But the ‘Russian scoundrels’ paid no attention to his vociferations, and hurried on as fast as they could to the castle. They were all silent, as they walked through the garden, though Anna Vassilyevna sighed a little. But when they reached the carriages and stood still, they broke into an irrepressible, irresistible fit of Homeric laughter. First Shubin exploded, shrieking as if he were mad, Bersenyev followed with his gurgling guffaw, then Zoya fell into thin tinkling little trills, Anna Vassilyevna too suddenly broke down, Elena could not help smiling, and even Insarov at last could not resist it. But the loudest, longest, most persistent laugh was Uvar Ivanovitch’s; he laughed till his sides ached, till he choked and panted. He would calm down a little, then would murmur through his tears: ‘I—thought—what’s that splash—and there—he—went plop.’ And with the last word, forced out with convulsive effort, his whole frame was shaking with another burst of laughter. Zoya made him worse. ‘I saw his legs,’ she said, ‘kicking in the air.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ gasped Uvar Ivanovitch, ‘his legs, his legs—and then splash!—there he plopped in!’
‘And how did Mr. Insarov manage it? why the German was three times his size?’ said Zoya.
‘I’ll tell you,’ answered Uvar Ivanovitch, rubbing his eyes, ‘I saw; with one arm about his waist, he tripped him up, and he went plop! I heard—a splash—there he went.’
Long after the carriages had started, long after the castle of Tsaritsino was out of sight, Uvar Ivanovitch was still unable to regain his composure. Shubin, who was again with him in the carriage, began to cry shame on him at last.
Insarov felt ashamed. He sat in the coach facing Elena (Bersenyev had taken his seat on the box), and he said nothing; she too was silent. He thought that she was condemning his action; but she did not condemn him. She had been scared at the first minute; then the expression of his face had impressed her; afterwards she pondered on it all. It was not quite clear to her what the nature of her reflections was. The emotion she had felt during the day had passed away; that she realised; but its place had been taken by another feeling which she did not yet fully understand. The partie de plaisir had been prolonged too late; insensibly evening passed into night. The carriage rolled swiftly along, now beside ripening cornfields, where the air was heavy and fragrant with the smell of wheat; now beside wide meadows, from which a sudden wave of freshness blew lightly in the face. The sky seemed to lie like smoke over the horizon. At last the moon rose, dark and red. Anna Vassilyevna was dozing; Zoya had poked her head out of window and was staring at the road. It occurred to Elena at last that she had not spoken to Insarov for more than an hour. She turned to him with a trifling question; he at once answered her, delighted. Dim sounds began stirring indistinctly in the air, as though thousands of voices were talking in the distance; Moscow was coming to meet them. Lights twinkled afar off; they grew more and more frequent; at last there was the grating of the cobbles under their wheels. Anna Vassilyevna awoke, every one in the carriage began talking, though no one could hear what was said; everything was drowned in the rattle of the cobbles under the two carriages, and the hoofs of the eight horses. Long and wearisome seemed the journey from Moscow to Kuntsovo; all the party were asleep or silent, leaning with their heads pressed into their respective corners; Elena did not close her eyes; she kept them fixed on Insarov’s dimly-outlined figure. A mood of sadness had come upon Shubin; the breeze was blowing into his eyes and irritating him; he retired into the collar of his cloak and was on the point of tears. Uvar Ivanovitch was snoring blissfully, rocking from side to side. The carriages came to a standstill at last. Two men-servants lifted Anna Vassilyevna out of the carriage; she was all to pieces, and at parting from her fellow travellers, announced that she was ‘nearly dead’; they began thanking her, but she only repeated, ‘nearly dead.’ Elena for the first time pressed Insarov’s hand at parting, and for a long while she sat at her window before undressing; Shubin seized an opportunity to whisper to Bersenyev:
‘There, isn’t he a hero; he can pitch drunken Germans into the river!’
‘While you didn’t even do that,’ retorted Bersenyev, and he started homewards with Insarov.
The dawn was already showing in the sky when the two friends reached their lodging. The sun had not yet risen, but already the chill of daybreak was in the air, a grey dew covered the grass, and the first larks were trilling high, high up in the shadowy infinity of air, whence like a solitary eye looked out the great, last star.