The Chorus Girl and Other Stories | Page 6

and caught the straying wisps of mist. Half a mile from the
gate they saw the dark patch of Kuznetsov's wood.
"Why has she come with me? I shall have to see her back," thought
Ognev, but looking at her profile he gave a friendly smile and said:
"One doesn't want to go away in such lovely weather. It's quite a
romantic evening, with the moon, the stillness, and all the etceteras. Do
you know, Vera Gavrilovna, here I have lived twenty-nine years in the
world and never had a romance. No romantic episode in my whole life,
so that I only know by hearsay of rendezvous, 'avenues of sighs,' and
kisses. It's not normal! In town, when one sits in one's lodgings, one
does not notice the blank, but here in the fresh air one feels it. . . . One
resents it!"
"Why is it?"
"I don't know. I suppose I've never had time, or perhaps it was I have
never met women who. . . . In fact, I have very few acquaintances and
never go anywhere."
For some three hundred paces the young people walked on in silence.
Ognev kept glancing at Verotchka's bare head and shawl, and days of
spring and summer rose to his mind one after another. It had been a
period when far from his grey Petersburg lodgings, enjoying the
friendly warmth of kind people, nature, and the work he loved, he had
not had time to notice how the sunsets followed the glow of dawn, and
how, one after another foretelling the end of summer, first the
nightingale ceased singing, then the quail, then a little later the landrail.

The days slipped by unnoticed, so that life must have been happy and
easy. He began calling aloud how reluctantly he, poor and
unaccustomed to change of scene and society, had come at the end of
April to the N---- District, where he had expected dreariness, loneliness,
and indifference to statistics, which he considered was now the
foremost among the sciences. When he arrived on an April morning at
the little town of N---- he had put up at the inn kept by Ryabuhin, the
Old Believer, where for twenty kopecks a day they had given him a
light, clean room on condition that he should not smoke indoors. After
resting and finding who was the president of the District Zemstvo, he
had set off at once on foot to Kuznetsov. He had to walk three miles
through lush meadows and young copses. Larks were hovering in the
clouds, filling the air with silvery notes, and rooks flapping their wings
with sedate dignity floated over the green cornland.
"Good heavens!" Ognev had thought in wonder; "can it be that there's
always air like this to breathe here, or is this scent only to-day, in
honour of my coming?"
Expecting a cold business-like reception, he went in to Kuznetsov's
diffidently, looking up from under his eyebrows and shyly pulling his
beard. At first Kuznetsov wrinkled up his brows and could not
understand what use the Zemstvo could be to the young man and his
statistics; but when the latter explained at length what was material for
statistics and how such material was collected, Kuznetsov brightened,
smiled, and with childish curiosity began looking at his notebooks. On
the evening of the same day Ivan Alexeyitch was already sitting at
supper with the Kuznetsovs, was rapidly becoming exhilarated by their
strong home-made wine, and looking at the calm faces and lazy
movements of his new acquaintances, felt all over that sweet, drowsy
indolence which makes one want to sleep and stretch and smile; while
his new acquaintances looked at him good-naturedly and asked him
whether his father and mother were living, how much he earned a
month, how often he went to the theatre. . . .
Ognev recalled his expeditions about the neighbourhood, the picnics,
the fishing parties, the visit of the whole party to the convent to see the
Mother Superior Marfa, who had given each of the visitors a bead purse;
he recalled the hot, endless typically Russian arguments in which the
opponents, spluttering and banging the table with their fists,

misunderstand and interrupt one another, unconsciously contradict
themselves at every phrase, continually change the subject, and after
arguing for two or three hours, laugh and say: "Goodness knows what
we have been arguing about! Beginning with one thing and going on to
another!"
"And do you remember how the doctor and you and I rode to
Shestovo?" said Ivan Alexeyitch to Vera as they reached the copse. "It
was there that the crazy saint met us: I gave him a five-kopeck piece,
and he crossed himself three times and flung it into the rye. Good
heavens! I am carrying away such a mass