As Sasha talked, he used to stretch out two long wasted fingers before the listener’s face.
“It all seems somehow strange to me here, now I am out of the habit of it,” he went on. “There is no making it out. Nobody ever does anything. Your mother spends the whole day walking about like a duchess, Granny does nothing either, nor you either. And your Andrei Andreyich never does anything either.”
Nadya had heard this the year before and, she fancied, the year before that too, and she knew that Sasha could not make any other criticism, and in old days this had amused her, but now for some reason she felt annoyed.
“That’s all stale, and I have been sick of it for ages,” she said, and got up. “You should think of something a little newer.”
He laughed and got up too, and they went together toward the house. She, tall, handsome, and well made, beside him looked very healthy and smartly dressed; she was conscious of this and felt sorry for him and for some reason awkward.
“And you say a great deal you should not,” she said. “You’ve just been talking about my Andrei, but you see you don’t know him.”
“My Andrei. . . . Bother him, your Andrei. I am sorry for your youth.”
They were already sitting down to supper as the young people went into the dining-room. The grandmother, or Granny as she was called in the household, a very stout, plain old lady with bushy eyebrows and a little mustache, was talking loudly, and from her voice and manner of speaking it could be seen that she was the person of most importance in the house. She owned rows of shops in the market, and the old-fashioned house with columns and the garden, yet she prayed every morning that God might save her from ruin and shed tears as she did so. Her daughter-in-law, Nadya’s mother, Nina Ivanovna, a fair-haired woman tightly laced in, with a pince-nez, and diamonds on every finger, Father Andrei, a lean, toothless old man whose face always looked as though he were just going to say something amusing, and his son, Andrei Andreyich, a stout and handsome young man with curly hair, looking like an artist or an actor, were all talking of hypnotism.
“You will get well in a week here,” said Granny, addressing Sasha. “Only you must eat more. What do you look like!” she sighed. “You are really dreadful! You are a regular prodigal son, that is what you are.”
“After wasting his father’s substance in riotous living,” said Father Andrei slowly, with laughing eyes. “He fed with senseless beasts.”
“I like my dad,” said Andrei Andreyich, touching his father on the shoulder. “He is a splendid old fellow, a dear old fellow.”
Everyone was silent for a space. Sasha suddenly burst out laughing and put his dinner napkin to his mouth.
“So you believe in hypnotism?” said Father Andrei to Nina Ivanovna.
“I cannot, of course, assert that I believe,” answered Nina Ivanovna, assuming a very serious, even severe, expression; “but I must own that there is much that is mysterious and incomprehensible in nature.”
“I quite agree with you, though I must add that religion distinctly curtails for us the domain of the mysterious.”
A big and very fat turkey was served. Father Andrei and Nina Ivanovna went on with their conversation. Nina Ivanovna’s diamonds glittered on her fingers, then tears began to glitter in her eyes, she grew excited.
“Though I cannot venture to argue with you,” she said, “you must admit there are so many insoluble riddles in life!”
“Not one, I assure you.”
After supper Andrei Andreyich played the fiddle and Nina Ivanovna accompanied him on the piano. Ten years before he had taken his degree at the university in the Faculty of Arts but had never held any post, had no definite work, and only from time to time took part in concerts for charitable objects; and in the town he was regarded as a musician.
Andrei Andreyich played; they all listened in silence. The samovar was boiling quietly on the table and no one but Sasha was drinking tea. Then when it struck twelve a violin string suddenly broke; everyone laughed, bustled about, and began saying good-bye.
After seeing her fiancé out, Nadya went upstairs where she and her mother had their rooms (the lower story was occupied by the grandmother). They began putting the lights out below in the dining-room, while Sasha still sat on drinking tea. He always spent a long time over tea in the Moscow style, drinking as much as seven glasses at a time. For a long time after Nadya had undressed and gone to bed she could hear the servants clearing away downstairs and Granny talking angrily. At last everything was hushed, and nothing could be heard but Sasha from time to time coughing on a bass note in his room below.
2.
When Nadya woke up it must have been five o’clock, it was beginning to get light. A watchman was tapping somewhere far away. She was not sleepy, and her bed felt very soft and uncomfortable. Nadya sat up in her bed and fell to thinking as she had done every night in May. Her thoughts were the same as they had been the night before, useless, persistent thoughts, always alike, of how Andrei Andreyich had begun courting her and had made her an offer, how she had accepted him and then little by little had come to appreciate the kindly, intelligent man. But for some reason now, when there was little more than a month left before the wedding, she began to feel dread and uneasiness as though something vague and oppressive were before her.
“Ticktock, ticktock . . .” the watchman tapped lazily. “. . . Ticktock.”
Through the big old-fashioned window she could see the garden and at a little distance bushes of lilac in full flower, drowsy and lifeless from the cold; and the thick white mist was floating softly up to the lilac, trying to cover it. Drowsy rooks were cawing in the faraway trees.
“My God, why is my heart so heavy?”
Perhaps every girl felt the same before her wedding. There was no knowing! Or was it Sasha’s influence? But for several years past Sasha had been repeating the same thing, like a copybook, and when he talked he seemed naive and queer. But why was it she could not get Sasha out of her head? Why was it?
The watchman left off tapping for a long while. The birds were twittering under the windows and the mist had disappeared from the garden. Everything was lighted up by the spring sunshine as by a smile. Soon the whole garden, warm and caressed by the sun, returned to life, and dewdrops like diamonds glittered on the leaves and the old neglected garden on that morning looked young and gaily decked.
Granny was already awake. Sasha’s husky cough began. Nadya could hear them below, setting the samovar and moving the chairs. The hours passed slowly; Nadya had been up and walking about the garden for a long while and still the morning dragged on.
At last Nina Ivanovna appeared with a tear-stained face, carrying a glass of mineral water. She was interested in spiritualism and homeopathy, read a great deal, was fond of talking of the doubts to which she was subject, and to Nadya it seemed as though there were a deep mysterious significance in all that.
Now Nadya kissed her mother and walked beside her.
“What have you been crying about, Mother?” she asked.
“Last night I was reading a story in which there is an old man and his daughter. The old man is in some office and his chief falls in love with his daughter. I have not finished it, but there was a passage which made it hard to keep from tears,” said Nina Ivanovna, and she sipped at her glass. “I thought of it this morning and shed tears again.”
“I have been so depressed all these days,” said Nadya after a pause. “Why is it I don’t sleep at night!”
“I don’t know, dear. When I can’t sleep I shut my eyes very tightly, like this, and picture to myself Anna Karenina moving about and talking, or something historical from the ancient world. . . .”