STORIES OF CHILDHOOD

3

THE BOYS

“Volodia is here!” cried some one in the courtyard.

“Voloditchka is here!” shrieked Natalia, rushing into the dining-room.

The whole family ran to the window, for they had been expecting their Volodia for hours. At the front porch stood a wide posting sleigh with its troika of white horses wreathed in dense clouds of steam. The sleigh was empty because Volodia was already standing in the front entry untying his hood with red, frostbitten fingers. His schoolboy’s uniform, his overcoat, his cap, his goloshes, and the hair on his temples were all silvery with frost, and from his head to his feet he exhaled such a wholesome atmosphere of cold that one shivered to be near him. His mother and aunt rushed to kiss and embrace him. Natalia fell down at his feet and began pulling off his goloshes. His sisters shrieked, doors creaked and banged on every side, and his father came running into the hall in his shirt-sleeves waving a pair of scissors and crying in alarm:

“Is anything the matter? We expected you yesterday. Did you have a good journey? For heaven’s sake, give him a chance to kiss his own father!”

4“Bow, wow, wow!” barked the great black dog, My Lord, in a deep voice, banging the walls and furniture with his tail.

All these noises went to make up one great, joyous clamour that lasted several minutes. When the first burst of joy had subsided the family noticed that, beside Volodia, there was still another small person in the hall. He was wrapped in scarfs and shawls and hoods and was standing motionless in the shadow cast by a huge fox-skin coat.

“Volodia, who is that?” whispered Volodia’s mother.

“Good gracious!” Volodia exclaimed recollecting himself. “Let me present my friend Tchetchevitsin. I have brought him from school to stay with us.”

“We are delighted to see you! Make yourself at home!” cried the father gaily. “Excuse my not having a coat on! Allow me!—Natalia, help Mr. Tcherepitsin to take off his things! For heaven’s sake, take that dog away! This noise is too awful!”

A few minutes later Volodia and his friend were sitting in the dining-room drinking tea, dazed by their noisy reception and still rosy with cold. The wintry rays of the sun, piercing the frost and snow on the window-panes, trembled over the samovar and bathed themselves in the slop-basin. The room was warm, and the boys felt heat and cold jostling one another in their bodies, neither wanting to concede its place to the other.

“Well, Christmas will soon be here!” cried Volodia’s 5father, rolling a cigarette. “Has it seemed long since your mother cried as she saw you off last summer? Time flies, my son! Old age comes before one has time to heave a sigh. Mr. Tchibisoff, do help yourself! We don’t stand on ceremony here!”

Volodia’s three sisters, Katia, Sonia, and Masha, the oldest of whom was eleven, sat around the table with their eyes fixed on their new acquaintance. Tchetchevitsin was the same age and size as Volodia, but he was neither plump nor fair like him. He was swarthy and thin and his face was covered with freckles. His hair was bristly, his eyes were small, and his lips were thick; in a word, he was very plain, and, had it not been for his schoolboy’s uniform, he might have been taken for the son of a cook. He was taciturn and morose, and he never once smiled. The girls immediately decided that he must be a very clever and learned person. He seemed to be meditating something, and was so busy with his own thoughts that he started if he were asked a question and asked to have it repeated.

The girls noticed that Volodia, who was generally so talkative and gay, seldom spoke now and never smiled and on the whole did not seem glad to be at home. He only addressed his sisters once during dinner and then his remark was strange. He pointed to the samovar and said:

“In California they drink gin instead of tea.”

He, too, seemed to be busy with thoughts of his 6own, and, to judge from the glances that the two boys occasionally exchanged, their thoughts were identical.

After tea the whole family went into the nursery, and papa and the girls sat down at the table and took up some work which they had been doing when they were interrupted by the boys’ arrival. They were making decorations out of coloured paper for the Christmas tree. It was a thrilling and noisy occupation. Each new flower was greeted by the girls with shrieks of ecstasy, of terror almost, as if it had dropped from the sky. Papa, too, was in raptures, but every now and then he would throw down the scissors, exclaiming angrily that they were blunt. Mamma came running into the nursery with an anxious face and asked:

“Who has taken my scissors? Have you taken my scissors again, Ivan?”

“Good heavens, won’t she even let me have a pair of scissors?” answered papa in a tearful voice, throwing himself back in his chair with the air of a much-abused man. But the next moment he was in raptures again.

On former holidays Volodia had always helped with the preparations for the Christmas tree, and had run out into the yard to watch the coachman and the shepherd heaping up a mound of snow, but this time neither he nor Tchetchevitsin took any notice of the coloured paper, neither did they once visit the stables. 7They sat by a window whispering together, and then opened an atlas and fell to studying it.

“First, we must go to Perm,” whispered Tchetchevitsin. “Then to Tyumen, then to Tomsk, and then—then to Kamschatka. From there the Eskimos will take us across Behring Strait in their canoes, and then—we shall be in America! There are a great many wild animals there.”

“Where is California?” asked Volodia.

“California is farther down. If once we can get to America, California will only be round the corner. We can make our living by hunting and highway robbery.”

All day Tchetchevitsin avoided the girls, and, if he met them, looked at them askance. After tea in the evening he was left alone with them for five minutes. To remain silent would have been awkward, so he coughed sternly, rubbed the back of his right hand with the palm of his left, looked severely at Katia, and asked:

“Have you read Mayne Reid?”

“No, I haven’t—But tell me, can you skate?”

Tchetchevitsin became lost in thought once more and did not answer her question. He only blew out his cheeks and heaved a sigh as if he were very hot. Once more he raised his eyes to Katia’s face and said:

“When a herd of buffalo gallop across the pampas the whole earth trembles and the frightened mustangs kick and neigh.”

8Tchetchevitsin smiled wistfully and added:

“And Indians attack trains, too. But worst of all are the mosquitoes and the termites.”

“What are they?”

“Termites look something like ants, only they have wings. They bite dreadfully. Do you know who I am?”

“You are Mr. Tchetchevitsin!”

“No, I am Montezuma Hawkeye, the invincible chieftain.”

Masha, the youngest of the girls, looked first at him and then out of the window into the garden, where night was already falling, and said doubtfully:

“We had Tchetchevitsa (lentils) for supper last night.”

The absolutely unintelligible sayings of Tchetchevitsin, his continual whispered conversations with Volodia, and the fact that Volodia never played now and was always absorbed in thought—all this seemed to the girls to be both mysterious and strange. Katia and Sonia, the two oldest ones, began to spy on the boys, and when Volodia and his friend went to bed that evening, they crept to the door of their room and listened to the conversation inside. Oh! what did they hear? The boys were planning to run away to America in search of gold! They were all prepared for the journey and had a pistol ready, two knives, some dried bread, a magnifying-glass for lighting fires, a compass, and four roubles. The girls discovered that the boys would have to walk several thousand miles, 9fighting on the way with savages and tigers, and that they would then find gold and ivory, and slay their enemies. Next, they would turn pirates, drink gin, and at last marry beautiful wives and settle down to cultivate a plantation. Volodia and Tchetchevitsin both talked at once and kept interrupting one another from excitement. Tchetchevitsin called himself “Montezuma Hawkeye,” and Volodia “my Paleface Brother.”

“Be sure you don’t tell mamma!” said Katia to Sonia as they went back to bed. “Volodia will bring us gold and ivory from America, but if you tell mamma she won’t let him go!”

Tchetchevitsin spent the day before Christmas Eve studying a map of Asia and taking notes, while Volodia roamed about the house refusing all food, his face looking tired and puffy as if it had been stung by a bee. He stopped more than once in front of the icon in the nursery and crossed himself saying:

“O Lord, forgive me, miserable sinner! O Lord, help my poor, unfortunate mother!”

Toward evening he burst into tears. When he said good night he kissed his father and mother and sisters over and over again. Katia and Sonia realized the significance of his actions, but Masha, the youngest, understood nothing at all. Only when her eye fell upon Tchetchevitsin did she grow pensive and say with a sigh:

“Nurse says that when Lent comes we must eat peas and Tchetchevitsa.”

10Early on Christmas Eve Katia and Sonia slipped quietly out of bed and went to the boys’ room to see them run away to America. They crept up to their door.

“So you won’t go?” asked Tchetchevitsin angrily. “Tell me, you won’t go?”

“Oh, dear!” wailed Volodia, weeping softly. “How can I go? I’m so sorry for mamma!”

“Paleface Brother, I beg you to go! You promised me yourself that you would. You told me yourself how nice it would be. Now, when everything is ready, you are afraid!”

“I—I’m not afraid. I—I am sorry for mamma.”

“Tell me, are you going or not?”

“I’m going, only—only wait a bit, I want to stay at home a little while longer!”

“If that is the case, I’ll go alone!” Tchetchevitsin said with decision. “I can get along perfectly well without you. I want to hunt and fight tigers! If you won’t go, give me my pistol!”

Volodia began to cry so bitterly that his sisters could not endure the sound and began weeping softly themselves. Silence fell.

“Then you won’t go?” demanded Tchetchevitsin again.

“I—I’ll go.”

“Then get dressed!”

And to keep up Volodia’s courage, Tchetchevitsin began singing the praises of America. He roared like a 11tiger, he whistled like a steamboat, he scolded, and promised to give Volodia all the ivory and gold they might find.

The thin, dark boy with his bristling hair and his freckles seemed to the girls to be a strange and wonderful person. He was a hero to them, a man without fear, who could roar so well that, through the closed door, one might really mistake him for a tiger or a lion.

When the girls were dressing in their own room, Katia cried with tears in her eyes:

“Oh, I’m so frightened!”

