On the thirty-first of August he was returning from the camp, not with the whole brigade, but with only two batteries. He was dreamy and excited all the way, as though he were going home. He had an intense long- ing to see again the queer horse, the church, the in- sincere family of the von Rabbecks, the dark room. The "inner voice," which so often deceives lovers, whispered to him for some reason that he would surely see her . . . And he was tortured by the questions: How would he meet her? What would he talk to her about? Had she forgotten the kiss? If the worst came to the worst, he thought, even if he did not meet her, it would be a pleasure to him merely to go through the dark room and recall the past. . . .
Towards evening there appeared on the horizon the familiar church and white barns. Ryabovich's heart raced. . . • He did not hear the officer who was riding beside him and saying something to him, he forgot everything, and looked eagerly at the river shining in the distance, at the roof of the house, at the dovecote round which the pigeons were circling in the light of the setting sun.
When they reached the church and were listening to the quartermaster, he expected every second that a man on horseback would come round the church en- closure and invite the officers to tea, but . . . the quartermaster ended his report, the officers dismounted and strolled off to the village, and the man on horse- back did not appear.
"Von Rabbeck wiU hear at once from the peasants
that we have come and wiU send for us," thought
Ryabovich, as he went into the peasant cottage, unable
to understand why a comrade was lighting a candle and
why the orderlies were hastening to get the samovars
going.
A crushing uneasiness took possession of him. He lay down, then got up and looked out of the window to see whether the messenger were coming. But there was no sign of him.
He lay do^ again, but half an hour later he got up and, unable to restrain his uneasiness, went into the street and strode towards the church. It was dark and deserted in the square near the church enclosure. Three soldiers were standing silent in a row where the road began to go down-hill. Seeing Ryabovich, they roused themselves and saluted. He returned the salute and be- gan to go do^ the familiar path.
On the farther bank of the river the whole sky was flooded with crimson: the moon was rising; two peasant women, talking loudly, were pulling cabbage leaves in the kitchen garden; beyond the kitchen garden there were some cottages that formed a dark mass. . . • Everything on the near side of the river was just as it had been in May: the path, the bushes, the willows over- hanging the water . . . but there was no sound of the brave nightingale and no scent of poplar and young grass.
Reaching the garden, Ryabovich looked in at the gate. The garden was dark and still. . • . He could see nothing but the white stems of the nearest birch-trees and a little bit of the avenue; all the rest melted to- gether into a dark mass. Ryabovich looked and listened eagerly, but after waiting for a quarter of an hour out hearing a sound or catching a glimpse of a light, he trudged back. . • .
He went do^ to the river. The General's bathing cabin and the bath-sheets on the rail of the little bridge showed white before him. . . . He walked up on the bridge, stood a little, and quite unnecessarily touched a sheet. It felt rough and cold. He looked do^ at the water. . . . The river ran rapidly and with a faintly audible gurgle round the piles of the bathing cabin. The red moon was reflected near the left bank; little ripples ran over the reflection, stretching it out, breaking it into bits, and seemed trying to carry it away. . . .
"How stupid, how stupid!" thought Ryabovich, look- ing at the running water. "How unintelligent it all is!"
Now that he expected nothing, the incident of the kiss, his impatience, his vague hopes and disappoint- ment, presented themselves to him in a clear light. It no longer seemed to him strange that the General's mes- senger never came and that he would never see the girl who had accidentally kissed him instead of someone else; on the contrary, it would have been strange if he had seen her. . . .
The water was running, he knew not where or why, just as it did in May. At that time it had flowed into a great river, from the great river into the sea; then it had risen in vapor, turned into rain, and perhaps the very same water was running now before Ryabovich's eyes again. . . . What for? Why?
And the whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovich an unintelligible, aimless jest. . . . And turning his eyes from the water and looking at the sky, he remembered again how Fate in the person of an un- known woman had by chance caressed him, he recalled his summer dreams and fancies, and his life struck him as extraordinarily meager, poverty-stricken, and drab. . . .
When he had returned to the cottage he did not find a single comrade. The orderly informed him that they had all gone to "General Fontryabkin, who had sent a messenger on horseback to invite them. . . ."
For an instant there was a flash of joy in Ryabovich's heart, but he quenched it at once, got into bed, and in his wrath with his fate, as though to spite it, did not go to the General's.
1887
The Name-Day Party
the festive dinner with its eight courses Ј\. and its endless conversation, Olga Mihailovna, whose husband's name-day was being celebrated, went out into the garden. The duty of smiling and talking in- cessantly, the clatter of the crockery, the stupidity of the servants, the long intervals between the courses, and the stays she had put on to conceal her pregnancy from the visitors, wearied her to exhaustion. She longed to get away from the house, to sit in the shade and rest her mind with thoughts of the baby which was to be born to her in another two months. She was used to these thoughts coming to her as she turned to the left out of the big avenue into the narrow path. Here in the thick shade of the plums and cherry-trees the dry branches would scratch her neck and shoulders; a spi- der's web would settle on her face, and there would rise up in her mind the image of a little creature of undetermined sex and undefined features, and it began to seem as though it were not the spider's web that tickled her face and neck caressingly, but that little creature. When, at the end of the path, a thin wicker fence came into sight, and behind it podgy beehives with tiled roofs; when into the motionless, stagnant air there came a smell of hay and honey, and a soft buzzing of bees was audible, then the little creature would take complete possession of Olga Mihailovna. She used to sit down on a bench near the shanty of woven branches, and fall to thinking.
This time, too, she went on as far as the seat, sat down, and began thinking; but instead of the little creature there rose up in her imagination the figures of the grown-up people whom she had just left. She felt dreadfully uneasy that she, the hostess, had deserted her guests, and she remembered how her husband, Pyotr Dmitrich, and her uncle, Nikolay Nikolaich, had argued at dinner about trial by jury, about the press, and about the higher education of women. Her husband, as usual, argued in order to show off his Conservative ideas be- fore his visitors—but chiefly in order to disagree with her uncle, whom he disliked. Her uncle contradicted him and wrangled over every word he uttered, so as to show the company that he, Uncle Nikolay Nikolaich, still retained his youthful freshness of spirit and free- thinking in spite of his fifty-nine years. And towards the end of dinner even Olga Mihailovna herself could not resist taking part and unskillfully attempting to defend university education for women—not that it stood in need of her defense, but simply because she wanted to annoy her husband, who to her mind was unfair. The guests were wearied by this discussion, but they all thought it necessary to take part in it, and talked a great deal, although none of them took any interest in trial by jury or the higher education of women. . . .