Overnight, the frost hit him unexpectedly; and the golden maples and bright, dressed up mountain ash was covered with light frost.
Even the air seems to have become hard, frosty, resilient, and the long road is far away from the window, which all time goes into the garden and then follows behind the gate. Behind the window frame, a little foggy glass, to breathe on it clearly outlined the silhouettes of dark trees, and under them, like a carpet, everything is covered with yellow leaves.
And on this path in the morning, as soon as the white light over the garden rose, a guest accompanied by Oleg came from the railway station, entered the house, and immediately became noisy and joyful.
My uncle in an open shaggy fur coat walked all over the house, accompanied by joyful noises and voices, taking his niece away from his textbooks.
- Do you, Marina Mnishek, teach everything? Are you still chewing on the well-known granite of science?
Marina raised her laughing eyes and shook her shoulders with wheat scythe scattered on her shoulders:
- Uncle, what are you calling me Marina Mnishek all the time?
All over the house, there is running, there is a samovar, noise, tea, everybody is knocked down, the maid brings forgotten chairs from the terrace into the house for tea.
And uncle is very glad to see everybody because he hasn't been to their house for so long! - Oleg, the eldest, Oleg, and the excellent cursor Marina, and the gloomy, thin, dark-haired Katya, who Oleg and Marina recently took away from her stepmother.
Marina is sitting over her textbooks and is studying day and night. She is a real honors woman!
And she always copes with everybody so excellent...
My uncle behind the samovar tells me the latest news. In three or four weeks, by holidays, he will come again, and with him will come guests - and with them will be a young railwayman Sasha, who was at their manor four months ago, in early summer. If he can come...
As it turns out, they haven't seen him for a long time! Then, in the summer, they discussed with Sasha everything to which, of course, they have been ready for a long time - the fight for justice and readiness to stand up for the right cause. And they are ready to support other comrades and swear to be together till the end. As they walked then in the garden, as, touching barely noticeable sleeves, broken hair with his cheek, she listened attentively to him ... "Hostile whirlwinds are blowing over us..."
If only they let us go on holiday...
An old nanny, Arina Petrovna, grumbles when she passes through the rooms in the evening, cleaning up after the guests: "There are no icons in the house. You see, gentlemen of the disbelievers. And there's nothing to cross over to, and they will marry — blessed with what?
And right, we don't have any icons, and there's no one to pray that Sasha would come; Marina is funny, she sniffs slowly up her sleeve - and she would like to pray, so I want Sasha to come, I want to see him, even his ears, pierced with a hat, seem to her the nicest thing in the world, and even if she saw someone with a similar silhouette, the heart would tremble. The three weeks before the holidays would have passed sooner!
The snow-covered district seems to glow with a soft pinkish light as if the soft snow itself radiates gentle sunset heat, and the mountain ash under the snow blush elegantly around the house.
Marina runs out on the porch in boots, throwing a down scarf, pulls a snowy branch over herself. The snow densely crumbles with flakes on the corner of the terrace and the porch railing.
- Run back! - Arina Petrovna appears in the window. - There is nothing to jump out of the window in the frost naked!
Marina goes into the house, flushed, often breathing with blush and fresh air, and the cold steam let in after her goes through the rooms.
...In the far room, not having breathed yet, gathered in a lump, stuck his head in his knees... Oh, God, I wish I'd come sooner! Would you pray and lie on the water, on the wax - and what else are they saying? If only to see again, that all that we had decided came true and witnessed! Behind the mountains, it seems, beyond the long centuries their new meeting, and there is no such abyss that would separate us from each other!