All was quiet until the family sat down to dinner at two o’clock, and then it suddenly appeared that the boys were not in the house. Inquiries were made in the servants’ quarters and at the stables, but they were not there. A search was made in the village, but they could not be found. At tea time they were still missing, and when the family had to sit down to supper without them, mamma was terribly anxious and was even crying. That night another search was made in the village and men were sent down to the river with lanterns. Heavens, what an uproar arose!

Next morning the policeman arrived and went into the dining-room to write something. Mamma was crying.

Suddenly, lo and behold! a posting sleigh drove up to the front door with clouds of steam rising from its three white horses.

12“Volodia is here!” cried some one in the courtyard.

“Voloditchka is here!” shrieked Natalia, rushing into the dining-room.

My Lord barked “Bow, wow, wow!” in his deep voice.

It seemed that the boys had been stopped at the hotel in the town, where they had gone about asking every one where they could buy gunpowder. As he entered the hall, Volodia burst into tears and flung his arms round his mother’s neck. The girls trembled with terror at the thought of what would happen next, for they heard papa call Volodia and Tchetchevitsin into his study and begin talking to them. Mamma wept and joined in the talk.

“Do you think it was right?” papa asked, chiding them. “I hope to goodness they won’t find it out at school, because, if they do, you will certainly be expelled. Be ashamed of yourself, Master Tchetchevitsin! You are a bad boy. You are a mischief-maker and your parents will punish you. Do you think it was right to run away? Where did you spend the night?”

“In the station!” answered Tchetchevitsin proudly.

Volodia was put to bed, and a towel soaked in vinegar was laid on his head. A telegram was despatched, and next day a lady arrived, Tchetchevitsin’s mamma, who took her son away.

As Tchetchevitsin departed his face looked haughty 13and stern. He said not a word as he took his leave of the girls, but in a copy-book of Katia’s he wrote these words for remembrance:

“Montezuma Hawkeye.”

14

GRISHA

Grisha, a chubby little boy born only two years and eight months ago, was out walking on the boulevard with his nurse. He wore a long, wadded burnoose, a large cap with a furry knob, a muffler, and wool-lined goloshes. He felt stuffy and hot, and, in addition, the waxing sun of April was beating directly into his face and making his eyelids smart.

Every inch of his awkward little figure, with its timid, uncertain steps, bespoke a boundless perplexity.

Until that day the only universe known to Grisha had been square. In one corner of it stood his crib, in another stood nurse’s trunk, in the third was a chair, and in the fourth a little icon lamp. If you looked under the bed you saw a doll with one arm and a drum; behind nurse’s trunk were a great many various objects: a few empty spools, some scraps of paper, a box without a lid, and a broken jumping-jack. In this world, besides nurse and Grisha, there often appeared mamma and the cat. Mamma looked like a doll, and the cat looked like papa’s fur coat, only the 15fur coat did not have eyes and a tail. From the world which was called the nursery a door led to a place where people dined and drank tea. There stood Grisha’s high chair and there hung the clock made to wag its pendulum and strike. From the dining-room one could pass into another room with big red chairs; there, on the floor, glowered a dark stain for which people still shook their forefingers at Grisha. Still farther beyond lay another room, where one was not allowed to go, and in which one sometimes caught glimpses of papa, a very mysterious person! The functions of mamma and nurse were obvious: they dressed Grisha, fed him, and put him to bed; but why papa should be there was incomprehensible. Aunty was also a puzzling person. She appeared and disappeared. Where did she go? More than once Grisha had looked for her under the bed, behind the trunk, and under the sofa, but she was not to be found.

In the new world where he now found himself, where the sun dazzled one’s eyes, there were so many papas and mammas and aunties that one scarcely knew which one to run to. But the funniest and oddest things of all were the horses. Grisha stared at their moving legs and could not understand them at all. He looked up at nurse, hoping that she might help him to solve the riddle, but she answered nothing.

Suddenly he heard a terrible noise. Straight toward him down the street came a squad of soldiers marching 16in step, with red faces and sticks under their arms. Grisha’s blood ran cold with terror and he looked up anxiously at his nurse to inquire if this were not dangerous. But nursie neither ran away nor cried, so he decided it must be safe. He followed the soldiers with his eyes and began marching in step with them.

Across the street ran two big, long-nosed cats, their tails sticking straight up into the air and their tongues lolling out of their mouths. Grisha felt that he, too, ought to run, and he started off in pursuit.

“Stop, stop!” cried nursie, seizing him roughly by the shoulder. “Where are you going? Who told you to be naughty?”

But there sat a sort of nurse with a basket of oranges in her lap. As Grisha passed her he silently took one.

“Don’t do that!” cried his fellow wayfarer, slapping his hand and snatching the orange away from him. “Little stupid!”

Next, Grisha would gladly have picked up some of the slivers of glass that rattled under his feet and glittered like icon lamps, but he was afraid that his hand might be slapped again.

“Good day!” Grisha heard a loud, hoarse voice say over his very ear, and, looking up, he caught sight of a tall person with shiny buttons.

To his great joy this man shook hands with nursie; they stood together and entered into conversation. The sunlight, the rumbling of the vehicles, the horses, the shiny buttons, all struck Grisha as so amazingly 17new and yet unterrifying, that his heart overflowed with delight and he began to laugh.

“Come! Come!” he cried to the man with the shiny buttons, pulling his coat tails.

“Where to?” asked the man.

“Come!” Grisha insisted. He would have liked to say that it would be nice to take papa and mamma and the cat along, too, but somehow his tongue would not obey him.

In a few minutes nurse turned off the boulevard and led Grisha into a large courtyard where the snow still lay on the ground. The man with shiny buttons followed them. Carefully avoiding the puddles and lumps of snow, they picked their way across the courtyard, mounted a dark, grimy staircase, and entered a room where the air was heavy with smoke and a strong smell of cooking. A woman was standing over a stove frying chops. This cook and nurse embraced one another, and, sitting down on a bench with the man, began talking in low voices. Bundled up as he was, Grisha felt unbearably hot.

“What does this mean?” he asked himself, gazing about. He saw a dingy ceiling, a two-pronged oven fork, and a stove with a huge oven mouth gaping at him.

“Ma-a-m-ma!” he wailed.

“Now! Now!” his nurse called to him. “Be good!”

The cook set a bottle, two glasses, and a pie on the 18table. The two women and the man with the shiny buttons touched glasses and each had several drinks. The man embraced alternately the cook and the nurse. Then all three began to sing softly.

Grisha stretched his hand toward the pie, and they gave him a piece. He ate it and watched his nurse drinking. He wanted to drink, too.

“Give, nursie! Give!” he begged.

The cook gave him a drink out of her glass. He screwed up his eyes, frowned, and coughed for a long time after that, beating the air with his hands, while the cook watched him and laughed.

When he reached home, Grisha explained to mamma, the walls, and his crib where he had been and what he had seen. He told it less with his tongue than with his hands and his face; he showed how the sun had shone, how the horses had trotted, how the terrible oven had gaped at him, and how the cook had drunk.

That evening he could not possibly go to sleep. The soldiers with their sticks, the great cats, the horses, the bits of glass, the basket of oranges, the shiny buttons, all this lay piled on his brain and oppressed him. He tossed from side to side, chattering to himself, and finally, unable longer to endure his excitement, he burst into tears.

“Why, he has fever!” cried mamma, laying the palm of her hand on his forehead. “What can be the reason?”

“The stove!” wept Grisha. “Go away, stove!”

19“He has eaten something that has disagreed with him,” mamma concluded.

And, shaken by his impressions of a new life apprehended for the first time, Grisha was given a spoonful of castor-oil by mamma.

20

A TRIFLE FROM REAL LIFE

Nikolai Ilitch Belayeff was a young gentleman of St. Petersburg, aged thirty-two, rosy, well fed, and a patron of the race-tracks. Once, toward evening, he went to pay a call on Olga Ivanovna with whom, to use his own expression, he was dragging through a long and tedious love-affair. And the truth was that the first thrilling, inspiring pages of this romance had long since been read, and that the story was now dragging wearily on, presenting nothing that was either interesting or novel.

Not finding Olga at home, my hero threw himself upon a couch and prepared to await her return.

“Good evening, Nikolai Ilitch!” he heard a child’s voice say. “Mamma will soon be home. She has gone to the dressmaker’s with Sonia.”

On the divan in the same room lay Aliosha, Olga’s son, a small boy of eight, immaculately and picturesquely dressed in a little velvet suit and long black stockings. He had been lying on a satin pillow, mimicking the antics of an acrobat he had seen at the circus. First he stretched up one pretty leg, then another; then, when they were tired, he brought his arms into play, and at last jumped up galvanically, throwing himself on all fours in an effort to stand on his 21head. He went through all these motions with the most serious face in the world, puffing like a martyr, as if he himself regretted that God had given him such a restless little body.

“Ah, good evening, my boy!” said Belayeff. “Is that you? I did not know you were here. Is mamma well?”

Aliosha seized the toe of his left shoe in his right hand, assumed the most unnatural position in the world, rolled over, jumped up, and peeped out at Belayeff from under the heavy fringes of the lampshade.

“Not very,” he said shrugging his shoulders. “Mamma is never really well. She is a woman, you see, and women always have something the matter with them.”

From lack of anything better to do, Belayeff began scrutinizing Aliosha’s face. During all his acquaintance with Olga he had never bestowed any consideration upon the boy or noticed his existence at all. He had seen the child about, but what he was doing there Belayeff, somehow, had never cared to think.

Now, in the dusk of evening, Aliosha’s pale face and fixed, dark eyes unexpectedly reminded Belayeff of Olga as she had appeared in the first pages of their romance. He wanted to pet the boy.

