Tales of Chekhov 04-The Party and other stories

husband?

There was not a soul in the drawing-room or on the verandah. All the guests were sauntering about the garden.

'I shall have to suggest a walk in the birchwood before tea, or else a row in the boats,' thought Olga Mihalovna, hurrying to the croquet ground, from which came the sounds of voices and laughter.

'And sit the old people down to vint. . . .' She met Grigory the footman coming from the croquet ground with empty bottles.

'Where are the ladies?' she asked.

'Among the raspberry-bushes. The master's there, too.'

'Oh, good heavens!' some one on the croquet lawn shouted with exasperation. 'I have told you a thousand times over! To know the Bulgarians you must see them! You can't judge from the papers!'

Either because of the outburst or for some other reason, Olga Mihalovna was suddenly aware of a terrible weakness all over, especially in her legs and in her shoulders. She felt she could not bear to speak, to listen, or to move.

'Grigory,' she said faintly and with an effort, 'when you have to serve tea or anything, please don't appeal to me, don't ask me anything, don't speak of anything. . . . Do it all yourself, and . . . and don't make a noise with your feet, I entreat you. . . . I can't, because . . .'

Without finishing, she walked on towards the croquet lawn, but on the way she thought of the ladies, and turned towards the raspberry-bushes. The sky, the air, and the trees looked gloomy again and threatened rain; it was hot and stifling. An immense flock of crows, foreseeing a storm, flew cawing over the garden. The paths were more overgrown, darker, and narrower as they got nearer the kitchen garden. In one of them, buried in a thick tangle of wild pear, crab-apple, sorrel, young oaks, and hopbine, clouds of tiny black flies swarmed round Olga Mihalovna. She covered her face with her hands and began forcing herself to think of the little creature . . . . There floated through her imagination the figures of Grigory, Mitya, Kolya, the faces of the peasants who had come in the morning to present their congratulations.

She heard footsteps, and she opened her eyes. Uncle Nikolay Nikolaitch was coming rapidly towards her.

'It's you, dear? I am very glad . . .' he began, breathless. 'A couple of words. . . .' He mopped with his handkerchief his red shaven chin, then suddenly stepped back a pace, flung up his hands and opened his eyes wide. 'My dear girl, how long is this going on?' he said rapidly, spluttering. 'I ask you: is there no limit to it? I say nothing of the demoralizing effect of his martinet views on all around him, of the way he insults all that is sacred and best in me and in every honest thinking man—I will say nothing about that, but he might at least behave decently! Why, he shouts, he bellows, gives himself airs, poses as a sort of Bonaparte, does not let one say a word. . . . I don't know what the devil's the matter with him! These lordly gestures, this condescending tone; and laughing like a general! Who is he, allow me to ask you? I ask you, who is he? The husband of his wife, with a few paltry acres and the rank of a titular who has had the luck to marry an heiress! An upstart and a junker, like so many others! A type out of Shtchedrin! Upon my word, it's either that he's suffering from megalomania, or that old rat in his dotage, Count Alexey Petrovitch, is right when he says that children and young people are a long time growing up nowadays, and go on playing they are cabmen and generals till they are forty!'

'That's true, that's true,' Olga Mihalovna assented. 'Let me pass.'

'Now just consider: what is it leading to?' her uncle went on, barring her way. 'How will this playing at being a general and a Conservative end? Already he has got into trouble! Yes, to stand his trial! I am very glad of it! That's what his noise and shouting has brought him to—to stand in the prisoner's dock. And it's not as though it were the Circuit Court or something: it's the Central Court! Nothing worse could be imagined, I think! And then he has quarrelled with every one! He is celebrating his name-day, and look, Vostryakov's not here, nor Yahontov, nor Vladimirov, nor Shevud, nor the Count. . . . There is no one, I imagine, more Conservative than Count Alexey Petrovitch, yet even he has not come. And he never will come again. He won't come, you will see!'

