HIDE AND SEEK

HIDE AND SEEK
BY FIODOR SOLOGUB
Everything in Lelechka's nursery was bright, pretty, and cheerful.
Lelechka's sweet voice charmed her mother. Lelechka was a delightful
child. There was no other such child, there never had been, and there
never would be. Lelechka's mother, Serafima Aleksandrovna, was sure of
that. Lelechka's eyes were dark and large, her cheeks were rosy, her
lips were made for kisses and for laughter. But it was not these
charms in Lelechka that gave her mother the keenest joy. Lelechka was
her mother's only child. That was why every movement of Lelechka's
bewitched her mother. It was great bliss to hold Lelechka on her knees
and to fondle her; to feel the little girl in her arms--a thing as
lively and as bright as a little bird.
To tell the truth, Serafima Aleksandrovna felt happy only in the
nursery. She felt cold with her husband.
Perhaps it was because he himself loved the cold--he loved to drink
cold water, and to breathe cold air. He was always fresh and cool,
with a frigid smile, and wherever he passed cold currents seemed to
move in the air.
The Nesletyevs, Sergey Modestovich and Serafima Aleksandrovna, had
married without love or calculation, because it was the accepted
thing. He was a young man of thirty-five, she a young woman of
twenty-five; both were of the same circle and well brought up; he was
expected to take a wife, and the time had come for her to take a
husband.
It even seemed to Serafima Aleksandrovna that she was in love with her
future husband, and this made her happy. He looked handsome and
well-bred; his intelligent grey eyes always preserved a dignified
expression; and he fulfilled his obligations of a fiance with
irreproachable gentleness.
The bride was also good-looking; she was a tall, dark-eyed,
dark-haired girl, somewhat timid but very tactful. He was not after
her dowry, though it pleased him to know that she had something. He
had connexions, and his wife came of good, influential people. This
might, at the proper opportunity, prove useful. Always irreproachable
and tactful, Nesletyev got on in his position not so fast that any one
should envy him, nor yet so slow that he should envy any one
else--everything came in the proper measure and at the proper time.
After their marriage there was nothing in the manner of Sergey
Modestovich to suggest anything wrong to his wife. Later, however,
when his wife was about to have a child, Sergey Modestovich
established connexions elsewhere of a light and temporary nature.
Serafima Aleksandrovna found this out, and, to her own astonishment,
was not particularly hurt; she awaited her infant with a restless
anticipation that swallowed every other feeling.
A little girl was born; Serafima Aleksandrovna gave herself up to her.
At the beginning she used to tell her husband, with rapture, of all
the joyous details of Lekchka's existence. But she soon found that he
listened to her without the slightest interest, and only from the
habit of politeness. Serafima Aleksandrovna drifted farther and
farther away from him. She loved her little girl with the ungratified
passion that other women, deceived in their husbands, show their
chance young lovers.
"_Mamochka_, let's play _priatki_" (hide and seek), cried Lelechka,
pronouncing the _r_ like the _l_, so that the word sounded "pliatki."
This charming inability to speak always made, Serafima Aleksandrovna
smile with tender rapture. Lelechka then ran away, stamping with her
plump little legs over the carpets, and hid herself behind the
curtains near her bed.
"_Tiu-tiu, mamochka!_" she cried out in her sweet, laughing voice, as
she looked out with a single roguish eye.
"Where is my baby girl?" the mother asked, as she looked for Lelechka
and made believe that she did not see her.
And Lelechka poured out her rippling laughter in her hiding place.
Then she came out a little farther, and her mother, as though she had
only just caught sight of her, seized her by her little shoulders and
exclaimed joyously: "Here she is, my Lelechka!"
Lelechka laughed long and merrily, her head close to her mother's
knees, and all of her cuddled up between her mother's white hands. Her
mother's eyes glowed with passionate emotion.
"Now, _mamochka_, you hide," said Lelechka, as she ceased laughing.
Her mother went to hide. Lelechka turned away as though not to see,
but watched her _mamochka_ stealthily all the time. Mamma hid behind
the cupboard, and exclaimed: "_Tiu-tiu_, baby girl!"
Lelechka ran round the room and looked into all the corners, making
believe, as her mother had done before, that she was seeking--though
she really knew all the time where her _mamochka_ was standing.
"Where's my _mamochka_?" asked Lelechka. "She's not here, and she's
not here," she kept on repeating, as she ran from corner to corner.
Her mother stood, with suppressed breathing, her head pressed against
the wall, her hair somewhat disarranged. A smile of absolute bliss
played on her red lips.
The nurse, Fedosya, a good-natured and fine-looking, if somewhat
stupid woman, smiled as she looked at her mistress with her
characteristic expression, which seemed to say that it was not for her
to object to gentlewomen's caprices. She thought to herself: "The
mother is like a little child herself--look how excited she is."
Lelechka was getting nearer her mother's corner. Her mother was
growing more absorbed every moment by her interest in the game; her
heart beat with short quick strokes, and she pressed even closer to
the wall, disarranging her hair still more. Lelechka suddenly glanced
toward her mother's corner and screamed with joy.
"I've found 'oo," she cried out loudly and joyously, mispronouncing
her words in a way that again made her mother happy.
She pulled her mother by her hands to the middle of the room, they
were merry and they laughed; and Lelechka again hid her head against
her mother's knees, and went on lisping and lisping, without end, her
sweet little words, so fascinating yet so awkward.
Sergey Modestovich was coming at this moment toward the nursery.
Through the half-closed doors he heard the laughter, the joyous
outcries, the sound of romping. He entered the nursery, smiling his
genial cold smile; he was irreproachably dressed, and he looked fresh
and erect, and he spread round him an atmosphere of cleanliness,
freshness and coldness. He entered in the midst of the lively game,
and he confused them all by his radiant coldness. Even Fedosya felt
abashed, now for her mistress, now for herself. Serafima Aleksandrovna
at once became calm and apparently cold--and this mood communicated
itself to the little girl, who ceased to laugh, but looked instead,
silently and intently, at her father.
Sergey Modestovich gave a swift glance round the room. He liked coming
here, where everything was beautifully arranged; this was done by
Serafima Aleksandrovna, who wished to surround her little girl, from
her very infancy, only with the loveliest things. Serafima
Aleksandrovna dressed herself tastefully; this, too, she did for
Lelechka, with the same end in view. One thing Sergey Modestovich had
not become reconciled to, and this was his wife's almost continuous
presence in the nursery.
"It's just as I thought... I knew that I'd find you here," he said
with a derisive and condescending smile.
They left the nursery together. As he followed his wife through the
door Sergey Modestovich said rather indifferently, in an incidental
way, laying no stress on his words: "Don't you think that it would be
well for the little girl if she were sometimes without your company?
Merely, you see, that the child should feel its own individuality," he
explained in answer to Serafima Aleksandrovna's puzzled glance.
"She's still so little," said Serafima Aleksandrovna.
"In any case, this is but my humble opinion. I don't insist. It's your
kingdom there."
"I'll think it over," his wife answered, smiling, as he did, coldly
but genially.
Then they began to talk of something else.
II
Nurse Fedosya, sitting in the kitchen that evening, was telling the
silent housemaid Darya and the talkative old cook Agathya about the
young lady of the house, and how the child loved to play _priatki_
with her mother--"She hides her little face, and cries '_tiutiu_'!"
"And the mistress herself is like a little one," added Fedosya,
smiling.
Agathya listened and shook her head ominously; while her face became
grave and reproachful.
"That the mistress does it, well, that's one thing; but that the young
lady does it, that's bad."
"Why?" asked Fedosya with curiosity.
This expression of curiosity gave her face the look of a wooden,
roughly-painted doll.
"Yes, that's bad," repeated Agathya with conviction. "Terribly bad!"
"Well?" said Fedosya, the ludicrous expression of curiosity on her
face becoming more emphatic.
"She'll hide, and hide, and hide away," said Agathya, in a mysterious
whisper, as she looked cautiously toward the door.
"What are you saying?" exclaimed Fedosya, frightened.
"It's the truth I'm saying, remember my words," Agathya went on with
the same assurance and secrecy. "It's the surest sign."
The old woman had invented this sign, quite suddenly, herself; and she
was evidently very proud of it.
III
Lelechka was asleep, and Serafima Aleksandrovna was sitting in her own
room, thinking with joy and tenderness of Lelechka. Lelechka was in
her thoughts, first a sweet, tiny girl, then a sweet, big girl, then
again a delightful little girl; and so until the end she remained
mamma's little Lelechka.
Serafima Aleksandrovna did not even notice that Fedosya came up to her
and paused before her. Fedosya had a worried, frightened look.
"Madam, madam," she said quietly, in a trembling voice.
Serafima Aleksandrovna gave a start. Fedosya's face made her anxious.
"What is it, Fedosya?" she asked with great concern. "Is there
anything wrong with Lelechka?"
"No, madam," said Fedosya, as she gesticulated with her hands to
reassure her mistress and to make her sit down. "Lelechka is asleep,
may God be with her! Only I'd like to say something--you see--Lelechka
is always hiding herself--that's not good."
Fedosya looked at her mistress with fixed eyes, which had grown round
from fright.
"Why not good?" asked Serafima Aleksandrovna, with vexation,
succumbing involuntarily to vague fears.
"I can't tell you how bad it is," said Fedosya, and her face expressed
the most decided confidence.
"Please speak in a sensible way," observed Serafima Aleksandrovna
dryly. "I understand nothing of what you are saying."
"You see, madam, it's a kind of omen," explained Fedosya abruptly, in
a shamefaced way.
"Nonsense!" said Serafima Aleksandrovna.
She did not wish to hear any further as to the sort of omen it was,
and what it foreboded. But, somehow, a sense of fear and of sadness
crept into her mood, and it was humiliating to feel that an absurd
tale should disturb her beloved fancies, and should agitate her so
deeply.
"Of course I know that gentlefolk don't believe in omens, but it's a
bad omen, madam," Fedosya went on in a doleful voice, "the young lady
will hide, and hide..."
Suddenly she burst into tears, sobbing out loudly: "She'll hide, and
hide, and hide away, angelic little soul, in a damp grave," she
continued, as she wiped her tears with her apron and blew her nose.
"Who told you all this?" asked Serafima Aleksandrovna in an austere
low voice.
"Agathya says so, madam," answered Fedosya; "it's she that knows."
"Knows!" exclaimed Serafima Aleksandrovna in irritation, as though she
wished to protect herself somehow from this sudden anxiety. "What
nonsense! Please don't come to me with any such notions in the future.
Now you may go."
Fedosya, dejected, her feelings hurt, left her mistress.
"What nonsense! As though Lelechka could die!" thought Serafima
Aleksandrovna to herself, trying to conquer the feeling of coldness
and fear which took possession, of her at the thought of the possible
death of Lelechka. Serafima Aleksandrovna, upon reflection, attributed
these women's beliefs in omens to ignorance. She saw clearly that
there could be no possible connexion between a child's quite ordinary
diversion and the continuation of the child's life. She made a special
effort that evening to occupy her mind with other matters, but her
thoughts returned involuntarily to the fact that Lelechka loved to
hide herself.
When Lelechka was still quite small, and had learned to distinguish
between her mother and her nurse, she sometimes, sitting in her
nurse's arms, made a sudden roguish grimace, and hid her laughing face
in the nurse's shoulder. Then she would look out with a sly glance.
Of late, in those rare moments of the mistress' absence from the
nursery, Fedosya had again taught Lelechka to hide; and when
Lelechka's mother, on coming in, saw how lovely the child looked when
she was hiding, she herself began to play hide and seek with her tiny
daughter.
IV
The next day Serafima Aleksandrovna, absorbed in her joyous cares for
Lelechka, had forgotten Fedosya's words of the day before.
But when she returned to the nursery, after having ordered the dinner,
and she heard Lelechka suddenly cry _"Tiu-tiu!"_ from under the table,
a feeling of fear suddenly took hold of her. Though she reproached
herself at once for this unfounded, superstitious dread, nevertheless
she could not enter wholeheartedly into the spirit of Lelechka's
favourite game, and she tried to divert Lelechka's attention to
something else.