“Come here, little monkey,” he said, “and let me look at you!”

The boy jumped down from the sofa and ran to Belayeff.

22“Well,” the latter began, laying his hand on the boy’s thin shoulder. “And how are you? Is everything all right with you?”

“No, not very. It used to be much better.”

“In what way?”

“That’s easy to answer. Sonia and I used to learn only music and reading before, but now we have French verses, too. You have cut your beard!”

“Yes.”

“So I noticed. It is shorter than it was. Please let me touch it—does that hurt?”

“No, not a bit.”

“Why does it hurt if you pull one hair at a time, and not a bit if you pull lots? Ha! Ha! I’ll tell you something. You ought to wear whiskers! You could shave here on the sides, here, and here you could let the hair grow——”

The boy nestled close to Belayeff and began to play with his watch-chain.

“Mamma is going to give me a watch when I go to school, and I am going to ask her to give me a chain just like yours—Oh, what a lovely locket! Papa has a locket just like that; only yours has little stripes on it, and papa’s has letters. He has a portrait of mamma in his locket. Papa wears another watch-chain now made of ribbon.”

“How do you know? Do you ever see your papa?”

“I—n-no—I——”

Aliosha blushed deeply at being caught telling a fib 23and began to scratch the locket furiously with his nail. Belayeff looked searchingly into his face and repeated:

“Do you ever see your papa?”

“N-no!”

“Come, tell me honestly! I can see by your face that you are not telling the truth. It’s no use quibbling now that the cat is out of the bag. Tell me, do you see him? Now then, as between friends!”

Aliosha reflected.

“You won’t tell mamma?” he asked.

“What an idea!”

“Honour bright?”

“Honour bright!”

“Promise!”

“Oh, you insufferable child! What do you take me for?”

Aliosha glanced around, opened his eyes wide, and said:

“For heaven’s sake don’t tell mamma! Don’t tell a soul, because it’s a secret. I don’t know what would happen to Sonia and Pelagia and me if mamma should find out. Now, listen. Sonia and I see papa every Thursday and every Friday. When Pelagia takes us out walking before dinner we go to Anfel’s confectionery and there we find papa already waiting for us. He is always sitting in the little private room with the marble table and the ash-tray that’s made like a goose without a back.”

24“What do you do in there?”

“We don’t do anything. First we say how do you do, and then papa orders coffee and pasties for us. Sonia likes pasties with meat, you know, but I can’t abide them with meat. I like mine with cabbage or eggs. We eat so much that we have a hard time eating our dinner afterward so that mamma won’t guess anything.”

“What do you talk about?”

“With papa? Oh, about everything. He kisses us and hugs us and tells us the funniest jokes. Do you know what? He says that when we grow bigger he is going to take us to live with him. Sonia doesn’t want to go, but I wouldn’t mind. Of course it would be lonely without mamma, but I could write letters to her. Isn’t it funny, we might go and see her then on Sundays, mightn’t we? Papa says, too, he is going to buy me a pony. He is such a nice man! I don’t know why mamma doesn’t ask him to live with her and why she won’t let us see him. He loves mamma very much. He always asks how she is and what she has been doing. When she was ill he took hold of his head just like this—and ran about the room. He always asks us whether we are obedient and respectful to her. Tell me, is it true that we are unfortunate?”

“H’m—why do you ask?”

“Because papa says we are. He says we are unfortunate children, and that he is unfortunate, and that mamma is unfortunate. He tells us to pray to God for her and for ourselves.”

25Aliosha fixed his eyes on the figure of a stuffed bird, and became lost in thought.

“Well, I declare—” muttered Belayeff. “So, that’s what you do, you hold meetings at a confectioner’s? And your mamma doesn’t know it?”

“N-no. How could she? Pelagia wouldn’t tell her for the world. Day before yesterday papa gave us pears. They were as sweet as sugar. I ate two!”

“H’m. But—listen to me, does papa ever say anything about me?”

“About you? What shall I say?” Aliosha looked searchingly into Belayeff’s face and shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing special,” he answered.

“Well, what does he say, for instance?”

“You won’t be angry if I tell you?”

“What an idea! Does he abuse me?”

“No, he doesn’t abuse you, but, you know, he is angry with you. He says that it is your fault that mamma is unhappy, and that you have ruined mamma. He is such a funny man! I tell him that you are kind and that you never scold mamma, but he only shakes his head.”

“So he says I have ruined her?”

“Yes—don’t be angry, Nikolai Ilitch!”

Belayeff rose and began pacing up and down the room.

“How strange this is—and how ridiculous!” he muttered shrugging his shoulders and smiling sarcastically. “It is all his fault and yet he says I have 26ruined her! What an innocent baby this is! And so he told you I had ruined your mother?”

“Yes, but—you promised not to be angry!”

“I’m not angry and—and it is none of your business anyway. Yes, this is—this is really ridiculous! Here I have been caught like a mouse in a trap, and now it seems it is all my fault!”

The door-bell rang. The boy tore himself from Belayeff’s arms and ran out of the room. A moment later a lady entered with a little girl. It was Aliosha’s mother, Olga Ivanovna. Aliosha skipped into the room behind her, singing loudly and clapping his hands. Belayeff nodded and continued to walk up and down.

“Of course!” he muttered. “Whom should he blame but me? He has right on his side! He is the injured husband.”

“What is that you are saying?” asked Olga Ivanovna.

“What am I saying? Just listen to what your young hopeful here has been preaching. It appears that I am a wicked scoundrel and that I have ruined you and your children. You are all unhappy, and I alone am frightfully happy. Frightfully, frightfully happy!”

“I don’t understand you, Nikolai. What is the matter?”

“Just listen to what this young gentleman here has to say!” cried Belayeff pointing to Aliosha.

27Aliosha flushed and then grew suddenly pale and his face became distorted with fear.

“Nikolai Ilitch!” he whispered loudly. “Hush!”

Olga Ivanovna looked at Aliosha in surprise, and then at Belayeff, and then back again at Aliosha.

“Ask him!” Belayeff continued. “That idiot of yours, Pelagia, takes them to a confectioner’s and arranges meetings there between them and their papa. But that isn’t the point. The point is that papa is the victim, and that I am an abandoned scoundrel who has wrecked the lives of both of you!”

“Nikolai Ilitch!” groaned Aliosha. “You gave me your word of honour!”

“Leave me alone!” Belayeff motioned to him impatiently. “This is more important than words of honour. This hypocrisy, these lies are intolerable!”

“I don’t understand!” cried Olga Ivanovna, the tears glistening in her eyes. “Listen, Aliosha,” she asked, turning to her son. “Do you really see your father?”

But Aliosha did not hear her, his eyes were fixed with horror on Belayeff.

“It cannot be possible!” his mother exclaimed, “I must go and ask Pelagia.”

Olga Ivanovna left the room.

“But Nikolai Ilitch, you gave me your word of honour!” cried Aliosha trembling all over.

Belayeff made an impatient gesture and went on pacing the floor. He was absorbed in thoughts of the 28wrong that had been done him, and, as before, was unconscious of the boy’s presence: a serious, grown-up person like him could not be bothered with little boys. But Aliosha crept into a corner and told Sonia with horror how he had been deceived. He trembled and hiccoughed and cried. This was the first time in his life that he had come roughly face to face with deceit; he had never imagined till now that there were things in this world besides pasties and watches and sweet pears, things for which no name could be found in the vocabulary of childhood.

29

THE COOK’S WEDDING

Grisha, a little urchin of seven, stood at the kitchen door with his eye at the keyhole, watching and listening. Something was taking place in the kitchen that seemed to him very strange and that he had never seen happen before. At the table on which the meat and onions were usually chopped sat a huge, burly peasant in a long coachman’s coat. His hair and beard were red, and a large drop of perspiration hung from the tip of his nose. He was holding his saucer on the outstretched fingers of his right hand and, as he supped his tea, was nibbling a lump of sugar so noisily that the goose-flesh started out on Grisha’s back. On a grimy stool opposite him sat Grisha’s old nurse, Aksinia. She also was drinking tea; her mien was serious and at the same time radiant with triumph. Pelagia, the cook, was busy over the stove and seemed to be endeavouring to conceal her face by every possible means. Grisha could see that it was fairly on fire, burning hot, and flooded in turn with every colour of the rainbow from dark purple to a deathly pallor. The cook was constantly catching up knives, forks, stove-wood, and dish-rags in her trembling hands, and was bustling about and grumbling and making a great racket without accomplishing anything. She did 30not once glance toward the table at which the other two were sitting, and replied to the nurse’s questions abruptly and roughly without ever turning her head in their direction.

“Drink, drink, Danilo!” the nurse was urging the driver. “What makes you always drink tea? Take some vodka!”

And the nurse pushed the bottle toward her guest, her face assuming a malicious expression.

“No, ma’am, I don’t use it. Thank you, ma’am,” the driver replied. “Don’t force me to drink it, goody Aksinia!”

“What’s the matter with you? What, you a driver and won’t drink vodka? A single man ought to drink! Come, have a little!”

The driver rolled his eyes at the vodka and then at the malicious face of the nurse, and his own face assumed an expression no less crafty than hers.

“No, no; you’ll not catch me, you old witch!” he seemed to be saying.

“No, thank you; I don’t drink,” he answered aloud. “That foolishness won’t do in our business. A workman can drink if he wants to because he never budges from the same place, but we fellows live too much in public. Don’t we now? Supposing I were to go into an inn and my horse were to break away, or, worse still, supposing I were to get drunk and, before I knew it, were to go to sleep and fall off the box? That’s what happens!”

31“How much do you make a day, Danilo?”

