Half an hour later all the guests were crowding on the bank near
the pile to which the boats were fastened. They were all talking
and laughing, and were in such excitement and commotion that they
could hardly get into the boats. Three boats were crammed with
passengers, while two stood empty. The keys for unfastening these
two boats had been somehow mislaid, and messengers were continually
running from the river to the house to look for them. Some said
Grigory had the keys, others that the bailiff had them, while others
suggested sending for a blacksmith and breaking the padlocks. And
all talked at once, interrupting and shouting one another down.
Pyotr Dmitritch paced impatiently to and fro on the bank, shouting:
"What the devil's the meaning of it! The keys ought always to be
lying in the hall window! Who has dared to take them away? The
bailiff can get a boat of his own if he wants one!"
At last the keys were found. Then it appeared that two oars were
missing. Again there was a great hullabaloo. Pyotr Dmitritch, who
was weary of pacing about the bank, jumped into a long, narrow boat
hollowed out of the trunk of a poplar, and, lurching from side to
side and almost falling into the water, pushed off from the bank.
The other boats followed him one after another, amid loud laughter
and the shrieks of the young ladies.
The white cloudy sky, the trees on the riverside, the boats with
the people in them, and the oars, were reflected in the water as
in a mirror; under the boats, far away below in the bottomless
depths, was a second sky with the birds flying across it. The bank
on which the house and gardens stood was high, steep, and covered
with trees; on the other, which was sloping, stretched broad green
water-meadows with sheets of water glistening in them. The boats
had floated a hundred yards when, behind the mournfully drooping
willows on the sloping banks, huts and a herd of cows came into
sight; they began to hear songs, drunken shouts, and the strains
of a concertina.
Here and there on the river fishing-boats were scattered about,
setting their nets for the night. In one of these boats was the
festive party, playing on home-made violins and violoncellos.
Olga Mihalovna was sitting at the rudder; she was smiling affably
and talking a great deal to entertain her visitors, while she glanced
stealthily at her husband. He was ahead of them all, standing up
punting with one oar. The light sharp-nosed canoe, which all the
guests called the "death-trap"--while Pyotr Dmitritch, for some
reason, called it _Penderaklia_--flew along quickly; it had a
brisk, crafty expression, as though it hated its heavy occupant and
was looking out for a favourable moment to glide away from under
his feet. Olga Mihalovna kept looking at her husband, and she loathed
his good looks which attracted every one, the back of his head, his
attitude, his familiar manner with women; she hated all the women
sitting in the boat with her, was jealous, and at the same time was
trembling every minute in terror that the frail craft would upset
and cause an accident.
"Take care, Pyotr!" she cried, while her heart fluttered with terror.
"Sit down! We believe in your courage without all that!"
She was worried, too, by the people who were in the boat with her.
They were all ordinary good sort of people like thousands of others,
but now each one of them struck her as exceptional and evil. In
each one of them she saw nothing but falsity. "That young man," she
thought, "rowing, in gold-rimmed spectacles, with chestnut hair and
a nice-looking beard: he is a mamma's darling, rich, and well-fed,
and always fortunate, and every one considers him an honourable,
free-thinking, advanced man. It's not a year since he left the
University and came to live in the district, but he already talks
of himself as 'we active members of the Zemstvo.' But in another
year he will be bored like so many others and go off to Petersburg,
and to justify running away, will tell every one that the Zemstvos
are good-for-nothing, and that he has been deceived in them. While
from the other boat his young wife keeps her eyes fixed on him, and
believes that he is 'an active member of the Zemstvo,' just as in
a year she will believe that the Zemstvo is good-for-nothing. And
that stout, carefully shaven gentleman in the straw hat with the
broad ribbon, with an expensive cigar in his mouth: he is fond of
saying, 'It is time to put away dreams and set to work!' He has
Yorkshire pigs, Butler's hives, rape-seed, pine-apples, a dairy, a
cheese factory, Italian bookkeeping by double entry; but every
summer he sells his timber and mortgages part of his land to spend
the autumn with his mistress in the Crimea. And there's Uncle Nikolay
Nikolaitch, who has quarrelled with Pyotr Dmitritch, and yet for
some reason does not go home."
Olga Mihalovna looked at the other boats, and there, too, she saw
only uninteresting, queer creatures, affected or stupid people. She
thought of all the people she knew in the district, and could not
remember one person of whom one could say or think anything good.
They all seemed to her mediocre, insipid, unintelligent, narrow,
false, heartless; they all said what they did not think, and did
what they did not want to. Dreariness and despair were stifling
her; she longed to leave off smiling, to leap up and cry out, "I
am sick of you," and then jump out and swim to the bank.
"I say, let's take Pyotr Dmitritch in tow!" some one shouted.
"In tow, in tow!" the others chimed in. "Olga Mihalovna, take your
husband in tow."
To take him in tow, Olga Mihalovna, who was steering, had to seize
the right moment and to catch bold of his boat by the chain at the
beak. When she bent over to the chain Pyotr Dmitritch frowned and
looked at her in alarm.
"I hope you won't catch cold," he said.
"If you are uneasy about me and the child, why do you torment me?"
thought Olga Mihalovna.
Pyotr Dmitritch acknowledged himself vanquished, and, not caring
to be towed, jumped from the _Penderaklia_ into the boat which was
overful already, and jumped so carelessly that the boat lurched
violently, and every one cried out in terror.
