Groholsky sat down in a chair beside her and bent2 over. He was entirely3 absorbed in contemplation of her.
How pretty she seemed to him, lighted up by the rays of the setting sun!
There was a complete view from the window of the setting sun, golden, lightly flecked with purple.
The whole drawing-room, including Liza, was bathed by it with brilliant light that did not hurt the eyes, and for a little while covered with gold.
Groholsky was lost in admiration4. Liza was so incredibly beautiful. It is true her little kittenish face with its brown eyes, and turn up nose was fresh, and even piquant5, his scanty6 hair was black as soot7 and curly, her little figure was graceful8, well proportioned and mobile as the body of an electric eel9, but on the whole. . . . However my taste has nothing to do with it. Groholsky who was spoilt by women, and who had been in love and out of love hundreds of times in his life, saw her as a beauty. He loved her, and blind love finds ideal beauty everywhere.
“I say,” he said, looking straight into her eyes, “I have come to talk to you, my precious. Love cannot bear anything vague or indefinite. . . . Indefinite relations, you know, I told you yesterday, Liza . . . we will try to-day to settle the question we raised yesterday. Come, let us decide together. . . .”
“What are we to do?”
Liza gave a yawn and scowling10, drew her right arm from under her head.
“What are we to do?” she repeated hardly audibly after Groholsky.
“Well, yes, what are we to do? Come, decide, wise little head . . . I love you, and a man in love is not fond of sharing. He is more than an egoist. It is too much for me to go shares with your husband. I mentally tear him to pieces, when I remember that he loves you too. In the second place you love me. . . . Perfect freedom is an essential condition for love. . . . And are you free? Are you not tortured by the thought that that man towers for ever over your soul? A man whom you do not love, whom very likely and quite naturally, you hate. . . . That’s the second thing. . . . And thirdly. . . . What is the third thing? Oh yes. . . . We are deceiving him and that . . . is dishonourable. Truth before everything, Liza. Let us have done with lying!”
“Well, then, what are we to do?”
“You can guess. . . . I think it necessary, obligatory12, to inform him of our relations and to leave him, to begin to live in freedom. Both must be done as quickly as possible. . . . This very evening, for instance. . . . It’s time to make an end of it. Surely you must be sick of loving like a thief?”
“Tell! tell Vanya?”
“Why, yes!”
“That’s impossible! I told you yesterday, Michel, that it is impossible.”
“Why?”
“He will be upset. He’ll make a row, do all sorts of unpleasant things. . . . Don’t you know what he is like? God forbid! There’s no need to tell him. What an idea!”
Groholsky passed his hand over his brow, and heaved a sigh.
“Yes,” he said, “he will be more than upset. I am robbing him of his happiness. Does he love you?”
“He does love me. Very much.”
“There’s another complication! One does not know where to begin. To conceal13 it from him is base, telling him would kill him. . . . Goodness knows what’s one to do. Well, how is it to be?”
Groholsky pondered. His pale face wore a frown.
“Let us go on always as we are now,” said Liza. “Let him find out for himself, if he wants to.”
“But you know that . . . is sinful, and besides the fact is you are mine, and no one has the right to think that you do not belong to me but to someone else! You are mine! I will not give way to anyone! . . . I am sorry for him—God knows how sorry I am for him, Liza! It hurts me to see him! But . . . it can’t be helped after all. You don’t love him, do you? What’s the good of your going on being miserable14 with him? We must have it out! We will have it out with him, and you will come to me. You are my wife, and not his. Let him do what he likes. He’ll get over his troubles somehow. . . . He is not the first, and he won’t be the last. . . . Will you run away? Eh? Make haste and tell me! Will you run away?”
Liza got up and looked inquiringly at Groholsky.
“Run away?”
“Yes. . . . To my estate. . . . Then to the Crimea. . . . We will tell him by letter. . . . We can go at night. There is a train at half past one. Well? Is that all right?”
Liza scratched the bridge of her nose, and hesitated.
“Very well,” she said, and burst into tears.
Patches of red came out of her cheeks, her eyes swelled15, and tears flowed down her kittenish face. . . .
“What is it?” cried Groholsky in a flutter. “Liza! what’s the matter? Come! what are you crying for? What a girl! Come, what is it? Darling! Little woman!”
Liza held out her hands to Groholsky, and hung on his neck. There was a sound of sobbing16.
“I am sorry for him . . .” muttered Liza. “Oh, I am so sorry for him!”
“Sorry for whom?”
“Va—Vanya. . . .”
“And do you suppose I’m not? But what’s to be done? We are causing him suffering. . . . He will be unhappy, will curse us . . . but is it our fault that we love one another?”
As he uttered the last word, Groholsky darted17 away from Liza as though he had been stung and sat down in an easy chair. Liza sprang away from his neck and rapidly—in one instant—dropped on the lounge.
They both turned fearfully red, dropped their eyes, and coughed.
A tall, broad-shouldered man of thirty, in the uniform of a government clerk, had walked into the drawing-room. He had walked in unnoticed. Only the bang of a chair which he knocked in the doorway18 had warned the lovers of his presence, and made them look round. It was the husband.
They had looked round too late.
He had seen Groholsky’s arm round Liza’s waist, and had seen Liza hanging on Groholsky’s white and aristocratic neck.
“He saw us!” Liza and Groholsky thought at the same moment, while they did not know what to do with their heavy hands and embarrassed eyes. . . .
The petrified19 husband, rosy20-faced, turned white.
An agonising, strange, soul-revolting silence lasted for three minutes. Oh, those three minutes! Groholsky remembers them to this day.
The first to move and break the silence was the husband. He stepped up to Groholsky and, screwing his face into a senseless grimace21 like a smile, gave him his hand. Groholsky shook the soft perspiring22 hand and shuddered23 all over as though he had crushed a cold frog in his fist.
“Good evening,” he muttered.
“How are you?” the husband brought out in a faint husky, almost inaudible voice, and he sat down opposite Groholsky, straightening his collar at the back of his neck.
Again, an agonising silence followed . . . but that silence was no longer so stupid. . . . The first step, most difficult and colourless, was over.
All that was left now was for one of the two to depart in search of matches or on some such trifling25 errand. Both longed intensely to get away. They sat still, not looking at one another, and pulled at their beards while they ransacked26 their troubled brains for some means of escape from their horribly awkward position. Both were perspiring. Both were unbearably27 miserable and both were devoured28 by hatred29. They longed to begin the tussle30 but how were they to begin and which was to begin first? If only she would have gone out!
“I saw you yesterday at the Assembly Hall,” muttered Bugrov (that was the husband’s name).
“Yes, I was there . . . the ball . . . did you dance?”
“M’m . . . yes . . . with that . . . with the younger Lyukovtsky . . . . She dances heavily. . . . She dances impossibly. She is a great chatterbox.” (Pause.) “She is never tired of talking.”
“Yes. . . . It was slow. I saw you too. . .”
Groholsky accidentally glanced at Bugrov. . . . He caught the shifting eyes of the deceived husband and could not bear it. He got up quickly, quickly seized Bugrov’s hand, shook it, picked up his hat, and walked towards the door, conscious of his own back. He felt as though thousands of eyes were looking at his back. It is a feeling known to the actor who has been hissed32 and is making his exit from the stage, and to the young dandy who has received a blow on the back of the head and is being led away in charge of a policeman.
As soon as the sound of Groholsky’s steps had died away and the door in the hall creaked, Bugrov leapt up, and after making two or three rounds of the drawing-room, strolled up to his wife. The kittenish face puckered33 up and began bKlinking its eyes as though expecting a slap. Her husband went up to her, and with a pale, distorted face, with arms, head, and shoulders shaking, stepped on her dress and knocked her knees with his.
“If, you wretched creature,” he began in a hollow, wailing34 voice, “you let him come here once again, I’ll. . . . Don’t let him dare to set his foot. . . . I’ll kill you. Do you understand? A-a-ah . . . worthless creature, you shudder24! Fil-thy woman!”
Bugrov seized her by the elbow, shook her, and flung her like an indiarubber ball towards the window. . . .
“Wretched, vulgar woman! you have no shame!”
She flew towards the window, hardly touching35 the floor with her feet, and caught at the curtains with her hands.
“Hold your tongue,” shouted her husband, going up to her with flashing eyes and stamping his foot.
She did hold her tongue, she looked at the ceiling, and whimpered while her face wore the expression of a little girl in disgrace expecting to be punished.
“So that’s what you are like! Eh? Carrying on with a fop! Good! And your promise before the altar? What are you? A nice wife and mother. Hold your tongue!”
And he struck her on her pretty supple36 shoulder. “Hold your tongue, you wretched creature. I’ll give you worse than that! If that scoundrel dares to show himself here ever again, if I see you—listen!—with that blackguard ever again, don’t ask for mercy! I’ll kill you, if I go to Siberia for it! And him too. I shouldn’t think twice about it! You can go, I don’t want to see you!”
Bugrov wiped his eyes and his brow with his sleeve and strode about the drawing-room, Liza sobbing more and more loudly, twitching37 her shoulders and her little turned up nose, became absorbed in examining the lace on the curtain.
“You are crazy,” her husband shouted. “Your silly head is full of nonsense! Nothing but whims38! I won’t allow it, Elizaveta, my girl! You had better be careful with me! I don’t like it! If you want to behave like a pig, then . . . then out you go, there is no place in my house for you! Out you pack if. . . . You are a wife, so you must forget these dandies, put them out of your silly head! It’s all foolishness! Don’t let it happen again! You try defending yourself! Love your husband! You have been given to your husband, so you must love him. Yes, indeed! Is one not enough? Go away till . . . . Torturers!”
