“I have so enjoyed your playing,” she said, going up to the piano. “I have so enjoyed it. You have a wonderful talent! But don’t you think our piano’s out of tune1?”
At that moment the two schoolboys walked into the room, accompanied by the student.
“My goodness! Mitya and Kolya,” Olga Mihalovna drawled joyfully2, going to meet them: “How big they have grown! One would not know you! But where is your mamma?”
“I congratulate you on the name-day,” the student began in a free-and-easy tone, “and I wish you all happiness. Ekaterina Andreyevna sends her congratulations and begs you to excuse her. She is not very well.”
“How unkind of her! I have been expecting her all day. Is it long since you left Petersburg?” Olga Mihalovna asked the student. “What kind of weather have you there now?” And without waiting for an answer, she looked cordially at the schoolboys and repeated:
“How tall they have grown! It is not long since they used to come with their nurse, and they are at school already! The old grow older while the young grow up. . . . Have you had dinner?”
“Oh, please don’t trouble!” said the student.
“Why, you have not had dinner?”
“For goodness’ sake, don’t trouble!”
“But I suppose you are hungry?” Olga Mihalovna said it in a harsh, rude voice, with impatience3 and vexation — it escaped her unawares, but at once she coughed, smiled, and flushed crimson4. “How tall they have grown!” she said softly.
“Please don’t trouble!” the student said once more.
The student begged her not to trouble; the boys said nothing; obviously all three of them were hungry. Olga Mihalovna took them into the dining-room and told Vassily to lay the table.
“How unkind of your mamma!” she said as she made them sit down. “She has quite forgotten me. Unkind, unkind, unkind . . . you must tell her so. What are you studying?” she asked the student.
“Medicine.”
“Well, I have a weakness for doctors, only fancy. I am very sorry my husband is not a doctor. What courage any one must have to perform an operation or dissect5 a corpse6, for instance! Horrible! Aren’t you frightened? I believe I should die of terror! Of course, you drink vodka?”
“Please don’t trouble.”
“After your journey you must have something to drink. Though I am a woman, even I drink sometimes. And Mitya and Kolya will drink Malaga. It’s not a strong wine; you need not be afraid of it. What fine fellows they are, really! They’ll be thinking of getting married next.”
Olga Mihalovna talked without ceasing; she knew by experience that when she had guests to entertain it was far easier and more comfortable to talk than to listen. When you talk there is no need to strain your attention to think of answers to questions, and to change your expression of face. But unawares she asked the student a serious question; the student began a lengthy7 speech and she was forced to listen. The student knew that she had once been at the University, and so tried to seem a serious person as he talked to her.
“What subject are you studying?” she asked, forgetting that she had already put that question to him.
“Medicine.”
Olga Mihalovna now remembered that she had been away from the ladies for a long while.
“Yes? Then I suppose you are going to be a doctor?” she said, getting up. “That’s splendid. I am sorry I did not go in for medicine myself. So you will finish your dinner here, gentlemen, and then come into the garden. I will introduce you to the young ladies.”
She went out and glanced at her watch: it was five minutes to six. And she wondered that the time had gone so slowly, and thought with horror that there were six more hours before midnight, when the party would break up. How could she get through those six hours? What phrases could she utter? How should she behave to her husband?
There was not a soul in the drawing-room or on the verandah. All the guests were sauntering about the garden.
“I shall have to suggest a walk in the birchwood before tea, or else a row in the boats,” thought Olga Mihalovna, hurrying to the croquet ground, from which came the sounds of voices and laughter.
“And sit the old people down to vint . . . .” She met Grigory the footman coming from the croquet ground with empty bottles.
“Where are the ladies?” she asked.
“Among the raspberry-bushes. The master’s there, too.”
“Oh, good heavens!” some one on the croquet lawn shouted with exasperation8. “I have told you a thousand times over! To know the Bulgarians you must see them! You can’t judge from the papers!”
