“What do you say to that?” he said, and laughed. “I had a tank holding two hundred gallons put in the loft, and so now we shall have water.”
They walked across the yard and went out into the street and took a cab. Thick clouds of dust were blowing, and it seemed as though it were just going to rain.
“You are not cold?” said Andrei Andreyich, screwing up his eyes at the dust.
She did not answer.
“Yesterday, you remember, Sasha blamed me for doing nothing,” he said, after a brief silence. “Well, he is right, absolutely right! I do nothing and can do nothing. My precious, why is it? Why is it that the very thought that I may some day fix a cockade on my cap and go into the government service is so hateful to me? Why do I feel so uncomfortable when I see a lawyer or a Latin master or a member of the Zemstvo? O Mother Russia! O Mother Russia! What a burden of idle and useless people you still carry! How many like me are upon you, long-suffering Mother!”
And from the fact that he did nothing he drew generalizations, seeing in it a sign of the times.
“When we are married let us go together into the country, my precious; there we will work! We will buy ourselves a little piece of land with a garden and a river, we will labor and watch life. Oh, how splendid that will be!”
He took off his hat, and his hair floated in the wind, while she listened to him and thought: “Good God, I wish I were home!”
When they were quite near the house they overtook Father Andrei.
“Ah, here’s Father coming,” cried Andrei Andreyich, delighted, and he waved his hat. “I love my dad really,” he said as he paid the cabman. “He’s a splendid old fellow, a dear old fellow.”
Nadya went into the house, feeling cross and unwell, thinking that there would be visitors all the evening, that she would have to entertain them, to smile, to listen to the fiddle, to listen to all sorts of nonsense, and to talk of nothing but the wedding.
Granny, dignified, gorgeous in her silk dress, and haughty as she always seemed before visitors, was sitting before the samovar. Father Andrei came in with his sly smile.
“I have the pleasure and blessed consolation of seeing you in health,” he said to Granny, and it was hard to tell whether he was joking or speaking seriously.
4.
The wind was beating on the window and on the roof; there was a whistling sound, and in the stove the house spirit was plaintively and sullenly droning his song. It was past midnight; everyone in the house had gone to bed, but no one was asleep, and it seemed all the while to Nadya as though they were playing the fiddle below. There was a sharp bang; a shutter must have been torn off. A minute later Nina Ivanovna came in in her nightgown, with a candle.
“What was the bang, Nadya?” she asked.
Her mother, with her hair in a single plait and a timid smile on her face, looked older, plainer, smaller on that stormy night. Nadya remembered that quite a little time ago she had thought her mother an exceptional woman and had listened with pride to the things she said; and now she could not remember those things, everything that came into her mind was so feeble and useless.
In the stove was the sound of several bass voices in chorus, and she even heard “O-o-o my G-o-od!” Nadya sat on her bed, and suddenly she clutched at her hair and burst into sobs.
“Mother, Mother, my own,” she said. “If only you knew what is happening to me! I beg you, I beseech you, let me go away! I beseech you!”
“Where?” asked Nina Ivanovna, not understanding, and she sat down on the bedstead. “Go where?”
For a long while Nadya cried and could not utter a word.
“Let me go away from the town,” she said at last. “There must not and will not be a wedding, understand that! I don’t love that man . . . I can’t even speak about him.”
“No, my own, no!” Nina Ivanovna said quickly, terribly alarmed. “Calm yourself—it’s just because you are in low spirits. It will pass, it often happens. Most likely you have had a tiff with Andrei; but lovers’ quarrels always end in kisses!”
“Oh, go away, Mother, oh, go away,” sobbed Nadya.
“Yes,” said Nina Ivanovna after a pause, “it’s not long since you were a baby, a little girl, and now you are engaged to be married. In nature there is a continual transmutation of substances. Before you know where you are you will be a mother yourself and an old woman, and will have as rebellious a daughter as I have.”
“My darling, my sweet, you are clever you know, you are unhappy,” said Nadya. “You are very unhappy; why do you say such very dull, commonplace things? For God’s sake, why?”
Nina Ivanovna tried to say something but could not utter a word; she gave a sob and went away to her own room. The bass voices began droning in the stove again, and Nadya felt suddenly frightened. She jumped out of bed and went quickly to her mother. Nina Ivanovna, with tear-stained face, was lying in bed wrapped in a pale blue quilt and holding a book in her hands.
“Mother, listen to me!” said Nadya. “I implore you, do understand! If you would only understand how petty and degrading our life is. My eyes have been opened, and I see it all now. And what is your Andrei Andreyich? Why, he is not intelligent, Mother! Merciful heavens, do understand, Mother, he is stupid!”
Nina Ivanovna abruptly sat up.
“You and your grandmother torment me,” she said with a sob. “I want to live! to live,” she repeated, and twice she beat her little fist upon her bosom. “Let me be free! I am still young, I want to live, and you have made me an old woman between you!”
She broke into bitter tears, lay down and curled up under the quilt, and looked so small, so pitiful, so foolish. Nadya went to her room, dressed, and, sitting at the window, fell to waiting for the morning. She sat all night thinking, while someone seemed to be tapping on the shutters and whistling in the yard.
In the morning Granny complained that the wind had blown down all the apples in the garden and broken down an old plum tree. It was gray, murky, cheerless, dark enough for candles; everyone complained of the cold, and the rain lashed on the windows. After tea Nadya went into Sasha’s room and, without saying a word, knelt down before an armchair in the corner and hid her face in her hands.
“What is it?” asked Sasha.
“I can’t . . .” she said. “How I could go on living here before, I can’t understand, I can’t conceive! I despise the man I am engaged to, I despise myself, I despise all this idle, senseless existence.”
“Well, well,” said Sasha, not yet grasping what was meant. “That’s all right . . . that’s good.”
“I am sick of this life,” Nadya went on. “I can’t endure another day here. Tomorrow I am going away. Take me with you for God’s sake!”
For a minute Sasha looked at her in astonishment; at last he understood and was delighted as a child. He waved his arms and began pattering with his slippers as though he were dancing with delight.
“Splendid,” he said, rubbing his hands. “My goodness, how fine that is!”
And she stared at him without blinking, with adoring eyes, as though spellbound, expecting every minute that he would say something important, something infinitely significant; he had told her nothing yet, but already it seemed to her that something new and great was opening before her which she had not known till then, and already she gazed at him full of expectation, ready to face anything, even death.
“I am going tomorrow,” he said after a moment’s thought. “You come to the station to see me off. . . . I’ll take your things in my portmanteau, and I’ll get your ticket, and when the third bell rings you get into the carriage, and we’ll go off. You’ll see me as far as Moscow and then go on to Petersburg alone. Have you a passport?”