'Yes, she is very nice . . .' Sasha agreed. 'Your mother, in her own way of course, is a very good and sweet woman, but . . . how shall I say? I went early this morning into your kitchen and there I found four servants sleeping on the floor, no bedsteads, and rags for bedding, stench, bugs, beetles . . . it is just as it was twenty years ago, no change at all. Well, Granny, God bless her, what else can you expect of Granny? But your mother speaks French, you know, and acts in private theatricals. One would think she might understand.'
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 Andrey Andreitch 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 Andrey, but you see you don't know him.'
'My Andrey. . . . Bother him, your Andrey. 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 moustache, 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 Andrey, a lean, toothless old man whose face always looked as though he were just going to say something amusing, and his son, Andrey Andreitch, 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 Andrey slowly, with laughing eyes. 'He fed with senseless beasts.'
'I like my dad,' said Andrey Andreitch, 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 Andrey 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 Andrey 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 Andrey Andreitch 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.
Andrey Andreitch 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 fiance out, Nadya went upstairs where she and her mother had their rooms (the lower storey 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.
II
When Nadya woke up it must have been two 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 Andrey Andreitch 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 hardly a month left before the wedding, she began to feel dread and uneasiness as though something vague and oppressive were before her.
'Tick-tock, tick-tock . . .' the watchman tapped lazily. '. . . Tick-tock.'
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 far-away trees.
'My God, why is my heart so heavy?'
