She heard footsteps, and opened her eyes. Uncle Nik- olay Nikolaich was coming rapidly towards her.
"It's you, dear? I am very glad—" he began, breath- less. "Just a word—" He mopped with his handkerchief his red shaven chin, then suddenly stepped back a pace, clapped his hands together, and opened his eyes wide. "My dear girl, how long will this go on?" he said rapidly, spluttering. "I ask you: is there no limit to it? I say noth- ing 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 de- cently! 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 councilor who has had the luck to marry an heiress! An upstart and a Junker, of whom there are many! A type out of Shche- drin! Upon my word, it's either that he's suffering from megalomania, or that old rat in his dotage, Count Alexey Petrovich, 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 tiU they are forty!"
"That's true, that's true," Olga Mihailovna 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 himself into trouble! Yes, he'll have to stand trial! I am very glad of itl That's what his noise and shouting has brought him to—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 quarreled with everyone! 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 conserv- ative than Count Alexey Petrovich, 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 Mihailovna.
"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 difficult people. It seems as though I should have to apologize to all of you for having been at the university," said Olga Mihailovna sharply. ''Listen, uncle. If people played the same scales over and over again all 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, ma'am!" he said, and made a ceremonious bow. "If you have fallen under his influence yourself, and have abandoned your convic- tions, you should have said so before. I beg your par- don!"
"Yes, I have abandoned my convictions," she cried. ^frere; make the most of it!"
"I beg your pardon, ma'am!"
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 Mihailovna. "I hope he will go home."
She found the ladies and the young people near the raspberry patch in the kitchen garden. Some were eat- ing raspberries; others, tired of eating raspberries, were strolling about the strawberry beds or foraging among the sugar-peas. A little to one side of the raspberry patch, near a branching apple-tree propped up by posts which had been pulled out of an old fence, Pyotr Dmi- trich 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 Lubochka and the daughters of a neighbor, Colonel Bukreyev—two anemic and unhealthily stout blondes, Natalya and Valentina, or, as they were always called, Nata and Vata, both wearing white frocks and strikingly like each other. Pyotr Dmitrich was teaching them how 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 Lubochka. "Cornel"
Lubochka took the scythe clumsily, blushed crimson, and laughed.
"Don't be afraid, Lubov Alexandrovnal" cried Olga Mihailovna, 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."
Lubochka 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 she were a 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 raspberry patch.
Pyotr Dmitrich 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 Mihailovna loved him when he was like that. But his boyishness did not usually last long. It didn't this time; after playing with the scythe, he for some reason thought it necessary to take a serious tone about it.
'When I ^ mowing, I feel, do you lmow, 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, plow, sow, break in horses."
And Pyotr Dmitrich began a conversation with the ladies about the advantages of physical labor, about cul- ture, and then about the pernicious effects of money, of property. Listening to her husband Olga Mihailovna, 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 Bukreyev, who was eating raspberries and also taking part in the conversation.
"Come," he said, making room for Olga Mihailovna and Pyotr Dmitrich. "The ripest are here. • . . And so, according to Proudhon," he went on, raising his voice, "property is theft. But I must confess I don't believe in Proudhon, and don't consider him a philosopher. To my ^^^ng the French are no authorities—God bless them!"
'"\Vell, as for Proudhons and Buckles and the rest of them, I am weak in that department," said Pyotr Dmi- trich. "For philosophy you must apply to my wife. She has been to the university, and knows all your Schopen- hauers and Proudhons by heart. . . ."
Olga Mihailovna felt bored again. She walked again along a little path, past apple-and pear-trees, and again looked as though she was on some very important er- rand. She reached the gardener's cottage. In the door- way the gardener's wife, Varvara, was sitting with her four little children who had big close-cropped heads. Varvara, too, was with child and expecting to be con- fined by Elijah's Day. After greeting her, Olga Mi- hailovna looked at her and the children in silence and asked:
"Well, how do you feel?"
"Oh, all right. . . ."
A silence followed. The two women seemed to under- stand each other without words.
"It's dreadful having one's first baby," said Olga Mi- hailovna after a moment's thought. "I keep feeling as though I shall not get through it, as though I shall die."