Lelechka was a lovely and obedient child. She eagerly complied with
her mother's new wishes. But as she had got into the habit of hiding
from her mother in some corner, and of crying out _"Tiu-tiu!"_ so even
that day she returned more than once to the game.
Serafima Aleksandrovna tried desperately to amuse Lelechka. This was
not so easy because restless, threatening thoughts obtruded themselves
constantly.
"Why does Lelechka keep on recalling the _tiu-tiu_? Why does she not
get tired of the same thing--of eternally closing her eyes, and of
hiding her face? Perhaps," thought Serafima Aleksandrovna, "she is not
as strongly drawn to the world as other children, who are attracted by
many things. If this is so, is it not a sign of organic weakness? Is
it not a germ of the unconscious non-desire to live?"
Serafima Aleksandrovna was tormented by presentiments. She felt
ashamed of herself for ceasing to play hide and seek with Lelechka
before Fedosya. But this game had become agonising to her, all the
more agonising because she had a real desire to play it, and because
something drew her very strongly to hide herself from Lelechka and to
seek out the hiding child. Serafima Aleksandrovna herself began the
game once or twice, though she played it with a heavy heart. She
suffered as though committing an evil deed with full consciousness.
It was a sad day for Serafima Aleksandrovna.
V
Lelechka was about to fall asleep. No sooner had she climbed into her
little bed, protected by a network on all sides, than her eyes began
to close from fatigue. Her mother covered her with a blue blanket.
Lelechka drew her sweet little hands from under the blanket and
stretched them out to embrace her mother. Her mother bent down.
Lelechka, with a tender expression on her sleepy face, kissed her
mother and let her head fall on the pillow. As her hands hid
themselves under the blanket Lelechka whispered: "The hands
_tiu-tiu!_"
The mother's heart seemed to stop--Lelechka lay there so small, so
frail, so quiet. Lelechka smiled gently, closed her eyes and said
quietly: "The eyes _tiu-tiu!_"
Then even more quietly: "Lelechka _tiu-tiu!_"
With these words she fell asleep, her face pressing the pillow. She
seemed so small and so frail under the blanket that covered her. Her
mother looked at her with sad eyes.
Serafima Aleksandrovna remained standing over Lelechka's bed a long
while, and she kept looking at Lelechka with tenderness and fear.
"I'm a mother: is it possible that I shouldn't be able to protect
her?" she thought, as she imagined the various ills that might befall
Lelechka.
She prayed long that night, but the prayer did not relieve her
sadness.
VI
Several days passed. Lelechka caught cold. The fever came upon her at
night. When Serafima Aleksandrovna, awakened by Fedosya, came to
Lelechka and saw her looking so hot, so restless, and so tormented,
she instantly recalled the evil omen, and a hopeless despair took
possession of her from the first moments.
A doctor was called, and everything was done that is usual on such
occasions--but the inevitable happened. Serafima Aleksandrovna tried
to console herself with the hope that Lelechka would get well, and
would again laugh and play--yet this seemed to her an unthinkable
happiness! And Lelechka grew feebler from hour to hour.
All simulated tranquillity, so as not to frighten Serafima
Aleksandrovna, but their masked faces only made her sad.
Nothing made her so unhappy as the reiterations of Fedosya, uttered
between sobs: "She hid herself and hid herself, our Lelechka!"
But the thoughts of Serafima Aleksandrovna were confused, and she
could not quite grasp what was happening.
Fever was consuming Lelechka, and there were times when she lost
consciousness and spoke in delirium. But when she returned to herself
she bore her pain and her fatigue with gentle good nature; she smiled
feebly at her _mamochka_, so that her _mamochka_ should not see how
much she suffered. Three days passed, torturing like a nightmare.
Lelechka grew quite feeble. She did not know that she was dying.
She glanced at her mother with her dimmed eyes, and lisped in a
scarcely audible, hoarse voice: "_Tiu-tiu, mamochka!_ Make _tiu-tiu,
mamochka!_"
Serafima Aleksandrovna hid her face behind the curtains near
Lelechka's bed. How tragic!
"_Mamochka!_" called Lelechka in an almost inaudible voice.
Lelechka's mother bent over her, and Lelechka, her vision grown still
more dim, saw her mother's pale, despairing face for the last time.
"A white _mamochka_!" whispered Lelechka.
_Mamochka's_ white face became blurred, and everything grew dark
before Lelechka. She caught the edge of the bed-cover feebly with her
hands and whispered: "_Tiu-tiu!_"
Something rattled in her throat; Lelechka opened and again closed her
rapidly paling lips, and died.
Serafima Aleksandrovna was in dumb despair as she left Lelechka, and
went out of the room. She met her husband.
"Lelechka is dead," she said in a quiet, dull voice.
Sergey Modestovich looked anxiously at her pale face. He was struck by
the strange stupor in her formerly animated handsome features.
VII
Lelechka was dressed, placed in a little coffin, and carried into the
parlour. Serafima Aicksandrovna was standing by the coffin and looking
dully at her dead child. Sergey Modestovich went to his wife and,
consoling her with cold, empty words, tried to draw her away from the
coffin. Seranma Aleksandrovna smiled.
"Go away," she said quietly. "Lelechka is playing. She'll be up in a
minute."
"Sima, my dear, don't agitate yourself," said Sergey Modestovich in a
whisper. "You must resign yourself to your fate."
"She'll be up in a minute," persisted Serafima Aleksandrovna, her eyes
fixed on the dead little girl.
Sergey Modestovich looked round him cautiously: he was afraid of the
unseemly and of the ridiculous.
"Sima, don't agitate yourself," he repeated. "This would be a miracle,
and miracles do not happen in the nineteenth century."
No sooner had he said these words than Sergey Modestovich felt their
irrelevance to what had happened. He was confused and annoyed.
He took his wife by the arm, and cautiously led her away from the
coffin. She did not oppose him.
Her face seemed tranquil and her eyes were dry. She went into the
nursery and began to walk round the room, looking into those places
where Lelechka used to hide herself. She walked all about the room,
and bent now and then to look under the table or under the bed, and
kept on repeating cheerfully: "Where is my little one? Where is my
Lelechka?"
After she had walked round the room once she began to make her quest
anew. Fedosya, motionless, with dejected face, sat in a corner, and
looked frightened at her mistress; then she suddenly burst out
sobbing, and she wailed loudly:
"She hid herself, and hid herself, our Lelechka, our angelic little
soul!"
Serafima Aleksandrovna trembled, paused, cast a perplexed look at
Fedosya, began to weep, and left the nursery quietly.
VIII
Sergey Modestovich hurried the funeral. He saw that Serafima
Aleksandrovna. was terribly shocked by her sudden misfortune, and as
he feared for her reason he thought she would more readily be diverted
and consoled when Lelechka was buried.
Next morning Serafima Aleksandrovna dressed with particular care--for
Lelechka. When she entered the parlour there were several people
between her and Lelechka. The priest and deacon paced up and down the
room; clouds of blue smoke drifted in the air, and there was a smell
of incense. There was an oppressive feeling of heaviness in Serafima
Aleksandrovna's head as she approached Lelechka. Lelechka lay there
still and pale, and smiled pathetically. Serafima Aleksandrovna laid
her cheek upon the edge of Lelechka's coffin, and whispered:
"_Tiu-tiu_, little one!"
The little one did not reply. Then there was some kind of stir and
confusion around Serafima Aleksandrovna; strange, unnecessary faces
bent over her, some one held her--and Lelechka was carried away
somewhere.
Serafima Aleksandrovna stood up erect, sighed in a lost way, smiled,
and called loudly: "Lelechka!"
Lelechka was being carried out. The mother threw herself after the
coffin with despairing sobs, but she was held back. She sprang behind
the door, through which Lelechka had passed, sat down there on the
floor, and as she looked through the crevice, she cried out:
"Lelechka, _tiu-tiu!_"
Then she put her head out from behind the door, and began to laugh.
Lelechka was quickly carried away from her mother, and those who
carried her seemed to run rather than to walk.
DETHRONED
BY I.N. POTAPENKO
"Well?" Captain Zarubkin's wife called out impatiently to her husband,
rising from the sofa and turning to face him as he entered.
"He doesn't know anything about it," he replied indifferently, as if
the matter were of no interest to him. Then he asked in a businesslike
tone: "Nothing for me from the office?"
"Why should I know? Am I your errand boy?"
"How they dilly-dally! If only the package doesn't come too late. It's
so important!"
"Idiot!"
"Who's an idiot?"
"You, with your indifference, your stupid egoism."
The captain said nothing. He was neither surprised nor insulted. On
the contrary, the smile on his face was as though he had received a
compliment. These wifely animadversions, probably oft-heard, by no
means interfered with his domestic peace.
"It can't be that the man doesn't know when his wife is coming back
home," Mrs. Zarubkin continued excitedly. "She's written to him every
day of the four months that she's been away. The postmaster told me
so."
"Semyonov! Ho, Semyonov! Has any one from the office been here?"
"I don't know, your Excellency," came in a loud, clear voice from back
of the room.
"Why don't you know? Where have you been?"
"I went to Abramka, your Excellency."
"The tailor again?"
"Yes, your Excellency, the tailor Abramka."
The captain spat in annoyance.
"And where is Krynka?"
"He went to market, your Excellency."
"Was he told to go to market?"
"Yes, your Excellency."
The captain spat again.
"Why do you keep spitting? Such vulgar manners!" his wife cried
angrily. "You behave at home like a drunken subaltern. You haven't the
least consideration for your wife. You are so coarse in your behaviour
towards me! Do, please, go to your office."
"Semyonov."
"Your Excellency?"
"If the package comes, please have it sent back to the office and say
I've gone there. And listen! Some one must always be here. I won't
have everybody out of the house at the same time. Do you hear?"
"Yes, your Excellency."
The captain put on his cap to go. In the doorway he turned and
addressed his wife.
"Please, Tasya, please don't send all the servants on your errands at
the same time. Something important may turn up, and then there's
nobody here to attend to it."
He went out, and his wife remained reclining in the sofa corner as if
his plea were no concern of hers. But scarcely had he left the house,
when she called out:
"Semyonov, come here. Quick!"
A bare-footed unshaven man in dark blue pantaloons and cotton shirt
presented himself. His stocky figure and red face made a wholesome
appearance. He was the Captain's orderly.
"At your service, your Excellency."
"Listen, Semyonov, you don't seem to be stupid."
"I don't know, your Excellency."
"For goodness' sake, drop 'your Excellency.' I am not your superior
officer."
"Yes, your Excel--"
"Idiot!"
But the lady's manner toward the servant was far friendlier than
toward her husband. Semyonov had it in his power to perform important
services for her, while the captain had not come up to her
expectations.
"Listen, Semyonov, how do you and the doctor's men get along together?
Are you friendly?"
"Yes, your Excellency."
"Intolerable!" cried the lady, jumping up. "Stop using that silly
title. Can't you speak like a sensible man?"
Semyonov had been standing in the stiff attitude of attention, with
the palms of his hands at the seams of his trousers. Now he suddenly
relaxed, and even wiped his nose with his fist.
"That's the way we are taught to do," he said carelessly, with a
clownish grin. "The gentlemen, the officers, insist on it."
"Now, tell me, you are on good terms with the doctor's men?"
"You mean Podmar and Shuchok? Of course, we're friends."
"Very well, then go straight to them and try to find out when Mrs.
Shaldin is expected back. They ought to know. They must be getting
things ready against her return--cleaning her bedroom and fixing it
up. Do you understand? But be careful to find out right. And also be
very careful not to let on for whom you are finding it out. Do you
understand?'
"Of course, I understand."
"Well, then, go. But one more thing. Since you're going out, you may
as well stop at Abramka's again and tell him to come here right away.
You understand?"
