how to hold the

scythe and not to get too hot over it--that is, not to use more

force than is necessary! Like this. . . . Wouldn't you like to try?"

he said, offering the scythe to Lubotchka. "Come!"

Lubotchka took the scythe clumsily, blushed crimson, and laughed.

"Don't be afraid, Lubov Alexandrovna!" cried Olga Mihalovna, loud

enough for all the ladies to hear that she was with them. "Don't

be afraid! You must learn! If you marry a Tolstoyan he will make

you mow."

Lubotchka raised the scythe, but began laughing again, and, helpless

with laughter, let go of it at once. She was ashamed and pleased

at being talked to as though grown up. Nata, with a cold, serious

face, with no trace of smiling or shyness, took the scythe, swung

it and caught it in the grass; Vata, also without a smile, as cold

and serious as her sister, took the scythe, and silently thrust it

into the earth. Having done this, the two sisters linked arms and

walked in silence to the raspberries.

Pyotr Dmitritch laughed and played about like a boy, and this

childish, frolicsome mood in which he became exceedingly good-natured

suited him far better than any other. Olga Mihalovna loved him when

he was like that. But his boyishness did not usually last long. It

did not this time; after playing with the scythe, he for some reason

thought it necessary to take a serious tone about it.

"When I am mowing, I feel, do you know, healthier and more normal,"

he said. "If I were forced to confine myself to an intellectual

life I believe I should go out of my mind. I feel that I was not

born to be a man of culture! I ought to mow, plough, sow, drive out

the horses."

And Pyotr Dmitritch began a conversation with the ladies about the

advantages of physical labour, about culture, and then about the

pernicious effects of money, of property. Listening to her husband,

Olga Mihalovna, for some reason, thought of her dowry.

"And the time will come, I suppose," she thought, "when he will not

forgive me for being richer than he. He is proud and vain. Maybe

he will hate me because he owes so much to me."

She stopped near Colonel Bukryeev, who was eating raspberries and

also taking part in the conversation.

"Come," he said, making room for Olga Mihalovna and Pyotr Dmitritch.

"The ripest are here. . . . And so, according to Proudhon," he went

on, raising his voice, "property is robbery. But I must confess I

don't believe in Proudhon, and don't consider him a philosopher.

The French are not authorities, to my thinking--God bless them!"

"Well, as for Proudhons and Buckles and the rest of them, I am weak

in that department," said Pyotr Dmitritch. "For philosophy you must

apply to my wife. She has been at University lectures and knows all

your Schopenhauers and Proudhons by heart. . . ."

Olga Mihalovna felt bored again. She walked again along a little

path by apple and pear trees, and looked again as though she was

on some very important errand. She reached the gardener's cottage.

In the doorway the gardener's wife, Varvara, was sitting together

with her four little children with big shaven heads. Varvara, too,

was with child and expecting to be confined on Elijah's Day. After

greeting her, Olga Mihalovna looked at her and the children in

silence and asked:

"Well, how do you feel?"

"Oh, all right. . . ."

A silence followed. The two women seemed to understand each other

without words.

"It's dreadful having one's first baby," said Olga Mihalovna after

a moment's thought. "I keep feeling as though I shall not get through

it, as though I shall die."

"I fancied that, too, but here I am alive. One has all sorts of

fancies."

Varvara, who was just going to have her fifth, looked down a little

on her mistress from the height of her experience and spoke in a

rather didactic tone, and Olga Mihalovna could not help feeling her

authority; she would have liked to have talked of her fears, of the

child, of her sensations, but she was afraid it might strike Varvara

as naïve and trivial. And she waited in silence for Varvara to say

something herself.

"Olya, we are going indoors," Pyotr Dmitritch called from the

raspberries.

Olga Mihalovna liked being silent, waiting and watching Varvara.

She would have been ready to stay like that till night without

speaking or having any duty to perform. But she had to go. She had

hardly left the cottage when Lubotchka, Nata, and Vata came running

to meet her. The sisters stopped short abruptly a couple of yards

away; Lubotchka ran right up to her and flung herself on her neck.

"You dear, darling, precious," she said, kissing her face and her

neck. "Let us go and have tea on the island!"

"On the island, on the island!" said the precisely similar Nata and

Vata, both at once, without a smile.

"But it's going to rain, my dears."

"It's not, it's not," cried Lubotchka with a woebegone face. "They've

all agreed to go. Dear! darling!"

"They are all getting ready to have tea on the island," said Pyotr

Dmitritch, coming up. "See to arranging things. . . . We will all

go in the boats, and the samovars and all the rest of it must be

sent in the carriage with the servants."

He walked beside his wife and gave her his arm. Olga Mihalovna had

a desire to say something disagreeable to her husband, something

biting, even about her dowry perhaps--the crueller the better,

she felt. She thought a little, and said:

"Why is it Count Alexey Petrovitch hasn't come? What a pity!"

"I am very glad he hasn't come," said Pyotr Dmitritch, lying. "I'm

sick to death of that old lunatic."

"But yet before dinner you were expecting him so eagerly!"