Raisky looked at the pretty bride with the emotions of a brother, but he had an impulse of terror when he noticed in her sheaf of orange blossom some faded blooms.
“They are from the bouquet that Vera gave me for my birthday,” she explained naively.
Raisky pretended that withered flowers were a bad omen, and helped her to pick them out.
When the time for their departure came, the bride had to be literally dragged sobbing from her aunt’s breast, but her tears were tears of joy. Tatiana Markovna was pale, only maintaining her self-restraint with difficulty, and it was plain that she could only just stand as she looked out on the Volga after her departing child. Once at home again, she gave way to her tears. She knew that she possessed the almost undivided love of her other child, the passionate Vera, whose character had been ripened by bitter experience.
Tushin stayed with a friend in the town for the wedding. Next day he came to Tatiana Markovna, accompanied by an architect, and they spent nearly a week over plans, going over the two houses, the gardens and the servants’ quarters, making sketches and talking of radical alterations in the spring. Everything of value—furniture, pictures, even the parquet flooring—had been taken out of the old house and stored, partly in the new house, partly in outhouses and on the ground.
Tatiana Markovna and Vera intended to go to Novosselovo, and later on to visit the Vikentevs; for the summer they were invited to be the guests of Anna Ivanovna, Tushin’s sister, at “Smoke.” Tatiana Markovna had given no definite answer to the suggestion, saying that it must be “as God wills.” In any case Tushin was making the necessary arrangements with the architect, and intended to make extensive alterations in his house for the reception of the honoured visitors.
Raisky stayed in his rooms in the new house, but Leonti had returned to his own home for the time being, to return to Malinovka after the departure of Tatiana Markovna and Vera. He, too, had been invited by Tushin to “Smoke,” but Leonti had answered with a sigh, “Later in the winter. Just now I am expecting....” and had broken off to look out on to the road from Moscow. He was in fact expecting a letter from his wife in answer to one he had just written. Not long before, Juliana Andreevna had written to their housekeeper and had asked her to send her winter cloak. She indicated the address, but said not a word about her husband. Leonti dispatched the cloak himself with a glowing letter in which he asked her to come, and spoke of his love and friendship.
The poor man received no reply. Gradually he resumed his teaching, though he still betrayed his melancholy now and again during the lessons, and was apt to be absentminded and unconscious of the behaviour of his scholars, who took pitiless advantage of his helplessness.
Tushin had offered to look after Malinovka during Tatiana Markovna’s absence. He called it his winter quarters and made a point of crossing the Volga every week to give an eye to the house, the farm yard and the servants, of whom only Vassilissa, Egor, the cook and the coachman accompanied their mistress to Novosselovo. Yakob and Savili were put especially at Tushin’s disposition.
Raisky proposed to leave a week after the wedding.