"But his Excellency gave me orders to stay at home," said Semyonov,
scratching himself behind his ears.
"Please don't answer back. Just do as I tell you. Go on, now."
"At your service." And the orderly, impressed by the lady's severe
military tone, left the room.
Mrs. Zarubkin remained reclining on the sofa for a while. Then she
rose and walked up and down the room and finally went to her bedroom,
where her two little daughters were playing in their nurse's care. She
scolded them a bit and returned to her former place on the couch. Her
every movement betrayed great excitement.
* * * * *
Tatyana Grigoryevna Zarubkin was one of the most looked-up to ladies
of the S---- Regiment and even of the whole town of Chmyrsk, where the
regiment was quartered. To be sure, you hardly could say that, outside
the regiment, the town could boast any ladies at all. There were very
respectable women, decent wives, mothers, daughters and widows of
honourable citizens; but they all dressed in cotton and flannel, and
on high holidays made a show of cheap Cashmere gowns over which they
wore gay shawls with borders of wonderful arabesques. Their hats and
other headgear gave not the faintest evidence of good taste. So they
could scarcely be dubbed "ladies." They were satisfied to be called
"women." Each one of them, almost, had the name of her husband's trade
or position tacked to her name--Mrs. Grocer so-and-so, Mrs. Mayor
so-and-so, Mrs. Milliner so-and-so, etc. Genuine _ladies_ in the
Russian society sense had never come to the town before the
S----Regiment had taken up its quarters there; and it goes without
saying that the ladies of the regiment had nothing in common, and
therefore no intercourse with, the women of the town. They were so
dissimilar that they were like creatures of a different species.
There is no disputing that Tatyana Grigoryevna Zarubkin was one of the
most looked-up-to of the ladies. She invariably played the most
important part at all the regimental affairs--the amateur theatricals,
the social evenings, the afternoon teas. If the captain's wife was not
to be present, it was a foregone conclusion that the affair would not
be a success.
The most important point was that Mrs. Zarubkin had the untarnished
reputation of being the best-dressed of all the ladies. She was always
the most distinguished looking at the annual ball. Her gown for the
occasion, ordered from Moscow, was always chosen with the greatest
regard for her charms and defects, and it was always exquisitely
beautiful. A new fashion could not gain admittance to the other ladies
of the regiment except by way of the captain's wife. Thanks to her
good taste in dressing, the stately blonde was queen at all the balls
and in all the salons of Chmyrsk. Another advantage of hers was that
although she was nearly forty she still looked fresh and youthful, so
that the young officers were constantly hovering about her and paying
her homage.
November was a very lively month in the regiment's calendar. It was on
the tenth of November that the annual ball took place. The ladies, of
course, spent their best efforts in preparation for this event.
Needless to say that in these arduous activities, Abramka Stiftik, the
ladies' tailor, played a prominent role. He was the one man in Chmyrsk
who had any understanding at all for the subtle art of the feminine
toilet. Preparations had begun in his shop in August already. Within
the last weeks his modest parlour--furnished with six shabby chairs
placed about a round table, and a fly-specked mirror on the wall--the
atmosphere heavy with a smell of onions and herring, had been filled
from early morning to the evening hours with the most charming and
elegant of the fairer sex. There was trying-on and discussion of
styles and selection of material. It was all very nerve-racking for
the ladies.
The only one who had never appeared in this parlour was the captain's
wife. That had been a thorn in Abramka's flesh. He had spent days and
nights going over in his mind how he could rid this lady of the, in
his opinion, wretched habit of ordering her clothes from Moscow. For
this ball, however, as she herself had told him, she had not ordered a
dress but only material from out of town, from which he deduced that
he was to make the gown for her. But there was only one week left
before the ball, and still she had not come to him. Abramka was in a
state of feverishness. He longed once to make a dress for Mrs.
Zarubkin. It would add to his glory. He wanted to prove that he
understood his trade just as well as any tailor in Moscow, and that it
was quite superfluous for her to order her gowns outside of Chmyrsk.
He would come out the triumphant competitor of Moscow.
As each day passed and Mrs. Zarubkin did not appear in his shop, his
nervousness increased. Finally she ordered a dressing-jacket from
him--but not a word said of a ball gown. What was he to think of it?
So, when Semyonov told him that Mrs. Zarubkin was expecting him at her
home, it goes without saying that he instantly removed the dozen pins
in his mouth, as he was trying on a customer's dress, told one of his
assistants to continue with the fitting, and instantly set off to call
on the captain's wife. In this case, it was not a question of a mere
ball gown, but of the acquisition of the best customer in town.
Although Abramka wore a silk hat and a suit in keeping with the silk
hat, still he was careful not to ring at the front entrance, but
always knocked at the back door. At another time when the captain's
orderly was not in the house--for the captain's orderly also performed
the duties of the captain's cook--he might have knocked long and loud.
On other occasions a cannon might have been shot off right next to
Tatyana Grigoryevna's ears and she would not have lifted her fingers
to open the door. But now she instantly caught the sound of the modest
knocking and opened the back door herself for Abramka.
"Oh!" she cried delightedly. "You, Abramka!"
She really wanted to address him less familiarly, as was more
befitting so dignified a man in a silk hat; but everybody called him
"Abramka," and he would have been very much surprised had he been
honoured with his full name, Abram Srulevich Stiftik. So she thought
it best to address him as the others did.
Mr. "Abramka" was tall and thin. There was always a melancholy
expression in his pale face. He had a little stoop, a long and very
heavy greyish beard. He had been practising his profession for thirty
years. Ever since his apprenticeship he had been called "Abramka,"
which did not strike him as at all derogatory or unfitting. Even his
shingle read: "Ladies' Tailor: Abramka Stiftik"--the most valid proof
that he deemed his name immaterial, but that the chief thing to him
was his art. As a matter of fact, he had attained, if not perfection
in tailoring, yet remarkable skill. To this all the ladies of the
S---- Regiment could attest with conviction.
Abramka removed his silk hat, stepped into the kitchen, and said
gravely, with profound feeling:
"Mrs. Zarubkin, I am entirely at your service."
"Come into the reception room. I have something very important to
speak to you about."
Abramka followed in silence. He stepped softly on tiptoe, as if afraid
of waking some one.
"Sit down, Abramka, listen--but give me your word of honour, you won't
tell any one?" Tatyana Grigoryevna began, reddening a bit. She was
ashamed to have to let the tailor Abramka into her secret, but since
there was no getting around it, she quieted herself and in an instant
had regained her ease.
"I don't know what you are speaking of, Mrs. Zarubkin," Abramka
rejoined. He assumed a somewhat injured manner. "Have you ever heard
of Abramka ever babbling anything out? You certainly know that in my
profession--you know everybody has some secret to be kept."
"Oh, you must have misunderstood me, Abramka. What sort of secrets do
you mean?"
"Well, one lady is a little bit one-sided, another lady"--he pointed
to his breast--"is not quite full enough, another lady has scrawny
arms--such things as that have to be covered up or filled out or laced
in, so as to look better. That is where our art comes in. But we are
in duty bound not to say anything about it."
Tatyana Grigoryevna smiled.
"Well, I can assure you I am all right that way. There is nothing
about me that needs to be covered up or filled out."
"Oh, as if I didn't know that! Everybody knows that Mrs. Zarubkin's
figure is perfect," Abramka cried, trying to flatter his new customer.
Mrs. Zarubkin laughed and made up her mind to remember "Everybody
knows that Mrs. Zarubkin's figure is perfect." Then she said:
"You know that the ball is to take place in a week."
"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Zarubkin, in only one week; unfortunately, only one
week," replied Abramka, sighing.
"But you remember your promise to make my dress for me for the ball
this time?"
"Mrs. Zarubkin," Abramka cried, laying his hand on his heart. "Have I
said that I was not willing to make it? No, indeed, I said it must be
made and made right--for Mrs. Zarubkin, it must be better than for any
one else. That's the way I feel about it."
"Splendid! Just what I wanted to know."
"But why don't you show me your material? Why don't you say to me,
'Here, Abramka, here is the stuff, make a dress?' Abramka would work
on it day and night."
"Ahem, that's just it--I can't order it. That is where the trouble
comes in. Tell me, Abramka, what is the shortest time you need for
making the dress? Listen, the very shortest?"
Abramka shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, is a week too much for a ball dress such as you will want? It's
got to be sewed, it can't be pasted together, You, yourself, know
that, Mrs. Zarubkin."
"But supposing I order it only three days before the ball?"
Abramka started.
"Only three days before the ball? A ball dress? Am I a god, Mrs.
Zarubkin? I am nothing but the ladies' tailor, Abramka Stiftik."
"Well, then you are a nice tailor!" said Tatyana Grigoryevna,
scornfully. "In Moscow they made a ball dress for me in two days."
Abramka jumped up as if at a shot, and beat his breast.
"Is that so? Then I say, Mrs. Zarubkin," he cried pathetically, "if
they made a ball gown for you in Moscow in two days, very well, then I
will make a ball gown for you, if I must, in one day. I will neither
eat nor sleep, and I won't let my help off either for one minute. How
does that suit you?"
"Sit down, Abramka, thank you very much. I hope I shall not have to
put such a strain on you. It really does not depend upon me, otherwise
I should have ordered the dress from you long ago."
"It doesn't depend upon you? Then upon whom does it depend?"
"Ahem, it depends upon--but now, Abramka, remember this is just
between you and me--it depends upon Mrs. Shaldin."
"Upon Mrs. Shaldin, the doctor's wife? Why she isn't even here."
"That's just it. That is why I have to wait. How is it that a clever
man like you, Abramka, doesn't grasp the situation?"
"Hm, hm! Let me see." Abramka racked his brains for a solution of the
riddle. How could it be that Mrs. Shaldin, who was away, should have
anything to do with Mrs. Zarubkin's order for a gown? No, that passed
his comprehension.
"She certainly will get back in time for the ball," said Mrs.
Zarubkin, to give him a cue.
"Well, yes."
"And certainly will bring a dress back with her."
"Certainly!"
"A dress from abroad, something we have never seen here--something
highly original."
"Mrs. Zarubkin!" Abramka cried, as if a truth of tremendous import had
been revealed to him. "Mrs. Zarubkin, I understand. Why certainly!
Yes, but that will be pretty hard."
"That's just it."
Abramka reflected a moment, then said:
"I assure you, Mrs. Zarubkin, you need not be a bit uneasy. I will
make a dress for you that will be just as grand as the one from
abroad. I assure you, your dress will be the most elegant one at the
ball, just as it always has been. I tell you, my name won't be Abramka
Stiftik if--"
His eager asseverations seemed not quite to satisfy the captain's
wife. Her mind was not quite set at ease. She interrupted him.
"But the style, Abramka, the style! You can't possibly guess what the
latest fashion is abroad."
"Why shouldn't I know what the latest fashion is, Mrs. Zarubkin? In
Kiev I have a friend who publishes fashion-plates. I will telegraph to
him, and he will immediately send me pictures of the latest French
models. The telegram will cost only eighty cents, Mrs. Zarubkin, and I
swear to you I will copy any dress he sends. Mrs. Shaldin can't
possibly have a dress like that."
"All very well and good, and that's what we'll do. Still we must wait
until Mrs. Shaldin comes back. Don't you see, Abramka, I must have
exactly the same style that she has? Can't you see, so that nobody can
say that she is in the latest fashion?"
At this point Semyonov entered the room cautiously. He was wearing the
oddest-looking jacket and the captain's old boots. His hair was
rumpled, and his eyes were shining suspiciously. There was every sign
that he had used the renewal of friendship with the doctor's men as a
pretext for a booze.
"I had to stand them some brandy, your Excellency," he said saucily,
but catching his mistress's threatening look, he lowered his head
guiltily.
"Idiot," she yelled at him, "face about. Be off with you to the
kitchen."
In his befuddlement, Semyonov had not noticed Abramka's presence. Now
he became aware of him, faced about and retired to the kitchen
sheepishly.
"What an impolite fellow," said Abramka reproachfully.