Bugrov paused; then shouted:
“Go away I tell you, go to the nursery! Why are you blubbering, it is your own fault, and you blubber! What a woman! Last year you were after Petka Totchkov, now you are after this devil. Lord forgive us! . . . Tfoo, it’s time you understood what you are! A wife! A mother! Last year there were unpleasantnesses, and now there will be unpleasantnesses. . . . Tfoo!”
Bugrov heaved a loud sigh, and the air was filled with the smell of sherry. He had come back from dining and was slightly drunk . . . .
“Don’t you know your duty? No! . . . you must be taught, you’ve not been taught so far! Your mamma was a gad-about, and you . . . you can blubber. Yes! blubber away. . . .”
Bugrov went up to his wife and drew the curtain out of her hands.
“Don’t stand by the window, people will see you blubbering. . . . Don’t let it happen again. You’ll go from embracing to worse trouble. You’ll come to grief. Do you suppose I like to be made a fool of? And you will make a fool of me if you carry on with them, the low brutes41. . . . Come, that’s enough. . . . Don’t you. . . . Another time. . . . Of course I . . Liza . . . stay. . . .”
Bugrov heaved a sigh and enveloped42 Liza in the fumes43 of sherry.
“You are young and silly, you don’t understand anything. . . . I am never at home. . . . And they take advantage of it. You must be sensible, prudent44. They will deceive you. And then I won’t endure it. . . . Then I may do anything. . . . Of course! Then you can just lie down, and die. I . . . I am capable of doing anything if you deceive me, my good girl. I might beat you to death. . . . And . . . I shall turn you out of the house, and then you can go to your rascals45.”
And Bugrov (horribile dictu) wiped the wet, tearful face of the traitress Liza with his big soft hand. He treated his twenty-year-old wife as though she were a child.
“Come, that’s enough. . . . I forgive you. Only God forbid it should happen again! I forgive you for the fifth time, but I shall not forgive you for the sixth, as God is holy. God does not forgive such as you for such things.”
Bugrov bent down and put out his shining lips towards Liza’s little head. But the kiss did not follow. The doors of the hall, of the dining-room, of the parlour, and of the drawing-room all slammed, and Groholsky flew into the drawing-room like a whirlwind. He was pale and trembling. He was flourishing his arms and crushing his expensive hat in his hands. His coat fluttered upon him as though it were on a peg46. He was the incarnation of acute fever. When Bugrov saw him he moved away from his wife and began looking out of the other window. Groholsky flew up to him, and waving his arms and breathing heavily and looking at no one, he began in a shaking voice:
“Ivan Petrovitch! Let us leave off keeping up this farce47 with one another! We have deceived each other long enough! It’s too much! I cannot stand it. You must do as you like, but I cannot! It’s hateful and mean, it’s revolting! Do you understand that it is revolting?”
Groholsky spluttered and gasped49 for breath.
“It’s against my principles. And you are an honest man. I love her! I love her more than anything on earth! You have noticed it and . . . it’s my duty to say this!”
“What am I to say to him?” Ivan Petrovitch wondered.
“We must make an end of it. This farce cannot drag on much longer! It must be settled somehow.”
Groholsky drew a breath and went on:
“I cannot live without her; she feels the same. You are an educated man, you will understand that in such circumstances your family life is impossible. This woman is not yours, so . . . in short, I beg you to look at the matter from an indulgent humane50 point of view. . . . Ivan Petrovitch, you must understand at last that I love her—love her more than myself, more than anything in the world, and to struggle against that love is beyond my power!”
“And she?” Bugrov asked in a sullen51, somewhat ironical52 tone.
“Ask her; come now, ask her! For her to live with a man she does not love, to live with you is . . . is a misery53!”
“And she?” Bugrov repeated, this time not in an ironical tone.
“She . . . she loves me! We love each other, Ivan Petrovitch! Kill us, despise us, pursue us, do as you will, but we can no longer conceal it from you. We are standing54 face to face—you may judge us with all the severity of a man whom we . . . whom fate has robbed of happiness!”
Bugrov turned as red as a boiled crab55, and looked out of one eye at Liza. He began bKlinking. His fingers, his lips, and his eyelids56 twitched57. Poor fellow! The eyes of his weeping wife told him that Groholsky was right, that it was a serious matter.
“Well!” he muttered. “If you. . . . In these days. . . . You are always. . . .”
“As God is above,” Groholsky shrilled58 in his high tenor59, “we understand you. Do you suppose we have no sense, no feeling? I know what agonies I am causing you, as God’s above! But be indulgent, I beseech60 you! We are not to blame. Love is not a crime. No will can struggle against it. . . . Give her up to me, Ivan Petrovitch! Let her go with me! Take from me what you will for your sufferings. Take my life, but give me Liza. I am ready to do anything. . . . Come, tell me how I can do something to make up in part at least! To make up for that lost happiness, I can give you other happiness. I can, Ivan Petrovitch; I am ready to do anything! It would be base on my part to leave you without satisfaction. . . . I understand you at this moment.”
Bugrov waved his hand as though to say, ‘For God’s sake, go away.’ His eyes began to be dimmed by a treacherous61 moisture—in a moment they would see him crying like a child.
“I understand you, Ivan Petrovitch. I will give you another happiness, such as hitherto you have not known. What would you like? I have money, my father is an influential62 man. . . . Will you? Come, how much do you want?”
Bugrov’s heart suddenly began throbbing63. . . . He clutched at the window curtains with both hands. . . .
“Will you have fifty thousand? Ivan Petrovitch, I entreat64 you. . . . It’s not a bribe65, not a bargain. . . . I only want by a sacrifice on my part to atone66 a little for your inevitable67 loss. Would you like a hundred thousand? I am willing. A hundred thousand?”
My God! Two immense hammers began beating on the perspiring temples of the unhappy Ivan Petrovitch. Russian sledges68 with tinkling69 bells began racing39 in his ears. . . .
“Accept this sacrifice from me,” Groholsky went on, “I entreat you! You will take a load off my conscience. . . . I implore70 you!”
My God! A smart carriage rolled along the road wet from a May shower, passed the window through which Bugrov’s wet eyes were looking. The horses were fine, spirited, well-trained beasts. People in straw hats, with contented71 faces, were sitting in the carriage with long fishing-rods and bags. . . . A schoolboy in a white cap was holding a gun. They were driving out into the country to catch fish, to shoot, to walk about and have tea in the open air. They were driving to that region of bliss72 in which Bugrov as a boy—the barefoot, sunburnt, but infinitely73 happy son of a village deacon—had once raced about the meadows, the woods, and the river banks. Oh, how fiendishly seductive was that May! How happy those who can take off their heavy uniforms, get into a carriage and fly off to the country where the quails75 are calling and there is the scent76 of fresh hay. Bugrov’s heart ached with a sweet thrill that made him shiver. A hundred thousand! With the carriage there floated before him all the secret dreams over which he had gloated, through the long years of his life as a government clerk as he sat in the office of his department or in his wretched little study. . . . A river, deep, with fish, a wide garden with narrow avenues, little fountains, shade, flowers, arbours, a luxurious77 villa74 with terraces and turrets78 with an Aeolian harp79 and little silver bells (he had heard of the existence of an Aeolian harp from German romances); a cloudless blue sky; pure limpid80 air fragrant81 with the scents82 that recall his hungry, barefoot, crushed childhood. . . . To get up at five, to go to bed at nine; to spend the day catching83 fish, talking with the peasants. . . . What happiness!
“Ivan Petrovitch, do not torture me! Will you take a hundred thousand?”
“H’m . . . a hundred and fifty thousand!” muttered Bugrov in a hollow voice, the voice of a husky bull. He muttered it, and bowed his head, ashamed of his words, and awaiting the answer.
“Good,” said Groholsky, “I agree. I thank you, Ivan Petrovitch . . . . In a minute. . . . I will not keep you waiting. . . .”
Groholsky jumped up, put on his hat, and staggering backwards84, ran out of the drawing-room.
Bugrov clutched the window curtains more tightly than ever. . . . He was ashamed . . . . There was a nasty, stupid feeling in his soul, but, on the other hand, what fair shining hopes swarmed86 between his throbbing temples! He was rich!
Liza, who had grasped nothing of what was happening, darted through the half-opened door trembling all over and afraid that he would come to her window and fling her away from it. She went into the nursery, laid herself down on the nurse’s bed, and curled herself up. She was shivering with fever.
Bugrov was left alone. He felt stifled87, and he opened the window. What glorious air breathed fragrance89 on his face and neck! It would be good to breathe such air lolling on the cushions of a carriage . . . . Out there, far beyond the town, among the villages and the summer villas90, the air was sweeter still. . . . Bugrov actually smiled as he dreamed of the air that would be about him when he would go out on the verandah of his villa and admire the view. A long while he dreamed. . . . The sun had set, and still he stood and dreamed, trying his utmost to cast out of his mind the image of Liza which obstinately91 pursued him in all his dreams.
“I have brought it, Ivan Petrovitch!” Groholsky, re-entering,
whispered above his ear. “I have brought it—take it. . . . Here
in this roll there are forty thousand. . . . With this cheque will
you kindly92 get twenty the day after to-morrow from Valentinov? . . .
Here is a bill of exchange . . . a cheque. . . . The remaining
thirty thousand in a day or two. . . . My steward93 will bring it to
you.”
