I had no time, nor would it have been of any use, to deliberate
over what I had seen. Only an expression kept recurring to my mind,
‘love spell,’ which I had lately heard, and over the signification
of which I had pondered a good deal. I walked alongside the garden
fence, and in a few moments, behind the silver poplars (they had not
yet lost a single leaf, and the foliage was luxuriantly thick and
brilliantly glistening), I saw the yard and two little lodges of Martin
Petrovitch’s homestead. The whole place struck me as having been tidied
up and pulled into shape. On every side one could perceive traces of
unflagging and severe supervision. Anna Martinovna came out on to the
steps, and screwing up her blue-grey eyes, gazed for a long while in
the direction of the copse.
‘Have you seen the master?’ she asked a peasant, who was walking across
the yard.
‘Vladimir Vassilitch?’ responded the latter, taking his cap off. ‘He
went into the copse, surely.’
‘I know, he went to the copse. Hasn’t he come back? Haven’t you seen
him?’
‘I’ve not seen him … nay.’
The peasant continued standing bareheaded before Anna Martinovna.
‘Well, you can go,’ she said. ‘Or no----wait a bit----where’s Martin
Petrovitch? Do you know?’
‘Oh, Martin Petrovitch,’ answered the peasant, in a sing-song voice,
alternately lifting his right and then his left hand, as though
pointing away somewhere, ‘is sitting yonder, at the pond, with a
fishing-rod. He’s sitting in the reeds, with a rod. Catching fish,
maybe, God knows.’
‘Very well … you can go,’ repeated Anna Martinovna; ‘and put away that
wheel, it’s lying about.’
The peasant ran to carry out her command, while she remained standing a
few minutes longer on the steps, still gazing in the direction of the
copse. Then she clenched one fist menacingly, and went slowly back into
the house. ‘Axiutka!’ I heard her imperious voice calling within.
Anna Martinovna looked angry, and tightened her lips, thin enough at
all times, with a sort of special energy. She was carelessly dressed,
and a coil of loose hair had fallen down on to her shoulder. But in
spite of the negligence of her attire, and her irritable humour,
she struck me, just as before, as attractive, and I should have been
delighted to kiss the narrow hand which looked malignant too, as she
twice irritably pushed back the loose tress.