"Oh, you wouldn't believe--" said the captain's wife, but instantly
followed Semyonov into the kitchen.
Semyonov aware of his awful misdemeanour, tried to stand up straight
and give a report.
"She will come back, your Excellency, day after to-morrow toward
evening. She sent a telegram."
"Is that true now?"
"I swear it's true. Shuchok saw it himself."
"All right, very good. You will get something for this."
"Yes, your Excellency."
"Silence, you goose. Go on, set the table."
Abramka remained about ten minutes longer with the captain's wife, and
on leaving said:
"Let me assure you once again, Mrs. Zarubkin, you needn't worry; just
select the style, and I will make a gown for you that the best tailor
in Paris can't beat." He pressed his hand to his heart in token of his
intention to do everything in his power for Mrs. Zarubkin.
* * * * *
It was seven o'clock in the evening. Mrs. Shaldin and her trunk had
arrived hardly half an hour before, yet the captain's wife was already
there paying visit; which was a sign of the warm friendship that
existed between the two women. They kissed each other and fell to
talking. The doctor, a tall man of forty-five, seemed discomfited by
the visit, and passed unfriendly side glances at his guest. He had
hoped to spend that evening undisturbed with his wife, and he well
knew that when the ladies of the regiment came to call upon each other
"for only a second," it meant a whole evening of listening to idle
talk.
"You wouldn't believe me, dear, how bored I was the whole time you
were away, how I longed for you, Natalie Semyonovna. But you probably
never gave us a thought."
"Oh, how can you say anything like that. I was thinking of you every
minute, every second. If I hadn't been obliged to finish the cure, I
should have returned long ago. No matter how beautiful it may be away
from home, still the only place to live is among those that are near
and dear to you."
These were only the preliminary soundings. They lasted with variations
for a quarter of an hour. First Mrs. Shaldin narrated a few incidents
of the trip, then Mrs. Zarubkin gave a report of some of the chief
happenings in the life of the regiment. When the conversation was in
full swing, and the samovar was singing on the table, and the pancakes
were spreading their appetising odour, the captain's wife suddenly
cried:
"I wonder what the fashions are abroad now. I say, you must have
feasted your eyes on them!"
Mrs. Shaldin simply replied with a scornful gesture.
"Other people may like them, but I don't care for them one bit. I am
glad we here don't get to see them until a year later. You know,
Tatyana Grigoryevna, you sometimes see the ugliest styles."
"Really?" asked the captain's wife eagerly, her eyes gleaming with
curiosity. The great moment of complete revelation seemed to have
arrived.
"Perfectly hideous, I tell you. Just imagine, you know how nice the
plain skirts were. Then why change them? But no, to be in style now,
the skirts have to be draped. Why? It is just a sign of complete lack
of imagination. And in Lyons they got out a new kind of silk--but that
is still a French secret."
"Why a secret? The silk is certainly being worn already?"
"Yes, one does see it being worn already, but when it was first
manufactured, the greatest secret was made of it. They were afraid the
Germans would imitate. You understand?"
"Oh, but what is the latest style?"
"I really can't explain it to you. All I know is, it is something
awful."
"She can't explain! That means she doesn't want to explain. Oh, the
cunning one. What a sly look she has in her eyes." So thought the
captain's wife. From the very beginning of the conversation, the two
warm friends, it need scarcely be said, were mutually distrustful.
Each had the conviction that everything the other said was to be taken
in the very opposite sense. They were of about the same age, Mrs.
Shaldin possibly one or two years younger than Mrs. Zarubkin. Mrs.
Zarubkin was rather plump, and had heavy light hair. Her appearance
was blooming. Mrs. Shaldin was slim, though well proportioned. She was
a brunette with a pale complexion and large dark eyes. They were two
types of beauty very likely to divide the gentlemen of the regiment
into two camps of admirers. But women are never content with halves.
Mrs. Zarubkin wanted to see all the officers of the regiment at her
feet, and so did Mrs. Shaldin. It naturally led to great rivalry
between the two women, of which they were both conscious, though they
always had the friendliest smiles for each other.
Mrs. Shaldin tried to give a different turn to the conversation.
"Do you think the ball will be interesting this year?"
"Why should it be interesting?" rejoined the captain's wife
scornfully. "Always the same people, the same old humdrum jog-trot."
"I suppose the ladies have been besieging our poor Abramka?"
"I really can't tell you. So far as I am concerned, I have scarcely
looked at what he made for me."
"Hm, how's that? Didn't you order your dress from Moscow again?"
"No, it really does not pay. I am sick of the bother of it all. Why
all that trouble? For whom? Our officers don't care a bit how one
dresses. They haven't the least taste."
"Hm, there's something back of that," thought Mrs. Shaldin.
The captain's wife continued with apparent indifference:
"I can guess what a gorgeous dress you had made abroad. Certainly in
the latest fashion?"
"I?" Mrs. Shaldin laughed innocently. "How could I get the time during
my cure to think of a dress? As a matter of fact, I completely forgot
the ball, thought of it at the last moment, and bought the first piece
of goods I laid my hands on."
"Pink?"
"Oh, no. How can you say pink!"
"Light blue, then?"
"You can't call it exactly light blue. It is a very undefined sort of
colour. I really wouldn't know what to call it."
"But it certainly must have some sort of a shade?"
"You may believe me or not if you choose, but really I don't know.
It's a very indefinite shade."
"Is it Sura silk?"
"No, I can't bear Sura. It doesn't keep the folds well."
"I suppose it is crepe de Chine?"
"Heavens, no! Crepe de Chine is much too expensive for me."
"Then what can it be?"
"Oh, wait a minute, what _is_ the name of that goods? You know there
are so many funny new names now. They don't make any sense."
"Then show me your dress, dearest. Do please show me your dress."
Mrs. Shaldin seemed to be highly embarrassed.
"I am so sorry I can't. It is way down at the bottom of the trunk.
There is the trunk. You see yourself I couldn't unpack it now."
The trunk, close to the wall, was covered with oil cloth and tied
tight with heavy cords. The captain's wife devoured it with her eyes.
She would have liked to see through and through it. She had nothing to
say in reply, because it certainly was impossible to ask her friend,
tired out from her recent journey, to begin to unpack right away and
take out all her things just to show her her new dress. Yet she could
not tear her eyes away from the trunk. There was a magic in it that
held her enthralled. Had she been alone she would have begun to unpack
it herself, nor even have asked the help of a servant to undo the
knots. Now there was nothing left for her but to turn her eyes
sorrowfully away from the fascinating object and take up another topic
of conversation to which she would be utterly indifferent. But she
couldn't think of anything else to talk about. Mrs. Shaldin must have
prepared herself beforehand. She must have suspected something. So now
Mrs. Zarubkin pinned her last hope to Abramka's inventiveness. She
glanced at the clock.
"Dear me," she exclaimed, as if surprised at the lateness of the hour.
"I must be going. I don't want to disturb you any longer either,
dearest. You must be very tired. I hope you rest well."
She shook hands with Mrs. Shaldin, kissed her and left.
* * * * *
Abramka Stiftik had just taken off his coat and was doing some ironing
in his shirt sleeves, when a peculiar figure appeared in his shop. It
was that of a stocky orderly in a well-worn uniform without buttons
and old galoshes instead of boots. His face was gloomy-looking and was
covered with a heavy growth of hair. Abramka knew this figure well. It
seemed always just to have been awakened from the deepest sleep.
"Ah, Shuchok, what do you want?"
"Mrs. Shaldin would like you to call upon her," said Shuchok. He
behaved as if he had come on a terribly serious mission.
"Ah, that's so, your lady has come back. I heard about it. You see I
am very busy. Still you may tell her I am coming right away. I just
want to finish ironing Mrs. Konopotkin's dress."
Abramka simply wanted to keep up appearances, as always when he was
sent for. But his joy at the summons to Mrs. Shaldin was so great that
to the astonishment of his helpers and Shuchok he left immediately.
He found Mrs. Shaldin alone. She had not slept well the two nights
before and had risen late that morning. Her husband had left long
before for the Military Hospital. She was sitting beside her open
trunk taking her things out very carefully.
"How do you do, Mrs. Shaldin? Welcome back to Chmyrsk. I congratulate
you on your happy arrival."
"Oh, how do you do, Abramka?" said Mrs. Shaldin delightedly; "we
haven't seen each other for a long time, have we? I was rather
homesick for you."
"Oh, Mrs. Shaldin, you must have had a very good time abroad. But what
do you need me for? You certainly brought a dress back with you?"
"Abramka always comes in handy," said Mrs. Shaldin jestingly. "We
ladies of the regiment are quite helpless without Abramka. Take a
seat."
Abramka seated himself. He felt much more at ease in Mrs. Shaldin's
home than in Mrs. Zarubkin's. Mrs. Shaldin did not order her clothes
from Moscow. She was a steady customer of his. In this room he had
many a time circled about the doctor's wife with a yard measure, pins,
chalk and scissors, had kneeled down beside her, raised himself to his
feet, bent over again and stood puzzling over some difficult problem
of dressmaking--how low to cut the dress out at the neck, how long to
make the train, how wide the hem, and so on. None of the ladies of the
regiment ordered as much from him as Mrs. Shaldin. Her grandmother
would send her material from Kiev or the doctor would go on a
professional trip to Chernigov and always bring some goods back with
him; or sometimes her aunt in Voronesh would make her a gift of some
silk.
"Abramka is always ready to serve Mrs. Shaldin first," said the
tailor, though seized with a little pang, as if bitten by a guilty
conscience.
"Are you sure you are telling the truth? Is Abramka always to be
depended upon? Eh, is he?" She looked at him searchingly from beneath
drooping lids.
"What a question," rejoined Abramka. His face quivered slightly. His
feeling of discomfort was waxing. "Has Abramka ever--"
"Oh, things can happen. But, all right, never mind. I brought a dress
along with me. I had to have it made in a great hurry, and there is
just a little more to be done on it. Now if I give you this dress to
finish, can I be sure that you positively won't tell another soul how
it is made?"
"Mrs. Shaldin, oh, Mrs. Shaldin," said Abramka reproachfully.
Nevertheless, the expression of his face was not so reassuring as
usual.
"You give me your word of honour?"
"Certainly! My name isn't Abramka Stiftik if I--"
"Well, all right, I will trust you. But be careful. You know of whom
you must be careful?"
"Who is that, Mrs. Shaldin?"
"Oh, you know very well whom I mean. No, you needn't put your hand on
your heart. She was here to see me yesterday and tried in every way
she could to find out how my dress is made. But she couldn't get it
out of me." Abramka sighed. Mrs. Shaldin seemed to suspect his
betrayal. "I am right, am I not? She has not had her dress made yet,
has she? She waited to see my dress, didn't she? And she told you to
copy the style, didn't she?" Mrs, Shaldin asked with honest naivete.
"But I warn you, Abramka, if you give away the least little thing
about my dress, then all is over between you and me. Remember that."
Abramka's hand went to his heart again, and the gesture carried the
same sense of conviction as of old.
"Mrs. Shaldin, how can you speak like that?"
"Wait a moment."
Mrs. Shaldin left the room. About ten minutes passed during which
Abramka had plenty of time to reflect. How could he have given the
captain's wife a promise like that so lightly? What was the captain's
wife to him as compared with the doctor's wife? Mrs. Zarubkin had
never given him a really decent order--just a few things for the house
and some mending. Supposing he were now to perform this great service
for her, would that mean that he could depend upon her for the future?
Was any woman to be depended upon? She would wear this dress out and
go back to ordering her clothes from Moscow again. But _Mrs. Shaldin_,
she was very different. He could forgive her having brought this one
dress along from abroad. What woman in Russia would have refrained,
when abroad, from buying a new dress? Mrs. Shaldin would continue to
be his steady customer all the same.
The door opened. Abramka rose involuntarily, and clasped his hands in
astonishment.
"Well," he exclaimed rapturously, "that is a dress, that is--My, my!"
