The Rendezvous | Page 3

all about it. Besides, you see, it's raining." He yawned again. "I have a lot of work to do; you can't look after everything, and he is yet scolding. We are leaving to-morrow--"
"To-morrow?" uttered the girl, and fixed a frightened look upon him.
"To-morrow--Come, come, come, please," he replied quickly, vexed, noticing that she quivered, and bowed her head in silence. "Please, Akulina, don't cry. You know I can't bear it" (and he twitched his flat nose). "If you don't stop, I'll leave you right away. What nonsense--to whimper!"
"Well, I shan't, I shan't," said Akulina hastily, swallowing the tears with an effort. "So you're going away to-morrow?" she added, after a brief silence. "When will it please God to have me meet you again, Victor Alexandrich?"
"We'll meet, we'll meet again. If it isn't next year, it'll be later. My master, it seems, wants to enter the service in St. Petersburg," he went on, pronouncing the words carelessly and somewhat indistinctly. "And it may be that we'll go abroad."
"You will forget me, Victor Alexandrich," said Akulina sadly.
"No--why should I? I'll not forget you, only you had rallier be sensible; don't make a fool of yourself; obey your father--And I'll not forget you--Oh, no; oh, no." And he stretched himself calmly and yawned again.
"Do not forget me, Victor Alexandrich," she resumed in a beseeching voice. "I have loved you so much, it seems--all, it seems, for you--You tell me to obey father, Victor Alexandrich--How am I to obey my father--?"
"How's that?" He pronounced these words as if from the stomach, lying on his back and holding his hands under his head.
"Why, Victor Alexandrich--you know it yourself--"
She fell silent. Victor fingered his steel watch-chain.
"Akulina, you are not a foolish girl," he said at last, "therefore don't talk nonsense. It's for your own good, do you understand me? Of course, you are not foolish, you're not altogether a peasant, so to say, and your mother wasn't always a peasant either. Still, you are without education--therefore you must obey when you are told to."
"But it's terrible, Victor Alexandrich."
"Oh, what nonsense, my dear--what is she afraid of! What is that you have there," he added, moving close to her, "flowers?"
"Flowers," replied Akulina sadly. "I have picked some field tansies," she went on, with some animation. "They're good for the calves, And here I have some marigolds--for scrofula. Here, look, what a pretty flower! I haven't seen such a pretty flower in all my life. Here are forget-me-nots, and--and these I have picked for you," she added, taking from under the tansies a small bunch of cornflowers, tied around with a thin blade of grass; "do you want them?"
Victor held out his hand lazily, took the flowers, smelt them carelessly, and began to turn them around in his fingers, looking up with thoughtful importance. Akulina gazed at him. There was so much tender devotion, reverent obedience, and love in her pensive eyes. She at once feared him, and yet she dared not cry, and inwardly she bade him farewell, and admired him for the last time; and he lay there, stretched out like a sultan, and endured her admiration with magnanimous patience and condescension. I confess I was filled with indignation as I looked at his red face, which betrayed satisfied selfishness through his feigned contempt and indifference. Akulina was so beautiful at this moment. All her soul opened before him trustingly and passionately;--it reached out to him, caressed him, and he--He dropped the cornflowers on the grass, took out from the side-pocket of his coat a round glass in a bronze frame and began to force it into his eye; but no matter how hard he tried to hold it with his knitted brow, his raised cheek, and even with his nose, the glass dropped out and fell into his hands.
"What's this?" asked Akulina at last, with surprise.
"A lorgnette," he replied importantly.
"What is it for?"
"To see better."
"Let me see it."
Victor frowned, but gave her the glass.
"Look out; don't break it."
"Don't be afraid, I'll not break it." She lifted it timidly to her eye.
"I can't see anything," she said naively.
"Shut your eye," he retorted in the tone of a dissatisfied teacher. She closed the eye before which she held the glass.
"Not that eye, not that one, you fool! The other one!" exclaimed Victor, and, not allowing her to correct her mistake, he took the lorgnette away from her.
Akulina blushed, laughed slightly, and turned away.
"It seems it's not for us."
"Of course not!"
The poor girl maintained silence, and heaved a deep sigh.
"Oh, Victor Alexandrich, how will I get along without you?" she said suddenly.
Victor wiped the lorgnette and put it back into his pocket.
"Yes, yes," he said at last. "At first it will really be hard for you." He tapped her on the shoulder condescendingly; she quietly took his hand