“That depends on the day. There are days and days. A coachman’s job isn’t worth much now. You know yourself that drivers are as thick as flies, hay is expensive, travellers are scarce and are always wanting to go everywhere on horseback. But, praise be to God, we don’t complain. We keep ourselves clothed and fed and we can even make some one else happy—(here the driver cast a look in Pelagia’s direction)—if they want us to!”

Grisha did not hear what was said next. His mamma came to the door and sent him away to the nursery to study.

“Be off to your lessons, you have no business to be here!” she exclaimed.

On reaching the nursery, Grisha took up “Our Mother Tongue,” and tried to read, but without success. The words he had just overheard had raised a host of questions in his mind.

“The cook is going to be married,” he thought. “That is strange. I don’t understand why she wants to be married. Mamma married papa and Cousin Vera married Pavel Andreitch, but papa and Pavel Andreitch have gold watch-chains and nice clothes and their boots are always clean. I can understand any one marrying them. But this horrid driver with his red nose and his felt boots—ugh! And why does nursie want poor Pelagia to marry?”

When her guest had gone, Pelagia came into the 32house to do the housework. Her excitement had not subsided. Her face was red and she looked startled. She scarcely touched the floor with her broom and swept out every corner at least five times. She lingered in the room where Grisha’s mamma was sitting. Solitude seemed to be irksome to her and she longed to pour out her heart in words and to share her impressions with some one.

“Well, he’s gone!” she began, seeing that mamma would not open the conversation.

“He seems to be a nice man,” said mamma without looking up from her embroidery. “He is sober and steady looking.”

“My lady, I won’t marry him!” Pelagia suddenly screamed. “I declare I won’t!”

“Don’t be silly, you’re not a baby! Marriage is a serious thing, and you must think it over carefully and not scream like that for no reason at all. Do you like him?”

“Oh, my lady!” murmured Pelagia in confusion. “He does say such things—indeed he does!”

“She ought to say outright she doesn’t like him,” thought Grisha.

“What a goose you are! Tell me, do you like him?”

“He’s an old man, my lady! Hee, hee!”

“Listen to her!” the nurse burst out from the other end of the room. “He isn’t forty yet! You mustn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth! Marry him and have done with it!”

33“I won’t marry him! I won’t, I won’t!” screamed Pelagia.

“Then you’re a donkey, you are! What in the world are you after, anyhow? Any other woman but you would be down on her knees to him, and you say you won’t marry him! She’s running after Grisha’s tutor, she is, my lady; she’s setting her cap at him! Ugh, the shameless creature!”

“Had you ever seen this Danilo before to-day?” her mistress asked Pelagia.

“How could I have seen him before to-day? This was the first time. Aksinia picked him up somewhere—bad luck to him! Why must I have him thrown at my head?”

That day the whole family kept their eyes fixed on Pelagia’s face as she was serving the dinner and teased her about the driver. Pelagia blushed furiously and giggled with confusion.

“What a shameful thing it must be to get married!” thought Grisha. “What a horribly shameful thing!”

The whole dinner was too salty, blood was oozing from the half-cooked chickens, and, to complete the disaster, Pelagia kept dropping the knives and forks and dishes as if her hands had been a pair of rickety shelves. No one blamed her, however, for every one knew what her state of mind must be.

Once only did papa angrily throw down his napkin and exclaim to mamma:

“What is this craze you have for match-making? 34Can’t you let them manage it for themselves if they want to get married?”

After dinner the neighbouring cooks and maids kept flitting in and out of the kitchen, and were whispering together there until late in the evening. Heaven knows how they had scented the approaching wedding! Waking up at midnight, Grisha heard his nurse and the cook murmuring together in his nursery behind the curtain. The nurse was trying to convince the cook of something, and the latter was alternately sobbing and giggling. When he fell asleep, Grisha saw in his dreams Pelagia being spirited away by the Evil One and a witch.

Next day quiet reigned once more, and from that time forward life in the kitchen jogged on as if there were no such thing in the world as a driver. Only nurse would don her new shawl from time to time and sally forth for a couple of hours, evidently to a conference, with a serious and triumphant expression on her face. Pelagia and the driver did not see one another, and if any one mentioned his name to her she would fly into a rage and exclaim:

“Bad luck to him! As if I ever thought of him at all—ugh!”

One evening, while Pelagia and the nurse were busily cutting out clothes in the kitchen, mamma came in and said:

“Of course you may marry him, Pelagia, that is your own affair, but I want you to understand that I 35can’t have him living here. You know I don’t like to have men sitting in the kitchen. Remember that! And I can’t ever let you go out for the night.”

“What do you take me for, my lady?” screamed Pelagia. “Why do you cast him into my teeth? Let him fuss all he wants to! What does he mean by hanging himself round my neck, the——”

Looking into the kitchen one Sunday morning, Grisha was petrified with astonishment. The room was packed to overflowing; the cooks from all the neighbouring houses were there with the house porter, two constables, a sergeant in his gold lace, and a boy named Filka. This Filka was generally to be found hanging about the wash-house playing with the dogs, but to-day he was washed and brushed and dressed in a gold-tinsel cassock and was carrying an icon in his hands. In the middle of the kitchen stood Pelagia in a new gingham dress with a wreath of flowers on her head. At her side stood the driver. The young couple were flushed and perspiring, and were blinking their eyes furiously.

“Well, it’s time to begin,” said the sergeant after a long silence.

A spasm passed over Pelagia’s features and she began to bawl. The sergeant picked up a huge loaf of bread from the table, pulled the nurse to his side, and commenced the ceremony. The driver approached the sergeant and flopped down on his knees before him, delivering a smacking kiss on his hand. Pelagia went 36mechanically after him and also flopped down on her knees. At last the outside door opened, a gust of white mist blew into the kitchen, and the assembly streamed out into the courtyard.

“Poor, poor woman!” thought Grisha, listening to the cook’s sobs. “Where are they taking her? Why don’t papa and mamma interfere?”

After the wedding they sang and played the concertina in the laundry until night. Mamma was annoyed because nurse smelled of vodka and because, with all these weddings, there never was any one to put on the samovar. Pelagia had not come in when Grisha went to bed that night.

“Poor woman, she is crying out there somewhere in the dark,” he thought. “And the driver is telling her to shut up!”

Next morning the cook was back in the kitchen again. The driver came in for a few minutes. He thanked mamma, and, casting a stern look at Pelagia, said:

“Keep a sharp eye on her, my lady! And you, too, Aksinia, don’t let her alone; make her behave herself. No nonsense for her! And please let me have five roubles of her wages, my lady, to buy myself a new pair of hames.”

Here, then, was a fresh puzzle for Grisha! Pelagia had been free to do as she liked and had been responsible to no one, and now suddenly, for no reason at all, along came an unknown man who seemed somehow to 37have acquired the right to control her actions and her property! Grisha grew very sad. He was on the verge of tears and longed passionately to be kind to this woman, who, it seemed to him, was a victim of human violence. He ran into the storeroom, picked out the largest apple he could find there, tiptoed into the kitchen, and, thrusting the apple into Pelagia’s hand, rushed back as fast as his legs could carry him.

38

SHROVE TUESDAY

“Here, Pavel, Pavel!” Pelagia Ivanovna cried, rousing her husband from a nap. “Do go and help Stepa! He is sitting there crying again over his lessons. It must be something he can’t understand.”

Pavel Vasilitch got up, made the sign of the cross over his yawning mouth, and said meekly:

“Very well, dear.”

The cat sleeping beside him also jumped up, stretched its tail in the air, arched its back, and half-closed its eyes. The mice could be heard scuttling behind the hangings. Having put on his slippers and dressing-gown, Pavel Vasilitch passed into the dining-room all ruffled and heavy with sleep. A second cat that had been sniffing at a plate of cold fish on the window-sill jumped to the floor as he entered, and hid in the cupboard.

“Who told you to go smelling that?” Pavel Vasilitch cried with vexation, covering the fish with a newspaper. “You’re more of a pig than a cat!”

A door led from the dining-room into the nursery. There, at a table disfigured with deep gouges and stains, sat Stepa, a schoolboy of ten with tearful eyes 39and a petulant face. He was hugging his knees to his chin and swaying backward and forward like a Chinese idol with his eyes fixed angrily on the schoolbook before him.

“So you’re learning your lessons, eh?” asked Pavel Vasilitch, yawning and taking his seat at the table beside him. “That’s the way, sonny. You’ve had your play and your nap, and you’ve eaten your pancakes, and to-morrow will be Lent, a time of repentance; so now you’re at work. The happiest day must have an end. What do those tears mean? Are your lessons getting the better of you? It’s hard to do lessons after eating pancakes! That’s what ails you, little sonny!”

“Why do you laugh at the child?” calls Pelagia Ivanovna from the next room. “Show him how to do his lessons, instead of making fun of him! Oh, what a trial he is! He’ll be sure to get a bad mark to-morrow!”

“What is it you don’t understand?” asked Pavel Vasilitch of Stepa.

“This here, how to divide these fractions,” the boy answered crossly. “The division of fractions by fractions.”

“H’m, you little pickle, that’s easy, there’s nothing about it to understand. You must do the sum right, that’s all. To divide one fraction by another you multiply the numerator of the first by the denominator of the second in order to get the numerator of the 40quotient. Very well. Now the denominator of the first——”

“I know that already!” Stepa interrupted him, flicking a nutshell off the table. “Show me an example.”

“An example? Very well, let me have a pencil. Now, then, listen to me. Supposing that we want to divide seven-eighths by two-fifths. Very well, then the proposition is this: we want to divide these two fractions by one another—Is the samovar boiling?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because it’s eight o’clock and time for tea. Very well, now listen to me. Supposing that we divide seven-eighths not by two-fifths, but by two, that is by the numerator only. What is the answer?”