He was so stunned he could find nothing more to say. And how charming
Mrs. Shaldin looked in her wonderful gown! Her tall slim figure seemed
to have been made for it. What simple yet elegant lines. At first
glance you would think it was nothing more than an ordinary
house-gown, but only at first glance. If you looked at it again, you
could tell right away that it met all the requirements of a fancy
ball-gown. What struck Abramka most was that it had no waist line,
that it did not consist of bodice and skirt. That was strange. It was
just caught lightly together under the bosom, which it brought out in
relief. Draped over the whole was a sort of upper garment of exquisite
old-rose lace embroidered with large silk flowers, which fell from the
shoulders and broadened out in bold superb lines. The dress was cut
low and edged with a narrow strip of black down around the bosom,
around the bottom of the lace drapery, and around the hem of the
skirt. A wonderful fan of feathers to match the down edging gave the
finishing touch.
"Well, how do you like it, Abramka!" asked Mrs. Shaldin with a
triumphant smile.
"Glorious, glorious! I haven't the words at my command. What a dress!
No, I couldn't make a dress like that. And how beautifully it fits
you, as if you had been born in it, Mrs. Shaldin. What do you call the
style?"
"Empire."
"Ampeer?" he queried. "Is that a new style? Well, well, what people
don't think of. Tailors like us might just as well throw our needles
and scissors away."
"Now, listen, Abramka, I wouldn't have shown it to you if there were
not this sewing to be done on it. You are the only one who will have
seen it before the ball. I am not even letting my husband look at it."
"Oh, Mrs. Shaldin, you can rely upon me as upon a rock. But after the
ball may I copy it?"
"Oh, yes, after the ball copy it as much as you please, but not now,
not for anything in the world."
There were no doubts in Abramka's mind when he left the doctor's
house. He had arrived at his decision. That superb creation had
conquered him. It would be a piece of audacity on his part, he felt,
even to think of imitating such a gown. Why, it was not a gown. It was
a dream, a fantastic vision--without a bodice, without puffs or frills
or tawdry trimmings of any sort. Simplicity itself and yet so chic.
Back in his shop he opened the package of fashion-plates that had just
arrived from Kiev. He turned the pages and stared in astonishment.
What was that? Could he trust his eyes? An Empire gown. There it was,
with the broad voluptuous drapery of lace hanging from the shoulders
and the edging of down. Almost exactly the same thing as Mrs.
Shaldin's.
He glanced up and saw Semyonov outside the window. He had certainly
come to fetch him to the captain's wife, who must have ordered him to
watch the tailor's movements, and must have learned that he had just
been at Mrs. Shaldin's. Semyonov entered and told him his mistress
wanted to sec him right away.
Abramks slammed the fashion magazine shut as if afraid that Semyonov
might catch a glimpse of the new Empire fashion and give the secret
away.
"I will come immediately," he said crossly.
He picked up his fashion plates, put the yard measure in his pocket,
rammed his silk hat sorrowfully on his head and set off for the
captain's house. He found Mrs. Zarubkin pacing the room excitedly,
greeted her, but carefully avoided meeting her eyes.
"Well, what did you find out?"
"Nothing, Mrs. Zarubkin," said Abramka dejectedly. "Unfortunately I
couldn't find out a thing."
"Idiot! I have no patience with you. Where are the fashion plates?"
"Here, Mrs. Zarubkin."
She turned the pages, looked at one picture after the other, and
suddenly her eyes shone and her cheeks reddened.
"Oh, Empire! The very thing. Empire is the very latest. Make this one
for me," she cried commandingly.
Abramka turned pale.
"Ampeer, Mrs. Zarubkin? I can't make that Ampeer dress for you," he
murmured.
"Why not?" asked the captain's wife, giving him a searching look.
"Because--because--I can't."
"Oh--h--h, you can't? You know why you can't. Because that is the
style of Mrs. Shaldin's dress. So that is the reliability you boast so
about? Great!"
"Mrs. Zarubkin, I will make any other dress you choose, but it is
absolutely impossible for me to make this one."
"I don't need your fashion plates, do you hear me? Get out of here,
and don't ever show your face again."
"Mrs. Zarubkin, I--"
"Get out of here," repeated the captain's wife, quite beside herself.
The poor tailor stuck his yard measure, which he had already taken
out, back into his pocket and left.
Half an hour later the captain's wife was entering a train for Kiev,
carrying a large package which contained material for a dress. The
captain had accompanied her to the station with a pucker in his
forehead. That was five days before the ball.
* * * * *
At the ball two expensive Empire gowns stood out conspicuously from
among the more or less elegant gowns which had been finished in the
shop of Abramka Stiftik, Ladies' Tailor. The one gown adorned Mrs.
Shaldin's figure, the other the figure of the captain's wife.
Mrs. Zarubkin had bought her gown ready made at Kiev, and had returned
only two hours before the beginning of the ball. She had scarcely had
time to dress. Perhaps it would have been better had she not appeared
at this one of the annual balls, had she not taken that fateful trip
to Kiev. For in comparison with the make and style of Mrs. Shaldin's
dress, which had been brought abroad, hers was like the botched
imitation of an amateur.
That was evident to everybody, though the captain's wife had her
little group of partisans, who maintained with exaggerated eagerness
that she looked extraordinarily fascinating in her dress and Mrs.
Shaldin still could not rival her. But there was no mistaking it,
there was little justice in this contention. Everybody knew better;
what was worst of all, Mrs. Zarubkin herself knew better. Mrs.
Shaldin's triumph was complete.
The two ladies gave each other the same friendly smiles as always, but
one of them was experiencing the fine disdain and the derision of the
conqueror, while the other was burning inside with the furious
resentment of a dethroned goddess--goddess of the annual ball.
From that time on Abramka cautiously avoided passing the captain's
house.

VANKA

VANKA
BY ANTON P. CHEKHOV
Nine-year-old Vanka Zhukov, who had been apprentice to the shoemaker
Aliakhin for three months, did not go to bed the night before
Christmas. He waited till the master and mistress and the assistants
had gone out to an early church-service, to procure from his
employer's cupboard a small phial of ink and a penholder with a rusty
nib; then, spreading a crumpled sheet of paper in front of him, he
began to write.
Before, however, deciding to make the first letter, he looked
furtively at the door and at the window, glanced several times at the
sombre ikon, on either side of which stretched shelves full of lasts,
and heaved a heart-rending sigh. The sheet of paper was spread on a
bench, and he himself was on his knees in front of it.
"Dear Grandfather Konstantin Makarych," he wrote, "I am writing you a
letter. I wish you a Happy Christmas and all God's holy best. I have
no mamma or papa, you are all I have."
Vanka gave a look towards the window in which shone the reflection of
his candle, and vividly pictured to himself his grandfather,
Konstantin Makarych, who was night-watchman at Messrs. Zhivarev. He
was a small, lean, unusually lively and active old man of sixty-five,
always smiling and blear-eyed. All day he slept in the servants'
kitchen or trifled with the cooks. At night, enveloped in an ample
sheep-skin coat, he strayed round the domain tapping with his cudgel.
Behind him, each hanging its head, walked the old bitch Kashtanka, and
the dog Viun, so named because of his black coat and long body and his
resemblance to a loach. Viun was an unusually civil and friendly dog,
looking as kindly at a stranger as at his masters, but he was not to
be trusted. Beneath his deference and humbleness was hid the most
inquisitorial maliciousness. No one knew better than he how to sneak
up and take a bite at a leg, or slip into the larder or steal a
muzhik's chicken. More than once they had nearly broken his hind-legs,
twice he had been hung up, every week he was nearly flogged to death,
but he always recovered.
At this moment, for certain, Vanka's grandfather must be standing at
the gate, blinking his eyes at the bright red windows of the village
church, stamping his feet in their high-felt boots, and jesting with
the people in the yard; his cudgel will be hanging from his belt, he
will be hugging himself with cold, giving a little dry, old man's
cough, and at times pinching a servant-girl or a cook.
"Won't we take some snuff?" he asks, holding out his snuff-box to the
women. The women take a pinch of snuff, and sneeze.
The old man goes into indescribable ecstasies, breaks into loud
laughter, and cries:
"Off with it, it will freeze to your nose!"
He gives his snuff to the dogs, too. Kashtanka sneezes, twitches her
nose, and walks away offended. Viun deferentially refuses to sniff and
wags his tail. It is glorious weather, not a breath of wind, clear,
and frosty; it is a dark eight, but the whole village, its white roofs
and streaks of smoke from the chimneys, the trees silvered with
hoar-frost, and the snowdrifts, you can see it all. The sky
scintillates with bright twinkling stars, and the Milky Way stands out
so clearly that it looks as if it had been polished and rubbed over
with snow for the holidays...
Vanka sighs, dips his pen in the ink, and continues to write:
"Last night I got a thrashing, my master dragged me by my hair into
the yard, and belaboured me with a shoe-maker's stirrup, because,
while I was rocking his brat in its cradle, I unfortunately fell
asleep. And during the week, my mistress told me to clean a herring,
and I began by its tail, so she took the herring and stuck its snout
into my face. The assistants tease me, send me to the tavern for
vodka, make me steal the master's cucumbers, and the master beats me
with whatever is handy. Food there is none; in the morning it's bread,
at dinner gruel, and in the evening bread again. As for tea or
sour-cabbage soup, the master and the mistress themselves guzzle that.
They make me sleep in the vestibule, and when their brat cries, I
don't sleep at all, but have to rock the cradle. Dear Grandpapa, for
Heaven's sake, take me away from here, home to our village, I can't
bear this any more... I bow to the ground to you, and will pray to God
for ever and ever, take me from here or I shall die..."
The corners of Vanka's mouth went down, he rubbed his eyes with his
dirty fist, and sobbed.
"I'll grate your tobacco for you," he continued, "I'll pray to God for
you, and if there is anything wrong, then flog me like the grey goat.
And if you really think I shan't find work, then I'll ask the manager,
for Christ's sake, to let me clean the boots, or I'll go instead of
Fedya as underherdsman. Dear Grandpapa, I can't bear this any more,
it'll kill me... I wanted to run away to our village, but I have no
boots, and I was afraid of the frost, and when I grow up I'll look
after you, no one shall harm you, and when you die I'll pray for the
repose of your soul, just like I do for mamma Pelagueya.
"As for Moscow, it is a large town, there are all gentlemen's houses,
lots of horses, no sheep, and the dogs are not vicious. The children
don't come round at Christmas with a star, no one is allowed to sing
in the choir, and once I saw in a shop window hooks on a line and
fishing rods, all for sale, and for every kind of fish, awfully
convenient. And there was one hook which would catch a sheat-fish
weighing a pound. And there are shops with guns, like the master's,
and I am sure they must cost 100 rubles each. And in the meat-shops
there are woodcocks, partridges, and hares, but who shot them or where
they come from, the shopman won't say.
"Dear Grandpapa, and when the masters give a Christmas tree, take a
golden walnut and hide it in my green box. Ask the young lady, Olga
Ignatyevna, for it, say it's for Vanka."
Vanka sighed convulsively, and again stared at the window. He
remembered that his grandfather always went to the forest for the
Christmas tree, and took his grandson with him. What happy times! The
frost crackled, his grandfather crackled, and as they both did, Vanka
did the same. Then before cutting down the Christmas tree his
grandfather smoked his pipe, took a long pinch of snuff, and made fun
of poor frozen little Vanka... The young fir trees, wrapt in
hoar-frost, stood motionless, waiting for which of them would die.
Suddenly a hare springing from somewhere would dart over the
snowdrift... His grandfather could not help shouting:
"Catch it, catch it, catch it! Ah, short-tailed devil!"
When the tree was down, his grandfather dragged it to the master's
house, and there they set about decorating it. The young lady, Olga
Ignatyevna, Vanka's great friend, busied herself most about it. When
little Vanka's mother, Pelagueya, was still alive, and was
servant-woman in the house, Olga Ignatyevna used to stuff him with
sugar-candy, and, having nothing to do, taught him to read, write,
count up to one hundred, and even to dance the quadrille. When
Pelagueya died, they placed the orphan Vanka in the kitchen with his
grandfather, and from the kitchen he was sent to Moscow to Aliakhin,
the shoemaker.
