AFTER breakfast they all dispersed. Eugène as usual went to his study, but instead of beginning to read or write his letters, he sat smoking one cigarette after another and thinking. He was terribly surprised and disturbed by the unexpected recrudescence within him of the bad feeling from which he had thought himself free since his marriage. Since then he had not once experienced that feeling, either for her – the woman he had known – or for any other woman except his wife. He had often felt glad of this emancipation, and now suddenly a chance meeting, seemingly so unimportant, revealed to him the fact that he was not free. What now tormented him was not that he was yielding to that feeling and desired her – he did not dream of so doing – but that the feeling was awake within him and he had to be on his guard against it. He had no doubt but that he would suppress it.
He had a letter to answer and a paper to write, and sat down at his writing-table and began to work. Having finished it and quite forgotten what had disturbed him, he went out to go to the stables. And again as ill-luck would have it, either by unfortunate chance or intentionally, as soon as he stepped from the porch a red skirt and red kerchief appeared from round the corner, and she went past him swinging her arms and swaying her body. She not only went past him, but on passing him ran, as if playfully, to overtake her fellow-servant.
Again the bright midday, the nettles, the back of Daniel’s hut, and in the shade of the plane-trees her smiling face biting some leaves, rose in his imagination.
‘No, it is impossible to let matters continue so,’ he said to himself, and waiting till the women had passed out of sight he went to the office.
It was just the dinner-hour and he hoped to find the steward still there, and so it happened. The steward was just waking up from his after-dinner nap, and stretching himself and yawning was standing in the office, looking at the herdsman who was telling him something.
‘Vasíli Nikoláich!’ said Eugène to the steward.
‘What is your pleasure?’
‘I want to speak to you.’
‘What is your pleasure?’
‘Just finish what you are saying.’
‘Aren’t you going to bring it in?’ said Vasíli Nikoláich to the herdsman.
‘It’s heavy, Vasíli Nikoláich.’
‘What is it?’ asked Eugène.
‘Why, a cow has calved in the meadow. Well, all right, I’ll order them to harness a horse at once. Tell Nicholas Lysúkh to get out the dray cart.’
The herdsman went out.
‘Do you know,’ began Eugène, flushing and conscious that he was doing so, ‘do you know, Vasíli Nikoláich, while I was a bachelor I went off the track a bit.… You may have heard …’
Vasíli Nikoláich, evidently sorry for his master, said with smiling eyes: ‘Is it about Stepanída?’
‘Why, yes. Look here. Please, please do not engage her to help in the house. You understand, it is very awkward for me …’
‘Yes, it must have been Ványa the clerk who arranged it.’
‘Yes, please … and hadn’t the rest of the phosphates better be strewn?’ said Eugène, to hide his confusion.
‘Yes, I am just going to see to it.’
So the matter ended, and Eugène calmed down, hoping that as he had lived for a year without seeing her, so things would go on now. ‘Besides, Vasíli Nikoláich will speak to Iván the clerk; Iván will speak to her, and she will understand that I don’t want it,’ said Eugène to himself, and he was glad that he had forced himself to speak to Vasíli Nikoláich, hard as it had been to do so.
‘Yes, it is better, much better, than that feeling of doubt, that feeling of shame.’ He shuddered at the mere remembrance of his sin in thought.
XII
THE moral effort he had made to overcome his shame and speak to Vasíli Nikoláich tranquillized Eugène. It seemed to him that the matter was all over now. Liza at once noticed that he was quite calm, and even happier than usual. ‘No doubt he was upset by our mothers pin-pricking one another. It really is disagreeable, especially for him who is so sensitive and noble, always to hear such unfriendly and ill-mannered insinuations,’ thought she.
The next day was Trinity Sunday. It was a beautiful day, and the peasant-women, on their way into the woods to plait wreaths, came, according to custom, to the landowner’s home and began to sing and dance. Mary Pávlovna and Varvára Alexéevna came out onto the porch in smart clothes, carrying sunshades, and went up to the ring of singers. With them, in a jacket of Chinese silk, came out the uncle, a flabby libertine and drunkard, who was living that summer with Eugène.