Groholsky, pink and excited, with all his limbs in motion, laid before Bugrov a heap of rolls of notes and bundles of papers. The heap was big, and of all sorts of hues94 and tints95. Never in the course of his life had Bugrov seen such a heap. He spread out his fat fingers and, not looking at Groholsky, fell to going through the bundles of notes and bonds. . . .
Groholsky spread out all the money, and moved restlessly about the room, looking for the Dulcinea who had been bought and sold.
Filling his pockets and his pocket-book, Bugrov thrust the securities into the table drawer, and, drinking off half a decanter full of water, dashed out into the street.
“Cab!” he shouted in a frantic96 voice.
At half-past eleven that night he drove up to the entrance of the Paris Hotel. He went noisily upstairs and knocked at the door of Groholsky’s apartments. He was admitted. Groholsky was packing his things in a portmanteau, Liza was sitting at the table trying on bracelets97. They were both frightened when Bugrov went in to them. They fancied that he had come for Liza and had brought back the money which he had taken in haste without reflection. But Bugrov had not come for Liza. Ashamed of his new get-up and feeling frightfully awkward in it, he bowed and stood at the door in the attitude of a flunkey. The get-up was superb. Bugrov was unrecognisable. His huge person, which had never hitherto worn anything but a uniform, was clothed in a fresh, brand-new suit of fine French cloth and of the most fashionable cut. On his feet spats98 shone with sparkling buckles99. He stood ashamed of his new get-up, and with his right hand covered the watch-chain for which he had, an hour before, paid three hundred roubles.
“I have come about something,” he began. “A business agreement is beyond price. I am not going to give up Mishutka. . . .”
“What Mishutka?” asked Groholsky.
“My son.”
Groholsky and Liza looked at each other. Liza’s eyes bulged100, her cheeks flushed, and her lips twitched. . . .
“Very well,” she said.
She thought of Mishutka’s warm little cot. It would be cruel to exchange that warm little cot for a chilly101 sofa in the hotel, and she consented.
“I shall see him,” she said.
Bugrov bowed, walked out, and flew down the stairs in his splendour, cleaving102 the air with his expensive cane103. . . .
“Home,” he said to the cabman. “I am starting at five o’clock to-morrow morning. . . . You will come; if I am asleep, you will wake me. We are driving out of town.”
II
It was a lovely August evening. The sun, set in a golden background lightly flecked with purple, stood above the western horizon on the point of sinking behind the far-away tumuli. In the garden, shadows and half-shadows had vanished, and the air had grown damp, but the golden light was still playing on the tree-tops. . . . It was warm. . . . Rain had just fallen, and made the fresh, transparent104 fragrant air still fresher.
I am not describing the August of Petersburg or Moscow, foggy, tearful, and dark, with its cold, incredibly damp sunsets. God forbid! I am not describing our cruel northern August. I ask the reader to move with me to the Crimea, to one of its shores, not far from Feodosia, the spot where stands the villa of one of our heroes. It is a pretty, neat villa surrounded by flower-beds and clipped bushes. A hundred paces behind it is an orchard105 in which its inmates106 walk. . . . Groholsky pays a high rent for that villa, a thousand roubles a year, I believe. . . . The villa is not worth that rent, but it is pretty. . . . Tall, with delicate walls and very delicate parapets, fragile, slender, painted a pale blue colour, hung with curtains, portières, draperies, it suggests a charming, fragile Chinese lady. . . .
On the evening described above, Groholsky and Liza were sitting on the verandah of this villa. Groholsky was reading Novoye Vremya and drinking milk out of a green mug. A syphon of Seltzer water was standing on the table before him. Groholsky imagined that he was suffering from catarrh of the lungs, and by the advice of Dr. Dmitriev consumed an immense quantity of grapes, milk, and Seltzer water. Liza was sitting in a soft easy chair some distance from the table. With her elbows on the parapet, and her little face propped107 on her little fists, she was gazing at the villa opposite. . . . The sun was playing upon the windows of the villa opposite, the glittering panes108 reflected the dazzling light. . . . Beyond the little garden and the few trees that surrounded the villa there was a glimpse of the sea with its waves, its dark blue colour, its immensity, its white masts. . . . It was so delightful109! Groholsky was reading an article by Anonymous110, and after every dozen lines he raised his blue eyes to Liza’s back. . . . The same passionate111, fervent112 love was shining in those eyes still. . . . He was infinitely happy in spite of his imaginary catarrh of the lungs. . . . Liza was conscious of his eyes upon her back, and was thinking of Mishutka’s brilliant future, and she felt so comfortable, so serene113 . . . .
She was not so much interested by the sea, and the glittering reflection on the windows of the villa opposite as by the waggons114 which were trailing up to that villa one after another.
The waggons were full of furniture and all sorts of domestic articles. Liza watched the trellis gates and big glass doors of the villa being opened and the men bustling115 about the furniture and wrangling116 incessantly117. Big armchairs and a sofa covered with dark raspberry coloured velvet, tables for the hall, the drawing-room and the dining-room, a big double bed and a child’s cot were carried in by the glass doors; something big, wrapped up in sacking, was carried in too. A grand piano, thought Liza, and her heart throbbed118.
It was long since she had heard the piano, and she was so fond of it. They had not a single musical instrument in their villa. Groholsky and she were musicians only in soul, no more. There were a great many boxes and packages with the words: “with care” upon them carried in after the piano.
They were boxes of looking-glasses and crockery. A gorgeous and luxurious carriage was dragged in, at the gate, and two white horses were led in looking like swans.
“My goodness, what riches!” thought Liza, remembering her old pony119 which Groholsky, who did not care for riding, had bought her for a hundred roubles. Compared with those swan-like steeds, her pony seemed to her no better than a bug31. Groholsky, who was afraid of riding fast, had purposely bought Liza a poor horse.
“What wealth!” Liza thought and murmured as she gazed at the noisy carriers.
The sun hid behind the tumuli, the air began to lose its dryness and limpidity120, and still the furniture was being driven up and hauled into the house. At last it was so dark that Groholsky left off reading the newspaper while Liza still gazed and gazed.
“Shouldn’t we light the lamp?” said Groholsky, afraid that a fly might drop into his milk and be swallowed in the darkness.
“Liza! shouldn’t we light the lamp? Shall we sit in darkness, my angel?”
Liza did not answer. She was interested in a chaise which had driven up to the villa opposite. . . . What a charming little mare121 was in that chaise. Of medium size, not large, but graceful. . . . A gentleman in a top hat was sitting in the chaise, a child about three, apparently122 a boy, was sitting on his knees waving his little hands. . . . He was waving his little hands and shouting with delight.
Liza suddenly uttered a shriek123, rose from her seat and lurched forward.
“What is the matter?” asked Groholsky.
“Nothing. . . I only . . . I fancied. . . .”
The tall, broad-shouldered gentleman in the top hat jumped out of the chaise, lifted the boy down, and with a skip and a hop85 ran gaily124 in at the glass door. The door opened noisily and he vanished into the darkness of the villa apartments.
Two smart footmen ran up to the horse in the chaise, and most respectfully led it to the gate. Soon the villa opposite was lighted up, and the clatter125 of plates, knives, and forks was audible. The gentleman in the top hat was having his supper, and judging by the duration of the clatter of crockery, his supper lasted long. Liza fancied she could smell chicken soup and roast duck. After supper discordant127 sounds of the piano floated across from the villa. In all probability the gentleman in the top hat was trying to amuse the child in some way, and allowing it to strum on it.
Groholsky went up to Liza and put his arm round her waist.
“What wonderful weather!” he said. “What air! Do you feel it? I am very happy, Liza, very happy indeed. My happiness is so great that I am really afraid of its destruction. The greatest things are usually destroyed, and do you know, Liza, in spite of all my happiness, I am not absolutely . . . at peace. . . . One haunting thought torments128 me . . . it torments me horribly. It gives me no peace by day or by night. . . .”
“What thought?”
“An awful thought, my love. I am tortured by the thought of your husband. I have been silent hitherto. I have feared to trouble your inner peace, but I cannot go on being silent. Where is he? What has happened to him? What has become of him with his money? It is awful! Every night I see his face, exhausted129, suffering, imploring130. . . . Why, only think, my angel—can the money he so generously accepted make up to him for you? He loved you very much, didn’t he?”
“Very much!”
“There you see! He has either taken to drink now, or . . . I am anxious about him! Ah, how anxious I am! Should we write to him, do you think? We ought to comfort him . . . a kind word, you know.”
Groholsky heaved a deep sigh, shook his head, and sank into an easy chair exhausted by painful reflection. Leaning his head on his fists he fell to musing131. Judging from his face, his musings were painful.
“I am going to bed,” said Liza; “it’s time.”
Liza went to her own room, undressed, and dived under the bedclothes. She used to go to bed at ten o’clock and get up at ten. She was fond of her comfort.
She was soon in the arms of Morpheus. Throughout the whole night she had the most fascinating dreams. . . . She dreamed whole romances, novels, Arabian Nights. . . . The hero of all these dreams was the gentleman in the top hat, who had caused her to utter a shriek that evening.
The gentleman in the top hat was carrying her off from Groholsky, was singing, was beating Groholsky and her, was flogging the boy under the window, was declaring his love, and driving her off in the chaise. . . . Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one’s eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness . . . . That night Liza lived through a great variety of experiences, and very happy ones, even in spite of the beating.
Waking up between six and seven, she flung on her clothes, hurriedly did her hair, and without even putting on her Tatar slippers132 with pointed133 toes, ran impulsively134 on to the verandah. Shading her eyes from the sun with one hand, and with the other holding up her slipping clothes, she gazed at the villa opposite. Her face beamed . . . . There could be no further doubt it was he.
