Mdlle. Ilovaisky seemed ashamed of her warmth, and, turning away from Likhary6ff, went over to the window.
"No . . . no . . . you cannot go there!" she said, rub- bing her finger down the window-pane.
Not only through her head, but through her whole body ran a feeling that here behind her stood an unhappy, for- saken, perishing man. But he, as if unconscious of his misery, as if he had not wept the night before, looked at her and smiled good-humouredly. It would have been better if he had continued to cry. For a few minutes in agitation she walked up and down the room, and then stopped in the corner and began to think. Likhary6ff said something, but she did not hear him. Turning her back w him, she took a credit note from her purse, smoothed it in her hand, and then, looking at him, blushed and thrust it into her pocket.
Outside the inn resounded the coachman's voice. Silently, with a severe, concentrated expression, Mdlle. Ilovaisky be- gan to put on her wraps. LikharyOff rolled her up in them, and chattered gaily. But every word caused her intolerable pain. It is not pleasant to listen to the jests of the wretched or dying.
When the transformation of a living woman into a form- less bundle was complete, Mdlle. Ilovaisky looked for the last time around "The Traveller," stood silent a moment, and then went out slowly. LikharyOff escorted her.
Outside, God alone knows why, the storm still raged. Great clouds vf big, soft snowflakes restlessly whirled over the ground, finding no abiding place. Horses, sledge, trees, the bull tethered to the post—all were white, and seemed made of down.
"Well, God bless you!" stammered LikharyOff, as he helped Marya Mikhailovna into the sledge. "Don't think ill of mel"
l\Idlle. Ilovaisky said nothing. When the sledge started and began to circle round a great snowdrift, she looked at Lik- haryOff as if she wished to say something. LikharyOff ran up to the sledge, but she said not a word, and only gazed at him through her long eyelashes to which the snowflakes already clung.
Whether it be that his sensitive mind read this glance aright, or whether, as it may have been, that his imagination led him astrav, it suddenly struck him that but a little more and this girl would have forgiven him his age, his failures, his misfortunes, and followed him, neither questioning nor reasoning, to the ends of the earth. For a long time he stood as if rooted to the spot, and gazed at the track left by the sledge-runners. fhe snowflakes settled swiftly on his hair, his beard, his shoulders. But soon the traces of the sledge-run- ners vanished, and he, covered with snow, began to resemble a white boulder, his eyes all the time continuing to search for something through the clouds of snow.
Nine-year-old Vanka Jukov, who has been apprentice to the shoemaker Aliakhine for three months, did not go to bed the night before Christmas. He waited till the master and mistress and the assistants had gone out to an early church-service, to procure from his employer's cupboard a small phial of ink and a penholder with a rusty nib; then, spreading a crumpled sheet of paper in front of him, began to write.
Before, however, deciding to make the first letter, he looked furtively at the door and at the window, glanced several times at the sombre ikon, on either side of which stretched shelves full of lasts, and heaved a heart-rending sigh. The sheet of paper was spread on a bench, and he himself was on his knees in front of it.
"Dear Grandfather Constantin Makaritch," he wrote, "I am writing you a letter. I wish you a Happy Christmas and all God's holy best. I have no father or mamenka, you are all I have."
Vanka gave a look towards the window in which shone the reflection of his candle, and vividly pictured to himself his grandfather, Constantin Makaritch, who was night-watchman at Messrs. Jivarevev. He was a small, lean, unusually lively and active old man of sixty -five, always smiling and blear- eyed. All day he slept in the servant's kitchen or trifled with the cooks. At night, enveloped in an ample sheep-skin coat, he strayed round the domain, tapping with his cudgel. Behind him, each hanging its head, walk the old bitch Kashtanka, and Viune, so named because of his black coat and long body, and his resemblance to a loach. Viune is an unusually civil
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and friendly dog, looking as kindly at a stranger as at his masters, but he is not to be trusted. Beneath his deference and humbleness is hid the most inquisitorial maliciousne^. No one better than he knows how to sneak up and take a bite at a leg, to slip into the larder or steal a moujik's chicken. More than once they have nearly broken his hindlegs, twice he has been hung up, every week he is nearly flogged to death, but he recovers from it all.
At this moment, for certain, his grandfather is standing at the gate, blinking his eyes at the bright red windows of the village church, stamping his feet in their high-felt boots, and jesting with the people in the yard; his cudgel will be hanging from his belt, he will be hugging himself with cold, giving a little dry, old man's cough, and at times pinching a servant girl or a cook.
"Won't we take some snuff ?" he asks, holding out his snuff. box to the women. The women take a pinch of snuff, and sneeze.
The old man goes into indescribable ecstasies, breaks into loud laughter, and cries:
"Off with it, it will freeze to your nose!"
He gives his snuff also to the dogs. Kashtanka sneezes. twitches her nose, and very offended walks away. Viune def- erentially refuses to sniff, and wags his tail. It is glorious weather, not a breath of wind, clear, and frosty; it is a dark night, but the whole village, its white roofs, and streaks of smoke from the chimneys, the trees silvered with hoar-frost, and the snowdrifts, you can see it all. The sky scintillates with bright twinkling stars, and the Milky Way stands out so clearly that it looks as if it had been polished and rubbed over with snow for the holidays.
Vanka sighs, dips his pen in the ink, and continues to write:
"Last night I got a thrashing, the patron dragged me by my hair into the yard, belaboured me with a shoemaker's stirrup, because, while I was rocking their brat in its cradle,
I unfortunately fell asleep. And during the week, my mistres told me to clean a herring, and I began by its tail, so she took the herring and thrust its phiz into my face. The as- sistants tease me, send me to the tavern for vodka, make me steal the patron's cucumbers, and the patron beats me with whatever is handy. Food there is none; in the morning it's bread, at dinner 'gruel,' and in the evening again bread, as for tea or sour-cabbage soup, the patrons themselves guzzle that. They make me sleep in the vestibule, and when their brat cries I don't sleep at all, but have to rock the cradle. Dear Grandpapa, for Heaven's sake take me away from here, home to our village, I can't bear this any more. . . .I bow to the ground to you, and will pray to God for ever and ever, take me from here or I shall die. . . ."
The corners of Vanka's mouth went down, he rubbed his eyes with his dirty fist, and sobbed.
'Tll grate your tobacco for you," he continued, "I pray to God for you, and if there is anything wrong, then flog me like the grey goat. And if you really think I shan't find work, then I'll ask the manager, for Christ's sake, to let me clean the boots, or I'll go instead of Fedia as underherdsman. Dear Grandpapa, I can't bear this any more, it'll kill me. ... I wanted to run away to our village, but I have no boots, and I was afraid of the frost. And when I grow up I'll look after you, no one shall harm you, and when you die I'll pray for the repose of your soul, just like I do for mamma Pelagea.
"As for Moscow, it is a large town, there are all gentle- men's houses, lots of horses, no sheep, and the dogs are not vicious. The children don't come round at Christmas with a star, no one is allowed to sing in the choir, and once I saw in a shop window hooks on a line and fishing rods, all for sale, and for every kind of fish, awfully convenient. And there was one hook which would catch a sheat-fish weighing a pound. And there are shops with guns, like the master's, and I am sure they must cost ioo roubles each. And in the meat- 6hops there are woodcocks, partridges, and hares, but who