Kirilin and Atchmianov climbed up the mountain by the path. Atchmianov
dropped behind and stopped, while Kirilin went up to Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna.
"Good-evening," he said, touching his cap.
"Good-evening."
"Yes!" said Kirilin, looking at the sky and pondering.
"Why 'yes'?" asked Nadyezhda Fyodorovna after a brief pause, noticing
that Atchmianov was watching them both.
"And so it seems," said the officer, slowly, "that our love has
withered before it has blossomed, so to speak. How do you wish me
to understand it? Is it a sort of coquetry on your part, or do you
look upon me as a nincompoop who can be treated as you choose."
"It was a mistake! Leave me alone!" Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said
sharply, on that beautiful, marvellous evening, looking at him with
terror and asking herself with bewilderment, could there really
have been a moment when that man attracted her and had been near
to her?
"So that's it!" said Kirilin; he thought in silence for a few minutes
and said: "Well, I'll wait till you are in a better humour, and
meanwhile I venture to assure you I am a gentleman, and I don't
allow any one to doubt it. Adieu!"
He touched his cap again and walked off, making his way between the
bushes. After a short interval Atchmianov approached hesitatingly.
"What a fine evening!" he said with a slight Armenian accent.
He was nice-looking, fashionably dressed, and behaved unaffectedly
like a well-bred youth, but Nadyezhda Fyodorovna did not like him
because she owed his father three hundred roubles; it was displeasing
to her, too, that a shopkeeper had been asked to the picnic, and
she was vexed at his coming up to her that evening when her heart
felt so pure.
"The picnic is a success altogether," he said, after a pause.
"Yes," she agreed, and as though suddenly remembering her debt, she
said carelessly: "Oh, tell them in your shop that Ivan Andreitch
will come round in a day or two and will pay three hundred roubles
. . . . I don't remember exactly what it is."
"I would give another three hundred if you would not mention that
debt every day. Why be prosaic?"
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna laughed; the amusing idea occurred to her that
if she had been willing and sufficiently immoral she might in one
minute be free from her debt. If she, for instance, were to turn
the head of this handsome young fool! How amusing, absurd, wild it
would be really! And she suddenly felt a longing to make him love
her, to plunder him, throw him over, and then to see what would
come of it.
"Allow me to give you one piece of advice," Atchmianov said timidly.
"I beg you to beware of Kirilin. He says horrible things about you
everywhere."
"It doesn't interest me to know what every fool says of me," Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna said coldly, and the amusing thought of playing with
handsome young Atchmianov suddenly lost its charm.
"We must go down," she said; "they're calling us."
The fish soup was ready by now. They were ladling it out by platefuls,
and eating it with the religious solemnity with which this is only
done at a picnic; and every one thought the fish soup very good,
and thought that at home they had never eaten anything so nice. As
is always the case at picnics, in the mass of dinner napkins,
parcels, useless greasy papers fluttering in the wind, no one knew
where was his glass or where his bread. They poured the wine on the
carpet and on their own knees, spilt the salt, while it was dark
all round them and the fire burnt more dimly, and every one was too
lazy to get up and put wood on. They all drank wine, and even gave
Kostya and Katya half a glass each. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna drank one
glass and then another, got a little drunk and forgot about Kirilin.
"A splendid picnic, an enchanting evening," said Laevsky, growing
lively with the wine. "But I should prefer a fine winter to all
this. 'His beaver collar is silver with hoar-frost.'"
"Every one to his taste," observed Von Koren.
Laevsky felt uncomfortable; the heat of the campfire was beating
upon his back, and the hatred of Von Koren upon his breast and face:
this hatred on the part of a decent, clever man, a feeling in which
there probably lay hid a well-grounded reason, humiliated him and
enervated him, and unable to stand up against it, he said in a
propitiatory tone:
"I am passionately fond of nature, and I regret that I'm not a
naturalist. I envy you."
"Well, I don't envy you, and don't regret it," said Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna. "I don't understand how any one can seriously interest
himself in beetles and ladybirds while the people are suffering."
Laevsky shared her opinion. He was absolutely ignorant of natural
science, and so could never reconcile himself to the authoritative
tone and the learned and profound air of the people who devoted
themselves to the whiskers of ants and the claws of beetles, and
he always felt vexed that these people, relying on these whiskers,
claws, and something they called protoplasm (he always imagined it
in the form of an oyster), should undertake to decide questions
involving the origin and life of man. But in Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's
words he heard a note of falsity, and simply to contradict her he
said: "The point is not the ladybirds, but the deductions made from
them."