"Come quick, dear Grandpapa," continued Vanka, "I beseech you for
Christ's sake take me from here. Have pity on a poor orphan, for here
they beat me, and I am frightfully hungry, and so sad that I can't
tell you, I cry all the time. The other day the master hit me on the
head with a last; I fell to the ground, and only just returned to
life. My life is a misfortune, worse than any dog's... I send
greetings to Aliona, to one-eyed Tegor, and the coachman, and don't
let any one have my mouth-organ. I remain, your grandson, Ivan Zhukov,
dear Grandpapa, do come."
Vanka folded his sheet of paper in four, and put it into an envelope
purchased the night before for a kopek. He thought a little, dipped
the pen into the ink, and wrote the address:
"The village, to my grandfather." He then scratched his head, thought
again, and added: "Konstantin Makarych." Pleased at not having been
interfered with in his writing, he put on his cap, and, without
putting on his sheep-skin coat, ran out in his shirt-sleeves into the
street.
The shopman at the poulterer's, from whom he had inquired the night
before, had told him that letters were to be put into post-boxes, and
from there they were conveyed over the whole earth in mail troikas by
drunken post-boys and to the sound of bells. Vanka ran to the first
post-box and slipped his precious letter into the slit.
An hour afterwards, lulled by hope, he was sleeping soundly. In his
dreams he saw a stove, by the stove his grandfather sitting with his
legs dangling down, barefooted, and reading a letter to the cooks, and
Viun walking round the stove wagging his tail.

THE BET

THE BET
BY ANTON P. CHEKHOV
I
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from corner to
corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave in the
autumn fifteen years before. There were many clever people at the
party and much interesting conversation. They talked among other
things of capital punishment. The guests, among them not a few
scholars and journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital
punishment. They found it obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted
to a Christian State and immoral. Some of them thought that capital
punishment should be replaced universally by life-imprisonment.
"I don't agree with you," said the host. "I myself have experienced
neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may judge
_a priori_, then in my opinion capital punishment is more moral and
more humane than imprisonment. Execution kills instantly,
life-imprisonment kills by degrees. Who is the more humane
executioner, one who kills you in a few seconds or one who draws the
life out of you incessantly, for years?"
"They're both equally immoral," remarked one of the guests, "because
their purpose is the same, to take away life. The State is not God. It
has no right to take away that which it cannot give back, if it should
so desire."
Among the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five. On
being asked his opinion, he said:
"Capital punishment and life-imprisonment are equally immoral; but if
I were offered the choice between them, I would certainly choose the
second. It's better to live somehow than not to live at all."
There ensued a lively discussion. The banker who was then younger and
more nervous suddenly lost his temper, banged his fist on the table,
and turning to the young lawyer, cried out:
"It's a lie. I bet you two millions you wouldn't stick in a cell even
for five years."
"If you mean it seriously," replied the lawyer, "then I bet I'll stay
not five but fifteen."
"Fifteen! Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two millions."
"Agreed. You stake two millions, I my freedom," said the lawyer.
So this wild, ridiculous bet came to pass. The banker, who at that
time had too many millions to count, spoiled and capricious, was
beside himself with rapture. During supper he said to the lawyer
jokingly:
"Come to your senses, young roan, before it's too late. Two millions
are nothing to me, but you stand to lose three or four of the best
years of your life. I say three or four, because you'll never stick it
out any longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary
is much heavier than enforced imprisonment. The idea that you have the
right to free yourself at any moment will poison the whole of your
life in the cell. I pity you."
And now the banker, pacing from corner to corner, recalled all this
and asked himself:
"Why did I make this bet? What's the good? The lawyer loses fifteen
years of his life and I throw away two millions. Will it convince
people that capital punishment is worse or better than imprisonment
for life? No, no! all stuff and rubbish. On my part, it was the
caprice of a well-fed man; on the lawyer's pure greed of gold."
He recollected further what happened after the evening party. It was
decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the
strictest observation, in a garden wing of the banker's house. It was
agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right to
cross the threshold, to see living people, to hear human voices, and
to receive letters and newspapers. He was permitted to have a musical
instrument, to read books, to write letters, to drink wine and smoke
tobacco. By the agreement he could communicate, but only in silence,
with the outside world through a little window specially constructed
for this purpose. Everything necessary, books, music, wine, he could
receive in any quantity by sending a note through the window. The
agreement provided for all the minutest details, which made the
confinement strictly solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to remain
exactly fifteen years from twelve o'clock of November 14th, 1870, to
twelve o'clock of November 14th, 1885. The least attempt on his part
to violate the conditions, to escape if only for two minutes before
the time freed the banker from the obligation to pay him the two
millions.
During the first year of imprisonment, the lawyer, as far as it was
possible to judge from his short notes, suffered terribly from
loneliness and boredom. From his wing day and night came the sound of
the piano. He rejected wine and tobacco. "Wine," he wrote, "excites
desires, and desires are the chief foes of a prisoner; besides,
nothing is more boring than to drink good wine alone," and tobacco
spoils the air in his room. During the first year the lawyer was sent
books of a light character; novels with a complicated love interest,
stories of crime and fantasy, comedies, and so on.
In the second year the piano was heard no longer and the lawyer asked
only for classics. In the fifth year, music was heard again, and the
prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him said that during the
whole of that year he was only eating, drinking, and lying on his bed.
He yawned often and talked angrily to himself. Books he did not read.
Sometimes at nights he would sit down to write. He would write for a
long time and tear it all up in the morning. More than once he was
heard to weep.
In the second half of the sixth year, the prisoner began zealously to
study languages, philosophy, and history. He fell on these subjects so
hungrily that the banker hardly had time to get books enough for him.
In the space of four years about six hundred volumes were bought at
his request. It was while that passion lasted that the banker received
the following letter from the prisoner: "My dear gaoler, I am writing
these lines in six languages. Show them to experts. Let them read
them. If they do not find one single mistake, I beg you to give orders
to have a gun fired off in the garden. By the noise I shall know that
my efforts have not been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and
countries speak in different languages; but in them all burns the same
flame. Oh, if you knew my heavenly happiness now that I can understand
them!" The prisoner's desire was fulfilled. Two shots were fired in
the garden by the banker's order.
Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his
table and read only the New Testament. The banker found it strange
that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite volumes,
should have spent nearly a year in reading one book, easy to
understand and by no means thick. The New Testament was then replaced
by the history of religions and theology.
During the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an
extraordinary amount, quite haphazard. Now he would apply himself to
the natural sciences, then he would read Byron or Shakespeare. Notes
used to come from him in which he asked to be sent at the same time a
book on chemistry, a text-book of medicine, a novel, and some treatise
on philosophy or theology. He read as though he were swimming in the
sea among broken pieces of wreckage, and in his desire to save his
life was eagerly grasping one piece after another.
II
The banker recalled all this, and thought:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he receives his freedom. Under the
agreement, I shall have to pay him two millions. If I pay, it's all
over with me. I am ruined for ever ..."
Fifteen years before he had too many millions to count, but now he was
afraid to ask himself which he had more of, money or debts. Gambling
on the Stock-Exchange, risky speculation, and the recklessness of
which he could not rid himself even in old age, had gradually brought
his business to decay; and the fearless, self-confident, proud man of
business had become an ordinary banker, trembling at every rise and
fall in the market.
"That cursed bet," murmured the old man clutching his head in
despair... "Why didn't the man die? He's only forty years old. He will
take away my last farthing, marry, enjoy life, gamble on the Exchange,
and I will look on like an envious beggar and hear the same words from
him every day: 'I'm obliged to you for the happiness of my life. Let
me help you.' No, it's too much! The only escape from bankruptcy and
disgrace--is that the man should die."
The clock had just struck three. The banker was listening. In the
house every one was asleep, and one could hear only the frozen trees
whining outside the windows. Trying to make no sound, he took out of
his safe the key of the door which had not been opened for fifteen
years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house. The garden was
dark and cold. It was raining. A damp, penetrating wind howled in the
garden and gave the trees no rest. Though he strained his eyes, the
banker could see neither the ground, nor the white statues, nor the
garden wing, nor the trees. Approaching the garden wing, he called the
watchman twice. There was no answer. Evidently the watchman had taken
shelter from the bad weather and was now asleep somewhere in the
kitchen or the greenhouse.
"If I have the courage to fulfil my intention," thought the old man,
"the suspicion will fall on the watchman first of all."
In the darkness he groped for the steps and the door and entered the
hall of the garden-wing, then poked his way into a narrow passage and
struck a match. Not a soul was there. Some one's bed, with no
bedclothes on it, stood there, and an iron stove loomed dark in the
corner. The seals on the door that led into the prisoner's room were
unbroken.
When the match went out, the old man, trembling from agitation, peeped
into the little window.
In the prisoner's room a candle was burning dimly. The prisoner
himself sat by the table. Only his back, the hair on his head and his
hands were visible. Open books were strewn about on the table, the two
chairs, and on the carpet near the table.
Five minutes passed and the prisoner never once stirred. Fifteen
years' confinement had taught him to sit motionless. The banker tapped
on the window with his finger, but the prisoner made no movement in
reply. Then the banker cautiously tore the seals from the door and put
the key into the lock. The rusty lock gave a hoarse groan and the door
creaked. The banker expected instantly to hear a cry of surprise and
the sound of steps. Three minutes passed and it was as quiet inside as
it had been before. He made up his mind to enter.
Before the table sat a man, unlike an ordinary human being. It was a
skeleton, with tight-drawn skin, with long curly hair like a woman's,
and a shaggy beard. The colour of his face was yellow, of an earthy
shade; the cheeks were sunken, the back long and narrow, and the hand
upon which he leaned his hairy head was so lean and skinny that it was
painful to look upon. His hair was already silvering with grey, and no
one who glanced at the senile emaciation of the face would have
believed that he was only forty years old. On the table, before his
bended head, lay a sheet of paper on which something was written in a
tiny hand.
"Poor devil," thought the banker, "he's asleep and probably seeing
millions in his dreams. I have only to take and throw this half-dead
thing on the bed, smother him a moment with the pillow, and the most
careful examination will find no trace of unnatural death. But, first,
let us read what he has written here."
The banker took the sheet from the table and read:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock midnight, I shall obtain my freedom and
the right to mix with people. But before I leave this room and see the
sun I think it necessary to say a few words to you. On my own clear
conscience and before God who sees me I declare to you that I despise
freedom, life, health, and all that your books call the blessings of
the world.
"For fifteen years I have diligently studied earthly life. True, I saw
neither the earth nor the people, but in your books I drank fragrant
wine, sang songs, hunted deer and wild boar in the forests, loved
women... And beautiful women, like clouds ethereal, created by the
magic of your poets' genius, visited me by night and whispered to me
wonderful tales, which made my head drunken. In your books I climbed
the summits of Elbruz and Mont Blanc and saw from there how the sun
rose in the morning, and in the evening suffused the sky, the ocean
and lie mountain ridges with a purple gold. I saw from there how above
me lightnings glimmered cleaving the clouds; I saw green forests,
fields, rivers, lakes, cities; I heard syrens singing, and the playing
of the pipes of Pan; I touched the wings of beautiful devils who came
flying to me to speak of God... In your books I cast myself into
bottomless abysses, worked miracles, burned cities to the ground,
preached new religions, conquered whole countries...
"Your books gave me wisdom. All that unwearying human thought created
in the centuries is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I know
that I am cleverer than you all.
"And I despise your books, despise all worldly blessings and wisdom.
Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive as a mirage. Though
you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the
face of the earth like the mice underground; and your posterity, your
history, and the immortality of your men of genius will be as frozen
slag, burnt down together with the terrestrial globe.