On the verandah in the villa opposite there was a table in front of the glass door. A tea service was shining and glistening136 on the table with a silver samovar at the head. Ivan Petrovitch was sitting at the table. He had in his hand a glass in a silver holder137, and was drinking tea. He was drinking it with great relish138. That fact could be deduced from the smacking139 of his lips, the sound of which reached Liza’s ears. He was wearing a brown dressing140-gown with black flowers on it. Massive tassels141 fell down to the ground. It was the first time in her life Liza had seen her husband in a dressing-gown, and such an expensive-looking one.
Mishutka was sitting on one of his knees, and hindering him from drinking his tea. The child jumped up and down and tried to clutch his papa’s shining lip. After every three or four sips142 the father bent down to his son and kissed him on the head. A grey cat with its tail in the air was rubbing itself against one of the table legs, and with a plaintive143 mew proclaiming its desire for food. Liza hid behind the verandah curtain, and fastened her eyes upon the members of her former family; her face was radiant with joy.
“Misha!” she murmured, “Misha! Are you really here, Misha? The darling! And how he loves Vanya! Heavens!”
And Liza went off into a giggle144 when Mishutka stirred his father’s tea with a spoon. “And how Vanya loves Misha! My darlings!”
Liza’s heart throbbed, and her head went round with joy and happiness. She sank into an armchair and went on observing them, sitting down.
“How did they come here?” she wondered as she sent airy kisses to Mishutka. “Who gave them the idea of coming here? Heavens! Can all that wealth belong to them? Can those swan-like horses that were led in at the gate belong to Ivan Petrovitch? Ah!”
When he had finished his tea, Ivan Petrovitch went into the house. Ten minutes later, he appeared on the steps and Liza was astounded145 . . . . He, who in his youth only seven years ago had been called Vanushka and Vanka and had been ready to punch a man in the face and turn the house upside down over twenty kopecks, was dressed devilishly well. He had on a broad-brimmed straw hat, exquisite146 brilliant boots, a piqué waistcoat. . . . Thousands of suns, big and little, glistened147 on his watch-chain. With much chic126 he held in his right hand his gloves and cane.
And what swagger, what style there was in his heavy figure when, with a graceful motion of his hand, he bade the footman bring the horse round.
He got into the chaise with dignity, and told the footmen standing round the chaise to give him Mishutka and the fishing tackle they had brought. Setting Mishutka beside him, and putting his left arm round him, he held the reins148 and drove off.
“Ge-ee up!” shouted Mishutka.
Liza, unaware149 of what she was doing, waved her handkerchief after them. If she had looked in the glass she would have been surprised at her flushed, laughing, and, at the same time, tear-stained face. She was vexed150 that she was not beside her gleeful boy, and that she could not for some reason shower kisses on him at once.
For some reason! . . . Away with all your petty delicacies151!
“Grisha! Grisha!” Liza ran into Groholsky’s bedroom and set to work to wake him. “Get up, they have come! The darling!”
“Who has come?” asked Groholsky, waking up.
“Our people . . . Vanya and Misha, they have come, they are in the villa opposite. . . . I looked out, and there they were drinking tea. . . . And Misha too. . . . What a little angel our Misha has grown! If only you had seen him! Mother of God!”
“Seen whom? Why, you are. . . . Who has come? Come where?”
“Vanya and Misha. . . . I have been looking at the villa opposite, while they were sitting drinking tea. Misha can drink his tea by himself now. . . . Didn’t you see them moving in yesterday, it was they who arrived!”
Groholsky rubbed his forehead and turned pale.
“Arrived? Your husband?” he asked.
“Why, yes.”
“What for?”
“Most likely he is going to live here. They don’t know we are here. If they did, they would have looked at our villa, but they drank their tea and took no notice.”
“Where is he now? But for God’s sake do talk sense! Oh, where is he?”
“He has gone fishing with Misha in the chaise. Did you see the horses yesterday? Those are their horses . . . Vanya’s . . . Vanya drives with them. Do you know what, Grisha? We will have Misha to stay with us. . . . We will, won’t we? He is such a pretty boy. Such an exquisite boy!”
Groholsky pondered, while Liza went on talking and talking.
“This is an unexpected meeting,” said Groholsky, after prolonged and, as usual, harrassing reflection. “Well, who could have expected that we should meet here? Well. . . There it is. . . . So be it. It seems that it is fated. I can imagine the awkwardness of his position when he meets us.”
“Shall we have Misha to stay with us?”
“Yes, we will. . . . It will be awkward meeting him. . . . Why, what can I say to him? What can I talk of? It will be awkward for him and awkward for me. . . . We ought not to meet. We will carry on communications, if necessary, through the servants. . . . My head does ache so, Lizotchka. My arms and legs too, I ache all over. Is my head feverish152?”
Liza put her hand on his forehead and found that his head was hot.
“I had dreadful dreams all night . . . I shan’t get up to-day. I shall stay in bed . . . I must take some quinine. Send me my breakfast here, little woman.”
Groholsky took quinine and lay in bed the whole day. He drank warm water, moaned, had the sheets and pillowcase changed, whimpered, and induced an agonising boredom154 in all surrounding him.
He was insupportable when he imagined he had caught a chill. Liza had continually to interrupt her inquisitive155 observations and run from the verandah to his room. At dinner-time she had to put on mustard plasters. How boring all this would have been, O reader, if the villa opposite had not been at the service of my heroine! Liza watched that villa all day long and was gasping156 with happiness.
At ten o’clock Ivan Petrovitch and Mishutka came back from fishing and had breakfast. At two o’clock they had dinner, and at four o’clock they drove off somewhere in a carriage. The white horses bore them away with the swiftness of lightning. At seven o’clock visitors came to see them—all of them men. They were playing cards on two tables in the verandah till midnight. One of the men played superbly on the piano. The visitors played, ate, drank, and laughed. Ivan Petrovitch guffawing157 loudly, told them an anecdote158 of Armenian life at the top of his voice, so that all the villas round could hear. It was very gay and Mishutka sat up with them till midnight.
“Misha is merry, he is not crying,” thought Liza, “so he does not remember his mamma. So he has forgotten me!”
And there was a horrible bitter feeling in Liza’s soul. She spent the whole night crying. She was fretted159 by her little conscience, and by vexation and misery, and the desire to talk to Mishutka and kiss him. . . . In the morning she got up with a headache and tear-stained eyes. Her tears Groholsky put down to his own account.
“Do not weep, darling,” he said to her, “I am all right to-day, my chest is a little painful, but that is nothing.”
While they were having tea, lunch was being served at the villa opposite. Ivan Petrovitch was looking at his plate, and seeing nothing but a morsel160 of goose dripping with fat.
“I am very glad,” said Groholsky, looking askance at Bugrov, “very glad that his life is so tolerable! I hope that decent surroundings anyway may help to stifle88 his grief. Keep out of sight, Liza! They will see you . . . I am not disposed to talk to him just now . . . God be with him! Why trouble his peace?”
But the dinner did not pass off so quietly. During dinner precisely161 that “awkward position” which Groholsky so dreaded162 occurred. Just when the partridges, Groholsky’s favorite dish, had been put on the table, Liza was suddenly overcome with confusion, and Groholsky began wiping his face with his dinner napkin. On the verandah of the villa opposite they saw Bugrov. He was standing with his arms leaning on the parapet, and staring straight at them, with his eyes starting out of his head.
“Go in, Liza, go in,” Groholsky whispered. “I said we must have dinner indoors! What a girl you are, really. . . .”
Bugrov stared and stared, and suddenly began shouting. Groholsky looked at him and saw a face full of astonishment163. . . .
“Is that you?” bawled164 Ivan Petrovitch, “you! Are you here too?”
Groholsky passed his fingers from one shoulder to another, as though to say, “My chest is weak, and so I can’t shout across such a distance.” Liza’s heart began throbbing, and everything turned round before her eyes. Bugrov ran from his verandah, ran across the road, and a few seconds later was standing under the verandah on which Groholsky and Liza were dining. Alas165 for the partridges!
“How are you?” he began, flushing crimson166, and stuffing his big hands in his pockets. “Are you here? Are you here too?”
“Yes, we are here too. . . .”
“How did you get here?”
“Why, how did you?”
“I? It’s a long story, a regular romance, my good friend! But don’t put yourselves out—eat your dinner! I’ve been living, you know, ever since then . . . in the Oryol province. I rented an estate. A splendid estate! But do eat your dinner! I stayed there from the end of May, but now I have given it up. . . . It was cold there, and—well, the doctor advised me to go to the Crimea. . . .”
“Are you ill, then?” inquired Groholsky.
“Oh, well. . . . There always seems, as it were . . . something gurgling here. . . .”
And at the word “here” Ivan Petrovitch passed his open hand from his neck down to the middle of his stomach.
“So you are here too. . . . Yes . . . that’s very pleasant. Have you been here long?”
“Since July.”
“Oh, and you, Liza, how are you? Quite well?”
“Quite well,” answered Liza, and was embarrassed.
“You miss Mishutka, I’ll be bound. Eh? Well, he’s here with me. . . . I’ll send him over to you directly with Nikifor. This is very nice. Well, good-bye! I have to go off directly. . . . I made the acquaintance of Prince Ter-Haimazov yesterday; delightful man, though he is an Armenian. So he has a croquet party to-day; we are going to play croquet. . . . Good-bye! The carriage is waiting . . . .”