“Seven-sixteenths.”

“Splendid! Good boy! Now, then, sonny, the trick is this: as we have divided—let me see—as we have divided it by two, of course—wait a minute, I’m getting muddled myself. I remember when I was a boy at school we had a Polish arithmetic master named Sigismund Urbanitch, who used to get muddled over every lesson. He would suddenly lose his wits while he was in the midst of demonstrating a proposition, blush to the roots of his hair, and rush about the classroom as if the devil were after him. Then he would blow his nose four or five times and burst into tears. But we were generous to him, we used to pretend not 41to notice it, and would ask him whether he had the toothache. And yet we were a class of pirates, of cutthroats, I can tell you, but, as you see, we were generous. We boys weren’t puny like you when I was a youngster; we were great big chaps, you never saw such great strapping fellows! There was Mamakin, for instance, in the third grade. Lord! What a giant he was! Why, that colossus was seven feet high! The whole house shook when he walked across the floor and he would knock the breath out of your body if he laid his hand on your shoulder. Not only we boys, but even the masters feared him. Why Mamakin would sometimes——”

Pelagia Ivanovna’s footsteps resounded in the next room. Pavel Vasilitch winked at the door and whispered:

“Mother’s coming, let’s get to work! Very well, then, sonny,” he continued, raising his voice. “We want to divide this fraction by that one. All right. To do that we must multiply the numerator of the first by——”

“Come in to tea!” called Pelagia Ivanovna.

Father and son left their arithmetic and went in to tea. Pelagia Ivanovna was already seated at the dining-table with the silent aunt and another aunt who was deaf and dumb and old granny Markovna, who had assisted Stepa into the world. The samovar was hissing and emitting jets of steam that settled in large, dark shadows upon the ceiling. The cats came 42in from the hall, sleepy, melancholy, their tails standing straight up in the air.

“Do have some preserves with your tea, Markovna!” said Pelagia Ivanovna turning to the old dame. “To-morrow will be Lent, so you must eat all you can.”

Markovna helped herself to a large spoonful of jam, raised it to her lips, and swallowed it with a sidelong glance at Pavel Vasilitch. Next moment a sweet smile broke over her face, a smile almost as sweet as the jam itself.

“These preserves are perfectly delicious!” she exclaimed. “Did you make them yourself, Pelagia Ivanovna, dearie?”

“Yes, of course, who else could have made them? I do everything myself. Stepa, darling, was your tea too weak for you? Mercy, you’ve finished it already! Come, hand me your cup, sweetheart, and let me give you some more.”

“That young Mamakin I was telling you about, sonny,” continued Pavel Vasilitch, turning to Stepa, “couldn’t abide our French teacher. ‘I’m a gentleman!’ he used to exclaim. ‘I won’t be lorded over by a Frenchman!’ Of course he used to be flogged for it, and badly flogged, too. When he knew he was in for a thrashing he used to jump through the window and take to his heels, not showing his nose in school after that for five or six days. Then his mother would go to the head master and beg him for pity’s sake to find her Mishka and give the scoundrel a thrashing, but 43the head master used to say: ‘That’s all very well, madam, but no five of our men can hold that fellow!’”

“My goodness, what dreadful boys there are in the world!” whispered Pelagia Ivanovna, fixing terrified eyes on her husband. “His poor mother!”

A silence followed—Stepa yawned loudly as he contemplated the Chinaman on the tea-caddy whom he had seen at least a thousand times before. Markovna and the two aunts sipped their tea primly from their saucers. The air was close and oppressive with the heat of the stove. The lassitude that comes to the satiated body when it is forced to continue eating was depicted on the faces and in the movements of the family. The samovar had been taken away and the table had been cleared, but they still continued to sit about the board. Pelagia Ivanovna jumped up from time to time and ran into the kitchen with a look of horror on her face to confer with the cook about supper. The aunts both sat motionless in the same position, dozing with their hands folded on their chests and their lack-lustre eyes fixed on the lamp. Markovna kept hiccoughing every minute and asked each time:

“I wonder what makes me hiccough? I don’t know what I could have eaten or drunk—hick!”

Pavel Vasilitch and Stepa leaned over the table side by side with their heads together, poring over the pages of the Neva Magazine for the year 1878.

“‘The monument to Leonardo da Vinci in front of 44the Victor Emmanuel Museum at Milan.’ Look at that, it’s like a triumphal arch! And there are a man and a lady, and there are some more little people——”

“That looks like one of the boys at our school,” Stepa said.

“Turn over the page—‘The Proboscis of the House Fly as Seen through the Microscope.’ Goodness what a fly! I wonder what a bedbug would look like under the microscope, eh? How disgusting!”

The ancient hall clock coughed rather than struck ten times, as if it were afflicted with a cold. Into the dining-room came Anna the cook and fell flop at her master’s feet.

“Forgive me my sins, master, for Christ’s sake!” she cried and got up again very red in the face.

“Forgive me mine, too, for Christ’s sake!” answered Pavel Vasilitch calmly.

Anna then fell down at the feet of every member of the family in turn and asked forgiveness for her sins, omitting only Markovna, who, not being high-born, was unworthy of a prostration.

Another half-hour passed in silence and peace. The Neva was tossed aside onto the sofa and Pavel Vasilitch, with one finger raised aloft, was reciting Latin poetry he had learned in his youth. Stepa was watching his father’s finger with its wedding-ring and dozing as he listened to the words he could not understand. He rubbed his heavy eyes with his fist but they kept closing tighter and tighter each time.

45“I’m going to bed!” he said at last, stretching and yawning.

“What? To bed?” cried Pelagia Ivanovna. “Won’t you eat your meat for the last time before Lent?”

“I don’t want any meat.”

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” his startled mother exclaimed. “How can you say that? You won’t have any meat after to-night for the whole of Lent!”

Pavel Vasilitch was startled, too.

“Yes, yes, sonny,” he cried. “Your mother will give you nothing but Lenten fare for seven weeks after to-night. This won’t do. You must eat your meat!”

“But I want to go to bed!” whimpered Stepa.

“Then bring in the supper quick!” cried Pavel Vasilitch in a flutter. “Anna, what are you doing in there, you old slow-coach? Come quick and bring in the supper!”

Pelagia Ivanovna threw up her hands and rushed into the kitchen as if the house were afire.

“Hurry! Hurry!” rang through the house. “Stepa wants to go to bed! Anna! Oh, heavens, what is the matter? Hurry!”

In five minutes the supper was on the table. The cats appeared once more, stretching and arching their backs, with their tails in the air. The family applied themselves to their meal. No one was hungry, all were surfeited to the point of bursting, but they felt it was their duty to eat.

46

IN PASSION WEEK

“Run, the church-bells are ringing! Be a good boy in church and don’t play! If you do, God will punish you!”

My mother slipped a few copper coins into my hand and then forgot all about me, as she ran into the kitchen with an iron that was growing cold. I knew I should not be allowed to eat or drink after confession, so before leaving home I choked down a crust of bread and drank two glasses of water. Spring was at its height. The street was a sea of brown mud through which ruts were already in process of being worn; the housetops and sidewalks were dry, and the tender young green of springtime was pushing up through last year’s dry grass under the fence rows. Muddy rivulets were babbling and murmuring down the gutters in which the sun did not disdain to lave its rays. Chips, bits of straw, and nutshells were floating swiftly down with the current, twisting and turning and catching on the dirty foam flakes. Whither, whither were they drifting? Would they not be swept from the gutter into the river, from the river into the sea, and from the sea into the mighty ocean? I tried to 47picture to myself the long and terrible journey before them, but my imagination failed even before reaching the river.

A cab drove by. The cabman was clucking to his horse and slapping the reins, unaware of two street-urchins hanging from the springs of his little carriage. I wanted to join these boys, but straightway remembered that I was on my way to confession, whereupon the boys appeared to me to be very wicked sinners indeed.

“God will ask them on the Last Judgment Day why they played tricks on a poor cabman,” I thought. “They will begin to make excuses, but the devil will grab them and throw them into eternal fire. But if they obey their fathers and mothers and give pennies and bread to the beggars, God will have mercy on them and will let them into Paradise.”

The church porch was sunny and dry. Not a soul was there; I opened the church door irresolutely and entered the building. There, in the dim light more fraught with melancholy and gloom for me than ever before, I became overwhelmed by the consciousness of my wickedness and sin. The first object that met my sight was a huge crucifixion with the Virgin and St. John the Baptist on either side of the cross. The lustres and shutters were hung with mourning black, the icon lamps were glimmering faintly, and the sun seemed to be purposely avoiding the church windows. The Mother of God and the favourite Disciple were 48depicted in profile silently gazing at that unutterable agony upon the cross, oblivious of my presence. I felt that I was a stranger to them, paltry and vile; that I could not help them by word or deed; that I was a horrid, worthless boy, fit only to chatter and be naughty and rough. I called to mind all my acquaintances, and they all seemed to me to be trivial and silly and wicked, incapable of consoling one atom the terrible grief before me. The murky twilight deepened, the Mother of God and John the Baptist seemed very lonely.

Behind the lectern where the candles were sold stood the old soldier Prokofi, now churchwarden’s assistant.

His eyebrows were raised and he was stroking his beard and whispering to an old woman.

“The service will begin directly after vespers this evening. There will be prayers after matins to-morrow at eight o’clock. Do you hear me? At eight o’clock.”