'My God! but what has it to do with me?' asked Olga Mihalovna.

'What has it to do with you? Why, you are his wife! You are clever, you have had a university education, and it was in your power to make him an honest worker!'

'At the lectures I went to they did not teach us how to influence tiresome people. It seems as though I should have to apologize to all of you for having been at the University,' said Olga Mihalovna sharply. 'Listen, uncle. If people played the same scales over and over again the whole day long in your hearing, you wouldn't be able to sit still and listen, but would run away. I hear the same thing over again for days together all the year round. You must have pity on me at last.'

Her uncle pulled a very long face, then looked at her searchingly and twisted his lips into a mocking smile.

'So that's how it is,' he piped in a voice like an old woman's. 'I beg your pardon!' he said, and made a ceremonious bow. 'If you have fallen under his influence yourself, and have abandoned your convictions, you should have said so before. I beg your pardon!'

'Yes, I have abandoned my convictions,' she cried. 'There; make the most of it!'

'I beg your pardon!'

Her uncle for the last time made her a ceremonious bow, a little on one side, and, shrinking into himself, made a scrape with his foot and walked back.

'Idiot!' thought Olga Mihalovna. 'I hope he will go home.'

She found the ladies and the young people among the raspberries in the kitchen garden. Some were eating raspberries; others, tired of eating raspberries, were strolling about the strawberry beds or foraging among the sugar-peas. A little on one side of the raspberry bed, near a branching appletree propped up by posts which had been pulled out of an old fence, Pyotr Dmitritch was mowing the grass. His hair was falling over his forehead, his cravat was untied. His watch-chain was hanging loose. Every step and every swing of the scythe showed skill and the possession of immense physical strength. Near him were standing Lubotchka and the daughters of a neighbour, Colonel Bukryeev—two anaemic and unhealthily stout fair girls, Natalya and Valentina, or, as they were always called, Nata and Vata, both wearing white frocks and strikingly like each other. Pyotr Dmitritch was teaching them to mow.

'It's very simple,' he said. 'You have only to know how to hold the scythe and not to get too hot over it—that is, not to use more force than is necessary! Like this. . . . Wouldn't you like to try?' he said, offering the scythe to Lubotchka. 'Come!'

Lubotchka took the scythe clumsily, blushed crimson, and laughed.

'Don't be afraid, Lubov Alexandrovna!' cried Olga Mihalovna, loud enough for all the ladies to hear that she was with them. 'Don't be afraid! You must learn! If you marry a Tolstoyan he will make you mow.'

Lubotchka raised the scythe, but began laughing again, and, helpless with laughter, let go of it at once. She was ashamed and pleased at being talked to as though grown up. Nata, with a cold, serious face, with no trace of smiling or shyness, took the scythe, swung it and caught it in the grass; Vata, also without a smile, as cold and serious as her sister, took the scythe, and silently thrust it into the earth. Having done this, the two sisters linked arms and walked in silence to the raspberries.

Pyotr Dmitritch laughed and played about like a boy, and this childish, frolicsome mood in which he became exceedingly good-natured suited him far better than any other. Olga Mihalovna loved him when he was like that. But his boyishness did not usually last long. It did not this time; after playing with the scythe, he for some reason thought it necessary to take a serious tone about it.

'When I am mowing, I feel, do you know, healthier and more normal,' he said. 'If I were forced to confine myself to an intellectual life I believe I should go out of my mind. I feel that I was not born to be a man of culture! I ought to mow, plough, sow, drive out the horses.'

And Pyotr Dmitritch began a conversation with the ladies about the advantages of physical labour, about culture, and then about the pernicious effects of money, of property. Listening to her husband, Olga Mihalovna, for some reason, thought of her dowry.

'And the time will come, I suppose,' she thought, 'when he will not forgive me for being richer than he. He is proud and vain. Maybe he will hate me because he owes so much to me.'

She stopped near Colonel Bukryeev, who was eating raspberries and also taking part in the conversation.