‘He shouted too?’
’Yes. He shouted at them. They seemed
to be accusing each other. And if you could have
had a peep at these visitors. They had swarthy,
heavy faces with high cheek bones and hook noses, both
about forty years old, shabbily dressed, hot and dusty,
looking like workmen—not workmen, and not
gentlemen—goodness knows what sort of people
they were.’
‘And he went away with them?’
’Yes. He gave them something to eat and
went off with them. The woman of the house told
me they ate a whole huge pot of porridge between the
two of them. They outdid one another, she said,
and gobbled it up like wolves.’
Elena gave a faint smile.
‘You will see,’ she said, ’all this
will be explained into something very prosaic.’
’I hope it may! But you need not use that
word. There is nothing prosaic about Insarov,
though Shubin does maintain——’
‘Shubin!’ Elena broke in, shrugging her
shoulders. ’But you must confess these
two good men gobbling up porridge——’
‘Even Themistocles had his supper on the eve
of Salamis,’ observed Bersenyev with a smile.
’Yes; but then there was a battle next day.
Any way you will let me know when he comes back,’
said Elena, and she tried to change the subject, but
the conversation made little progress. Zoya made
her appearance and began walking about the room on
tip-toe, giving them thereby to understand that Anna
Vassilyevna was not yet awake.
Bersenyev went away.
In the evening of the same day a note from him was
brought to Elena. ‘He has come back,’
he wrote to her, ’sunburnt and dusty to his very
eyebrows; but where and why he went I don’t know;
won’t you find out?’
‘Won’t you find out!’ Elena whispered,
‘as though he talked to me!’
The next day, at two o’clock, Elena was standing
in the garden before a small kennel, where she was
rearing two puppies. (A gardener had found them deserted
under a hedge, and brought them to the young mistress,
being told by the laundry-maids that she took pity
on beasts of all sorts. He was not wrong in his
reckoning. Elena had given him a quarter-rouble.)
She looked into the kennel, assured herself that the
puppies were alive and well, and that they had been
provided with fresh straw, turned round, and almost
uttered a cry; down an alley straight towards her
was walking Insarov, alone.
‘Good-morning,’ he said, coming up to
her and taking off his cap. She noticed that
he certainly had got much sunburnt during the last
three days. ’I meant to have come here
with Andrei Petrovitch, but he was rather slow in
starting; so here I am without him. There is no
one in your house; they are all asleep or out of doors,
so I came on here.’
‘You seem to be apologising,’ replied
Elena. ’There’s no need to do that.
We are always very glad to see you. Let us sit
here on the bench in the shade.’