Either because of the outburst or for some other reason, Olga Mihalovna was suddenly aware of a terrible weakness all over, especially in her legs and in her shoulders. She felt she could not bear to speak, to listen, or to move.
“Grigory,” she said faintly and with an effort, “when you have to serve tea or anything, please don’t appeal to me, don’t ask me anything, don’t speak of anything. . . . Do it all yourself, and . . . and don’t make a noise with your feet, I entreat9 you. . . . I can’t, because . . .”
Without finishing, she walked on towards the croquet lawn, but on the way she thought of the ladies, and turned towards the raspberry-bushes. The sky, the air, and the trees looked gloomy again and threatened rain; it was hot and stifling10. An immense flock of crows, foreseeing a storm, flew cawing over the garden. The paths were more overgrown, darker, and narrower as they got nearer the kitchen garden. In one of them, buried in a thick tangle11 of wild pear, crab-apple, sorrel, young oaks, and hopbine, clouds of tiny black flies swarmed12 round Olga Mihalovna. She covered her face with her hands and began forcing herself to think of the little creature . . . . There floated through her imagination the figures of Grigory, Mitya, Kolya, the faces of the peasants who had come in the morning to present their congratulations.
She heard footsteps, and she opened her eyes. Uncle Nikolay Nikolaitch was coming rapidly towards her.
“It’s you, dear? I am very glad . . .” he began, breathless. “A couple of words . . . .” He mopped with his handkerchief his red shaven chin, then suddenly stepped back a pace, flung up his hands and opened his eyes wide. “My dear girl, how long is this going on?” he said rapidly, spluttering. “I ask you: is there no limit to it? I say nothing of the demoralizing effect of his martinet13 views on all around him, of the way he insults all that is sacred and best in me and in every honest thinking man — I will say nothing about that, but he might at least behave decently! Why, he shouts, he bellows14, gives himself airs, poses as a sort of Bonaparte, does not let one say a word. . . . I don’t know what the devil’s the matter with him! These lordly gestures, this condescending15 tone; and laughing like a general! Who is he, allow me to ask you? I ask you, who is he? The husband of his wife, with a few paltry16 acres and the rank of a titular17 who has had the luck to marry an heiress! An upstart and a junker, like so many others! A type out of Shtchedrin! Upon my word, it’s either that he’s suffering from megalomania, or that old rat in his dotage18, Count Alexey Petrovitch, is right when he says that children and young people are a long time growing up nowadays, and go on playing they are cabmen and generals till they are forty!”
“That’s true, that’s true,” Olga Mihalovna assented19. “Let me pass.”
“Now just consider: what is it leading to?” her uncle went on, barring her way. “How will this playing at being a general and a Conservative end? Already he has got into trouble! Yes, to stand his trial! I am very glad of it! That’s what his noise and shouting has brought him to — to stand in the prisoner’s dock. And it’s not as though it were the Circuit Court or something: it’s the Central Court! Nothing worse could be imagined, I think! And then he has quarrelled with every one! He is celebrating his name-day, and look, Vostryakov’s not here, nor Yahontov, nor Vladimirov, nor Shevud, nor the Count. . . . There is no one, I imagine, more Conservative than Count Alexey Petrovitch, yet even he has not come. And he never will come again. He won’t come, you will see!”
“My God! but what has it to do with me?” asked Olga Mihalovna.
“What has it to do with you? Why, you are his wife! You are clever, you have had a university education, and it was in your power to make him an honest worker!”
“At the lectures I went to they did not teach us how to influence tiresome20 people. It seems as though I should have to apologize to all of you for having been at the University,” said Olga Mihalovna sharply. “Listen, uncle. If people played the same scales over and over again the whole day long in your hearing, you wouldn’t be able to sit still and listen, but would run away. I hear the same thing over again for days together all the year round. You must have pity on me at last.”
Her uncle pulled a very long face, then looked at her searchingly and twisted his lips into a mocking smile.
