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His visitors did not talk of groats, nor of hay, nor of tar, but of something that had no direct bearing on his life, and he was glad and wanted them to go on. "It's bed-time, though," said Burkin, getting up. "Allow me to wish you good-night." Alehin said good-night and went downstairs to his own domain, while the visitors remained upstairs.
And they were both covered up and beginning to doze when they suddenly heard light footsteps patter, patter.... Some one was walking not far from the barn, walking a little and stopping, and a minute later, patter, patter again.... The dogs began growling. "That's Mavra," said Burkin. The footsteps died away.
Ivan Ivanovitch and Burkin were met in the house by a maid-servant, a young woman so beautiful that they both stood still and looked at one another. "You can't imagine how delighted I am to see you, my friends," said Alehin, going into the hall with them. "It is a surprise! Pelagea," he said, addressing the girl, "give our visitors something to change into. And, by the way, I will change too.
Ivan Ivanovitch and Burkin were already conscious of a feeling of wetness, messiness, and discomfort all over; their feet were heavy with mud, and when, crossing the dam, they went up to the barns, they were silent, as though they were angry with one another. In one of the barns there was the sound of a winnowing machine, the door was open, and clouds of dust were coming from it.
And our spending our whole lives among trivial, fussy men and silly, idle women, our talking and our listening to all sorts of nonsense isn't that a case for us, too? If you like, I will tell you a very edifying story." "No; it's time we were asleep," said Burkin. "Tell it tomorrow." They went into the barn and lay down on the hay.
And, indeed, though we had buried Byelikov, how many such men in cases were left, how many more of them there will be!" "That's just how it is," said Ivan Ivanovitch and he lighted his pipe. "How many more of them there will be!" repeated Burkin. The schoolmaster came out of the barn. He was a short, stout man, completely bald, with a black beard down to his waist. The two dogs came out with him.
"Well, you are off on another tack now, Ivan Ivanovitch," said the schoolmaster. "Let us go to sleep!" And ten minutes later Burkin was asleep. But Ivan Ivanovitch kept sighing and turning over from side to side; then he got up, went outside again, and, sitting in the doorway, lighted his pipe.
He lived at a stud-farm near the town, and had come out shooting now to get a breath of fresh air. Burkin, the high-school teacher, stayed every summer at Count P -'s, and had been thoroughly at home in this district for years. They did not sleep. Ivan Ivanovitch, a tall, lean old fellow with long moustaches, was sitting outside the door, smoking a pipe in the moonlight.
We carried him into the waiting-room, the blood was flowing it was a horrible thing and he kept asking them to look for his leg and was very much worried about it; there were twenty roubles in the boot on the leg that had been cut off, and he was afraid they would be lost." "That's a story from a different opera," said Burkin.
The explanation which would seem to fit one case does not apply in a dozen others, and the very best thing, to my mind, would be to explain every case individually without attempting to generalize. We ought, as the doctors say, to individualize each case." "Perfectly true," Burkin assented. "We Russians of the educated class have a partiality for these questions that remain unanswered.
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