" Why, it was simply misery; worse than the factory hands. If they play the fool, you can give them the whip ; but what was one to do with him ? "
His aunt wept the whole day, and when Piotr Ivanitch asked for his dinner, he was told that nothing had been prepared, that the mistress had shut herself up in her room and given the cook no directions.
" And all Alexandr!" said Piotr Ivanitch; " what a worry he is!"
He walked up and down and then went off to dine at the English Club.
CHAPTER XII
It was a lovely morning. The lake the reader knows already in the village of Grahae was just stirred by a faint ripple. The eyes involuntarily winked in the dazzling brilliance of the sunshine which flashed in sparkles of diamond and emerald on the water. Weeping birch-trees bathed their branches in the lake, and in parts of its banks were growing rushes, among which were nestling great yellow flowers reposing on broad floating leaves. Light clouds sometimes passed before the sun; suddenly it seemed to have turned its back on Grahse; then the lake and the forest and the village—all were instantly in shadow; there was a patch of sunshine only in the distance. The cloud passed—the lake was sparkling again, and the cornfields seemed covered with gold.
Anna Pavlovna had been sitting since five o'clock in the balcony. What had brought her out: the sunrise, the fresh breeze, or the lark's song ? No, she never took her eyes off the road which passed through the forest. Agrafena came up to ask for the keys. Anna Pavlovna did not glance at her, and not taking her eyes from the road gave her the keys without even asking her what for. The cook appeared; without a glance at him either, she gave him a multitude of directions. Once more the table was to be spread with a banquet.
Anna Pavlovna was left again alone. Suddenly her eyes brightened; every energy of her soul and body were strained to look; something dark appeared upon the road. Some one was coming, but slowly, deliberately. Ah ! it was a waggon coming down from the mountain. Anna Parlovna frowned.
" Some evil spirit sent him ! " she said; " they might go round, all rush up here."
She sank back again disappointed into her easy-chair, and again with trembling expectation bent her gaze upon the forest, without noticing anything around her. But there was something to notice around her; the scene began to change significantly. The air, hot with the burning sun of midday, grew heavy and stifling. Then the sun was hidden. It grew dark. And the forest, and the distant
villages, and the grass all began to assume a uniform and threatening hue.
Anna Pavlovna revived and looked up. Good Heavens ! From the west was creeping, like a living monster, a shapeless blur of blackness, with a copper glow upon its edges, and as quickly swooping down upon the village and the forest, stretching like two huge wings on both sides. Everything in nature seemed in dismay. The cows hung their heads; the horses lashed their tails and snorted with distended nostrils, shaking their manes: the dust under their hoofs did not fly up, but was parted like sand under the wheels. The clouds grew heavy with storm. Soon there v- was the slow roll of thunder in the distance.
Everything was hushed, as though expecting something unprecedented. What had become of the birds that had been fluttering and singing so merrily in the sunshine ? Where were the insects who had been buzzing in the grass ? All were hidden and voiceless, and inanimate objects seemed to share the foreboding of evil. The trees ceased rustling, and, intertwining their twigs together, they drew themselves up; only sometimes they bowed their tops down as though warning one another in a whisper of approaching danger. The thunderclouds had overspread the horizon and formed a kind of impenetrable leaden vault overhead. In the village every one was trying to reach home in time. There was an instant of universal solemn silence. Then, like a forerunner from the forest, came a fresh breeze blowing cool in the wayfarer's face; it rustled in the leaves, slammed the door of a hut as it passed, and ruffling up the dust of the street sank away in the bushes. After it rushed a whirling blast slowly raising a cloud of dust on the road; then it burst into the village, tore some rotten boards from the fence, carried off a thatch roof, and fluttered the petticoats of a peasant woman who was fetching water, and drove the cocks and hens along the street ruffling their feathers.
The squall rushed by. Again a hush. Everything was uneasy and seeking shelter; only a silly sheep saw nothing coming; he went on indifferently chewing cud, standing in the middle of the street gazing in one direction and not comprehending the general agitation ; and a straw from the thatch whirling along the road was doing its utmost to keep up with the rushing wind.
Two or three great drops of rain fell, and suddenly came a flash of lightning. An old man got up from the boundary mound of earth and hurriedly called some little grandchildren into the hut; an old woman crossing herself hastily shut a window.
The peals of thunder overpowering every sound of humanity rolled in triumphant sovereignty in the heavens, A horse broke away from its cord in terror, and dashed into the meadow ; a peasant tried in vain to catch it. And the rain at first fell in scattered drops, then pelted faster and faster and lashed more and more violently on the roofs and windows. A small white hand was thrust out on to the balcony for some flowers, the subjects of the tenderest solicitude.
At the first outbreak of the storm Anna Pavlovna crossed herself and left the balcony.
" No, it's clearly useless now to expect him to-day," she said with a sigh," he will put up somewhere to avoid the storm, and perhaps for the night."
Suddenly there was a sound of wheels only not from the forest but from the other direction. Someone had come into the court. Madame Adouev's heart stood still.
" What is that ? " she thought, " could he have planned to arrive unexpectedly ? But no, there is no road that way."
She did not know what to think; but soon everything was explained. A minute later Anton Ivanitch came in. His hair was somewhat grizzled, he himself had grown stouter; his cheeks were fat from indolence and good-living. He wore the same surtout, the same loose pantaloons.
" I've been expecting and expecting you, Anton Ivanitch," began Anna Pavlovna. " I thought you were not coming. I had begun to despair of you."
" It's very wrong of you to think such a thing! with any one else, ma'am, I daresay! You can't iiecoy me to see every one, but with you it's another thing ! I was delayed not through my own fault; I have just driven here with only one horse."
" How was that ? " asked Anna Pavlovna absently, as she moved towards the window.
" Because, ma'am, at the christening at Pavl Savitch's my little piebald fell lame; some evil spirit induced the
coachman to lay an old door from the barn over the old ditch ; they're poor folk, you see! They hadn't any new planks! And on the door there was some hook or something sticking out; so the horse stumbled and fell over the side, and I was within an ace of having my neck broken—such a shock! So from that time he's gone lame. They are such stingy creatures, to be sure. You wouldn't believe, ma'am, what their house is like; it would be better to keep people in some almshouse. And yet every winter at Moscow they will waste their thousand roubles."
Anna Pavlovna listened absent-mindedly to him, and gave a slight shake of the head as he concluded.
"You know I have received a letter from Sashenka, Anton Ivanitch!" she interposed, "he writes he will be here about the 20th; so I am hardly knowing what I am doing for joy."
"I have heard of it, ma'am; Proshka told me, but I didn't understand what he was saying at first; I imagined he had arrived already; threw it me into a perspiration with joy!»
" God bless you, Anton Ivanitch, for loving us so."
" Could any one love you more ? Why, I have dandled Alexandr Fedoritch in my arms; he is just like one of my own kin."