Between two large pillars near the rood-screen the penitents were standing in line waiting their turn for confession. Among them was Mitka, a ragged little brat with an ugly, shaven head, protruding ears, and small, wicked eyes. He was the son of Nastasia the washerwoman, and was a bully and a thief who filched apples from the fruit-stalls and had more than once made away with my knuckle-bones. He was now staring crossly at me and seemed to be exulting in the fact that he was going to confession before me. My 49heart swelled with rage and I tried not to look at him. From the bottom of my soul I was furious that this boy’s sins were about to be forgiven.

In front of him stood a richly dressed lady with a white plume in her hat. Clearly she was deeply agitated and tensely expectant, and one of her cheeks was burning with a feverish flush.

I waited five minutes, ten minutes—then a well-dressed young man with a long, thin neck came out from behind the screen. He had on high rubber goloshes, and I at once began dreaming of the day when I should buy a pair of goloshes like his for myself. I decided that I would certainly do so. And now came the lady’s turn. She shuddered and went behind the screen.

Through a crack I could see her approach the altar, prostrate herself, rise, and bow her head expectantly without looking at the priest. The priest’s back was turned toward the screen, and all I could see of him was his broad shoulders, his curly grey hair, and the chain around his neck from which a cross was suspended. Sighing, without looking at the lady, he began nodding his head and whispering rapidly, now raising, now lowering his voice. The lady listened meekly, guiltily almost, with downcast eyes, and answered him in a few words.

“What can be her sin?” I wondered, looking reverently at her beautiful, gentle face. “Forgive her, God, and make her happy!”

50But now the priest was covering her head with the stole.

“I, Thy unworthy servant,” his voice rang out, “by the power vouchsafed me, forgive this woman and absolve her from sin——”

The lady prostrated herself once more, kissed the cross, and retired. Both her cheeks were flushed now, but her face was calm, and unclouded, and joyous.

“She is happy now,” I thought, my eye wandering from her to the priest pronouncing the absolution. “But how happy he must be who is able to forgive sin!”

It was Mitka’s turn next, and my heart suddenly boiled over with hatred for the little thief. I wanted to go behind the screen ahead of him, I wanted to be first. Mitka noticed the movement, and hit me on the head with a candle. I paid him back in his own coin, and for a moment sounds of panting and the breaking of candles were heard in the church. We were forcibly parted, and my enemy nervously and stiffly approached the altar and bowed to the ground, but what happened after that I was unable to see. All I could think of was that I was going next, after Mitka, and at that thought the objects around me danced and swam before my eyes. Mitka’s protruding ears grew larger than ever and melted into the back of his neck, the priest swayed, and the floor rocked under my feet.

The priest’s voice rang out:

“I, Thy unworthy servant——”

51I found myself moving toward the screen. My feet seemed to be treading on air. I felt as if I were floating. I reached the altar, which was higher than my head. The weary, dispassionate face of the priest flashed for a moment across my vision, but after that I saw only his blue-lined sleeves and one corner of the stole. I felt his near presence, smelled the odour of his cassock, and heard his stern voice, and the cheek that was turned toward him began to burn. I lost much of what he said from excitement, but I answered him earnestly, in a voice that sounded to me as if it were not my own. I thought of the lonely Mother of God, and the Disciple, and the crucifixion, and my mother, and wanted to cry and ask for forgiveness.

“What is your name?” asked the priest, laying the stole over my head.

How relieved I now felt, and how light of heart! My sins were gone, I was sanctified. I could enter into Paradise. It seemed to me that I exhaled the same odour as the priest’s cassock, and I sniffed my sleeve as I came out from behind the screen and went to the deacon to register. The dim half-light of the church no longer struck me as gloomy, and I could now look calmly and without anger at Mitka.

“What is your name?” asked the deacon.

“Fedia.”

“Fedia, what?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is your daddy’s name?”

52“Ivan.”

“And his other name?”

I was silent.

“How old are you?”

“Nine years old.”

On reaching home I went straight to bed to avoid seeing my family at supper. Shutting my eyes, I lay thinking of how glorious it would be to be martyred by Herod or some one; to live in a desert feeding bears like the hermit Seraphim; to pass one’s life in a cell with nothing to eat but wafers; to give away all one possessed to the poor; to make a pilgrimage to Kief. I could hear them laying the table in the dining-room; supper would soon be ready! There would be pickles and cabbage pasties and baked fish—oh, how hungry I was! I now felt willing to endure any torture whatsoever, to live in the desert without my mother, feeding bears out of my own hands, if only I could have just one little cabbage pasty first!

“Purify my heart, O God!” I prayed, pulling the bedclothes up over my head. “O guardian angels, save me from sin!”

Next morning, Thursday, I woke with a heart as serene and joyful as a spring day. I walked gaily and manfully to church, conscious that I was now a communicant and that I was wearing a beautiful and expensive shirt made from a silk dress left me by my grandmamma. Everything in church spoke of joy and happiness and springtime. The Mother of God and 53John the Baptist looked less sad than they had the evening before, and the faces of the communicants were radiant with anticipation. The past, it seemed, was all forgiven and forgotten. Mitka was there, washed and dressed in his Sunday best. I looked cheerfully at his protruding ears, and, to show that I bore him no malice, I said:

“You look fine to-day. If your hair didn’t stick up so and you weren’t so poorly dressed one might almost think your mother was a lady instead of a washerwoman. Come and play knuckle-bones with me on Easter Day!”

Mitka looked suspiciously at me and secretly threatened me with his fist.

The lady of yesterday was radiantly beautiful. She wore a light blue dress fastened with a large, flashing brooch shaped like a horseshoe.

I stood and admired her, thinking that when I grew to be a man I should certainly marry a woman like her, but, remembering suddenly that to think of marriage was shameful, I stopped, and moved toward the choir where the deacon was already reading the prayers that concluded the service.

54

AN INCIDENT

It was morning. Bright rays of sunlight were streaming into the nursery through the lacy curtain that the frost had drawn across the panes of the windows. Vania, a boy of six with a shaven head and a nose like a button, and his sister Nina, a chubby, curly-haired girl of four, woke from their sleep and stared crossly at one another through the bars of their cribs.

“Oh, shame, shame!” grumbled nursie. “All good folks have had breakfast by now and your eyes are still half-closed!”

The sun’s rays were chasing each other merrily across the carpet, the walls, and the tail of nursie’s dress, and seemed to be inviting the children to a romp, but they did not notice the sun, they had waked in a bad humour. Nina pouted, made a wry face, and began to whine:

“Tea, nursie, I want my tea!”

Vania frowned and wondered how he could manage to quarrel and so find an excuse to bawl. He was already winking his eyes and opening his mouth when mamma’s voice came from the dining-room saying:

“Don’t forget to give the cat some milk; she has kittens now!”

Vania and Nina pulled long faces and looked dubiously 55at one another; then they both screamed, jumped out of bed, and scampered into the kitchen as they were, barefooted and in their little nightgowns, filling the air with shrill squeals as they ran.

“The cat has kittens! The cat has kittens!” they shrieked.

Under a bench in the kitchen stood a box, the same box which Stepan used for carrying coal when fires were lighted in the fire-places. Out of this box peered the cat. Profound weariness was manifested in her face, and her green eyes with their narrow black pupils wore an expression both languid and sentimental. One could see from her mien that if “he,” the father of her children, were but with her, her happiness would be complete. She opened her mouth wide and tried to mew but her throat only emitted a wheezing sound. The squeaking of her kittens came from inside the box.

The children squatted down on their heels near the box, motionless, holding their breath, their eyes riveted on the cat. They were dumb with wonder and amazement and did not hear their nurse as she grumblingly pursued them. Unaffected pleasure shone in the eyes of both.

In the lives and education of children domestic animals play a useful if inconspicuous part. Who does not remember some strong, noble watch-dog of his childhood, some petted spaniel, or the birds that died in captivity? Who does not recall the stupid, arrogant turkeys, and the meek old tabby-cats that 56were always ready to forgive us even when we stepped on their tails for fun and caused them the keenest pain? I sometimes think that the loyalty, patience, capacity for forgiveness, and fidelity of our domestic animals have a far greater and more potent influence over the minds of children than the long discourses of some pale, prosy German tutor or the hazy explanations of a governess who tries to tell them that water is compounded of oxygen and hydrogen.

“Oh, how tiny they are!” cried Nina, staring at the kittens round-eyed and breaking into a merry peal of laughter—“They look like mice!”

“One, two, three—” counted Vania. “Three kittens. That means one for me and one for you and one for some one else.”

“Murrm-murr-r-r-m,” purred the cat, flattered at receiving so much attention. “Murr-r-m.”

When they were tired of looking at the kittens, the children took them out from under the cat and began squeezing and pinching them; then, not satisfied with this, they wrapped them in the hems of their nightgowns and ran with them into the drawing-room.

Their mother was sitting there with a strange man. When she saw the children come in not dressed, not washed, with their nightgowns in the air she blushed and looked sternly at them.

“For shame! Let your nightgowns down!” she cried. “Go away or else I shall have to punish you!”

But the children heeded neither the threats of their 57mother nor the presence of the stranger. They laid the kittens down on the carpet and raised their voices in shrill vociferation. The mother cat roamed about at their feet and mewed beseechingly. A moment later the children were seized and borne off into the nursery to be dressed and fed and to say their prayers, but their hearts were full of passionate longing to have done with these prosaic duties as quickly as possible and to escape once more into the kitchen.

Their usual games and occupations faded into the background.