Ivan Petrovitch whirled round, tossed his head, and, waving adieu to them, ran home.
“Unhappy man,” said Groholsky, heaving a deep sigh as he watched him go off.
“In what way is he unhappy?” asked Liza.
“To see you and not have the right to call you his!”
“Fool!” Liza was so bold to think. “Idiot!”
Before evening Liza was hugging and kissing Mishutka. At first the boy howled, but when he was offered jam, he was all friendly smiles.
For three days Groholsky and Liza did not see Bugrov. He had disappeared somewhere, and was only at home at night. On the fourth day he visited them again at dinner-time. He came in, shook hands with both of them, and sat down to the table. His face was serious.
“I have come to you on business,” he said. “Read this.” And he handed Groholsky a letter. “Read it! Read it aloud!”
Groholsky read as follows:
“My beloved and consoling, never-forgotten son Ioann! I have received the respectful and loving letter in which you invite your aged167 father to the mild and salubrious Crimea, to breathe the fragrant air, and behold168 strange lands. To that letter I reply that on taking my holiday, I will come to you, but not for long. My colleague, Father Gerasim, is a frail169 and delicate man, and cannot be left alone for long. I am very sensible of your not forgetting your parents, your father and your mother. . . . You rejoice your father with your affection, and you remember your mother in your prayers, and so it is fitting to do. Meet me at Feodosia. What sort of town is Feodosia—what is it like? It will be very agreeable to see it. Your godmother, who took you from the font, is called Feodosia. You write that God has been graciously pleased that you should win two hundred thousand roubles. That is gratifying to me. But I cannot approve of your having left the service while still of a grade of little importance; even a rich man ought to be in the service. I bless you always, now and hereafter. Ilya and Seryozhka Andronov send you their greetings. You might send them ten roubles each—they are badly off!
“Your loving Father,
“Pyotr Bugrov, Priest.”
Groholsky read this letter aloud, and he and Liza both looked inquiringly at Bugrov.
“You see what it is,” Ivan Petrovitch began hesitatingly. “I should like to ask you, Liza, not to let him see you, to keep out of his sight while he is here. I have written to him that you are ill and gone to the Caucasus for a cure. If you meet him. . . You see yourself. . . . It’s awkward. . . H’m. . . .”
“Very well,” said Liza.
“We can do that,” thought Groholsky, “since he makes sacrifices, why shouldn’t we?”
“Please do. . . . If he sees you there will be trouble. . . . My father is a man of strict principles. He would curse me in seven churches. Don’t go out of doors, Liza, that is all. He won’t be here long. Don’t be afraid.”
Father Pyotr did not long keep them waiting. One fine morning Ivan Petrovitch ran in and hissed in a mysterious tone:
“He has come! He is asleep now, so please be careful.”
And Liza was shut up within four walls. She did not venture to go out into the yard or on to the verandah. She could only see the sky from behind the window curtain. Unluckily for her, Ivan Petrovitch’s papa spent his whole time in the open air, and even slept on the verandah. Usually Father Pyotr, a little parish priest, in a brown cassock and a top hat with a curly brim, walked slowly round the villas and gazed with curiosity at the “strange lands” through his grandfatherly spectacles. Ivan Petrovitch with the Stanislav on a little ribbon accompanied him. He did not wear a decoration as a rule, but before his own people he liked to show off. In their society he always wore the Stanislav.
Liza was bored to death. Groholsky suffered too. He had to go for his walks alone without a companion. He almost shed tears, but . . . had to submit to his fate. And to make things worse, Bugrov would run across every morning and in a hissing170 whisper would give some quite unnecessary bulletin concerning the health of Father Pyotr. He bored them with those bulletins.
“He slept well,” he informed them. “Yesterday he was put out because I had no salted cucumbers. . . He has taken to Mishutka; he keeps patting him on the head.”
At last, a fortnight later, little Father Pyotr walked for the last time round the villas and, to Groholsky’s immense relief, departed. He had enjoyed himself, and went off very well satisfied. Liza and Groholsky fell back into their old manner of life. Groholsky once more blessed his fate. But his happiness did not last for long. A new trouble worse than Father Pyotr followed. Ivan Petrovitch took to coming to see them every day. Ivan Petrovitch, to be frank, though a capital fellow, was a very tedious person. He came at dinner-time, dined with them and stayed a very long time. That would not have mattered. But they had to buy vodka, which Groholsky could not endure, for his dinner. He would drink five glasses and talk the whole dinner-time. That, too, would not have mattered. . . . But he would sit on till two o’clock in the morning, and not let them get to bed, and, worse still, he permitted himself to talk of things about which he should have been silent. When towards two o’clock in the morning he had drunk too much vodka and champagne171, he would take Mishutka in his arms, and weeping, say to him, before Groholsky and Liza:
“Mihail, my son, what am I? I . . . am a scoundrel. I have sold your mother! Sold her for thirty pieces of silver, may the Lord punish me! Mihail Ivanitch, little sucking pig, where is your mother? Lost! Gone! Sold into slavery! Well, I am a scoundrel.”
These tears and these words turned Groholsky’s soul inside out. He would look timidly at Liza’s pale face and wring172 his hands.
“Go to bed, Ivan Petrovitch,” he would say timidly.
“I am going. . . . Come along, Mishutka. . . . The Lord be our judge! I cannot think of sleep while I know that my wife is a slave . . . . But it is not Groholsky’s fault. . . . The goods were mine, the money his. . . . Freedom for the free and Heaven for the saved.”
By day Ivan Petrovitch was no less insufferable to Groholsky. To Groholsky’s intense horror, he was always at Liza’s side. He went fishing with her, told her stories, walked with her, and even on one occasion, taking advantage of Groholsky’s having a cold, carried her off in his carriage, goodness knows where, and did not bring her back till night!
“It’s outrageous173, inhuman,” thought Groholsky, biting his lips.
Groholsky liked to be continually kissing Liza. He could not exist without those honeyed kisses, and it was awkward to kiss her before Ivan Petrovitch. It was agony. The poor fellow felt forlorn, but fate soon had compassion174 on him. Ivan Petrovitch suddenly went off somewhere for a whole week. Visitors had come and carried him off with them . . . And Mishutka was taken too.
One fine morning Groholsky came home from a walk good-humoured and beaming.
“He has come,” he said to Liza, rubbing his hands. “I am very glad he has come. Ha-ha-ha!”
“What are you laughing at?”
“There are women with him.”
“What women?”
“I don’t know. . . . It’s a good thing he has got women. . . . A capital thing, in fact. . . . He is still young and fresh. Come here! Look!”
Groholsky led Liza on to the verandah, and pointed to the villa opposite. They both held their sides, and roared with laughter. It was funny. Ivan Petrovitch was standing on the verandah of the villa opposite, smiling. Two dark-haired ladies and Mishutka were standing below, under the verandah. The ladies were laughing, and loudly talking French.
“French women,” observed Groholsky. “The one nearest us isn’t at all bad-looking. Lively damsels, but that’s no matter. There are good women to be found even among such. . . . But they really do go too far.”
What was funny was that Ivan Petrovitch bent across the verandah, and stretching with his long arms, put them round the shoulders of one of the French girls, lifted her in the air, and set her giggling175 on the verandah. After lifting up both ladies on to the verandah, he lifted up Mishutka too. The ladies ran down and the proceedings176 were repeated.
“Powerful muscles, I must say,” muttered Groholsky looking at this scene. The operation was repeated some six times, the ladies were so amiable177 as to show no embarrassment178 whatever when the boisterous179 wind disposed of their inflated180 skirts as it willed while they were being lifted. Groholsky dropped his eyes in a shamefaced way when the ladies flung their legs over the parapet as they reached the verandah. But Liza watched and laughed! What did she care? It was not a case of men misbehaving themselves, which would have put her, as a woman, to shame, but of ladies.
In the evening, Ivan Petrovitch flew over, and with some embarrassment announced that he was now a man with a household to look after . . . .
“You mustn’t imagine they are just anybody,” he said. “It is true they are French. They shout at the top of their voices, and drink . . . but we all know! The French are brought up to be like that! It can’t be helped. . . . The prince,” Ivan Petrovitch added, “let me have them almost for nothing. . . . He said: ‘take them, take them. . . .’ I must introduce you to the prince sometime. A man of culture! He’s for ever writing, writing. . . . And do you know what their names are? One is Fanny, the other Isabella. . . . There’s Europe, ha-ha-ha! . . . The west! Good-bye!”
Ivan Petrovitch left Liza and Groholsky in peace, and devoted181 himself to his ladies. All day long sound of talk, laughter, and the clatter of crockery came from his villa. . . . The lights were not put out till far into the night. . . . Groholsky was in bliss. . . . At last, after a prolonged interval182 of agony, he felt happy and at peace again. Ivan Petrovitch with his two ladies had no such happiness as he had with one. But alas, destiny has no heart. She plays with the Groholskys, the Lizas, the Ivans, and the Mishutkas as with pawns183. . . . Groholsky lost his peace again. . . .
One morning, about ten days afterwards, on waking up late, he went out on to the verandah and saw a spectacle which shocked him, revolted him, and moved him to intense indignation. Under the verandah of the villa opposite stood the French women, and between them Liza. She was talking and looking askance at her own villa as though to see whether that tyrant184, that despot were awake (so Groholsky interpreted those looks). Ivan Petrovitch standing on the verandah with his sleeves tucked up, lifted Isabella into the air, then Fanny, and then Liza. When he was lifting Liza it seemed to Groholsky that he pressed her to himself. . . . Liza too flung one leg over the parapet. . . . Oh these women! All sphinxes, every one of them!
