Fifty-Two Stories

“I must, darling, I must! I’ve stayed too long as it is. I have children waiting at home.”

“That’s unkind! Why didn’t you bring your children with you?”

“My dear, if you’ll allow me, I’ll bring them to you some weekday, but today…”

“Ah, please do,” Olga Mikhailovna interrupted. “I’ll be very glad! Your children are so sweet! Kiss them all for me…But, really, you hurt my feelings! Why the hurry, I don’t understand.”

“I must, I must…Goodbye, dear. Take care of yourself. Knowing the condition you’re in now…”

The two women kissed. After accompanying the guest to her carriage, Olga Mikhailovna went to the ladies in the drawing room. There the lamps were already lit, and the gentlemen were sitting down to play cards.

IV

The guests began to leave after supper, at a quarter past midnight. Seeing her guests off, Olga Mikhailovna stood on the porch and said:

“You really should take a shawl! It’s getting a bit chilly. God forbid you should catch cold!”

“Don’t worry, Olga Mikhailovna,” the guests replied, seating themselves. “Well, goodbye! Mind yourself, we’ll be expecting you! Don’t disappoint us!”

“Who-o-a!” The coachman held back the horses.

“Off we go, Denis! Goodbye, Olga Mikhailovna!”

“Kiss the children for me!”

The carriage set off and disappeared at once into the darkness. In the red circle that the lamp cast on the road a new pair or troika of impatient horses would appear, and the silhouette of a driver with his arms stretched forward. Again kisses and reproaches began, and entreaties to come again or to take a shawl. Pyotr Dmitrich kept running out from the front hall to help the ladies get into the carriages.

“You go by Efremovshchina now,” he instructed the coachman. “It’s closer by Mankino, but the road is worse. God forbid you should overturn the carriage…Goodbye, my sweet! Mille compliments to your artist!”

“Goodbye, Olga Mikhailovna, darling! Go inside or you’ll catch cold! It’s damp!”

“Who-o-a! Behave yourself!”

“What horses have you got here?” asked Pyotr Dmitrich.

“Bought from Khaidarov during Lent,” the coachman replied.

“Fine horsies…”

And Pyotr Dmitrich patted the outrunner on the rump.

“Well, off you go! God be with you!”

Finally the last guest left. The red circle on the road swayed, floated to one side, shrank, and went out—this was Vassily taking the lamp from the porch. On previous occasions, after seeing off their guests, Pyotr Dmitrich and Olga Mikhailovna usually began leaping about face to face in the reception room, clapping their hands and singing: “Gone! gone! gone!” But this time Olga Mikhailovna was not up to it. She went to the bedroom, undressed, and got into bed.

It seemed to her that she would fall asleep at once and sleep soundly. Her legs and shoulders ached, her head was heavy from talking, and, as earlier, she felt some sort of discomfort all over her body. She covered her head, lay there for some three minutes, then peeked from under the blanket at the icon lamp, listened to the silence, and smiled.

“Very nice, very nice…,” she whispered, bending her legs, which seemed longer to her because she had walked so much. “Sleep, sleep…”

Her legs refused to lie still, her whole body felt ill at ease, and she turned on the other side. A big fly buzzed around the bedroom, restlessly beating against the ceiling. There were also the sounds of Grigory and Vassily in the reception room, stepping cautiously as they cleared the tables. It seemed to Olga Mikhailovna that she would fall asleep and feel comfortable only when these noises died down. And she again turned impatiently on the other side.

Her husband’s voice reached her from the drawing room. Someone must have stayed for the night, because Pyotr Dmitrich was addressing whoever it was and speaking loudly:

“I wouldn’t say that Count Alexei Petrovich is a false man. But he can’t help seeming to be, because you gentlemen are all trying to see him as not what he really is. In his play-acting you see an original mind; in his unceremonious manners—good nature; in his total lack of opinion you see conservatism. Let’s even allow that he is indeed a sterling conservative. But what essentially is conservatism?”

Pyotr Dmitrich, angry with Count Alexei Petrovich, and with his guests, and with himself, was now unburdening his heart. He denounced the count and the guests, and, in vexation with himself, was ready to say and preach anything at all. Having bid the guest good night, he paced up and down the drawing room, walked through the dining room, the corridor, the study, the drawing room again, and went into the bedroom. Olga Mikhailovna was lying on her back, covered with the blanket only up to her waist (it now seemed hot to her), and with an angry face was watching the fly as it knocked against the ceiling.

“Has someone stayed for the night?” she asked.

“Egorov.”