“So that’s how it is,” he piped in a voice like an old woman’s. “I beg your pardon!” he said, and made a ceremonious bow. “If you have fallen under his influence yourself, and have abandoned your convictions, you should have said so before. I beg your pardon!”
“Yes, I have abandoned my convictions,” she cried. “There; make the most of it!”
“I beg your pardon!”
Her uncle for the last time made her a ceremonious bow, a little on one side, and, shrinking into himself, made a scrape with his foot and walked back.
“Idiot!” thought Olga Mihalovna. “I hope he will go home.”
She found the ladies and the young people among the raspberries in the kitchen garden. Some were eating raspberries; others, tired of eating raspberries, were strolling about the strawberry beds or foraging21 among the sugar-peas. A little on one side of the raspberry bed, near a branching appletree propped22 up by posts which had been pulled out of an old fence, Pyotr Dmitritch was mowing23 the grass. His hair was falling over his forehead, his cravat25 was untied26. His watch-chain was hanging loose. Every step and every swing of the scythe27 showed skill and the possession of immense physical strength. Near him were standing28 Lubotchka and the daughters of a neighbour, Colonel Bukryeev — two anaemic and unhealthily stout29 fair girls, Natalya and Valentina, or, as they were always called, Nata and Vata, both wearing white frocks and strikingly like each other. Pyotr Dmitritch was teaching them to mow24.
“It’s very simple,” he said. “You have only to know how to hold the scythe and not to get too hot over it — that is, not to use more force than is necessary! Like this. . . . Wouldn’t you like to try?” he said, offering the scythe to Lubotchka. “Come!”
Lubotchka took the scythe clumsily, blushed crimson, and laughed.
“Don’t be afraid, Lubov Alexandrovna!” cried Olga Mihalovna, loud enough for all the ladies to hear that she was with them. “Don’t be afraid! You must learn! If you marry a Tolstoyan he will make you mow.”
Lubotchka raised the scythe, but began laughing again, and, helpless with laughter, let go of it at once. She was ashamed and pleased at being talked to as though grown up. Nata, with a cold, serious face, with no trace of smiling or shyness, took the scythe, swung it and caught it in the grass; Vata, also without a smile, as cold and serious as her sister, took the scythe, and silently thrust it into the earth. Having done this, the two sisters linked arms and walked in silence to the raspberries.
Pyotr Dmitritch laughed and played about like a boy, and this childish, frolicsome30 mood in which he became exceedingly good-natured suited him far better than any other. Olga Mihalovna loved him when he was like that. But his boyishness did not usually last long. It did not this time; after playing with the scythe, he for some reason thought it necessary to take a serious tone about it.
“When I am mowing, I feel, do you know, healthier and more normal,” he said. “If I were forced to confine myself to an intellectual life I believe I should go out of my mind. I feel that I was not born to be a man of culture! I ought to mow, plough, sow, drive out the horses.”
And Pyotr Dmitritch began a conversation with the ladies about the advantages of physical labour, about culture, and then about the pernicious effects of money, of property. Listening to her husband, Olga Mihalovna, for some reason, thought of her dowry.
“And the time will come, I suppose,” she thought, “when he will not forgive me for being richer than he. He is proud and vain. Maybe he will hate me because he owes so much to me.”
She stopped near Colonel Bukryeev, who was eating raspberries and also taking part in the conversation.
“Come,” he said, making room for Olga Mihalovna and Pyotr Dmitritch. “The ripest are here. . . . And so, according to Proudhon,” he went on, raising his voice, “property is robbery. But I must confess I don’t believe in Proudhon, and don’t consider him a philosopher. The French are not authorities, to my thinking — God bless them!”
“Well, as for Proudhons and Buckles31 and the rest of them, I am weak in that department,” said Pyotr Dmitritch. “For philosophy you must apply to my wife. She has been at University lectures and knows all your Schopenhauers and Proudhons by heart . . . .”
