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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.
VISeveral 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.
VIILelechka was dressed, placed in a little coffin, and carried into the parlour. Serafima Aleksandrovna 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. Serafima 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.
VIIISergey 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
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