“How rude it is of them!” said the superintendent of the post-office, looking at his watch. “It may be learned manners to be late, but to my thinking it’s hoggish.”
Sheshkovsky, a stout man with a black beard, listened and said:
“They’re coming!”
XIX
“It’s the first time in my life I’ve seen it! How glorious!” said Von Koren, pointing to the glade and stretching out his hands to the east. “Look: green rays!”
In the east behind the mountains rose two green streaks of light, and it really was beautiful. The sun was rising.
“Good-morning!” the zoologist went on, nodding to Laevsky’s seconds. “I’m not late, am I?”
He was followed by his seconds, Boyko and Govorovsky, two very young officers of the same height, wearing white tunics, and Ustimovitch, the thin, unsociable doctor; in one hand he had a bag of some sort, and in the other hand, as usual, a cane which he held behind him. Laying the bag on the ground and greeting no one, he put the other hand, too, behind his back and began pacing up and down the glade.
Laevsky felt the exhaustion and awkwardness of a man who is soon perhaps to die, and is for that reason an object of general attention. He wanted to be killed as soon as possible or taken home. He saw the sunrise now for the first time in his life; the early morning, the green rays of light, the dampness, and the men in wet boots, seemed to him to have nothing to do with his life, to be superfluous and embarrassing. All this had no connection with the night he had been through, with his thoughts and his feeling of guilt, and so he would have gladly gone away without waiting for the duel.
Von Koren was noticeably excited and tried to conceal it, pretending that he was more interested in the green light than anything. The seconds were confused, and looked at one another as though wondering why they were here and what they were to do.