When Liza returned home from her husband’s villa and went into the bedroom on tip-toe, as though nothing had happened, Groholsky, pale, with hectic185 flushes on his cheeks, was lying in the attitude of a man at his last gasp48 and moaning.
On seeing Liza, he sprang out of bed, and began pacing about the bedroom.
“So that’s what you are like, is it?” he shrieked186 in a high tenor. “So that’s it! Very much obliged to you! It’s revolting, madam! Immoral187, in fact! Let me tell you that!”
Liza turned pale, and of course burst into tears. When women feel that they are in the right, they scold and shed tears; when they are conscious of being in fault, they shed tears only.
“On a level with those depraved creatures! It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . lower than any impropriety! Why, do you know what they are? They are kept women! Cocottes! And you a respectable woman go rushing off where they are. . . And he . . . He! What does he want? What more does he want of me? I don’t understand it! I have given him half of my property—I have given him more! You know it yourself! I have given him what I have not myself. . . . I have given him almost all. . . . And he! I’ve put up with your calling him Vanya, though he has no right whatever to such intimacy188. I have put up with your walks, kisses after dinner. . . . I have put up with everything, but this I will not put up with. . . . Either he or I! Let him go away, or I go away! I’m not equal to living like this any longer, no! You can see that for yourself! . . . Either he or I. . . . Enough! The cup is brimming over. . . . I have suffered a great deal as it is. . . . I am going to talk to him at once—this minute! What is he, after all? What has he to be proud of? No, indeed. . . . He has no reason to think so much of himself . . . .”
Groholsky said a great many more valiant189 and stinging things, but did not “go at once”; he felt timid and abashed190. . . . He went to Ivan Petrovitch three days later.
When he went into his apartment, he gaped191 with astonishment. He was amazed at the wealth and luxury with which Bugrov had surrounded himself. Velvet hangings, fearfully expensive chairs. . . . One was positively192 ashamed to step on the carpet. Groholsky had seen many rich men in his day, but he had never seen such frenzied193 luxury. . . . And the higgledy-piggledy muddle194 he saw when, with an inexplicable195 tremor196, he walked into the drawing-room—plates with bits of bread on them were lying about on the grand piano, a glass was standing on a chair, under the table there was a basket with a filthy197 rag in it. . . . Nut shells were strewn about in the windows. Bugrov himself was not quite in his usual trim when Groholsky walked in . . . . With a red face and uncombed locks he was pacing about the room in deshabille, talking to himself, apparently much agitated198. Mishutka was sitting on the sofa there in the drawing-room, and was making the air vibrate with a piercing scream.
“It’s awful, Grigory Vassilyevitch!” Bugrov began on seeing Groholsky, “such disorder199 . . . such disorder . . . Please sit down. You must excuse my being in the costume of Adam and Eve. . . . It’s of no consequence. . . . Horrible disorderliness! I don’t understand how people can exist here, I don’t understand it! The servants won’t do what they are told, the climate is horrible, everything is expensive. . . . Stop your noise,” Bugrov shouted, suddenly coming to a halt before Mishutka; “stop it, I tell you! Little beast, won’t you stop it?”
And Bugrov pulled Mishutka’s ear.
“That’s revolting, Ivan Petrovitch,” said Groholsky in a tearful voice. “How can you treat a tiny child like that? You really are. . .”
“Let him stop yelling then. . . . Be quiet—I’ll whip you!”
“Don’t cry, Misha darling. . . . Papa won’t touch you again. Don’t beat him, Ivan Petrovitch; why, he is hardly more than a baby. . . . There, there. . . . Would you like a little horse? I’ll send you a little horse. . . . You really are hard-hearted. . . .”
Groholsky paused, and then asked:
“And how are your ladies getting on, Ivan Petrovitch?”
“Not at all. I’ve turned them out without ceremony. I might have gone on keeping them, but it’s awkward. . . . The boy will grow up . . . . A father’s example. . . . If I were alone, then it would be a different thing. . . . Besides, what’s the use of my keeping them? Poof . . . it’s a regular farce! I talk to them in Russian, and they answer me in French. They don’t understand a thing—you can’t knock anything into their heads.”
“I’ve come to you about something, Ivan Petrovitch, to talk things over. . . . H’m. . . . It’s nothing very particular. But just . . . two or three words. . . . In reality, I have a favour to ask of you.”
“What’s that?”
“Would you think it possible, Ivan Petrovitch, to go away? We are delighted that you are here; it’s very agreeable for us, but it’s inconvenient200, don’t you know. . . . You will understand me. It’s awkward in a way. . . . Such indefinite relations, such continual awkwardness in regard to one another. . . . We must part. . . . It’s essential in fact. Excuse my saying so, but . . . you must see for yourself, of course, that in such circumstances to be living side by side leads to . . . reflections . . . that is . . . not to reflections, but there is a certain awkward feeling. . . .”
“Yes. . . . That is so, I have thought of it myself. Very good, I will go away.”
“We shall be very grateful to you. . . . Believe me, Ivan Petrovitch, we shall preserve the most flattering memory of you. The sacrifice which you. . .”
“Very good. . . . Only what am I to do with all this? I say, you buy this furniture of mine! What do you say? It’s not expensive, eight thousand . . . ten. . . . The furniture, the carriage, the grand piano. . . .”
“Very good. . . . I will give you ten thousand. . . .”
“Well, that is capital! I will set off to-morrow. I shall go to Moscow. It’s impossible to live here. Everything is so dear! Awfully201 dear! The money fairly flies. . . . You can’t take a step without spending a thousand! I can’t go on like that. I have a child to bring up. . . . Well, thank God that you will buy my furniture. . . . That will be a little more in hand, or I should have been regularly bankrupt. . . .”
Groholsky got up, took leave of Bugrov, and went home rejoicing. In the evening he sent him ten thousand roubles.
Early next morning Bugrov and Mishutka were already at Feodosia.
III
Several months had passed; spring had come. With spring, fine bright days had come too. Life was not so dull and hateful, and the earth was more fair to look upon. . . . There was a warm breeze from the sea and the open country. . . . The earth was covered with fresh grass, fresh leaves were green upon the trees. Nature had sprung into new life, and had put on new array.
It might be thought that new hopes and new desires would surge up in man when everything in nature is renewed, and young and fresh . . . but it is hard for man to renew life. . . .
Groholsky was still living in the same villa. His hopes and desires, small and unexacting, were still concentrated on the same Liza, on her alone, and on nothing else! As before, he could not take his eyes off her, and gloated over the thought: how happy I am! The poor fellow really did feel awfully happy. Liza sat as before on the verandah, and unaccountably stared with bored eyes at the villa opposite and the trees near it through which there was a peep at the dark blue sea. . . . As before, she spent her days for the most part in silence, often in tears and from time to time in putting mustard plasters on Groholsky. She might be congratulated on one new sensation, however. There was a worm gnawing202 at her vitals. . . . That worm was misery. . . . She was fearfully miserable, pining for her son, for her old, her cheerful manner of life. Her life in the past had not been particularly cheerful, but still it was livelier than her present existence. When she lived with her husband she used from time to time to go to a theatre, to an entertainment, to visit acquaintances. But here with Groholsky it was all quietness and emptiness. . . . Besides, here there was one man, and he with his ailments203 and his continual mawkish204 kisses, was like an old grandfather for ever shedding tears of joy.
It was boring! Here she had not Mihey Sergeyitch who used to be fond of dancing the mazurka with her. She had not Spiridon Nikolaitch, the son of the editor of the Provincial205 News. Spiridon Nikolaitch sang well and recited poetry. Here she had not a table set with lunch for visitors. She had not Gerasimovna, the old nurse who used to be continually grumbling206 at her for eating too much jam. . . . She had no one! There was simply nothing for her but to lie down and die of depression. Groholsky rejoiced in his solitude207, but . . . he was wrong to rejoice in it. All too soon he paid for his egoism. At the beginning of May when the very air seemed to be in love and faint with happiness, Groholsky lost everything; the woman he loved and. . .
That year Bugrov, too, visited the Crimea. He did not take the villa opposite, but pottered about, going from one town to another with Mishutka. He spent his time eating, drinking, sleeping, and playing cards. He had lost all relish for fishing, shooting and the French women, who, between ourselves, had robbed him a bit. He had grown thin, lost his broad and beaming smiles, and had taken to dressing in canvas. Ivan Petrovitch from time to time visited Groholsky’s villa. He brought Liza jam, sweets, and fruit, and seemed trying to dispel208 her ennui209. Groholsky was not troubled by these visits, especially as they were brief and infrequent, and were apparently paid on account of Mishutka, who could not under any circumstances have been altogether deprived of the privilege of seeing his mother. Bugrov came, unpacked210 his presents, and after saying a few words, departed. And those few words he said not to Liza but to Groholsky . . . . With Liza he was silent and Groholsky’s mind was at rest; but there is a Russian proverb which he would have done well to remember: “Don’t fear the dog that barks, but fear the dog that’s quiet. . . .” A fiendish proverb, but in practical life sometimes indispensable.
As he was walking in the garden one day, Groholsky heard two voices in conversation. One voice was a man’s, the other was a woman’s. One belonged to Bugrov, the other to Liza. Groholsky listened, and turning white as death, turned softly towards the speakers. He halted behind a lilac bush, and proceeded to watch and listen. His arms and legs turned cold. A cold sweat came out upon his brow. He clutched several branches of the lilac that he might not stagger and fall down. All was over!
