“Ah yes, you always deceive me and say it has come out.”
“No, really, it means . . . you’ll succeed. It has come out.”
“All right, all right, you sly puss! But isn’t it time we had tea?”
“I have ordered the samovar to be lit. I’ll see to it at once. Do you want to have it here? . . . Be quick and finish your lesson Pimochka, and let’s have a run.”
And Lisa went to the door.
“Lisa, Lizzie!” said her uncle, looking intently at his fork. “I think I’ve dropped a stitch again-pick it up for me, there’s a dear.”
“Directly, directly. But I must give out a loaf of sugar to be broken up.”
And really, three minutes later she ran back, went to her uncle and pinched his ear.
“That’s for dropping your stitches!” she said, laughing, and you haven’t done your task!”
“Well, well, never mind, never mind. Put it right-there’s a little knot or something.”
Lisa took the fork, drew a pin out of her tippet-which thereupon the breeze coming in at the door blew slightly open-and managing somehow to pick up the stitch with the pin pulled two loops through, and returned the fork to her uncle.
“Now give me a kiss for it,” she said, holding out her rosy cheek to him and pinning up her tippet. “You shall have rum with your tea today. It’s Friday, you know.”
And she again went into the tea-room.
“Come here and look, uncle, the hussars are coming!” she called from there in her clear voice.
Anna Fedorovna came with her brother into the tea-room, the windows of which overlooked the village, to see the hussars. Very little was visible from the windows-only a crowd moving in a cloud of dust.
“It’s a pity we have so little room, sister, and that the wing is not yet finished,” said the old man to Anna Fedorovna. “We might have invited the officers. Hussar officers are such splendid, gay young fellows, you know. It would have been good to see something of them.”
“Why of course, I should have been only too glad, brother; but you know yourself we have no room. There’s my bedroom, Lisa’s room, the drawing-room, and this room of yours, and that’s all. Really now, where could we put them? The village elder’s hut has been cleaned up for them: Michael Matveev says its quite clean now.”
“And we could have chosen a bridegroom for you from among them, Lizzie-a fine hussar!”
“I don’t want an hussar; I’d rather have an uhlan. Weren’t you in the uhlans, uncle? . . . I don’t want to have anything to do with these hussars. They are all said to be desperate fellows.” And Lisa blushed a little but again laughed her musical laugh.
“Here comes Ustyushka running; we must ask her what she has seen,” she added.
Anna Fedorovna told her to call Ustyushka.
“It’s not in you to keep to your work, you must needs run off to see the soldiers,” said Anna Fedorovna. “Well, where have the officers put up?”
“In Eromkin’s house, mistress. There are two of them, such handsome ones. One’s a count, they say!”
“And what’s his name?”
“Dazarov or Turbinov. . . . . I’m sorry-I’ve forgotten.”
“What a fool; can’t so much as tell us anything. You might at least have found out the name.”
“Well, I’ll run back.”
“Yes, I know you’re first-rate at that sort of thing. . . . No, let Daniel go. Tell him to go and ask whether the officers want anything, brother. One ought to show them some politeness after all. Say the mistress sent to inquire.”
The old people again sat down in the tea-room and Lisa went to the servants’ room to put into a box the sugar that had been broken up. Ustyushka was there telling about the hussars.
“Darling miss, what a handsome man that count is!” she said. “A regular cherubim with black eyebrows. There now, if you had a bridegroom like that you would be a couple of the right sort.”
The other maids smiled approvingly; the old nurse sighed as she sat knitting at a window and even whispered a prayer, drawing in her breath.
“So you liked the hussars very much?” said Lisa. “And you’re a good one at telling what you’ve seen. Go, please, and bring some of the cranberry juice, Ustyushka, to give the hussars something sour to drink.”
And Lisa, laughing, went out with the sugar basin in her hands.