Olga Mihalovna felt bored again. She walked again along a little path by apple and pear trees, and looked again as though she was on some very important errand. She reached the gardener’s cottage. In the doorway32 the gardener’s wife, Varvara, was sitting together with her four little children with big shaven heads. Varvara, too, was with child and expecting to be confined on Elijah’s Day. After greeting her, Olga Mihalovna looked at her and the children in silence and asked:
“Well, how do you feel?”
“Oh, all right . . . .”
A silence followed. The two women seemed to understand each other without words.
“It’s dreadful having one’s first baby,” said Olga Mihalovna after a moment’s thought. “I keep feeling as though I shall not get through it, as though I shall die.”
“I fancied that, too, but here I am alive. One has all sorts of fancies.”
Varvara, who was just going to have her fifth, looked down a little on her mistress from the height of her experience and spoke33 in a rather didactic tone, and Olga Mihalovna could not help feeling her authority; she would have liked to have talked of her fears, of the child, of her sensations, but she was afraid it might strike Varvara as na?ve and trivial. And she waited in silence for Varvara to say something herself.
“Olya, we are going indoors,” Pyotr Dmitritch called from the raspberries.
Olga Mihalovna liked being silent, waiting and watching Varvara. She would have been ready to stay like that till night without speaking or having any duty to perform. But she had to go. She had hardly left the cottage when Lubotchka, Nata, and Vata came running to meet her. The sisters stopped short abruptly34 a couple of yards away; Lubotchka ran right up to her and flung herself on her neck.
“You dear, darling, precious,” she said, kissing her face and her neck. “Let us go and have tea on the island!”
“On the island, on the island!” said the precisely35 similar Nata and Vata, both at once, without a smile.
“But it’s going to rain, my dears.”
“It’s not, it’s not,” cried Lubotchka with a woebegone face. “They’ve all agreed to go. Dear! darling!”
“They are all getting ready to have tea on the island,” said Pyotr Dmitritch, coming up. “See to arranging things. . . . We will all go in the boats, and the samovars and all the rest of it must be sent in the carriage with the servants.”
He walked beside his wife and gave her his arm. Olga Mihalovna had a desire to say something disagreeable to her husband, something biting, even about her dowry perhaps — the crueller the better, she felt. She thought a little, and said:
“Why is it Count Alexey Petrovitch hasn’t come? What a pity!”
“I am very glad he hasn’t come,” said Pyotr Dmitritch, lying. “I’m sick to death of that old lunatic.”
“But yet before dinner you were expecting him so eagerly!”
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收听单词发音
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1
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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joyfully
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| adv. 喜悦地, 高兴地 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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5
dissect
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| v.分割；解剖 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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7
lengthy
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| adj.漫长的，冗长的 | |
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8
exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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entreat
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| v.恳求，恳请 | |
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stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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12
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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13
martinet
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| n.要求严格服从纪律的人 | |
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14
bellows
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| n.风箱；发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的名词复数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的第三人称单数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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15
condescending
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| adj.谦逊的,故意屈尊的 | |
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paltry
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| adj.无价值的，微不足道的 | |
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titular
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| adj.名义上的，有名无实的；n.只有名义（或头衔）的人 | |
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18
dotage
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| n.年老体衰；年老昏聩 | |
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assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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21
foraging
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| v.搜寻（食物），尤指动物觅（食）( forage的现在分词 )；（尤指用手）搜寻（东西） | |
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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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mowing
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| n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 ) | |
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mow
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| v.割（草、麦等），扫射，皱眉；n.草堆，谷物堆 | |
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cravat
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| n.领巾，领结；v.使穿有领结的服装，使结领结 | |
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untied
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| 松开，解开( untie的过去式和过去分词 )； 解除，使自由； 解决 | |
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27
scythe
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| n. 长柄的大镰刀，战车镰； v. 以大镰刀割 | |
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28
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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30
frolicsome
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| adj.嬉戏的，闹着玩的 | |
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31
buckles
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| 搭扣，扣环( buckle的名词复数 ) | |
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32
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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33
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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34
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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35
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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