The Party | Page 7

. ."
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 stifling. 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 tangle of wild pear, crab-apple, sorrel, young oaks,

and hopbine, clouds of tiny black flies swarmed 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 martinet 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 bellows, 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 condescending
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 paltry acres
and the rank of a titular 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 dotage, 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 assented. "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
tiresome 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