IX

At four o’clock next Wednesday, the station was packed with the picnickers. Everybody felt gay and at ease. For once Kvashnin’s visit was winding up more happily than anybody had dared to expect. He had neither stormed nor hurled thunderbolts at anyone, and nobody had been told to go; in fact, it was rumoured that most of the clerical staff would get a rise in the near future. Besides, the picnic bid fair to be very entertaining. Beshenaya Balka, where it was to be, was less than ten miles away if you rode on horseback, and the road was extremely picturesque. The sunny weather which had set in a week earlier enhanced the trip.

There were some ninety guests; they clustered in animated groups on the platform, talking and laughing loudly. French, German, and Polish phrases could be heard along with Russian conversation. Three Belgians had brought their cameras, hoping to take flash snapshots. General curiosity was roused by the complete secrecy about the details of the picnic. Svezhevsky with a mysterious and important air hinted at certain “surprises” but refused to be more specific.

The first surprise was a special train. At five o’clock sharp, a new ten-wheeled locomotive of American make left its shed. The ladies could not keep hack cries of amazement and delight: the huge engine was decked with bunting and fresh flowers. Green garlands of oak leaves, intermingled with bunches of asters, dahlias, stocks, and carnations, entwined its steel body in a spiral, wound up the chimney, hung from it down to the whistle, and climbed up again to form a blossoming wall against the cab. In the golden rays of the setting autumn sun, the steel and brass parts of the engine glistened showily through the greenery and flowers. The six first-class carriages stretching along the platform were to take the picnickers to the 200th Mile station, from which it was only two hundred yards or so to Beshenaya Balka.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Vasily Terentyevich has asked me to inform you that he’s paying all the picnic expenses,” Svezhevsky said again and again, hurrying from one group to another.

A large number of people flocked round him, and he gave them further explanations.

“Vasily Terentyevich was greatly pleased with the welcome extended to him here, and he is happy to be able to reciprocate. He’s paying all the expenses.”

Unable to restrain the kind of impulse which makes a valet boast of his master’s generosity, he added weightily, “We spent three thousand five hundred and ninety rubles on the picnic!”

“You mean you went halves with Mr. Kvashnin?” asked a mocking voice from behind. Svezhevsky spun round to find that the venomous question had come from Andreas, who, impassive as usual, was looking at him, hands deep in his trouser pockets.

“I beg your pardon? What was it you said, please?” asked Svezhevsky, his face reddening painfully.

“It was you who said something. ‘We spent three thousand’. you said, and so I assume that you meant yourself and Mr. Kvashnin. If that’s the case, it is my agreeable duty to tell you that, while I accept the favour from Mr. Kvashnin, I may very well refuse to accept it from Mr. Svezhevsky.”

“Oh, no, no! You’ve misunderstood me,” stammered Svezhevsky. “It’s Vasily Terentyevich who’s done it all. I’m simply – er – his confidant. An agent or something like that,” he added with a wry smile.

The Zinenkos, accompanied by Kvashnin and Shelkovnikov, arrived almost simultaneously with the train. But no sooner did Kvashnin alight from the carriage than a tragicomic incident occurred that no one could have foreseen. Since early morning, having heard about the planned picnic, workmen’s wives, sisters, and mothers had begun to gather at the station, many of them bringing their babies with them. With a look of stolid patience on their sunburnt, haggard faces, they had been sitting for many long hours on the station steps or on the ground, in the shadow cast by the walls. There were more than two hundred of them. Asked by the station staff what they wanted, they said they must see “the fat, red-headed boss.” The watchman tried to send them away but the uproar they raised made him give up the attempt and leave them alone.

Each carriage that pulled up caused a momentary stir among the women, but they settled back the moment they saw that this was not the “fat, red-headed boss.”

Hardly had Kvashnin stepped down on the footboard, clutching at the box, puffing and tilting the carriage, when the women closed in on him and dropped on their knees. The young, high-mettled horses shied and started at the noise of the crowd; it was all the driver could do to keep them in check by straining hard at the reins. At first Kvashnin could not make head or tail of it: the women were shouting all together, holding out their babies; tears were streaming down their bronzed faces.

Kvashnin saw that there was no breaking through the live ring in which he found himself.

“Quiet, women! Stop yelling!” he boomed, drowning their voices. “This isn’t a market, is it? I can’t hear a thing. Let one of you tell me what’s up.”

But each of the women thought she should be the one to speak. The hubbub grew louder, and the tears flew even more freely.

“Please, master, help us! We can’t stand it any more! It’s worn us thin! We’re dying – children and all! The cold’s just killing us!”

“Well, what do you want? What are you dying of?” Kvashnin bellowed again. “But don’t shout all at once! You there, speak up.” He poked his finger at a tall woman who was handsome in spite of the pallor of her weary face. “And let the others keep quiet!”

Most of the women stopped shouting, but continued to sob and wail softly, wiping their eyes and noses on the dirty hems of their skirts.

Even so, there were no less than twenty speaking at a time.

“We’re dying of cold, master! Please do something. It’s more than we can stand. They put us into barracks for the winter, but how can you live there? They call ‘em barracks, sure enough, but it’s chips they’re built of. Even now it’s terrible cold in them at night – makes your teeth chatter. And what: are we going to do in winter? At least have pity on our little ones – help us, dear master! At least get stoves built. There’s no place to cook our meals – we do our cooking outside. The men are at work all day, soaked and shivering. And when they get back home they can’t dry their clothes.”