Bugrov had his arm round Liza’s waist, and was saying to her:
“My darling! what are we to do? It seems it was God’s will. . . . I am a scoundrel. . . . I sold you. I was seduced211 by that Herod’s money, plague take him, and what good have I had from the money? Nothing but anxiety and display! No peace, no happiness, no position . . . . One sits like a fat invalid212 at the same spot, and never a step forwarder. . . . Have you heard that Andrushka Markuzin has been made a head clerk? Andrushka, that fool! While I stagnate213. . . . Good heavens! I have lost you, I have lost my happiness. I am a scoundrel, a blackguard, how do you think I shall feel at the dread153 day of judgment214?”
“Let us go away, Vanya,” wailed215 Liza. “I am dull. . . . I am dying of depression.”
“We cannot, the money has been taken. . . .”
“Well, give it back again.”
“I should be glad to, but . . . wait a minute. I have spent it all. We must submit, my girl. God is chastising216 us. Me for my covetousness217 and you for your frivolity218. Well, let us be tortured. . . . It will be the better for us in the next world.”
And in an access of religious feeling, Bugrov turned up his eyes to heaven.
“But I cannot go on living here; I am miserable.”
“Well, there is no help for it. I’m miserable too. Do you suppose I am happy without you? I am pining and wasting away! And my chest has begun to be bad! . . . You are my lawful219 wife, flesh of my flesh . . . one flesh. . . . You must live and bear it! While I . . . will drive over . . . visit you.”
And bending down to Liza, Bugrov whispered, loudly enough, however, to be heard several yards away:
“I will come to you at night, Lizanka. . . . Don’t worry. . . . I am staying at Feodosia close by. . . . I will live here near you till I have run through everything . . . and I soon shall be at my last farthing! A-a-ah, what a life it is! Dreariness220, ill . . . my chest is bad, and my stomach is bad.”
Bugrov ceased speaking, and then it was Liza’s turn. . . . My God, the cruelty of that woman! She began weeping, complaining, enumerating221 all the defects of her lover and her own sufferings. Groholsky as he listened to her, felt that he was a villain222, a miscreant223, a murderer.
“He makes me miserable. . . .” Liza said in conclusion.
After kissing Liza at parting, and going out at the garden gate, Bugrov came upon Groholsky, who was standing at the gate waiting for him.
“Ivan Petrovitch,” said Groholsky in the tone of a dying man, “I have seen and heard it all. . . It’s not honourable11 on your part, but I do not blame you. . . . You love her too, but you must understand that she is mine. Mine! I cannot live without her! How is it you don’t understand that? Granted that you love her, that you are miserable. . . . Have I not paid you, in part at least, for your sufferings? For God’s sake, go away! For God’s sake, go away! Go away from here for ever, I implore you, or you will kill me. . . .”
“I have nowhere to go,” Bugrov said thickly.
“H’m, you have squandered224 everything. . . . You are an impulsive135 man. Very well. . . . Go to my estate in the province of Tchernigov. If you like I will make you a present of the property. It’s a small estate, but a good one. . . . On my honour, it’s a good one!”
Bugrov gave a broad grin. He suddenly felt himself in the seventh heaven.
“I will give it you. . . . This very day I will write to my steward and send him an authorisation for completing the purchase. You must tell everyone you have bought it. . . . Go away, I entreat you.”
“Very good, I will go. I understand.”
“Let us go to a notary225 . . . at once,” said Groholsky, greatly cheered, and he went to order the carriage.
On the following evening, when Liza was sitting on the garden seat where her rendezvous226 with Ivan Petrovitch usually took place, Groholsky went quietly to her. He sat down beside her, and took her hand.
“Are you dull, Lizotchka?” he said, after a brief silence. “Are you depressed227? Why shouldn’t we go away somewhere? Why is it we always stay at home? We want to go about, to enjoy ourselves, to make acquaintances. . . . Don’t we?”
“I want nothing,” said Liza, and turned her pale, thin face towards the path by which Bugrov used to come to her.
Groholsky pondered. He knew who it was she expected, who it was she wanted.
“Let us go home, Liza,” he said, “it is damp here. . . .”
“You go; I’ll come directly.”
Groholsky pondered again.
“You are expecting him?” he asked, and made a wry228 face as though his heart had been gripped with red-hot pincers.
“Yes. . . . I want to give him the socks for Misha. . . .”
“He will not come.”
“How do you know?”
“He has gone away. . . .”
Liza opened her eyes wide. . . .
“He has gone away, gone to the Tchernigov province. I have given him my estate. . . .”
Liza turned fearfully pale, and caught at Groholsky’s shoulder to save herself from falling.
“I saw him off at the steamer at three o’clock.”
Liza suddenly clutched at her head, made a movement, and falling on the seat, began shaking all over.
“Vanya,” she wailed, “Vanya! I will go to Vanya. . . . Darling!”
She had a fit of hysterics. . . .
And from that evening, right up to July, two shadows could be seen in the park in which the summer visitors took their walks. The shadows wandered about from morning till evening, and made the summer visitors feel dismal229. . . . After Liza’s shadow invariably walked the shadow of Groholsky. . . . I call them shadows because they had both lost their natural appearance. They had grown thin and pale and shrunken, and looked more like shadows than living people. . . . Both were pining away like fleas230 in the classic anecdote of the Jew who sold insect powder.
At the beginning of July, Liza ran away from Groholsky, leaving a note in which she wrote that she was going for a time to “her son” . . . For a time! She ran away by night when Groholsky was asleep . . . . After reading her letter Groholsky spent a whole week wandering round about the villa as though he were mad, and neither ate nor slept. In August, he had an attack of recurrent fever, and in September he went abroad. There he took to drink. . . . He hoped in drink and dissipation to find comfort. . . . He squandered all his fortune, but did not succeed, poor fellow, in driving out of his brain the image of the beloved woman with the kittenish face . . . . Men do not die of happiness, nor do they die of misery. Groholsky’s hair went grey, but he did not die: he is alive to this day. . . . He came back from abroad to have “just a peep” at Liza . . . . Bugrov met him with open arms, and made him stay for an indefinite period. He is staying with Bugrov to this day.
This year I happened to be passing through Groholyovka, Bugrov’s estate. I found the master and the mistress of the house having supper. . . . Ivan Petrovitch was highly delighted to see me, and fell to pressing good things upon me. . . . He had grown rather stout231, and his face was a trifle puffy, though it was still rosy and looked sleek232 and well-nourished. . . . He was not bald. Liza, too, had grown fatter. Plumpness did not suit her. Her face was beginning to lose the kittenish look, and was, alas! more suggestive of the seal. Her cheeks were spreading upwards233, outwards234, and to both sides. The Bugrovs were living in first-rate style. They had plenty of everything. The house was overflowing235 with servants and edibles236. . . .
When we had finished supper we got into conversation. Forgetting that Liza did not play, I asked her to play us something on the piano.
“She does not play,” said Bugrov; “she is no musician. . . . Hey, you there! Ivan! call Grigory Vassilyevitch here! What’s he doing there?” And turning to me, Bugrov added, “Our musician will come directly; he plays the guitar. We keep the piano for Mishutka—we are having him taught. . . .”
Five minutes later, Groholsky walked into the room—sleepy, unkempt, and unshaven. . . . He walked in, bowed to me, and sat down on one side.
“Why, whoever goes to bed so early?” said Bugrov, addressing him. “What a fellow you are really! He’s always asleep, always asleep . . . The sleepy head! Come, play us something lively. . . .”
Groholsky turned the guitar, touched the strings237, and began singing:
“Yesterday I waited for my dear one. . . .”
I listened to the singing, looked at Bugrov’s well-fed countenance238, and thought: “Nasty brute40!” I felt like crying. . . . When he had finished singing, Groholsky bowed to us, and went out.
“And what am I to do with him?” Bugrov said when he had gone away. “I do have trouble with him! In the day he is always brooding and brooding. . . . And at night he moans. . . . He sleeps, but he sighs and moans in his sleep. . . . It is a sort of illness. . . . What am I to do with him, I can’t think! He won’t let us sleep. . . . I am afraid that he will go out of his mind. People think he is badly treated here. . . . In what way is he badly treated? He eats with us, and he drinks with us. . . . Only we won’t give him money. If we were to give him any he would spend it on drink or waste it . . . . That’s another trouble for me! Lord forgive me, a sinner!”
They made me stay the night. When I woke next morning, Bugrov was giving some one a lecture in the adjoining room. . . .
“Set a fool to say his prayers, and he will crack his skull239 on the floor! Why, who paints oars240 green! Do think, blockhead! Use your sense! Why don’t you speak?”
“I . . . I . . . made a mistake,” said a husky tenor apologetically.
The tenor belonged to Groholsky.
Groholsky saw me to the station.
“He is a despot, a tyrant,” he kept whispering to me all the way. “He is a generous man, but a tyrant! Neither heart nor brain are developed in him. . . . He tortures me! If it were not for that noble woman, I should have gone away long ago. I am sorry to leave her. It’s somehow easier to endure together.”
Groholsky heaved a sigh, and went on:
“She is with child. . . . You notice it? It is really my child. . . . Mine. . . . She soon saw her mistake, and gave herself to me again. She cannot endure him. . . .”
“You are a rag,” I could not refrain from saying to Groholsky.
