“Let go the bridle, Mitrofan!” he cried as he at last caught the stirrup; the next moment he swung himself into the saddle.
Feeling his rider’s spurs, Fairway gave in at once; he changed pace several times snorting and tossing his head, and started off from the gate at a broad, swinging gallop.
Very soon the swift ride, the chilly wind whistling in his ears, and the fresh smell of the autumnal, slightly damp earth soothed and roused Bobrov’s lax nerves. Besides, each time he set out for Zinenko’s, he felt pleasantly and excitingly elated.
The Zinenko family consisted of father, mother, and five daughters. The father was in charge of the mill warehouse. An indolent and seemingly good-natured giant, he was actually a most pushing and insidious fellow. He was one of those who under cover of speaking the truth to everybody’s face flatter their superiors agreeably if crudely, inform brazenly against their colleagues, and treat their subordinates in a monstrously despotic fashion. He would argue over the least trifle, shouting hoarsely and refusing to listen to any objections; he liked good food and had a weakness for Ukrainian choral songs, which he invariably sang out of tune. He was unwittingly henpecked by his wife, a little, sickly woman with mincing manners and tiny grey eyes set absurdly close to each other.
The daughters’ names were Maka, Beta, Shura, Nina, and Kasya.
Each of the daughters had been assigned a role in the family.
Maka, a girl with the profile of a fish, was reputed to have an angelic disposition. “Our Maka is modesty itself,” her parents would say when, during a stroll or an evening party, she effaced herself in the interest of her younger sisters (she was already on the wrong side of thirty).
Beta was considered clever, wore a pince-nez, and they even said that once she had wanted to enter courses for women. She held her head bent to one side, like an old trace-horse, and walked with a dipping gait. She would assail every fresh visitor with the contention that women are better and more honest than men, or say with a naive playfulness, “You’re so shrewd – won’t you guess my character?” When conversation drifted to one of the standard domestic topics, such as “Who is greater: Lermontov or Pushkin?” or “Does Nature make people kinder?” Beta would be pushed to the fore like a battle elephant.
The third daughter, Shura, had made it her specialty to play cards with every bachelor in turn. As soon as she found out that her partner was going to get married she would pick a new one, subduing her vexation and annoyance. And the game was sure to be accompanied by sweet little jokes and bewitching roguery, her partner being called “mean” and rapped on the hands with cards.
Nina was considered the family’s favourite, a spoilt but lovely child. She stood out strikingly among her sisters, with their bulky figures and rather coarse, vulgar faces. Perhaps Mme Zinenko alone could have explained the origin of Nina’s delicate, fragile little figure, her nearly aristocratic hands, her pretty, darkish face with its fascinating moles, her small pink ears, and her luxuriant, slightly curly hair. Her parents set great hopes upon her and therefore indulged her in everything; she was free to eat her fill of sweets, speak with a charming burr, and even dress better than her sisters.
The youngest, Kasya, was just over fourteen, but the extraordinary child was already head and shoulders taller than her mother, and had far outstripped her older sisters by the powerful prominence of her forms. Her figure had long been attracting the eyes of the young men at the mill, who were completely deprived of feminine company because the mill was far removed from town, and Kasya received their stares with the naive impudence of a precocious girl.
This distribution of the family charms was well known at the mill, and a wag had once said that one ought to marry all the five Zinenko girls at once, or none at all. Engineers and students doing their practical course looked upon Zinenko’s house as a hotel and thronged it from morning till night; they ate a great deal and drank even more, but avoided the meshes of wedlock with amazing dexterity.
Bobrov was rather disliked in the Zinenko family. Mme Zinenko, who sought to bring everything into line with trite and happily tedious provincial decorum, was shocked in her philistine tastes by Bobrov’s behaviour. The sarcastic jokes he cracked when in good spirits made all eyes open wide; and when he kept a close mouth for many an evening on end because he was tired and irritated, he was suspected of being secretive, proud, and tacitly ironic; moreover, he was suspected – worst of all – of “writing stories for magazines and picking characters for them.”
Bobrov was aware of this vague hostility expressed by lack of attention at table, or by the surprised shrugs of Mme Zinenko, but still he continued to call at the house. He could not tell whether he loved Nina. When he chanced to stay away from the house for three or four days he could not think of her without his heart beating with a sweet and disturbing sadness. He pictured her slender, graceful figure, her shaded languid eyes as they smiled, and the fragrance of her body, which for some reason reminded him of the scent of young, sticky poplar buds.
But he had only to spend with the Zinenkos three evenings in a row to feel bored by their company, by their talk – always the same in the same circumstances – by the banal and unnatural expression of their faces. Trivially playful relations had been established once and for all between the five “young ladies” and the “admirers” who “courted” them (terms used by the Zinenkos). Both sides pretended to make up two warring camps. Every now and again one of the admirers stole some object from his young lady for fun, and assured her that he would never give it hack; the young ladies sulked and whispered among themselves, calling the joker “mean” and laughing loudly the while, with a stiff, grating laughter. This sort of thing recurred daily, the words and gestures used being absolutely the same as the day before. Bobrov would return from the Zinenkos’ with a headache and with nerves set on edge by their provincial frills.
Thus the yearning for Nina, for the nervous grasp of her always warm hands, alternated in Bobrov’s heart with aversion to the monotony and affected manners of her family. There were moments when he was quite ready to propose to her, although he realized that she, with her vulgar coquetry and spiritual inanity, would turn their married life into hell, and that they thought and talked in different languages, as it were. But he could not make up his mind and kept silent.
Now, as he rode to Shepetovka, he knew in advance what they were going to say in this or that case and how, and could even picture the expression on their faces. He knew that when from their veranda they sighted him coming on horseback, the young ladies, who were always waiting for “nice young men,” would start a long dispute over who was coming. And when he drew near, the one who had guessed rightly would jump and clap her hands and click her tongue, exclaiming perkily, “Well, now? I guessed it, didn’t I?” Then she would run to Anna Afanasyevna. “Bobrov’s coming, Mamma, I guessed it first!” And her mother, who would be lazily drying the teacups, would say to Nina – none other than Nina – as if she were telling her something funny and unexpected, “You know, Nina, Bobrov’s coming.” And finally they would all be loud in their surprise at seeing Bobrov step in.
IV
Fairway trotted along, snorting sonorously and tugging at the reins. The Shepetovka estate came into view ahead. Its white walls and red roof hardly showed through the thick green of lilacs and acacias. Below, a small pond stood out from its setting of green shores.
A woman was standing on the house steps. From afar Bobrov recognized Nina by the bright yellow blouse which set off her dusky complexion so beautifully, and at once, reining in the horse, he straightened up, and pulled back his feet, thrust deeply into the stirrups.
“Riding your treasure again, eh? I simply can’t bear the sight of that monster!” cried Nina in the gay and wayward tone of a spoilt child. She had long been in the habit of teasing him about his horse to whom he was so much attached. Someone was always being teased at Zinenko’s for something or other.
Bobrov threw the reins to the mill groom who had run up, patted the horse’s strong neck, dark with sweat, and followed Nina into the drawing-room. Anna Afanasyevna, who