"He did that to please the ladies," thought Olga Mihalovna; "he
knows it's charming." Her hands and feet began trembling, as she
supposed, from boredom, vexation from the strain of smiling and the
discomfort she felt all over her body. And to conceal this trembling
from her guests, she tried to talk more loudly, to laugh, to move.
"If I suddenly begin to cry," she thought, "I shall say I have
toothache. . . ."
But at last the boats reached the "Island of Good Hope," as they
called the peninsula formed by a bend in the river at an acute
angle, covered with a copse of old birch-trees, oaks, willows, and
poplars. The tables were already laid under the trees; the samovars
were smoking, and Vassily and Grigory, in their swallow-tails and
white knitted gloves, were already busy with the tea-things. On the
other bank, opposite the "Island of Good Hope," there stood the
carriages which had come with the provisions. The baskets and parcels
of provisions were carried across to the island in a little boat
like the _Penderaklia_. The footmen, the coachmen, and even the
peasant who was sitting in the boat, had the solemn expression
befitting a name-day such as one only sees in children and servants.
While Olga Mihalovna was making the tea and pouring out the first
glasses, the visitors were busy with the liqueurs and sweet things.
Then there was the general commotion usual at picnics over drinking
tea, very wearisome and exhausting for the hostess. Grigory and
Vassily had hardly had time to take the glasses round before hands
were being stretched out to Olga Mihalovna with empty glasses. One
asked for no sugar, another wanted it stronger, another weak, a
fourth declined another glass. And all this Olga Mihalovna had to
remember, and then to call, "Ivan Petrovitch, is it without sugar
for you?" or, "Gentlemen, which of you wanted it weak?" But the
guest who had asked for weak tea, or no sugar, had by now forgotten
it, and, absorbed in agreeable conversation, took the first glass
that came. Depressed-looking figures wandered like shadows at a
little distance from the table, pretending to look for mushrooms
in the grass, or reading the labels on the boxes--these were those
for whom there were not glasses enough. "Have you had tea?" Olga
Mihalovna kept asking, and the guest so addressed begged her not
to trouble, and said, "I will wait," though it would have suited
her better for the visitors not to wait but to make haste.
Some, absorbed in conversation, drank their tea slowly, keeping
their glasses for half an hour; others, especially some who had
drunk a good deal at dinner, would not leave the table, and kept
on drinking glass after glass, so that Olga Mihalovna scarcely had
time to fill them. One jocular young man sipped his tea through a
lump of sugar, and kept saying, "Sinful man that I am, I love to
indulge myself with the Chinese herb." He kept asking with a heavy
sigh: "Another tiny dish of tea more, if you please." He drank a
great deal, nibbled his sugar, and thought it all very amusing and
original, and imagined that he was doing a clever imitation of a
Russian merchant. None of them understood that these trifles were
agonizing to their hostess, and, indeed, it was hard to understand
it, as Olga Mihalovna went on all the time smiling affably and
talking nonsense.
But she felt ill. . . . She was irritated by the crowd of people,
the laughter, the questions, the jocular young man, the footmen
harassed and run off their legs, the children who hung round the
table; she was irritated at Vata's being like Nata, at Kolya's being
like Mitya, so that one could not tell which of them had had tea
and which of them had not. She felt that her smile of forced
affability was passing into an expression of anger, and she felt
every minute as though she would burst into tears.
"Rain, my friends," cried some one.
Every one looked at the sky.
"Yes, it really is rain . . ." Pyotr Dmitritch assented, and wiped
his cheek.
Only a few drops were falling from the sky--the real rain had not
begun yet; but the company abandoned their tea and made haste to
get off. At first they all wanted to drive home in the carriages,
but changed their minds and made for the boats. On the pretext that
she had to hasten home to give directions about the supper, Olga
Mihalovna asked to be excused for leaving the others, and went home
in the carriage.
When she got into the carriage, she first of all let her face rest
from smiling. With an angry face she drove through the village, and
with an angry face acknowledged the bows of the peasants she met.
When she got home, she went to the bedroom by the back way and lay
down on her husband's bed.
"Merciful God!" she whispered. "What is all this hard labour for?
Why do all these people hustle each other here and pretend that
they are enjoying themselves? Why do I smile and lie? I don't
understand it."
She heard steps and voices. The visitors had come back.
"Let them come," thought Olga Mihalovna; "I shall lie a little
longer."
But a maid-servant came and said:
"Marya Grigoryevna is going, madam."
Olga Mihalovna jumped up, tidied her hair and hurried out of the
room.
"Marya Grigoryevna, what is the meaning of this?" she began in an
injured voice, going to meet Marya Grigoryevna. "Why are you in
such a hurry?"
"I can't help it, darling! I've stayed too long as it is; my children
are expecting me home."
"It's too bad of you! Why didn't you bring your children with you?"
"If you will let me, dear, I will bring them on some ordinary day,
but to-day . . ."
"Oh, please do," Olga Mihalovna interrupted; "I shall be delighted!
Your children are so sweet! Kiss them all for me. . . . But, really,
I am offended with you! I don't understand why you are in such a
hurry!"
"I really must, I really must. . . . Good-bye, dear. Take care of
yourself. In your condition, you know . . ."
And the ladies kissed each other. After seeing the departing guest
to her carriage, Olga Mihalovna went in to the ladies in the
drawing-room. There the lamps were already lighted and the gentlemen
were sitting down to cards.