The Darling | Page 3

wore a straw hat, a white waistcoat, and a gold watch-chain, and
looked more a country gentleman than a man in trade.
"Everything happens as it is ordained, Olga Semyonovna," he said
gravely, with a sympathetic note in his voice; "and if any of our dear
ones die, it must be because it is the will of God, so we ought have
fortitude and bear it submissively."
After seeing Olenka to her gate, he said good-bye and went on. All day
afterwards she heard his sedately dignified voice, and whenever she
shut her eyes she saw his dark beard. She liked him very much. And
apparently she had made an impression on him too, for not long
afterwards an elderly lady, with whom she was only slightly acquainted,
came to drink coffee with her, and as soon as she was seated at table
began to talk about Pustovalov, saying that he was an excellent man
whom one could thoroughly depend upon, and that any girl would be
glad to marry him. Three days later Pustovalov came himself. He did

not stay long, only about ten minutes, and he did not say much, but
when he left, Olenka loved him--loved him so much that she lay awake
all night in a perfect fever, and in the morning she sent for the elderly
lady. The match was quickly arranged, and then came the wedding.
Pustovalov and Olenka got on very well together when they were
married.
Usually he sat in the office till dinner-time, then he went out on
business, while Olenka took his place, and sat in the office till evening,
making up accounts and booking orders.
"Timber gets dearer every year; the price rises twenty per cent," she
would say to her customers and friends. "Only fancy we used to sell
local timber, and now Vassitchka always has to go for wood to the
Mogilev district. And the freight!" she would add, covering her cheeks
with her hands in horror. "The freight!"
It seemed to her that she had been in the timber trade for ages and ages,
and that the most important and necessary thing in life was timber; and
there was something intimate and touching to her in the very sound of
words such as "baulk," "post," "beam," "pole," "scantling," "batten,"
"lath," "plank," etc.
At night when she was asleep she dreamed of perfect mountains of
planks and boards, and long strings of wagons, carting timber
somewhere far away. She dreamed that a whole regiment of six-inch
beams forty feet high, standing on end, was marching upon the
timber-yard; that logs, beams, and boards knocked together with the
resounding crash of dry wood, kept falling and getting up again, piling
themselves on each other. Olenka cried out in her sleep, and Pustovalov
said to her tenderly: "Olenka, what's the matter, darling? Cross
yourself!"
Her husband's ideas were hers. If he thought the room was too hot, or
that business was slack, she thought the same. Her husband did not care
for entertainments, and on holidays he stayed at home. She did
likewise.
"You are always at home or in the office," her friends said to her. "You
should go to the theatre, darling, or to the circus."
"Vassitchka and I have no time to go to theatres," she would answer
sedately. "We have no time for nonsense. What's the use of these
theatres?"

On Saturdays Pustovalov and she used to go to the evening service; on
holidays to early mass, and they walked side by side with softened
faces as they came home from church. There was a pleasant fragrance
about them both, and her silk dress rustled agreeably. At home they
drank tea, with fancy bread and jams of various kinds, and afterwards
they ate pie. Every day at twelve o'clock there was a savoury smell of
beet-root soup and of mutton or duck in their yard, and on fast-days of
fish, and no one could pass the gate without feeling hungry. In the
office the samovar was always boiling, and customers were regaled
with tea and cracknels. Once a week the couple went to the baths and
returned side by side, both red in the face.
"Yes, we have nothing to complain of, thank God," Olenka used to say
to her acquaintances. "I wish every one were as well off as Vassitchka
and I."
When Pustovalov went away to buy wood in the Mogilev district, she
missed him dreadfully, lay awake and cried. A young veterinary
surgeon in the army, called Smirnin, to whom they had let their lodge,
used sometimes to come in in the evening. He used to talk to her and
play cards with her, and this entertained her in her husband's absence.
She was particularly interested in what he told her of his home