By their arrival in the world the kittens had eclipsed everything else and had taken their place as the one engrossing novelty and passion of the day. If Vania or Nina had been offered a ton of candy or a thousand pennies for each one of the kittens they would have refused the bargain without a moment’s hesitation. They sat over the kittens in the kitchen until the very moment for dinner, in spite of the vigorous protests of their nurse and of the cook. The expression on their faces was serious, absorbed, and full of anxiety. They were worrying not only over the present, but also over the future of the kittens. They decided that one should stay at home with the old cat to console its mother, the second should go to the cottage in the country, and the third should live in the cellar where there were so many rats.

“But why don’t they open their eyes?” Nina puzzled. “They are blind, like beggars!”

58Vania, too, was perturbed by this phenomenon. He set to work to open the eyes of one of the kittens, and puffed and snuffled over his task for a long time, but the operation proved to be unsuccessful. The children were also not a little worried because the kittens obstinately refused all meat and milk set before them. Their grey mother ate everything that was put under their little noses.

“Come on, let’s make some little houses for the kitties!” Vania suggested. “Then they can live in their own separate homes and the old kitty can come and visit them.”

They put hat-boxes in various corners of the kitchen, and the kittens were transferred to their new homes. But this family separation proved to be premature. With the same imploring, sentimental look on her face, the cat made the round of the boxes and carried her babies back to their former nest.

“Kitty is their mother,” Vania reflected. “But who is their father?”

“Yes, who is their father?” Nina repeated.

“They must have a father,” both decided.

Vania and Nina debated for a long time as to who should be the father of the kittens. At last their choice fell upon a large dark-red horse with a broken tail who had been thrown into a cupboard under the stairs and there lay awaiting his end in company with other rubbish and broken toys. This horse they dragged forth and set up beside the box.

59“Mind now!” the children admonished him. “Stand there and see they behave themselves!”

Shortly before dinner Vania was sitting at the table in his father’s study dreamily watching a kitten that lay squirming on the blotting-paper under the lamp. His eyes were following each movement of the little creature and he was trying to force first a pencil and then a match into its mouth. Suddenly his father appeared beside the table as if he had sprung from the floor.

“What’s that?” Vania heard him ask in an angry voice.

“It’s—it’s a little kitty, papa.”

“I’ll show you a little kitty! Look what you’ve done, you bad boy, you’ve messed up the whole blotter!”

To Vania’s intense surprise, his papa did not share his affection for kittens. Instead of going into raptures and rejoicing over it with him, he pulled Vania’s ear and shouted:

“Stepan! Come and take this nasty thing away!”

At dinner, too, a scandal occurred. During the second course the family suddenly heard a faint squeaking. A search for the cause was made and a kitten was discovered under Nina’s apron.

“Nina, leave the table at once!” cried her father angrily. “Stepan, throw the kittens into the slop-barrel this minute! I won’t have such filth in the house!”

60Vania and Nina were horrified. Apart from its cruelty, death in the slop-barrel threatened to deprive the old cat and the wooden horse of their children, to leave the box deserted, and to upset all their plans for the future, that beautiful future in which one cat would take care of its old mother, one would live in the country, and the third would catch rats in the cellar. The children began to cry and to beg for the lives of the kittens. Their father consented to spare them on condition that the children should under no circumstances go into the kitchen or touch the kittens.

When dinner was over, Vania and Nina roamed disconsolately through the house, pining for their pets. The prohibition to enter the kitchen had plunged them in gloom. They refused candy when it was offered them and were cross and rude to their mother. When their Uncle Peter came in the evening they took him aside and complained to him of their father who wanted to throw the kittens into the slop-barrel.

“Uncle Peter,” they begged. “Tell mamma to have the kittens brought into the nursery! Do tell her!”

“All right, all right!” their uncle consented to get rid of them.

Uncle Peter seldom came alone. There generally appeared with him Nero, a big black Dane with flapping ears and a tail as hard as a stick. He was a silent and gloomy dog, full of the consciousness of his own dignity. He ignored the children and thumped them with his 61tail as he stalked by them as if they had been chairs. The children cordially hated him, but this time practical considerations triumphed over sentiment.

“Do you know what, Nina?” said Vania, opening his eyes very wide. “Let’s make Nero their father instead of the horse! The horse is dead and he is alive.”

They waited all the evening for the time to come when papa should sit down to his whist and Nero might be admitted into the kitchen. At last papa began playing. Mamma was busy over the samovar and was not noticing the children—the happy moment had come!

“Come on!” Vania whispered to his sister.

But just then Stepan came into the room and announced with a smile:

“Madame, Nero has eaten the kittens!”

Nina and Vania paled and looked at Stepan in horror.

“Indeed he has!” chuckled the butler. “He has found the box and eaten every one!”

The children imagined that every soul in the house would spring up in alarm and fling themselves upon that wicked Nero. But instead of this they all sat quietly in their places and only seemed surprised at the appetite of the great dog. Papa and mamma laughed. Nero walked round the table wagging his tail and licking his chops with great self-satisfaction. Only the cat was uneasy. With her tail in the air she 62roamed through the house, looking suspiciously at every one and mewing pitifully.

“Children, it’s ten o’clock! Go to bed!” cried mamma.

Vania and Nina went to bed crying and lay for a long time thinking about the poor, abused kitty and that horrid, cruel, unpunished Nero.

63

A MATTER OF CLASSICS

Before going to take his Greek examination, Vania Ottopeloff devoutly kissed every icon in the house. He felt a load on his chest and his blood ran cold, while his heart beat madly and sank into his boots for fear of the unknown. What would become of him to-day? Would he get a B or a C? He asked his mother’s blessing six times over, and, as he left the house, he begged his aunt to pray for him. On his way to school he gave two copecks to a beggar, hoping that these two coins might redeem him from ignorance and that God would not let those numeral nouns with their terrible “Tessarakontas” and “Oktokaidekas” get in his way.

He came back from school late, at five o’clock, and went silently to his room to lie down. His thin cheeks were white and dark circles surrounded his eyes.

“Well? What happened? What did you get?” asked his mother coming to his bedside.

Vania blinked, made a wry face, and burst into tears. Mamma’s jaw dropped, she grew pale and threw up her hands, letting fall a pair of trousers which she had been mending.

“What are you crying for? You have failed, I suppose?” she asked.

64“Yes, I’ve—I’ve been plucked. I got a C.”

“I knew that would happen, I had a presentiment that it would!” his mother exclaimed. “The Lord have mercy on us! What did you fail in?”

“In Greek—Oh, mother—they asked me the future of Phero and, instead of answering Oisomai, I answered Opsomai; and then—and then the accent is not used if the last syllable is a diphthong, but—but I got confused, I forgot that the alpha was long and put on the accent. Then we had to decline Artaxerxes and I got muddled and made a mistake in the ablative—so he gave me a C—Oh, I’m the unhappiest boy in the whole world! I worked all last night—I have got up at four every morning this week——”

“No, it is not you who are unhappy, you good-for-nothing boy, it is I! You have worn me as thin as a rail, you monster, you thorn in my flesh, you wicked burden on your parents! I have wept for you, I have broken my back working for you, you worthless trifler, and what is my reward? Have you learned a thing?”

“I—I study—all night—you see that yourself——”

“I have prayed God to send death to deliver me, poor sinner, but death will not come. You bane of my existence! Other people have decent children, but my only child isn’t worth a pin. Shall I beat you? I would if I could, but where shall I get the strength to do it? Mother of God, where shall I get the strength?”

Mamma covered her face with the hem of her dress and burst into tears. Vania squirmed with grief and 65pressed his forehead against the wall. His aunt came in.

“There, now, I had a presentiment of this!” she exclaimed, turning pale and throwing up her hands as she guessed at once what had happened. “I felt low in my mind all this morning; I knew we should have trouble, and here it is!”

“You viper! You bane of my existence!” exclaimed Vania’s mother.

“Why do you abuse him?” the boy’s aunt scolded the mother, nervously pulling off the coffee-coloured kerchief she wore on her head. “How is he to blame? It is your fault! Yours! Why did you send him to that school? What sort of lady are you? Do you want to climb up among the gentlefolk? Aha! You will certainly get there at this rate! If you had done as I told you, you would have put him into business as I did my Kuzia. There’s Kuzia now making five hundred roubles a year. Is that such a trifle that you can afford to laugh at it? You have tortured yourself and tortured the boy with all this book-learning, worse luck to it! See how thin he is! Hear him cough! He is thirteen years old and he looks more like ten.”

“No, Nastenka, no, darling, I haven’t beaten that tormentor of mine much, and beating is what he needs. Ugh! You Jesuit! You Mohammedan! You thorn in my flesh!” she cried, raising her hand as if to strike her son. “I should thrash you if I had the strength. People used to say to me when he was 66still little: ‘Beat him! Beat him!’ But I didn’t listen to them, unhappy woman that I am! So now I have to suffer for it. But wait a bit, I’ll have your ears boxed! Wait a bit——”

His mother shook her fist at him and went weeping into the room occupied by her lodger, Eftiki Kuporosoff. The lodger was sitting at his table reading “Dancing Self-Taught.” This Kuporosoff was considered a clever and learned person. He spoke through his nose, washed with scented soap that made every one in the house sneeze, ate meat on fast-days, and was looking for an enlightened wife; for these reasons he thought himself an extremely intellectual lodger. He also possessed a tenor voice.

“Dear me!” cried Vania’s mother, running into his room with the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Do be so very kind as to thrash my boy! Oh, do do me that favour! He has failed in his examinations! Oh, misery me! Can you believe it, he has failed! I can’t punish him myself on account of being so weak and in bad health, so do thrash him for me! Be kind, be chivalrous and do it for me, Mr. Kuporosoff! Have mercy on a sick woman!”

Kuporosoff frowned and heaved a very deep sigh through his nostrils. He reflected, drummed on the table with his fingers, sighed once more, and went into Vania’s room.

