They walked across the yard and went out into the street and took a cab.  Thick clouds of dust were blowing, and it seemed as though it were just going to rain.

“You are not cold?” said Andrey Andreitch, screwing up his eyes at the dust.

She did not answer.

“Yesterday, you remember, Sasha blamed me for doing nothing,” he said, after a brief silence.  “Well, he is right, absolutely right!  I do nothing and can do nothing.  My precious, why is it?  Why is it that the very thought that I may some day fix a cockade on my cap and go into the government service is so hateful to me?  Why do I feel so uncomfortable when I see a lawyer or a Latin master or a member of the Zemstvo?  O Mother Russia!  O Mother Russia!  What a burden of idle and useless people you still carry!  How many like me are upon you, long-suffering Mother!”

And from the fact that he did nothing he drew generalizations, seeing in it a sign of the times.

“When we are married let us go together into the country, my precious; there we will work!  We will buy ourselves a little piece of land with a garden and a river, we will labour and watch life.  Oh, how splendid that will be!”

He took off his hat, and his hair floated in the wind, while she listened to him and thought:  “Good God, I wish I were home!”

When they were quite near the house they overtook Father Andrey.

“Ah, here’s father coming,” cried Andrey Andreitch, delighted, and he waved his hat.  “I love my dad really,” he said as he paid the cabman.  “He’s a splendid old fellow, a dear old fellow.”

Nadya went into the house, feeling cross and unwell, thinking that there would be visitors all the evening, that she would have to entertain them, to smile, to listen to the fiddle, to listen to all sorts of nonsense, and to talk of nothing but the wedding.

Granny, dignified, gorgeous in her silk dress, and haughty as she always seemed before visitors, was sitting before the samovar.  Father Andrey came in with his sly smile.

“I have the pleasure and blessed consolation of seeing you in health,” he said to Granny, and it was hard to tell whether he was joking or speaking seriously.

IV

The wind was beating on the window and on the roof; there was a whistling sound, and in the stove the house spirit was plaintively and sullenly droning his song.  It was past midnight; everyone in the house had gone to bed, but no one was asleep, and it seemed all the while to Nadya as though they were playing the fiddle below.  There was a sharp bang; a shutter must have been torn off.  A minute later Nina Ivanovna came in in her nightgown, with a candle.

“What was the bang, Nadya?” she asked.

Her mother, with her hair in a single plait and a timid smile on her face, looked older, plainer, smaller on that stormy night.  Nadya remembered that quite a little time ago she had thought her mother an exceptional woman and had listened with pride to the things she said; and now she could not remember those things, everything that came into her mind was so feeble and useless.