The Garnet Bracelet and other Stories / Гранатовый браслет и другие повести. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Never mind, I’ll get an answer from her at the picnic,” he thought, with a vague presentiment of something disastrous and dastardly. “She’ll have to tell me anyway.”

X

At the 200th Mile stop the picnickers got out of the carriages and started for Beshenaya Balka in a long, colourful file down a narrow road that led past the watchman’s house. The pungent freshness of autumnal woods floated to their flushed faces from afar. The road grew steeper and steeper, disappearing beneath a dark canopy of hazel bushes and honeysuckle.

Dead leaves, yellow and curled, rustled underfoot. A scarlet sunset showed through the thicket far ahead.

The bushes ended. A wide clearing, flattened and strewn with fine sand, came into view unexpectedly. At one end of it stood an octagonal pavilion decked with bunting and greenery, and at the other was a covered platform for the band. As soon as the first couples came out of the thicket the band struck up a lively march. The gay brass sounds sped playfully through the woods, reverberating among the trees and merging far away into another band that sometimes seemed to outrace, and sometimes to lag behind the first.

In the pavilion waiters were bustling round the tables, set in a U shape and covered with white cloths.

As soon as the hand stopped the picnickers broke into enthusiastic applause. They had reason to be delighted, for only a fortnight ago the clearing had been a hillside scantily covered with shrubs.

The band began to play a waltz.

Bobrov saw Svezhevsky, who was standing beside Nina, at once put his arm round her waist without asking permission and whirl with her about the clearing.

Scarcely had he released her when a mining student ran up to her, land then someone else. Bobrov was a poor dancer; he did not care for dancing. Nevertheless, it occurred to him to invite Nina for a quadrille. “It may give me a chance to ask for an explanation,” he thought. He walked over to her when, having danced two turns, she sat down, fanning herself.

“I hope you’ve reserved a quadrille for me, Nina Grigoryevna?”

“Oh, my goodness! Such a pity. I’ve promised all my quadrilles,” she replied, without looking at him. “You have? So soon?” Bobrov said thickly. “Of course.” She shrugged her shoulders, impatiently and ironically. “Why do you come so late? I gave away all my quadrilles while we were on the train.”

“So you completely forgot about me,” he said sadly.