" I've nothing, but pray look what he has/'
He showed the perch.
" I assure you," he went on, u it's singular how lucky he is ! It's a pity he doesn't give his mind to it; with his luck I should never have gone away empty-handed. To let such a pike slip!"
He sighed.
Antigone had begun to listen more eagerly, but Kostyakoff said no more.
The visits of the old man and his daughter were repeated more and more frequently. Even Adouev deigned to pay them some attention. He sometimes exchanged a word or two with the old man, and never a word with the daughter. At first she was piqued, then offended, at last depressed by it. Had Adouev talked a little to her, or even paid her ordinary attention—she would have forgotten him; but now it was quite otherwise. The human heart seems to live on contradictions.
Antigone constantly deliberated on some awful plan of vengeance, but later on she gradually gave it up.
One day when the old man and his daughter had drawn near our friends, Alexandr, after a brief interval, had laid his rod on the bushes and gone, according to his habit, to sit in his usual place, and was mechanically gazing now at the father, now at the daughter.
They stood with profile turned to him. In the father he did not discover anything out of the ordinary. A white blouse, nankeen trousers, and a low wide-brimmed hat, trimmed with green plush. But the daughter now! how gracefully she hung on her father's arm ! The wind would now and then lift a curl from her face as though on purpose to show Alexandr her lovely profile and white neck, and then raise her silk mantle and give a glimpse of her slender figure, or would playfully stir her dress and reveal a tiny ankle. She was gazing dreamily at the water.
For a long while Alexandr could not take his eyes off her, and he felt a feverish shiver run through him, He turned away from temptation and began to knock off the heads of the flowers with a switch.
" Ah ! I know what it means," he thought, " let it have its way and it would pass off! There's love ready-made!— imbecility! My uncle is right. But mere animal instinct shall not carry me away—no, I am not fallen so low as that!"
" Can I fish a little !" the young girl asked Kostyakoff timidly.
" Oh yes, miss; why not ? " he replied, giving her Adouev's rod.
" There now, you have a partner in the business ! " said her father to Kostyakoff and, leaving his daughter, he began to wander off further along the bank.
" Liza, mind you catch some fish for supper," he added.
The silence lasted a few minutes.
"Why is your partner so cross?" Liza inquired of Kostyakoff in a low voice.
" He's been passed over for the third time in his office, miss."
"What?" she asked, slightly frowning, u y It's the third time they haven't promoted him."
She shook her head.
" No ; it can't be!" she thought, " that's not it!"
" Don't you believe me, miss ? on my oath ! That pike too, you remember, he let slip through it."
" It's not so, not so," she thought now with conviction, " I know why he let the pike go."
" Ah ! ah !" she cried suddenly, " look, it's stirring, it's stirring."
She pulled it out and had caught nothing.
" It has got away !" said Kostyakoff, looking at the hook. x^*"See how it has torn off the worm; it must have been a big 1 pike. But you haven't learnt the art, miss; yo u didn't let
\ him bite prop erly." " ~^-
yi> "^Why, is there an art to learn in that ?"
^^ " Ye s7 as in everything," s aid A lexandr mechanically.
She started and quickly Turned roundj TrTher t\uil~tetting the rod slip into the water. But Alexandr was now looking in a different direction.
"How is one to arrive at learning it?" she said with a slight tremor in her voice.
" By practising oftener," replied Alexandr.
o
"Oh, is that it!" she thought, with a flutter of delight; " that means I am to come here oftener. I understand! Very well, I will come, but I shall pay you out, sir misanthrope, for all your impertinence."
This was how the spirit of coquetry interpreted Alexandras reply to her, but on that day he said nothing more.
" She's fancying, God knows what all, I daresay! " he said to himself; " she is going to put on airs and flirt .... how imbecile!"
From that day the visits of the old man and the young girl were repeated every day. Sometimes Liza came with her nurse, without the old man. She brought work and books with her and sat down under a tree, with an appearance of complete unconsciousness of Alexandra existence.
She thought in this way to pique his vanity and, as she expressed it, " to pay him out." She talked aloud to her nurse about her home and household affairs, to show that she did not even see Adouev. And he sometimes actually did not see her, and when he saw her, bowed coolly without a word.
Seeing that this ordinary method availed her nothing, she changed her plan of attack, and on two occasions volunteered a remark herself; sometimes she took a rod from him.
Alexandr, by degrees, became more talkative with her, but was thoroughly on his guard, and did not give vent to any kind of "sincere outburst;" whether through prudence on his part or that his old wounds were still not healed, as he expressed it, he was rather chilly even in conversation with her.
One day the old man had a samovar sent down to the river-bank. Liza poured out tea. Alexandr at once refused any tea, saying that he did not drink it in the evening.
" All this tea-drinking leads up to acquaintance with them —intimacy—no, thank you !" he thought.
" What's the matter with you ? why, yesterday you drank four glasses," said Kostyakoff.
" I never drink out of doors," Alexandr added hastily.
w What a mistake !" said Kostyakoff, " most capital tea, prime, cost fifteen roubles, I should say. If you please, a little more, miss, and how good it would be with rum."
Rum, too, was brought.
The old man invited Alexandr to go and see him, but he flatly declined. Liza bit her lip when she heard his refusal. She began to try to discover from him the reason of his unsociability. However artfully she turned the conversation to this topic, Alexandr still more artfully got out of it.
This mystery only^excited curiosity and possibly some other emotion in (^izaj) Her face, hitherto as clear as a summer sky, began to wear an expression of anxiety and thoughtfulness. She often turned a melancholy glance on Alexandr, removed her eyes from him with a sigh, and bent them on the ground, and seemed to be thinking to herself, " You are unhappy, perhaps deceived. Oh, how well I should have known how to make you happy; how I would have cherished you and loved you. I would have guarded you from fate itself—and so on."
This is how most women think, and most of them deceive those who trust in this siren's song. Alexandr apparently noticed nothing. He talked to her as he would have talked to a friend, or to his uncle, without a shade of that tenderness which involuntarily enters into the friendship of a man and a woman, and makes these relations unlike ^^fri^ndship. This is why it is said that friendship between a man and woman is impossible, because what is called friendship between them is either the beginning or the end of love, or else indeed is love itself. But seeing Adouev's attitude to Liza, one might almost believe that such a friendship did exist.
Once only he partly revealed or wanted to reveal his way
of thinking to her. He took up from the bench the book
she had brought with her and turned over the pages. It was
V--"" Childe Harold " in the French translation. Alexandr shook
his head, sighed and put the book- down without speaking.
"Don't you like Byron ? Have you an antipathy to Byron?" she said. "Byron was such a great poet—and you don't like him !"
" I have said nothing and you attack me," he replied.