Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [31]
At the gate of the summer house the lieutenant appeared, brilliant in the moonlight. He was pale from his drinking bout, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, and his hair disheveled.
“Why?” he repeated.
Olya lifted her head and saw Yegorov. She looked at me, and then at him, and then at me again. I laughed, and her face lit up. She stepped forward, a cry of joy on her lips. I thought she would be angry with us, but it was not in her to be angry. She made another step forward, thought for a moment, and then threw herself on Yegorov, who had quickly buttoned up his waistcoat and opened wide his arms. Olya fell against his chest. Yegorov broke out into peals of laughter, but he turned his head to one side so as not to breathe on her, and he murmured all kinds of wonderful nonsense.
“You shouldn’t have done it.… It’s not my fault, though,” Olya stammered. “It was what Papa and Mama wanted.…”
I turned round and strode back to the brilliantly lit castle.
There, in the castle, the guests were making preparations for congratulating the betrothed pair. They kept glancing impatiently at the clock. In the hallway the waiters were carrying trays and jostling one another: there were bottles and glasses on the trays. Chaikhidzev was impatiently squeezing his right hand with his left, and his eyes were searching for Olya. The Princess was wandering through all the rooms of the castle, looking for Olya, bent on giving her instructions—she should know how to conduct herself towards her mother, and so on, and so on. And we laughed.
“Have you seen Olya?” the Princess asked me.
“No.”
“Then go and find her.”
I went out into the garden and twice circled the castle, my hands behind my back. Our artist blew a note on a trumpet. It was the signal that meant: “Hold her! Don’t let her escape!” From the summer house Yegorov answered with an owl’s cry, which meant: “All’s well! Am holding her!”
I wandered around for a little while and then returned to the house. In the hallway the waiters had put their trays down on the tables and stood empty-handed, staring dully at the guests. The guests themselves were gazing at the clock with perplexed looks on their faces. The pianos were silent. A dull and brooding silence reigned oppressively in all the rooms.
“Where’s Olya?” the Princess asked me. She was purple.
“I don’t know. She is not in the garden.”
The Princess shrugged her shoulders.
“Doesn’t she realize she is long overdue?” she asked, pulling at my sleeve.
I shrugged my shoulders. The Princess moved away and whispered something to Chaikhidzev, who also shook his shoulders. The Princess pulled at his sleeve.
“Complete idiot!” she muttered, and went running through all the rooms.
The maids and some schoolboys who were related to Olya ran noisily down the steps and went searching for the vanished fiancée in the depths of the garden. I, too, went into the garden. I was afraid Yegorov would not be able to keep Olya much longer: and our carefully contrived plot would come to nothing. I went straight to the summer house. My fears were unfounded. Olya was sitting beside Yegorov, gesticulating with her little hands, whispering, whispering.… Whenever Olya stopped whispering, Yegorov would begin murmuring. She was explaining her “ideas,” as the Princess would call them. He sweetened each word with a kiss. When he spoke to her, not a moment passed without a kiss, and somehow he succeeded in holding his mouth sideways so that she would not smell his vodka-laden breath. They were both completely happy, oblivious of the world, and of time passing. For a moment I stood rejoicing at the gate of the summer house, and then, having no desire to disturb them, I returned to the castle.
The Princess was almost out of her wits, inhaling her smelling salts. She was full of wild conjectures, but before Chaikhidzev and the assembled guests she felt angry and ashamed. She was a woman who had never had recourse to violence, but when a maidservant came to tell her there was no sign of Olya, she slapped the maidservant on the face. The guests, weary of waiting for the