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She found the ladies and the young people among the raspberries in the kitchen garden. Some were eating raspberries; others, tired of eating raspberries, were strolling about the strawberry beds or foraging among the sugar-peas. A little on one side of the raspberry bed, near a branching appletree propped up by posts which had been pulled out of an old fence, Pyotr Dmitritch was mowing the grass.
And yet his hands were trembling, his feet were cold, and he was filled with dread at the thought that soon Ivan Dmitritch would get up and see that he was in a dressing-gown. He got up and walked across the room and sat down again.
'Hullo, Vassily Dmitritch, Kapiton shouted from the window; 'please come in.... The miller of Liobovshin, he whispered to me. The peasant climbed groaning out of the cart, came into the surgeon's room, and after looking for the holy pictures, crossed himself, bowing to them.
Some one must be staying the night, as Pyotr Dmitritch was addressing some one and speaking loudly: "I don't say that Count Alexey Petrovitch is an impostor. But he can't help seeming to be one, because all of you gentlemen attempt to see in him something different from what he really is.
You can do nothing, and your conscience is clear, and you feel you are wise . . . . No, sir, it is not philosophy, it's not thinking, it's not breadth of vision, but laziness, fakirism, drowsy stupefaction. Yes," cried Ivan Dmitritch, getting angry again, "you despise suffering, but I'll be bound if you pinch your finger in the door you will howl at the top of your voice."
At a quarter past one I went to bed. "Have the visitors downstairs gone?" I asked Alexey as he was undressing me. "Yes, sir, they've gone." "And why were they shouting hurrah?" "Alexey Dmitritch Mahonov subscribed for the famine fund a thousand bushels of flour and a thousand roubles.
Once seeing her husband near her, she remembered that she had insulted him, and without pausing to think whether it were really Pyotr Dmitritch or whether she were in delirium, clutched his hand in both hers and began kissing it. "You were lying, I was lying . . ." she began justifying herself. "Understand, understand. . . . They have exhausted me, driven me out of all patience."
Olga Mihalovna began peeping through a crack between two branches. She saw her husband, Pyotr Dmitritch, and Lubotchka Sheller, a girl of seventeen who had not long left boarding-school.
Some said Grigory had the keys, others that the bailiff had them, while others suggested sending for a blacksmith and breaking the padlocks. And all talked at once, interrupting and shouting one another down. Pyotr Dmitritch paced impatiently to and fro on the bank, shouting: "What the devil's the meaning of it! The keys ought always to be lying in the hall window! Who has dared to take them away?
"Go out of the room," said Pyotr Dmitritch sternly, going up to the bed. "Understand . . . understand! . . ." Olga Mihalovna began. "Olya, I entreat you, calm yourself," he said. "I did not mean to hurt you. I would not have gone out of the room if I had known it would have hurt you so much; I simply felt depressed. I tell you, on my honour . . ."
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