Kvashnin was trapped. Whichever way he turned, his path was barred by prostrate or kneeling women. And when he tried to force his way out, they would cling to his feet and the skirts of his long grey coat. Seeing that he was helpless, he beckoned to Shelkovnikov and, when the other had elbowed his way through the dense crowd, he asked him angrily in French, “Did you hear? What’s the meaning of this?”

Shelkovnikov was taken aback.

“I wrote to the Board more than once,” he mumbled. “There was a shortage of labour – it was summer-time, mowing was on – and the high prices – the Board wouldn’t authorize it. It couldn’t be helped.”

“So when are you going to start rebuilding the workmen’s barracks?” asked Kvashnin sternly.

“I can’t tell for certain. They’ll have to put up with it somehow. We must first make haste about quarters for the clerical staff.”

“The outrageous things that are going on here under your management!” grumbled Kvashnin. He turned to the women and said aloud, “Listen, women! Tomorrow they’ll start building stoves for you, and they’ll roof your barracks with shingles. D’you hear?”

“Yes, master! Thank you so much! Of course we heard you!” cried joyous voices. “That’s fine – you can rely on it when the master himself has ordered it. Thank you! Please allow us also to pick up the chips at the building site.”

“All right, you may do that.”

“Because there are Circassians posted everywhere, and they threaten us with their whips when we come.”

“Never mind – you come and take the chips. Nobody’ll harm you,” Kvashnin said reassuringly. “And now, women, off you go and cook your soup! And be quick about it!” he shouted, with an encouraging dash. “Have a couple of cartloads of bricks delivered to the barracks tomorrow,” he said to Shelkovnikov in an undertone. “That’ll comfort them for a long time. Let them look and be happy.”

The women were scattering in quite a cheerful mood.

“Mind you, if those stoves aren’t built we’ll ask the engineers to come and warm us,” cried the woman whom Kvashnin had told to speak up for the others.

“So we shall!” added another woman pertly. “Then let the boss himself warm us. See how fat and jolly he is. We’ll he warmer with him than by the stove.”

This incident, which ended so happily, raised everybody’s spirits. Even Kvashnin, who at first had been frowning at the manager, laughed when the women asked to be warmed, and took Shelkovnikov by the elbow as a sign of reconciliation.

“You see, my friend,” he said to Shelkovnikov, heavily climbing up the station steps with him, “you must know how to talk to those people. You may promise them anything you like – aluminium homes, an eight-hour working day, or a steak every morning, but you must do it with a great deal of assurance. I swear I could put down the stormiest popular demonstration in half an hour with mere promises.”

Kvashnin got on the train, laughing heartily as he recalled the details of the women’s rebellion which he had just quelled. Three minutes later the train started. The coachmen were told to drive straight to Beshenaya Balka, as the company planned to come back by carriage, with torches.

Nina’s behaviour perplexed Bobrov. He had awaited her arrival at the station with an excited impatience that had beset him the night before. His former doubts were gone; he believed that happiness was near, and never had the world seemed to him so beautiful, people so kind, or life so easy and joyful, as they did now. As he thought of his meeting with Nina, he tried involuntarily to picture it in advance, composing tender, passionate and eloquent phrases and then laughing at himself. Why think up words of love? They would come of themselves when they were needed, and would be much more beautiful, much warmer.

He recalled a poem he had read in a magazine, in which the poet said to his sweetheart that they were not going to swear to each other because vows would have been an insult to their trusting and ardent love.

Bobrov saw the Zinenkos’ two carriages arrive after Kvashnin’s troika. Nina was in the first. Wearing a pale-yellow dress trimmed with broad lace of the same colour at the crescent-shaped low neck, and a broad-brimmed white Italian hat adorned with a bouquet of tea-roses, she seemed to him paler and graver than usual. She caught sight of him from afar, but did not give him a significant look as he would have expected. In fact, he fancied that she deliberately turned away from him. And when he ran up to the carriage to help her to alight, she jumped nimbly out on the other side, as if to forestall him. He felt a pang of foreboding, but hastened to reassure himself. “Poor Nina, she’s ashamed of her decision and her love. She imagines that now anyone can easily read her inmost thoughts in her eyes. The delightful naivete of it!”

He was sure that Nina would herself make an opportunity, as she had done previously at the station, to exchange a few confidential words with him. But she was apparently absorbed by Kvashnin’s parley with the women and she never looked back at Bobrov, not even stealthily. Suddenly his heart began to beat in alarm and anguish. He made up his mind to walk up to the Zinenko family who kept together in a close group – the other ladies seemed to cut them – and, taking advantage of the noise which held the general attention, ask Nina at least by a look why she was so indifferent to him.

Bowing to Anna Afanasyevna and kissing her hand, he tried to read in her eyes whether she knew anything. Yes, she dearly did: her thin, angular eyebrows – suggesting a false character, as Bobrov often thought – were knitted resentfully, and her lips wore a haughty expression. Bobrov inferred that Nina had told everything to her mother, who had scolded her.

He stepped up to Nina, but she did not so much as glance at him. Her hand lay limp and cold in his trembling hand as he clasped it. Instead of responding to his greeting she turned her head to Beta and exchanged some trivial remarks with her. He read into that hasty manoeuvre of hers something guilty, something cowardly that shrank from a forthright answer. He felt his knees give way, and a chill feeling came into his mouth. He did not know what to think. Even if Nina had let out her secret to her mother, she could have said to him by one of those swift, eloquent glances that women instinctively command, “Yes, you’ve guessed right, she does know about our talk. But I haven’t changed, dear, I haven’t changed, don’t worry.” But she had preferred to turn away. “Never mind, I’ll get an answer from her at the picnic,” he thought, with a vague presentiment of something disastrous and dastardly. “She’ll have to tell me anyway.”