There still remained out
of the ruin a carpet and some armchairs near the large, dirty
windows, an old piano stood unmoved, and some portraits still hung on
the walls.
Lydia Constantinovna and Mintz came in from the back-room. Lydia
walked with her usual brisk, even tread, carrying herself with the
smooth, elastic bearing and graceful swing of her beautiful body that
Ivanov remembered so well.
She raised the piano-cover and began playing a dashing bravura that
was strikingly out of place in the dismantled room, then she closed
the piano-lid with a slam.
Aganka entered with the tea on a tray.
Mintz walked about the dim room, tapping his heels on the parquet
floor, and though he spoke loudly, his voice held a note of yearning
pain.
"I was in the park just now. That pond, those maple avenues--
disintegrating, dying, disappearing--drive me melancholy mad. The ice
has already melted in the pond by the dam. Why can we not bring back
the romantic eighteenth century, and sit in dressing-gowns, musing
with delicious sadness over our pipes? Why are we not illustrious
lords?"
Lydia Constantinovna smiled as she answered: "Why not indeed! That is
a poetic fancy. But the reality is very much worse. Marin-Brod has
never been a country house, it is a forest manor, a forestry-office
and nothing more ... nothing more..
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