"You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You take falsehood for truth and
ugliness for beauty. You would marvel if suddenly apple and orange
trees should bear frogs and lizards instead of fruit, and if roses
should begin to breathe the odour of a sweating horse. So do I marvel
at you, who have bartered heaven for earth. I do not want to
understand you.
"That I may show you in deed my contempt for that by which you live, I
waive the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise, and
which I now despise. That I may deprive myself of my right to them, I
shall come out from here five minutes before the stipulated term, and
thus shall violate the agreement."
When he had read, the banker put the sheet on the table, kissed the
head of the strange man, and began to weep. He went out of the wing.
Never at any other time, not even after his terrible losses on the
Exchange, had he felt such contempt for himself as now. Coming home,
he lay down on his bed, but agitation and tears kept him a long time
from sleeping...
The next morning the poor watchman came running to him and told him
that they had seen the man who lived in the wing climb through the
window into the garden. He had gone to the gate and disappeared. The
banker instantly went with his servants to the wing and established
the escape of his prisoner. To avoid unnecessary rumours he took the
paper with the renunciation from the table and, on his return, locked
it in his safe.

THE DARLING

THE DARLING
BY ANTON P. CHEKOV
Olenka, the daughter of the retired collegiate assessor Plemyanikov,
was sitting on the back-door steps of her house doing nothing. It was
hot, the flies were nagging and teasing, and it was pleasant to think
that it would soon be evening. Dark rain clouds were gathering from
the east, wafting a breath of moisture every now and then.
Kukin, who roomed in the wing of the same house, was standing in the
yard looking up at the sky. He was the manager of the Tivoli, an
open-air theatre.
"Again," he said despairingly. "Rain again. Rain, rain, rain! Every
day rain! As though to spite me. I might as well stick my head into a
noose and be done with it. It's ruining me. Heavy losses every day!"
He wrung his hands, and continued, addressing Olenka: "What a life,
Olga Semyonovna! It's enough to make a man weep. He works, he does his
best, his very best, he tortures himself, he passes sleepless nights,
he thinks and thinks and thinks how to do everything just right. And
what's the result? He gives the public the best operetta, the very
best pantomime, excellent artists. But do they want it? Have they the
least appreciation of it? The public is rude. The public is a great
boor. The public wants a circus, a lot of nonsense, a lot of stuff.
And there's the weather. Look! Rain almost every evening. It began to
rain on the tenth of May, and it's kept it up through the whole of
June. It's simply awful. I can't get any audiences, and don't I have
to pay rent? Don't I have to pay the actors?"
The next day towards evening the clouds gathered again, and Kukin said
with an hysterical laugh:
"Oh, I don't care. Let it do its worst. Let it drown the whole
theatre, and me, too. All right, no luck for me in this world or the
next. Let the actors bring suit against me and drag me to court.
What's the court? Why not Siberia at hard labour, or even the
scaffold? Ha, ha, ha!"
It was the same on the third day.
Olenka listened to Kukin seriously, in silence. Sometimes tears would
rise to her eyes. At last Kukin's misfortune touched her. She fell in
love with him. He was short, gaunt, with a yellow face, and curly hair
combed back from his forehead, and a thin tenor voice. His features
puckered all up when he spoke. Despair was ever inscribed on his face.
And yet he awakened in Olenka a sincere, deep feeling.
She was always loving somebody. She couldn't get on without loving
somebody. She had loved her sick father, who sat the whole time in his
armchair in a darkened room, breathing heavily. She had loved her
aunt, who came from Brianska once or twice a year to visit them. And
before that, when a pupil at the progymnasium, she had loved her
French teacher. She was a quiet, kind-hearted, compassionate girl,
with a soft gentle way about her. And she made a very healthy,
wholesome impression. Looking at her full, rosy cheeks, at her soft
white neck with the black mole, and at the good naive smile that
always played on her face when something pleasant was said, the men
would think, "Not so bad," and would smile too; and the lady visitors,
in the middle of the conversation, would suddenly grasp her hand and
exclaim, "You darling!" in a burst of delight.
The house, hers by inheritance, in which she had lived from birth, was
located at the outskirts of the city on the Gypsy Road, not far from
the Tivoli. From early evening till late at night she could hear the
music in the theatre and the bursting of the rockets; and it seemed to
her that Kukin was roaring and battling with his fate and taking his
chief enemy, the indifferent public, by assault. Her heart melted
softly, she felt no desire to sleep, and when Kukin returned home
towards morning, she tapped on her window-pane, and through the
curtains he saw her face and one shoulder and the kind smile she gave
him.
He proposed to her, and they were married. And when he had a good look
of her neck and her full vigorous shoulders, he clapped his hands and
said:
"You darling!"
He was happy. But it rained on their wedding-day, and the expression
of despair never left his face.
They got along well together. She sat in the cashier's box, kept the
theatre in order, wrote down the expenses, and paid out the salaries.
Her rosy cheeks, her kind naive smile, like a halo around her face,
could be seen at the cashier's window, behind the scenes, and in the
cafe. She began to tell her friends that the theatre was the greatest,
the most important, the most essential thing in the world, that it was
the only place to obtain true enjoyment in and become humanised and
educated.
"But do you suppose the public appreciates it?" she asked. "What the
public wants is the circus. Yesterday Vanichka and I gave _Faust
Burlesqued_, and almost all the boxes were empty. If we had given some
silly nonsense, I assure you, the theatre would have been overcrowded.
To-morrow we'll put _Orpheus in Hades_ on. Do come."
Whatever Kukin said about the theatre and the actors, she repeated.
She spoke, as he did, with contempt of the public, of its indifference
to art, of its boorishness. She meddled in the rehearsals, corrected
the actors, watched the conduct of the musicians; and when an
unfavourable criticism appeared in the local paper, she wept and went
to the editor to argue with him.
The actors were fond of her and called her "Vanichka and I" and "the
darling." She was sorry for them and lent them small sums. When they
bilked her, she never complained to her husband; at the utmost she
shed a few tears.
In winter, too, they got along nicely together. They leased a theatre
in the town for the whole winter and sublet it for short periods to a
Little Russian theatrical company, to a conjuror and to the local
amateur players.
Olenka grew fuller and was always beaming with contentment; while
Kukin grew thinner and yellower and complained of his terrible losses,
though he did fairly well the whole winter. At night he coughed, and
she gave him raspberry syrup and lime water, rubbed him with eau de
Cologne, and wrapped him up in soft coverings.
"You are my precious sweet," she said with perfect sincerity, stroking
his hair. "You are such a dear."
At Lent he went to Moscow to get his company together, and, while
without him, Olenka was unable to sleep. She sat at the window the
whole time, gazing at the stars. She likened herself to the hens that
are also uneasy and unable to sleep when their rooster is out of the
coop. Kukin was detained in Moscow. He wrote he would be back during
Easter Week, and in his letters discussed arrangements already for the
Tivoli. But late one night, before Easter Monday, there was an
ill-omened knocking at the wicket-gate. It was like a knocking on a
barrel--boom, boom, boom! The sleepy cook ran barefooted, plashing
through the puddles, to open the gate.
"Open the gate, please," said some one in a hollow bass voice. "I have
a telegram for you."
Olenka had received telegrams from her husband before; but this time,
somehow, she was numbed with terror. She opened the telegram with
trembling hands and read:
"Ivan Petrovich died suddenly to-day. Awaiting propt orders for
wuneral Tuesday."
That was the way the telegram was written--"wuneral"--and another
unintelligible word--"propt." The telegram was signed by the manager
of the opera company.
"My dearest!" Olenka burst out sobbing. "Vanichka, my dearest, my
sweetheart. Why did I ever meet you? Why did I ever get to know you
and love you? To whom have you abandoned your poor Olenka, your poor,
unhappy Olenka?"
Kukin was buried on Tuesday in the Vagankov Cemetery in Moscow. Olenka
returned home on Wednesday; and as soon as she entered her house she
threw herself on her bed and broke into such loud sobbing that she
could be heard in the street and in the neighbouring yards.
"The darling!" said the neighbours, crossing themselves. "How Olga
Semyonovna, the poor darling, is grieving!"
Three months afterwards Olenka was returning home from mass,
downhearted and in deep mourning. Beside her walked a man also
returning from church, Vasily Pustovalov, the manager of the merchant
Babakayev's lumber-yard. He was wearing a straw hat, a white vest with
a gold chain, and looked more like a landowner than a business man.
"Everything has its ordained course, Olga Semyonovna," he said
sedately, with sympathy in his voice. "And if any one near and dear to
us dies, then it means it was God's will and we should remember that
and bear it with submission."
He took her to the wicket-gate, said good-bye and went away. After
that she heard his sedate voice the whole day; and on closing her eyes
she instantly had a vision of his dark beard. She took a great liking
to him. And evidently he had been impressed by her, too; for, not long
after, an elderly woman, a distant acquaintance, came in to have a cup
of coffee with her. As soon as the woman was seated at table she began
to speak about Pustovalov--how good he was, what a steady man, and any
woman could be glad to get him as a husband. Three days later
Pustovalov himself paid Olenka a visit. He stayed only about ten
minutes, and spoke little, but Olenka fell in love with him, fell in
love so desperately that she did not sleep the whole night and burned
as with fever. In the morning she sent for the elderly woman. Soon
after, Olenka and Pustovalov were engaged, and the wedding followed.
Pustovalov and Olenka lived happily together. He usually stayed in the
lumber-yard until dinner, then went out on business. In his absence
Olenka took his place in the office until evening, attending to the
book-keeping and despatching the orders.
"Lumber rises twenty per cent every year nowadays," she told her
customers and acquaintances. "Imagine, we used to buy wood from our
forests here. Now Vasichka has to go every year to the government of
Mogilev to get wood. And what a tax!" she exclaimed, covering her
cheeks with her hands in terror. "What a tax!"
She felt as if she had been dealing in lumber for ever so long, that
the most important and essential thing in life was lumber. There was
something touching and endearing in the way she pronounced the words,
"beam," "joist," "plank," "stave," "lath," "gun-carriage," "clamp." At
night she dreamed of whole mountains of boards and planks, long,
endless rows of wagons conveying the wood somewhere, far, far from the
city. She dreamed that a whole regiment of beams, 36 ft. x 5 in., were
advancing in an upright position to do battle against the lumber-yard;
that the beams and joists and clamps were knocking against each other,
emitting the sharp crackling reports of dry wood, that they were all
falling and then rising again, piling on top of each other. Olenka
cried out in her sleep, and Pustovalov said to her gently:
"Olenka my dear, what is the matter? Cross yourself."
Her husband's opinions were all hers. If he thought the room was too
hot, she thought so too. If he thought business was dull, she thought
business was dull. Pustovalov was not fond of amusements and stayed
home on holidays; she did the same.
"You are always either at home or in the office," said her friends.
"Why don't you go to the theatre or to the circus, darling?"
"Vasichka and I never go to the theatre," she answered sedately. "We
have work to do, we have no time for nonsense. What does one get out
of going to theatre?"
On Saturdays she and Pustovalov went to vespers, and on holidays to
early mass. On returning home they walked side by side with rapt
faces, an agreeable smell emanating from both of them and her silk
dress rustling pleasantly. At home they drank tea with milk-bread and
various jams, and then ate pie. Every day at noontime there was an
appetising odour in the yard and outside the gate of cabbage soup,
roast mutton, or duck; and, on fast days, of fish. You couldn't pass
the gate without being seized by an acute desire to eat. The samovar
was always boiling on the office table, and customers were treated to
tea and biscuits. Once a week the married couple went to the baths and
returned with red faces, walking side by side.
"We are getting along very well, thank God," said Olenka to her
friends. "God grant that all should live as well as Vasichka and I."
When Pustovalov went to the government of Mogilev to buy wood, she was
dreadfully homesick for him, did not sleep nights, and cried.
Sometimes the veterinary surgeon of the regiment, Smirnov, a young man
who lodged in the wing of her house, came to see her evenings. He
related incidents, or they played cards together. This distracted her.
