Page:Chernyshevsky.whatistobedone.djvu/157

Rh was gay and full of jests; but when the ceremony began, his voice trembled, "Suppose it should result in a lawsuit? Natasha, you must go back to your father; your husband does not support you, and it is a wretched life to have a husband alive, and to live on your father's bread!" However, after several words, he again regained complete control of himself.

When the service was half over, Natalia Andréyevna, or Natasha, as Alekséi Petróvitch called his wife, invited the young people to come to her house after the ceremony; she had prepared a little breakfast. They came in, they laughed, they even danced two quadrilles with two couples: they also waltzed. Alekséi Petróvitch, who could not dance, played the violin for them; an hour and a half flew by quickly and unnoticed. It was a gay wedding.

"I think that they must be waiting dinner for me at home," said Viérotchka, "it is about time.—Now, my mílenki, I shall be able to live three or four days in my cellar without being melancholy, and possibly even more. Why should I worry now? There is nothing for me to fear now. No, don't go home with me; I am going all alone by myself, so as not to be seen by anybody."

"It's all right; they will not eat me up; don't worry, gentlemen," said Alekséi Petróvitch, as he escorted Lopukhóf and Kirsánof to the door, who had remained for a few minutes, so as to give Viérotchka a chance to get out of sight. "I am very glad now that Natasha encouraged me!"

On the following day, after a four days' hunt, a good house was found, at the farther end of the fifth block on the Vasilyevsky Island. Having all in all one hundred and sixty rubles in reserve, Lopukhóf concluded, with his friend, that it would be impossible for him and Viérotchka to think as yet of attempting to keep house, or to have their own furniture and dishes; and therefore they rented three rooms, together with furniture, dishes, and board, from an old man, who quietly spent his days, with a little stock of buttons, ribbons, pins, and other things, at the fence on the Middle Prospekt, between the first and second blocks; while his evenings were passed in quiet conversation with his old woman, who, for her part, spent her days in mending hundreds and thousands of old things of every sort, brought to her in bundles from the Pushing Market. The servants also belonged to the landlord; in other words, they were the landlord and landlady themselves.