“I should really like to have seen what that hussar is like,” she thought, “brown or fair? And he would have been glad to make our acquaintance I should think. . . . And if he goes away he’ll never know that I was here and thought about him. And how many such have already passed me by? Who sees me here except uncle and Ustyushka? Whichever way I do my hair, whatever sleeves I put on, no one looks at me with pleasure,” she thought with a sigh as she looked at her plump white arm. “I suppose he is tall, with large eyes, and certainly small black moustaches. . . . Here am I, more than twenty-two, and no one has fallen in love with me except pock-marked Ivan Ipatich, and four years ago I was even prettier. . . . And so my girlhood has passed without gladdening anyone. Oh, poor, poor country lass that I am!”
Her mother’s voice, calling her to pour out tea, roused the country lass from this momentary mation. She lifted her head with a start and went into the tea-room.
The best results are often obtained accidentally, and the more one tries the worse things turn out. In the country, people rarely try to educate their children and therefore unwittingly usually give them an excellent education. This was Particularly so in Lisa’s case. Anna Fedorovna, with her limited intellect and careless temperament, gave Lisa no education-did not teach her music or that very useful French language-but having accidentally borne a healthy pretty child by her deceased husband she gave her little daughter over to a wet-nurse and a dry-nurse, fed her, dressed her in cotton prints and goat-skin shoes, sent her out to walk and gather mushrooms and wild berries, engaged a student from the seminary to teach her reading, writing, and arithmetic, and when sixteen years had passed she casually found in Lisa a friend, an ever-kind-hearted, ever-cheerful soul, and an active housekeeper.
Anna Fedorovna, being kind-hearted, always had some children to bring up-either serf children or foundlings. Lisa began looking after them when she was ten years old: teaching them, dressing them, taking them to church, and checking them when they played too man pranks. Later on the decrepit kindly uncle, who had to be tended like a child, appeared on the scene. Then the servants and peasants came to the young lady with various requests and with their ailments, which latter she treated with elderberry, peppermint, and camphorated spirits. Then there was the household management which all fell on her shoulders of itself. Then an unsatisfied longing for love awoke and found its outlet only in Nature and religion.
And Lisa accidentally grew into an active, good-natured, cheerful, self-reliant, pure, and deeply religious woman. It is true that she suffered a little from vanity when she saw neighbours standing by her in church wearing fashionable bonnets brought from K — , and sometimes she was vexed to tears by her old mother’s whims and grumbling. She had dreams of love, too, in most absurd and sometimes crude forms, but these were dispersed by her useful activity which had grown into a necessity, and at the age of twenty-two there was not one spot or sting of remorse in the clear calm soul of the physically and morally beautifully developed maiden. Lisa was of medium height, plump rather than thin; her eyes were hazel, not large, and had slight shadows on the lower lids; and she had a long light-brown plait of hair.
She walked with big steps and with a slight sway-a “duck’s waddle” as the saying is. Her face, when she was occupied and not agitated by anything in Particular, seemed to say to everyone who looked into it: “It is a joy to live in the world when one has someone to love and a clear conscience.” Even in moments of vexation, perplexity, alarm, or sorrow, in spite of herself there shone-through the tear in her eye, her frownning left eyebrow, and her compressed lips-a kind straightforward spirit unspoilt by the intellect; it shone in the dimples of her cheeks, in the corners of her mouth, and in her beaming eyes accustomed to smile and to rejoice in life.
X
The air was still hot though the sun was setting when the squadron entered Morozovka. In front of them along the dusty village street trotted a brindled cow separated from its herd, looking around and now and then stopping and lowing, but never suspecting that all she had to do was to turn aside. The peasants-old men, women, and children-the servants from the manor-house, crowded on both sides of the street and eagerly watched the hussars as the latter rode through a thick cloud of dust, curbing their horses which occasionally stamped and snorted. On the right of the squadron were two officers who sat their fine black horses carelessly. One was Count Turbin, the commander, the other a very young man recently promoted from cadet, whose name was Polozov.
An