The most interesting of his stories were those of his own life. He was
married and had a son; but he had separated from his wife because she
had deceived him, and now he hated her and sent her forty rubles a
month for his son's support. Olenka sighed, shook her head, and was
sorry for him.
"Well, the Lord keep you," she said, as she saw him off to the door by
candlelight. "Thank you for coming to kill time with me. May God give
you health. Mother in Heaven!" She spoke very sedately, very
judiciously, imitating her husband. The veterinary surgeon had
disappeared behind the door when she called out after him: "Do you
know, Vladimir Platonych, you ought to make up with your wife. Forgive
her, if only for the sake of your son. The child understands
everything, you may be sure."
When Pustovalov returned, she told him in a low voice about the
veterinary surgeon and his unhappy family life; and they sighed and
shook their heads, and talked about the boy who must be homesick for
his father. Then, by a strange association of ideas, they both stopped
before the sacred images, made genuflections, and prayed to God to
send them children.
And so the Pustovalovs lived for full six years, quietly and
peaceably, in perfect love and harmony. But once in the winter Vasily
Andreyich, after drinking some hot tea, went out into the lumber-yard
without a hat on his head, caught a cold and took sick. He was treated
by the best physicians, but the malady progressed, and he died after
an illness of four months. Olenka was again left a widow.
"To whom have you left me, my darling?" she wailed after the funeral.
"How shall I live now without you, wretched creature that I am. Pity
me, good people, pity me, fatherless and motherless, all alone in the
world!"
She went about dressed in black and weepers, and she gave up wearing
hats and gloves for good. She hardly left the house except to go to
church and to visit her husband's grave. She almost led the life of a
nun.
It was not until six months had passed that she took off the weepers
and opened her shutters. She began to go out occasionally in the
morning to market with her cook. But how she lived at home and what
went on there, could only be surmised. It could be surmised from the
fact that she was seen in her little garden drinking tea with the
veterinarian while he read the paper out loud to her, and also from
the fact that once on meeting an acquaintance at the post-office, she
said to her:
"There is no proper veterinary inspection in our town. That is why
there is so much disease. You constantly hear of people getting sick
from the milk and becoming infected by the horses and cows. The health
of domestic animals ought really to be looked after as much as that of
human beings."
She repeated the veterinarian's words and held the same opinions as he
about everything. It was plain that she could not exist a single year
without an attachment, and she found her new happiness in the wing of
her house. In any one else this would have been condemned; but no one
could think ill of Olenka. Everything in her life was so transparent.
She and the veterinary surgeon never spoke about the change in their
relations. They tried, in fact, to conceal it, but unsuccessfully; for
Olenka could have no secrets. When the surgeon's colleagues from the
regiment came to see him, she poured tea, and served the supper, and
talked to them about the cattle plague, the foot and mouth disease,
and the municipal slaughter houses. The surgeon was dreadfully
embarrassed, and after the visitors had left, he caught her hand and
hissed angrily:
"Didn't I ask you not to talk about what you don't understand? When we
doctors discuss things, please don't mix in. It's getting to be a
nuisance."
She looked at him in astonishment and alarm, and asked:
"But, Volodichka, what _am_ I to talk about?"
And she threw her arms round his neck, with tears in her eyes, and
begged him not to be angry. And they were both happy.
But their happiness was of short duration. The veterinary surgeon went
away with his regiment to be gone for good, when it was transferred to
some distant place almost as far as Siberia, and Olenka was left
alone.
Now she was completely alone. Her father had long been dead, and his
armchair lay in the attic covered with dust and minus one leg. She got
thin and homely, and the people who met her on the street no longer
looked at her as they had used to, nor smiled at her. Evidently her
best years were over, past and gone, and a new, dubious life was to
begin which it were better not to think about.
In the evening Olenka sat on the steps and heard the music playing and
the rockets bursting in the Tivoli; but it no longer aroused any
response in her. She looked listlessly into the yard, thought of
nothing, wanted nothing, and when night came on, she went to bed and
dreamed of nothing but the empty yard. She ate and drank as though by
compulsion.
And what was worst of all, she no longer held any opinions. She saw
and understood everything that went on around her, but she could not
form an opinion about it. She knew of nothing to talk about. And how
dreadful not to have opinions! For instance, you see a bottle, or you
see that it is raining, or you see a muzhik riding by in a wagon. But
what the bottle or the rain or the muzhik are for, or what the sense
of them all is, you cannot tell--you cannot tell, not for a thousand
rubles. In the days of Kukin and Pustovalov and then of the veterinary
surgeon, Olenka had had an explanation for everything, and would have
given her opinion freely no matter about what. But now there was the
same emptiness in her heart and brain as in her yard. It was as
galling and bitter as a taste of wormwood.
Gradually the town grew up all around. The Gypsy Road had become a
street, and where the Tivoli and the lumber-yard had been, there were
now houses and a row of side streets. How quickly time flies! Olenka's
house turned gloomy, the roof rusty, the shed slanting. Dock and
thistles overgrew the yard. Olenka herself had aged and grown homely.
In the summer she sat on the steps, and her soul was empty and dreary
and bitter. When she caught the breath of spring, or when the wind
wafted the chime of the cathedral bells, a sudden flood of memories
would pour over her, her heart would expand with a tender warmth, and
the tears would stream down her cheeks. But that lasted only a moment.
Then would come emptiness again, and the feeling, What is the use of
living? The black kitten Bryska rubbed up against her and purred
softly, but the little creature's caresses left Olenka untouched. That
was not what she needed. What she needed was a love that would absorb
her whole being, her reason, her whole soul, that would give her
ideas, an object in life, that would warm her aging blood. And she
shook the black kitten off her skirt angrily, saying:
"Go away! What are you doing here?"
And so day after day, year after year not a single joy, not a single
opinion. Whatever Marva, the cook, said was all right.
One hot day in July, towards evening, as the town cattle were being
driven by, and the whole yard was filled with clouds of dust, there
was suddenly a knocking at the gate. Olenka herself went to open it,
and was dumbfounded to behold the veterinarian Smirnov. He had turned
grey and was dressed as a civilian. All the old memories flooded into
her soul, she could not restrain herself, she burst out crying, and
laid her head on Smirnov's breast without saying a word. So overcome
was she that she was totally unconscious of how they walked into the
house and seated themselves to drink tea.
"My darling!" she murmured, trembling with joy. "Vladimir Platonych,
from where has God sent you?"
"I want to settle here for good," he told her. "I have resigned my
position and have come here to try my fortune as a free man and lead a
settled life. Besides, it's time to send my boy to the gymnasium. He
is grown up now. You know, my wife and I have become reconciled."
"Where is she?" asked Olenka.
"At the hotel with the boy. I am looking for lodgings."
"Good gracious, bless you, take my house. Why won't my house do? Oh,
dear! Why, I won't ask any rent of you," Olenka burst out in the
greatest excitement, and began to cry again. "You live here, and the
wing will be enough for me. Oh, Heavens, what a joy!"
The very next day the roof was being painted and the walls
whitewashed, and Olenka, arms akimbo, was going about the yard
superintending. Her face brightened with her old smile. Her whole
being revived and freshened, as though she had awakened from a long
sleep. The veterinarian's wife and child arrived. She was a thin,
plain woman, with a crabbed expression. The boy Sasha, small for his
ten years of age, was a chubby child, with clear blue eyes and dimples
in his cheeks. He made for the kitten the instant he entered the yard,
and the place rang with his happy laughter.
"Is that your cat, auntie?" he asked Olenka. "When she has little
kitties, please give me one. Mamma is awfully afraid of mice."
Olenka chatted with him, gave him tea, and there was a sudden warmth
in her bosom and a soft gripping at her heart, as though the boy were
her own son.
In the evening, when he sat in the dining-room studying his lessons,
she looked at him tenderly and whispered to herself:
"My darling, my pretty. You are such a clever child, so good to look
at."
"An island is a tract of land entirely surrounded by water," he
recited.
"An island is a tract of land," she repeated--the first idea
asseverated with conviction after so many years of silence and mental
emptiness.
She now had her opinions, and at supper discussed with Sasha's parents
how difficult the studies had become for the children at the
gymnasium, but how, after all, a classical education was better than a
commercial course, because when you graduated from the gymnasium then
the road was open to you for any career at all. If you chose to, you
could become a doctor, or, if you wanted to, you could become an
engineer.
Sasha began to go to the gymnasium. His mother left on a visit to her
sister in Kharkov and never came back. The father was away every day
inspecting cattle, and sometimes was gone three whole days at a time,
so that Sasha, it seemed to Olenka, was utterly abandoned, was treated
as if he were quite superfluous, and must be dying of hunger. So she
transferred him into the wing along with herself and fixed up a little
room for him there.
Every morning Olenka would come into his room and find him sound
asleep with his hand tucked under his cheek, so quiet that he seemed
not to be breathing. What a shame to have to wake him, she thought.
"Sashenka," she said sorrowingly, "get up, darling. It's time to go to
the gymnasium."
He got up, dressed, said his prayers, then sat down to drink tea. He
drank three glasses of tea, ate two large cracknels and half a
buttered roll. The sleep was not yet out of him, so he was a little
cross.
"You don't know your fable as you should, Sashenka," said Olenka,
looking at him as though he were departing on a long journey. "What a
lot of trouble you are. You must try hard and learn, dear, and mind
your teachers."
"Oh, let me alone, please," said Sasha.
Then he went down the street to the gymnasium, a little fellow wearing
a large cap and carrying a satchel on his back. Olenka followed him
noiselessly.
"Sashenka," she called.
He looked round and she shoved a date or a caramel into his hand. When
he reached the street of the gymnasium, he turned around and said,
ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout woman:
"You had better go home, aunt. I can go the rest of the way myself."
She stopped and stared after him until he had disappeared into the
school entrance.
Oh, how she loved him! Not one of her other ties had been so deep.
Never before had she given herself so completely, so disinterestedly,
so cheerfully as now that her maternal instincts were all aroused. For
this boy, who was not hers, for the dimples in his cheeks and for his
big cap, she would have given her life, given it with joy and with
tears of rapture. Why? Ah, indeed, why?
When she had seen Sasha off to the gymnasium, she returned home
quietly, content, serene, overflowing with love. Her face, which had
grown younger in the last half year, smiled and beamed. People who met
her were pleased as they looked at her.
"How are you, Olga Semyonovna, darling? How are you getting on,
darling?"
"The gymnasium course is very hard nowadays," she told at the market.
"It's no joke. Yesterday the first class had a fable to learn by
heart, a Latin translation, and a problem. How is a little fellow to
do all that?"
And she spoke of the teacher and the lessons and the text-books,
repeating exactly what Sasha said about them.
At three o'clock they had dinner. In the evening they prepared the
lessons together, and Olenka wept with Sasha over the difficulties.
When she put him to bed, she lingered a long time making the sign of
the cross over him and muttering a prayer. And when she lay in bed,
she dreamed of the far-away, misty future when Sasha would finish his
studies and become a doctor or an engineer, have a large house of his
own, with horses and a carriage, marry and have children. She would
fall asleep still thinking of the same things, and tears would roll
down her cheeks from her closed eyes. And the black cat would lie at
her side purring: "Mrr, mrr, mrr."
Suddenly there was a loud knocking at the gate. Olenka woke up
breathless with fright, her heart beating violently. Half a minute
later there was another knock.
"A telegram from Kharkov," she thought, her whole body in a tremble.
"His mother wants Sasha to come to her in Kharkov. Oh, great God!"
She was in despair. Her head, her feet, her hands turned cold. There
was no unhappier creature in the world, she felt. But another minute
passed, she heard voices. It was the veterinarian coming home from the
club.
"Thank God," she thought. The load gradually fell from her heart, she
was at ease again. And she went back to bed, thinking of Sasha who lay
fast asleep in the next room and sometimes cried out in his sleep:
"I'll give it to you! Get away! Quit your scrapping!"