“You’ve become quite a beauty! The first man you love will be a happy fellow.”
The touch of his arm with its muscles like iron sent a fiery thrill through Lida’s soft, supple frame. Bashful and trembling, she drew away from him as if at the approach of some unseen beast of prey.
They had now reached the river’s edge. There was a moist, damp odour from the reeds that swayed pensively in the stream. On the other side, fields lay dim in twilight beneath the vast sky where shone the first pale stars.
Stepping aside, Sanine seized a withered branch, broke it in two, and flung the pieces into the stream where swiftly circles appeared on its surface and swiftly vanished. As if to hail Sanine as their comrade, the reeds bent their heads.
II
It was about six o’clock. The sun still shone brightly, but in the garden there were already faint green shadows. The air was full of light and warmth and peace. Maria Ivanovna was making jam, and under the green linden-tree there was a strong smell of boiling sugar and raspberries. Sanine had been busy at the flowerbeds all the morning, trying to revive some of the flowers that suffered most from the dust and heat.
“You had better pull up the weeds first,” suggested his mother, as from time to time she watched him through the blue, quivering stream. “Tell Grounjka, and she’ll do it for you.”
Sanine looked up, hot and smiling. “Why?” said he, as he tossed back his hair that clung to his brow. “Let them grow as much as they like. I am fond of everything green.”
“You’re a funny fellow!” said his mother, as she shrugged her shoulders, good-humouredly. For some reason or other, his answer had pleased her.
“It is you yourselves that are funny,” said Sanine, in a tone of conviction. He then went into the house to wash his hands, and, coming back, sat down at his ease in a wicker armchair near the table. He felt happy, and in a good temper. The verdure, the sunlight and the blue sky filled him with a keener sense of the joy of life. Large towns with their bustle and din were to him detestable. Around him were sunlight and freedom; the future gave him no anxiety; for he was disposed to accept from life whatever it could offer him. Sanine shut his eyes tight, and stretched himself; the tension of his sound, strong muscles gave him pleasurable thrills.
A gentle breeze was blowing. The whole garden seemed to sigh. Here and there, sparrows chattered noisily about their intensely important but incomprehensible little lives, and Mill, the fox-terrier, with ears erect and red tongue lolling out, lay in the long grass, listening. The leaves whispered softly; their round shadows quivered on the smooth gravel path.
Maria Ivanovna was vexed at her son’s calmness. She was fond of him, just as she was fond of all her children, and for that very reason she longed to rouse him, to wound his self-respect, if only to force him to heed her words and accept her view of life. Like an ant in the sand, she had employed every moment of a long existence in building up the frail structure of her domestic well-being. It was a long, bare, monotonous edifice, like a barrack or a hospital, built with countless little bricks that to her, as an incompetent architect, constituted the graces of life, though in fact they were petty worries that kept her in a perpetual state of irritation or of anxiety.
“Do you suppose things will go on like this, later on?” she said, with lips compressed, and feigning intense interest in the boiling jam.
“What do you mean by ‘later on’?” asked Sanine, and then sneezed.
Maria Ivanovna thought that he had sneezed on purpose to annoy her, and, absurd though such a notion was, looked cross.
“How nice it is to be here, with you!” said Sanine, dreamily.
“Yes, it’s not so bad,” she answered, drily. She was secretly pleased at her son’s praise of the house and garden that to her were as lifelong kinsfolk.
Sanine looked at her, and then said, thoughtfully:
“If you didn’t bother me with all sorts of silly things, it would be nicer still.”
The bland tone in which these words were spoken seemed at variance with their meaning, so that Maria Ivanovna did not know whether to be vexed or amused.
“To look at you, and then to think that, as a child, you were always rather odd,” said she, sadly, “and now—”
“And now?” exclaimed Sanine, gleefully, as if he expected to hear something specially pleasant and interesting.
“Now you are more crazy than ever!” said Maria Ivanovna sharply, shaking her spoon.
“Well, all the better!” said Sanine, laughing. After a pause, he added, “Ah! here’s Novikoff!”
Out of the house came a tall, fair, good-looking man. His red silk shirt, fitting tight to his well-proportioned frame, looked brilliant in the sun; his pale blue eyes had a lazy, good-natured expression.
“There you go! Always quarrelling!” said he, in a languid, friendly tone. “And in Heaven’s name, what about?”
“Well, the fact is, mother thinks that a Grecian nose would suit me better, while I am quite satisfied with the one that I have got.”
Sanine looked down his nose and, laughing, grasped the other’s big, soft hand.
“So, I should say!” exclaimed Maria Ivanovna, pettishly.
Novikoff laughed merrily; and from the green thicket, came a gentle echo in reply, as if someone yonder heartily shared his mirth.
“Ah! I know what it is! Worrying about your future.”
“What, you, too?” exclaimed Sanine, in comic alarm.
“It just serves you right.”
“Ah!” cried Sanine. “If it’s a case of two to one, I had better clear out.”
“No, it is I that will soon have to clear out,” said Maria Ivanovna with sudden irritation at which she herself was vexed. Hastily removing her saucepan of jam, she hurried into the house, without looking back. The
