it this minute," the
old man interrupted. And he kept his word. A pinch of tea was hunted
up, twisted in a screw of red paper; a small but very fiery and
loudly-hissing samovar was found, and sugar too in small lumps, which
looked as if they were thawing. Lavretsky drank tea out of a large cup;
he remembered this cup from childhood; there were playing-cards depicted
upon it, only visitors used to drink out of it--and here was he drinking
out if like a visitor. In the evening his servants came; Lavretsky did
not care to sleep in his aunt's bed; he directed them put him up a bed
in the dining-room. After extinguishing his candle he stared for a long
time about him and feel into cheerless reflection; he experienced that
feeling which every man knows whose lot it is to pass the night in a
place long uninhabited; it seemed to him that the darkness surrounding
him on all sides could not be accustomed to the new inhabitant, the
very walls of the house seemed amazed. At last he sighed, drew up the
counterpane round him and fell asleep. Anton remained up after all the
rest of the household; he was whispering a long while with Apraxya, he
sighed in an undertone, and twice he crossed himself; they had
neither of them expected that their master would settle among them at
Vassilyevskoe when he had not far off such a splendid estate with such
a capitally built house; they did not suspect that the very house was
hateful to Lavretsky; it stirred painful memories within him. Having
gossiped to his heart's content, Anton took a stick and struck the night
watchman's board, which had hung silent for so many years, and laid down
to sleep in the courtyard with no covering on his white head. The May
night was mild and soft, and the old man slept sweetly.

Chapter XX

The next day Lavretsky got up rather early, had a talk with the village
bailiff, visited the threshing-floor, ordered the chain to be taken off
the yard dog, who only barked a little but did not even come out of his
kennel, and returning home, sank into a kind of peaceful torpor, which
he did not shake off the whole day.

"Here I am at the very bottom of the river," he said to himself more
than once. He sat at the window without stirring, and, as it were,
listened to the current of the quiet life surrounding him, to the few
sounds of the country solitude. Something from behind the nettles chirps
with a shrill, shrill little note; a gnat seems to answer it. Now it
has cea