A.P. Chekhov
- The Duel
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XXI
VII
Kirilin and Atchmianov climbed up the
mountain by the path. Atchmianov dropped behind and stopped,
while Kirilin went up to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna.
"Good-evening," he said, touching his cap.
"Good-evening."
"Yes!" said Kirilin, looking at the sky and pondering.
"Why 'yes'?" asked Nadyezhda Fyodorovna after a brief pause,
noticing that Atchmianov was watching them both.
"And so it seems," said the officer, slowly, "that our love has
withered before it has blossomed, so to speak. How do you wish
me to understand it? Is it a sort of coquetry on your part, or
do you look upon me as a nincompoop who can be treated as you
choose."
"It was a mistake! Leave me alone!" Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said
sharply, on that beautiful, marvellous evening, looking at him
with terror and asking herself with bewilderment, could there
really have been a moment when that man attracted her and had
been near to her?
"So that's it!" said Kirilin; he thought in silence for a few
minutes and said: "Well, I'll wait till you are in a better
humour, and meanwhile I venture to assure you I am a gentleman,
and I don't allow any one to doubt it. Adieu!"
He touched his cap again and walked off, making his way between
the bushes. After a short interval Atchmianov approached
hesitatingly.
"What a fine evening!" he said with a slight Armenian accent.
He was nice-looking, fashionably dressed, and behaved
unaffectedly like a well-bred youth, but Nadyezhda Fyodorovna
did not like him because she owed his father three hundred
roubles; it was displeasing to her, too, that a shopkeeper had
been asked to the picnic, and she was vexed at his coming up to
her that evening when her heart felt so pure.
"The picnic is a success altogether," he said, after a pause.
"Yes," she agreed, and as though suddenly remembering her debt,
she said carelessly: "Oh, tell them in your shop that Ivan
Andreitch will come round in a day or two and will pay three
hundred roubles. . . . I don't remember exactly what it is."
"I would give another three hundred if you would not mention
that debt every day. Why be prosaic?"
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna laughed; the amusing idea occurred to her
that if she had been willing and sufficiently immoral she might
in one minute be free from her debt. If she, for instance, were
to turn the head of this handsome young fool! How amusing,
absurd, wild it would be really! And she suddenly felt a longing
to make him love her, to plunder him, throw him over, and then
to see what would come of it.
"Allow me to give you one piece of advice," Atchmianov said
timidly. "I beg you to beware of Kirilin. He says horrible
things about you everywhere."
"It doesn't interest me to know what every fool says of me,"
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said coldly, and the amusing thought of
playing with handsome young Atchmianov suddenly lost its charm.
"We must go down," she said; "they're calling us."
The fish soup was ready by now. They were ladling it out by
platefuls, and eating it with the religious solemnity with which
this is only done at a picnic; and every one thought the fish
soup very good, and thought that at home they had never eaten
anything so nice. As is always the case at picnics, in the mass
of dinner napkins, parcels, useless greasy papers fluttering in
the wind, no one knew where was his glass or where his bread.
They poured the wine on the carpet and on their own knees, spilt
the salt, while it was dark all round them and the fire burnt
more dimly, and every one was too lazy to get up and put wood
on. They all drank wine, and even gave Kostya and Katya half a
glass each. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna drank one glass and then
another, got a little drunk and forgot about Kirilin.
"A splendid picnic, an enchanting evening," said Laevsky,
growing lively with the wine. "But I should prefer a fine winter
to all this. 'His beaver collar is silver with hoar-frost.'
"Every one to his taste," observed Von Koren.
Laevsky felt uncomfortable; the heat of the campfire was beating
upon his back, and the hatred of Von Koren upon his breast and
face: this hatred on the part of a decent, clever man, a feeling
in which there probably lay hid a well-grounded reason,
humiliated him and enervated him, and unable to stand up against
it, he said in a propitiatory tone:
"I am passionately fond of nature, and I regret that I'm not a
naturalist. I envy you."
"Well, I don't envy you, and don't regret it," said Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna. "I don't understand how any one can seriously
interest himself in beetles and ladybirds while the people are
suffering."
Laevsky shared her opinion. He was absolutely ignorant of
natural science, and so could never reconcile himself to the
authoritative tone and the learned and profound air of the
people who devoted themselves to the whiskers of ants and the
claws of beetles, and he always felt vexed that these people,
relying on these whiskers, claws, and something they called
protoplasm (he always imagined it in the form of an oyster),
should undertake to decide questions involving the origin and
life of man. But in Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's words he heard a note
of falsity, and simply to contradict her he said: "The point is
not the ladybirds, but the deductions made from them."
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