Misha burst into an unexpected laugh; it was loud, merry, and childlike; and there was almost rapture in his remark:
“But you ought to see the sort of face the Headmaster makes on all such occasions.”
His voice was tender and sonorous, and it rang so softly and sweetly that he might have been telling about the blessed and the innocent, about the chaste play on the threshold of paradisian abodes. The words “strike” and “obstruction” came from his lips like the names of rare, sweet morsels. He grew cheerful and had a sudden desire to make things lively in schoolboy fashion. He began to sing loudly:
“Awake, rise up. …”
But he became confused, stopped sadly, grew quiet, and blushed. The sisters laughed. Piotr had a surly look. Rameyev smiled benignly. Miss Harrison, pretending not to have noticed the discordant incident, calmly pressed the button of the electric bell attached on a cord to the hanging light to bring on the next course.
The dinner proceeded slowly in the usual order. The discussion grew hotter, and went helter-skelter from subject to subject. Such is said to be the Russian manner in argument. Perhaps it is the universal manner of people when discussing something that touches them deeply.
Piotr exclaimed hotly:
“Why is the autocracy of the proletariat better than the one already in force? And what wild, barbarous watchwords they have! ‘Who is not with us, he is against us!’ ‘Who is master, let him get down from his place; it’s our banquet.’ ”
“It’s yet too early to speak of our banquet,” said Elena in a restrained voice.
“Do you know where we are drifting?” continued Piotr. “There will be a reign of terror, and a shaking up such as Russia has not yet experienced. The point at issue is not that there is talking or doing here or there by certain gentry who imagine that they are making history. The real issue is in the clash of two classes, two interests, two cultures, two conceptions of the world, two moral systems. Who is it that wishes to seize the crown of lordship? It is the Kham,3 it is he who threatens to devour our culture.”
Elisaveta said reproachfully:
“What a word—Kham!”
Piotr smiled in a nervous and aggrieved manner, and asked:
“You don’t like it?”
“I don’t like it,” said Elisaveta calmly.
With her habitual subjection to the thoughts and moods of her elder sister, Elena said:
“It is a rude word. I feel a reminiscence of a once helpless serfdom in it.”
“Nevertheless this word is now sufficiently literary,” said Piotr, with a vague smile. “And why shouldn’t one use it? It’s not the word that matters. We have seen countless instances with our own eyes of the progress of the spiritual bossiak4 who is savagely indifferent to everything, who is hopelessly wild, malicious, and drunken for generations to come. He will crush everything—science, art, everything! A good characteristic specimen of a kham is your Stchemilov, with whom, Elisaveta, you sympathize so strongly. He’s a familiar young fellow, a handsome flunkey.”
Piotr fixed his eyes on Elisaveta. She replied calmly:
“I think you very unjust to him. He is a good man.”
Everyone was glad when dinner was ended. It was a provoking conversation. Even the imperturbable Miss Harrison rose from her place rather sooner than usual. Rameyev went to his own room to get his hour’s nap. The young people went into the garden. Misha and Elena ran downhill to the river. They had a keen desire to run one after the other and to laugh.
“Elisaveta!” called out Piotr.
His voice trembled nervously. Elisaveta paused. She now stood within the deep shadow of an old linden. She looked questioningly at Piotr, her graceful bare arms folded on her breast; suddenly her heart beat faster. What a power of bewitchment was in those most lovable arms—oh, why did not some sudden impulse of passion throw them upon his shoulders!
“May I speak a few words to you, Elisaveta?” asked Piotr.
Elisaveta flushed a little, lowered her head, and said quietly:
“Let’s sit down somewhere.”
She walked along the path towards the small summerhouse which looked down the slope. Piotr followed her silently. In silence also they ascended the steep passage. Elisaveta seated herself and rested her arms upon the low rail of the open summerhouse. The undulating distances lay before her in one broad panoramic sweep—a view intimate from childhood, and which never failed to awaken the same delightful emotion. She was looking no longer at the separate objects—Nature poured herself out like music before her, in an inexhaustible play of colour and of soothing sound. Piotr stood before her and looked at her handsome face. The setting Dragon caressed Elisaveta’s face with its warm light; the skin thus suffused exulted in its radiance and bloom.
They were silent. Both felt a painful awkwardness. Piotr was nervously breaking twigs from a birch near by. Elisaveta began:
“What is it you wish to tell me?”
A cold remoteness, almost enmity, sounded in her deeply agitated voice. She felt her own harshness, to soften which she smiled gently and timidly.
“What’s there to say,” began Piotr quietly and irresolutely, “but one and the same thing. Elisaveta, I love you!”
Elisaveta flushed. Her eyes gave a sudden flare, then grew dull. She rose from her seat and spoke in an agitated manner:
“Piotr, why do you again torment yourself and me needlessly? We have been so intimate from childhood—yet it seems that we must part! Our ways are different, we think differently, and believe differently.”
Piotr listened to her with an expression of intense impatience and vexation. Elisaveta wished to continue, but he interrupted:
“Ah, but what’s the good of saying that? Elisaveta, do, I beg you, forget our differences. They are so petty! Or let us admit that they are significant. What I wish to say is that politics and all that separates us is only a light scum, a momentary froth on the broad surface of our life. In
