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Updated: May 13, 2025
This Hanov, a man of forty with a listless expression and a face that showed signs of wear, was beginning to look old, but was still handsome and admired by women. He lived in his big homestead alone, and was not in the service; and people used to say of him that he did nothing at home but walk up and down the room whistling, or play chess with his old footman.
The road grew worse and worse.... They drove into the wood. Here there was no room to turn round, the wheels sank deeply in, water splashed and gurgled through them, and sharp twigs struck them in the face. "What a road!" said Hanov, and he laughed. The schoolmistress looked at him and could not understand why this queer man lived here.
Just at that instant Hanov drove up with his team of four horses, and seeing him she imagined happiness such as she had never had, and smiled and nodded to him as an equal and a friend, and it seemed to her that her happiness, her triumph, was glowing in the sky and on all sides, in the windows and on the trees.
And just as she was thinking about the examination, she was overtaken by a neighboring landowner called Hanov in a carriage with four horses, the very man who had been examiner in her school the year before. When he came up to her he recognized her and bowed. "Good-morning," he said to her. "You are driving home, I suppose."
The School Council met very rarely, and there was no knowing where it met; the school guardian was an almost illiterate peasant, the head of a tanning business, unintelligent, rude, and a great friend of the watchman's and goodness knows to whom she could appeal with complaints or inquiries.... "He really is handsome," she thought, glancing at Hanov.
"Mind you don't drown the horse." "What?" "Look, Hanov is driving to the bridge," said Marya Vassilyevna, seeing the four horses far away to the right. "It is he, I think." "It is. So he didn't find Bakvist at home. What a pig-headed fellow he is. Lord have mercy upon us! He's driven over there, and what for? It's fully two miles nearer this way." They reached the river.
"Here we must turn off to the right," said Hanov, getting into his carriage. "Good-by! I wish you all things good!" And again she thought of her pupils, of the examination, of the watchman, of the School Council; and when the wind brought the sound of the retreating carriage these thoughts were mingled with others.
Hanov got out of his carriage and walked at the side of the road in his long overcoat. He was hot. "What a road!" he said, and laughed again. "It would soon smash up one's carriage." "Nobody obliges you to drive about in such weather," said Semyon surlily. "You should stay at home." "I am dull at home, grandfather. I don't like staying at home."
They turned off the highroad into a by-road to the village, Hanov leading the way and Semyon following. The four horses moved at a walking pace, with effort dragging the heavy carriage through the mud. Semyon tacked from side to side, keeping to the edge of the road, at one time through a snowdrift, at another through a pool, often jumping out of the cart and helping the horse.
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