“Look here!” he began his harangue. “Your parents are trying to educate you, aren’t they, and give 67you a start in life, you miserable young man? Then why do you act like this?”

He held forth for a long time, he made quite a speech. He referred to science, and to darkness and light.

“Yes, indeed, young man!” he exclaimed from time to time.

When he had concluded, he took off his belt and caught hold of Vania’s ear.

“This is the only way to treat you!” he exclaimed.

Vania knelt down obediently and put his head on Kuporosoff’s knees. His large pink ears rubbed against Kuporosoff’s new brown-striped trousers.

Vania made not a sound. That evening at a family conclave it was decided to put him into business at once.

68

THE TUTOR

The high-school boy Gregory Ziboroff condescendingly shakes hands with little Pete Udodoff. Pete, a chubby youngster of twelve with bristling hair, red cheeks, and a low forehead, dressed in a little grey suit, bows and scrapes, and reaches into the cupboard for his books. The lesson begins.

According to an agreement made with Udodoff, the father, Ziboroff is to help Pete with his lessons for two hours each day, in return for which he is to receive six roubles a month. He is preparing the boy for the second grade of the high-school. He prepared him for the first grade last year, but little Pete failed to pass his examinations.

“Very well,” begins Ziboroff lighting a cigarette. “You had the fourth declension to study. Decline fructus!”

Peter begins to decline it.

“There, you haven’t studied again!” cries Ziboroff rising. “This is the sixth time I have given you the fourth declension to learn, and you can’t get it through your head! For heaven’s sake, when will you ever begin to study your lessons?”

“What, you haven’t studied again?” exclaims a 69wheezing voice in the next room and Pete’s papa, a retired civil servant, enters. “Why haven’t you studied? Oh, you little donkey! Just think, Gregory, I had to thrash him again yesterday!”

Sighing profoundly, Udodoff sits down beside his son and opens the boy’s ragged grammar. Ziboroff begins examining Pete before his father, thinking to himself: “I’ll just show that stupid father what a stupid son he has!” The high-school boy is seized with the fury of the examiner and is ready to beat the little red-cheeked numskull before him, he hates and despises him so. He is even annoyed when the youngster hits on the right answer to one of his questions. How odious this little Pete seems to him!

“You don’t even know the second declension! You don’t even know the first! This is the way you learn your lessons! Come, tell me, what is the vocative of meus filius?”

“The vocative of meus filius? Why the vocative of meus filius is—it is——”

Pete stares hard at the ceiling and moves his lips inaudibly. No answer comes.

“What is the dative of dea?”

“Deabus—filiabus!” Pete bursts out.

Old Udodoff nods approvingly. The high-school boy, who was not expecting a correct answer, feels annoyed.

“What other nouns have their dative in abus?” he asks.

70It appears that anima, the soul, has its dative in abus, something that is not to be found in any grammar.

“What a melodious language Latin is!” observes Udodoff. “Alontron—bonus—anthropos—how marvellous! It is all very important!” he concludes with a sigh.

“The old brute is interrupting the lesson,” thinks Ziboroff. “Sitting over us like an inspector—I hate to be bossed! Now, then!” he cries to Pete. “You must learn that same lesson over again for next time. Next we’ll do some arithmetic. Fetch your slate! I want you to do this problem.”

Pete spits on his slate and rubs it dry with his sleeve. His tutor picks up the arithmetic and dictates the following problem to him.

“‘If a merchant buys 138 yards of cloth, some of which is black and some blue, for 540 roubles, how many yards of each did he buy if the blue cloth cost 5 roubles a yard and the black cloth 3?’ Repeat what I have just said.”

Peter repeats the problem and instantly and silently begins to divide 540 by 138.

“What are you doing? Wait a moment! No, no, go ahead! Is there a remainder? There ought not to be. Here, let me do it!”

Ziboroff divides 540 by 138, and finds that it goes three times and something over. He quickly rubs out the sum.

“How queer!” he thinks, ruffling his hair and flushing. 71“How should it be done? H’m—this is an indeterminate equation and not a sum in arithmetic at all——”

The tutor looks in the back of the book and finds that the answer is 75 and 63.

“H’m—that’s queer. Ought I to add 5 and 3 and divide 540 by 8? Is that right? No that’s not it. Come, do the sum!” he says to Pete.

“What’s the matter with you? That’s an easy problem!” cries Udodoff to Peter. “What a goose you are, sonny! Do it for him, Mr. Ziboroff!”

Gregory takes the pencil and begins figuring. He hiccoughs and flushes and pales.

“The fact is, this is an algebraical problem,” he says. “It ought to be solved with x and y. But it can be done in this way, too. Very well, I divide this by this, do you understand? Now then, I subtract it from this, see? Or, no, let me tell you, suppose you do this sum yourself for to-morrow. Think it out alone!”

Pete smiles maliciously. Udodoff smiles, too. Both realize the tutor’s perplexity. The high-school boy becomes still more violently embarrassed, rises, and begins to walk up and down.

“That sum can be done without the help of algebra,” says Udodoff, sighing and reaching for the counting board. “Look here!”

He rattles the counting board for a moment, and produces the answer 75 and 63, which is correct.

“That’s how we ignorant folks do it.”

72The tutor falls a prey to the most unbearably painful sensations. He looks at the clock with a sinking heart, and sees that it still lacks an hour and a quarter to the end of the lesson. What an eternity that is!

“Now we will have some dictation,” he says.

After the dictation comes a lesson in geography; after that, Bible study; after Bible study, Russian—there is so much to learn in this world! At last the two hours’ lesson is over, Ziboroff reaches for his cap, condescendingly shakes hands with little Pete, and takes his leave of Udodoff.

“Could you let me have a little money to-day?” he asks timidly. “I must pay my school bill to-morrow. You owe me for six months’ lessons.”

“Oh, do I really? Oh, yes, yes—” mutters Udodoff. “I would certainly let you have the money with pleasure, but I’m sorry to say I haven’t any just now. Perhaps in a week—or two.”

Ziboroff acquiesces, puts on his heavy goloshes, and goes out to give his next lesson.

73

OUT OF SORTS

Simon Pratchkin, a commissioner of the rural police, was walking up and down the floor of his room trying to smother a host of disagreeable sensations. He had gone to see the chief of police on business the evening before, and had unexpectedly sat down to a game of cards at which he had lost eight roubles. The amount was a trifle, but the demons of greed and avarice were whispering in his ear the accusation that he was a spendthrift.

“Eight roubles—a mere nothing!” cried Pratchkin, trying to drown the voices of the demons. “People often lose more than that without minding it at all. Besides, money is made to spend. One trip to the factory, one visit to Piloff’s tavern, and eight roubles would have been but a drop in a bucket!”

“It is winter; horse and peasant——”

monotonously murmured Pratchkin’s son Vania, in the next room.

“Down the road triumphant go—triumphant go——”

“Triumphant!” Pratchkin went on, pursuing the train of his thoughts. “If he had been stuck for a 74dozen roubles he wouldn’t have been so triumphant! What is he so triumphant about? Let him pay his debts on time! Eight roubles—what a trifle! That’s not eight thousand roubles. One can always win eight roubles back again.”

“And the pony trots his swiftest

For he feels the coming snow—

For he feels the coming snow.”

“Well, he wouldn’t be likely to go at a gallop, would he? Was he supposed to be a race-horse? He was a hack, a broken-down old hack! Foolish, drunken peasants always want to go at breakneck speed, and then, when they fall into an ice-hole, or down a precipice, some one has to haul them out and doctor them. If I had my way, I’d prescribe a kind of turpentine for them that they wouldn’t forget in a hurry! And why did I lead a low card? If I had led the ace of clubs, I wouldn’t have fallen into a hole myself——”

“O’er the furrows soft and crumbling

Flies the sleigh so free and wild—

O’er the furrows soft and crumbling——”

“Crumbling—crumbling furrows—what stuff that is! People will let those writers scribble anything. It was that ten-spot that made all the trouble. Why the devil did it have to turn up just at that moment?”

“When a little boy comes tumbling—comes tumbling

Down the road a merry child—a merry child.”

75“If the boy was running he must have been overeating himself and been naughty. Parents never will put their children to work. Instead of playing, that boy ought to have been splitting kindling, or reading the Bible—and I hadn’t the sense to come away! What an ass I was to stay after supper! Why didn’t I have my meal and go home?”

“At the window stands his mother,

Shakes her finger—shakes her finger at the boy——”

“She shakes her finger at him, does she? The trouble with her is, she is too lazy to go out-of-doors and punish him. She ought to catch him by his little coat and give him a good spanking. It would do him more good than shaking her finger at him. If she doesn’t take care, he will grow up to be a drunkard. Who wrote that?” asked Pratchkin aloud.

“Pushkin, papa.”

“Pushkin? H’m. What an ass he is! People like that simply write without knowing themselves what they are saying.”

“Papa, here’s a peasant with a load of flour!” cried Vania.

“Let some one take charge of it!”

The arrival of the flour failed to cheer Pratchkin. The more he tried to console himself, the more poignant grew his sense of loss, and he regretted those eight roubles as keenly as if they had in reality been eight thousand. When Vania finished studying his lesson 76and silence fell, Pratchkin was standing gloomily at the window, his mournful gaze fixed upon the snowdrifts in the garden. But the sight of the snowdrifts only opened wider the wound in his breast. They reminded him of yesterday’s expedition to the chief of police. His spleen rose and embittered his heart. The need to vent his sorrow reached such a pitch that it would brook no delay. He could endure it no longer.

“Vania!” he shouted. “Come here and let me whip you for breaking that window-pane yesterday!”

77