“Yes, I am a man of weak character. . . . That is quite true. I was born so. Do you know how I came into the world? My late papa cruelly oppressed a certain little clerk—it was awful how he treated him! He poisoned his life. Well . . . and my late mama was tender-hearted. She came from the people, she was of the working class. . . . She took that little clerk to her heart from pity. . . . Well . . . and so I came into the world. . . . The son of the ill-treated clerk. How could I have a strong will? Where was I to get it from? But that’s the second bell. . . . Good-bye. Come and see us again, but don’t tell Ivan Petrovitch what I have said about him.”
I pressed Groholsky’s hand, and got into the train. He bowed towards the carriage, and went to the water-barrel—I suppose he was thirsty!
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1
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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piquant
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| adj.辛辣的，开胃的，令人兴奋的 | |
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scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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7
soot
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| n.煤烟，烟尘；vt.熏以煤烟 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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eel
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| n.鳗鲡 | |
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scowling
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的现在分词 ) | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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12
obligatory
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| adj.强制性的，义务的，必须的 | |
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13
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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14
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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15
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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16
sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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17
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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18
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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19
petrified
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| adj.惊呆的；目瞪口呆的v.使吓呆，使惊呆；变僵硬；使石化(petrify的过去式和过去分词) | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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grimace
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| v.做鬼脸，面部歪扭 | |
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perspiring
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| v.出汗，流汗( perspire的现在分词 ) | |
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23
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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ransacked
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| v.彻底搜查( ransack的过去式和过去分词 )；抢劫，掠夺 | |
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27
unbearably
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| adv.不能忍受地，无法容忍地；慌 | |
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28
devoured
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| 吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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30
tussle
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| n.&v.扭打，搏斗，争辩 | |
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31
bug
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| n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器 | |
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32
hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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33
puckered
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| v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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34
wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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35
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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36
supple
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| adj.柔软的，易弯的，逢迎的，顺从的，灵活的；vt.使柔软，使柔顺，使顺从；vi.变柔软，变柔顺 | |
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twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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WHIMS
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| 虚妄，禅病 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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42
enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
fumes
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| n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体 | |
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44
prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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45
rascals
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| 流氓( rascal的名词复数 )； 无赖； （开玩笑说法）淘气的人（尤指小孩）； 恶作剧的人 | |
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46
peg
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| n.木栓，木钉；vt.用木钉钉，用短桩固定 | |
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47
farce
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| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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48
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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49
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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50
humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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51
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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52
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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53
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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54
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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55
crab
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| n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气 | |
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56
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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57
twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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58
shrilled
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| （声音）尖锐的，刺耳的，高频率的( shrill的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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59
tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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60
beseech
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| v.祈求，恳求 | |
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61
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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62
influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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63
throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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64
entreat
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| v.恳求，恳请 | |
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65
bribe
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| n.贿赂；v.向…行贿，买通 | |
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66
atone
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| v.赎罪，补偿 | |
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67
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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68
sledges
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| n.雪橇，雪车( sledge的名词复数 )v.乘雪橇( sledge的第三人称单数 )；用雪橇运载 | |
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69
tinkling
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| n.丁当作响声 | |
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70
implore
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| vt.乞求，恳求，哀求 | |
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71
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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72
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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73
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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74
villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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75
quails
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| 鹌鹑( quail的名词复数 )； 鹌鹑肉 | |
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76
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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77
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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78
turrets
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| （六角）转台( turret的名词复数 )； （战舰和坦克等上的）转动炮塔； （摄影机等上的）镜头转台； （旧时攻城用的）塔车 | |
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79
harp
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| n.竖琴；天琴座 | |
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80
limpid
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| adj.清澈的，透明的 | |
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81
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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82
scents
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| n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉 | |
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83
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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84
backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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85
hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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86
swarmed
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| 密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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87
stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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88
stifle
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| vt.使窒息；闷死；扼杀；抑止，阻止 | |
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89
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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90
villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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91
obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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92
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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93
steward
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| n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员 | |
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94
hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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95
tints
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| 色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹 | |
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96
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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97
bracelets
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| n.手镯，臂镯( bracelet的名词复数 ) | |
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98
spats
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| n.口角( spat的名词复数 )；小争吵；鞋罩；鞋套v.spit的过去式和过去分词( spat的第三人称单数 )；口角；小争吵；鞋罩 | |
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99
buckles
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| 搭扣，扣环( buckle的名词复数 ) | |
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100
bulged
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| 凸出( bulge的过去式和过去分词 )； 充满； 塞满（某物） | |
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101
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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102
cleaving
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| v.劈开，剁开，割开( cleave的现在分词 ) | |
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103
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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104
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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105
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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106
inmates
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| n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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107
propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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108
panes
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| 窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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109
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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110
anonymous
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| adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的 | |
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111
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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112
fervent
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| adj.热的，热烈的，热情的 | |
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113
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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114
waggons
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| 四轮的运货马车( waggon的名词复数 )； 铁路货车； 小手推车 | |
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115
bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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116
wrangling
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| v.争吵，争论，口角( wrangle的现在分词 ) | |
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117
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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118
throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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119
pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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120
limpidity
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| n.清澈，透明 | |
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121
mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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122
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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123
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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124
gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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125
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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126
chic
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| n./adj.别致(的)，时髦(的)，讲究的 | |
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127
discordant
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| adj.不调和的 | |
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128
torments
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| （肉体或精神上的）折磨，痛苦( torment的名词复数 )； 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
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129
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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130
imploring
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| 恳求的，哀求的 | |
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131
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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132
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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133
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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134
impulsively
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| adv.冲动地 | |
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135
impulsive
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| adj.冲动的，刺激的；有推动力的 | |
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136
glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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137
holder
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| n.持有者，占有者；(台，架等)支持物 | |
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138
relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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139
smacking
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| 活泼的，发出响声的，精力充沛的 | |
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140
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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141
tassels
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| n.穗( tassel的名词复数 )；流苏状物；（植物的）穗；玉蜀黍的穗状雄花v.抽穗， （玉米）长穗须( tassel的第三人称单数 )；使抽穗， （为了使作物茁壮生长）摘去穗状雄花；用流苏装饰 | |
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142
sips
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| n.小口喝，一小口的量( sip的名词复数 )v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的第三人称单数 ) | |
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143
plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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144
giggle
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| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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145
astounded
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| v.使震惊(astound的过去式和过去分词)；愕然；愕；惊讶 | |
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146
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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147
glistened
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| v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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148
reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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149
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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150
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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151
delicacies
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| n.棘手( delicacy的名词复数 )；精致；精美的食物；周到 | |
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152
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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153
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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154
boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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155
inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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156
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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157
guffawing
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| v.大笑，狂笑( guffaw的现在分词 ) | |
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158
anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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159
fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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160
morsel
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| n.一口，一点点 | |
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161
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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162
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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163
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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164
bawled
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| v.大叫，大喊( bawl的过去式和过去分词 )；放声大哭；大声叫出；叫卖（货物） | |
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165
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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166
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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167
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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168
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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169
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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170
hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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171
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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172
wring
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| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
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173
outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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174
compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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175
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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176
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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177
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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178
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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179
boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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inflated
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| adj.（价格）飞涨的；（通货）膨胀的；言过其实的；充了气的v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨 | |
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181
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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182
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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183
pawns
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| n.（国际象棋中的）兵( pawn的名词复数 )；卒；被人利用的人；小卒v.典当，抵押( pawn的第三人称单数 )；以（某事物）担保 | |
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184
tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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185
hectic
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| adj.肺病的；消耗热的；发热的；闹哄哄的 | |
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186
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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187
immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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188
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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189
valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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190
abashed
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| adj.窘迫的，尴尬的v.使羞愧，使局促，使窘迫( abash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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191
gaped
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| v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的过去式和过去分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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192
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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193
frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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194
muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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195
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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196
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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197
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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198
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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199
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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200
inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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201
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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202
gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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203
ailments
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| 疾病（尤指慢性病），不适( ailment的名词复数 ) | |
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204
mawkish
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| adj.多愁善感的的；无味的 | |
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205
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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206
grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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207
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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208
dispel
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| vt.驱走，驱散，消除 | |
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209
ennui
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| n.怠倦，无聊 | |
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210
unpacked
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| v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的过去式和过去分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等） | |
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211
seduced
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| 诱奸( seduce的过去式和过去分词 )； 勾引； 诱使堕落； 使入迷 | |
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212
invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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213
stagnate
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| v.停止 | |
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214
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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215
wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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216
chastising
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| v.严惩（某人）（尤指责打）( chastise的现在分词 ) | |
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217
covetousness
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218
frivolity
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| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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219
lawful
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| adj.法律许可的，守法的，合法的 | |
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220
dreariness
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| 沉寂，可怕，凄凉 | |
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221
enumerating
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| v.列举，枚举，数( enumerate的现在分词 ) | |
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222
villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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223
miscreant
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| n.恶棍 | |
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224
squandered
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| v.（指钱，财产等）浪费，乱花( squander的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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225
notary
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| n.公证人，公证员 | |
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226
rendezvous
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| n.约会，约会地点，汇合点；vi.汇合，集合；vt.使汇合，使在汇合地点相遇 | |
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227
depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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228
wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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229
dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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230
fleas
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| n.跳蚤( flea的名词复数 )；爱财如命；没好气地（拒绝某人的要求） | |
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232
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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233
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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234
outwards
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| adj.外面的，公开的，向外的；adv.向外；n.外形 | |
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235
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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236
edibles
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| 可以吃的，可食用的( edible的名词复数 )； 食物 | |
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237
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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238
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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239
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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240
oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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