United States or United States Minor Outlying Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She had a very tender and loving heart; life had soon crushed her. Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin happened to be a distant cousin of hers. His father had been a government official in Moscow. His brothers had entered cadets' corps; he was the youngest, his mother's darling, and of delicate constitution; he stopped at home.
'What shall we do to-day, eh? began Shubin, sitting down suddenly on a low chair, with his knees apart and his elbows propped on them. 'Andrei Petrovitch, has your honour any kind of plan for to-day? It's glorious weather; there's a scent of hay and dried strawberries as if one were drinking strawberry-tea for a cold. We ought to get up some kind of a spree. Open your prophetic lips.
Shubin went back to his room in the lodge and was just opening a book, when Nikolai Artemyevitch's valet came cautiously into his room and handed him a small triangular note, sealed with a thick heraldic crest. 'I hope, he found in the note, 'that you as a man of honour will not allow yourself to hint by so much as a single word at a certain promissory note which was talked of this morning.
Give this note back to me. Shubin scribbled below in pencil: 'Don't excite yourself, I'm not quite a sneak yet, and gave the note back to the man, and again began upon the book. But it soon slipped out of his hands.
Happily for her, an argument sprang up about art between him and Shubin; she moved apart and heard their voices as it were through a dream.
'Hey! cried Shubin suddenly in a low voice, 'Zoya Nikitishna is on the lookout, it seems. I will go to her. Elena Nikolaevna despises me now, while you, Andrei Petrovitch, she esteems, which comes to the same thing. I am going; I'm tired of being glum.
She went down to the drawing-room to tea, and found there all the household and Shubin, who looked at her sharply directly she came in; she tried to talk to him in a friendly way as of old, but she dreaded his penetration, she was afraid of herself. She felt sure that there was good reason for his having left her alone for more than a fortnight.
He ought not to know himself why he butts at things, but just to butt at them. But, perhaps, in our days heroes of a different stamp are needed. 'Why are you so taken up with Insarov? asked Bersenyev. 'Can you have run here only to describe his character to me? 'I came here, began Shubin, 'because I was very miserable at home. 'Oh, that's it! Don't you want to have a cry again?
'I never thought of sending you away from here. 'Do you mean to say, Shubin continued passionately, 'that I am not worthy of other society, that I am her equal; that I am as vain, and silly and petty as that mawkish German girl? Is that it? Elena frowned. 'You did not always speak like that of her, Pavel Yakovlitch, she remarked. 'Ah! reproaches! reproaches now! cried Shubin.
Shubin realised the necessity of cutting short everything painful with light words. 'Our trio has come together again, he began, 'for the last time. Let us submit to the decrees of fate; speak of the past with kindness; and in God's name go forward to the new life! In God's name, on our distant way, he began to hum, and stopped short. He felt suddenly ashamed and awkward.
Word Of The Day