“You? Going to marry . . . Urbenin? What a joke!”
“It's not a joke at all. . . . I really can't understand where you see
the joke. . . .”
“You to marry . . . Urbenin. . . .” I repeated, getting pale, I
really don't know why. “If this is not a joke, what is it?”
“What joke! I can't understand what is there extraordinary—what is
there strange in it?” Olenka said, pouting.
A minute passed in silence. . . . I gazed at the pretty girl, at her
young, almost childish face, and was astonished that she could make
such terrible jokes! I instantly pictured to myself Urbenin, elderly,
fat, red-faced with his standing-out ears and hard hands, whose very
touch could only scratch that young female body which had scarcely
begun to live. . . . Surely the thought of such a picture must
frighten this pretty wood fay, who knew how to look poetically at the
sky when it is reft by lightning and thunder growls angrily! I, even
I, was frightened!
“It's true he's a little old,” Olenka sighed, “but he loves me. . . .
His love is trustworthy.”
“It's not a matter of trustworthy love, but of happiness. . . .”
“I shall be happy with him. . . . He has means, thank God, and he's no
pauper, no beggar, but a nobleman. Of course, I'm not in love with
him, but are only those who marry for love happy? Oh, I know those
marriages for love!”
“My child, when have you had time to stuff your brain with this
terrible worldly wisdom?” I asked. “Admitted that you are joking with
me, but where have you learned to joke in such a coarse, old
way? . . . Where? When?”
Olenka looked at me with astonishment and shrugged her shoulders.
“I don't understand what you are saying,” she said. “You don't like to
see a young girl marry an old man? Is that so?”
Olenka suddenly blushed all over, her chin moved nervously, and
without waiting for my answer she rattled on rapidly.
“This does not please you? Then have the goodness to go into the wood
. . . into that dullness, where there is nothing except merlins and a
mad father . . . and wait there until a young suitor comes along! It
pleased you the other evening, but if you saw it in winter, when one
only wishes . . . that death might come——”
“Oh, all this is absurd, Olenka, all this is unripe, silly! If you are
not joking. . . . I don't even know what to say! You had better be
silent and not offend the air with your tongue. I, in your place,
would have hanged myself on seven aspens, and you buy linen . . . and
smile. Akh!”
“In any case, he with his means will have father cured,” she
whispered.
“How much do you require for your father's cure?” I cried. “Take it
from me—a hundred? Two hundred? . . . A thousand? Olenka, it's not
your father's cure that you want!”
The news Olenka had communicated to me had excited me so much, that I
had not even noticed that the wagonette had driven past my village, or
how it had turned into the Count's yard and stopped at the bailiff's
porch. When I saw the children run out, and the smile on Urbenin's
face, who also had rushed out to help Olenka down, I jumped out of the
wagonette and ran into the Count's house without even taking leave.
Here further news awaited me.