shot them or where they come from the shopman won't say.
"Dear Grandpapa, and when the masters give a Christmas tree take a golden walnut and hide it in my green box. Ask the young lady, Olga Ignatievna, for it, say it's for Vanka."
Vanka sighed convulsively, and again stared at the window. He remembered that his grandfather always went through the forest to the Christmas tree, and took his grandson with him. What happy times! The frost crackled, his grandfather crackled, and as they both did Vanka did the same. Then before cutting down the Christmas tree his grandfather smoked his pipe, took a long pinch of snuff, and made fun of poor frozen little Vanka. . . . The young fir trees, wrapt in hoar-frost, stand motionless and wait; which of them will die? Suddenly a hare springing from somewhere darts over the snowdrift. . . . His grandfather could not help shouting:
"Catch it, catch it, catch it! Ah, short-tailed devil!"
When the tree was down, his grandfather dragged it to the master's house, and there they set about decorating it. The young lady, Olga Ignatievna, Vanka's great friend, busied herself most about it. When little Vanka's mother, Pelagea, was still alive, and was servant-woman in the house, Olga Ignatievna used to stuff him with sugar-candy, and, having nothing to do, taught him to read, write, count up to one hundred, and even to dance the quadrille. When Pelagea died, they placed the orphan Vanka in the kitchen with his grandfather, and from the kitchen he was sent to Moscow, to Aliakhine, the shoemaker.
"Come quick, dear grandpapa," continued Vanka, "I be^ seech you for Christ's sake take me from here. Have pity on a poor orphan, for here they all beat me, and I am fright- fully hungry, and so bored that I can't tell you, I cry all the time. The other day the patron hit me on the head with a last; I fell to the ground, and only just returned to life. My life is a disaster, worse than any dog's. ... I send greetings to Aliona, to one-eyed Egor, and the coachman, and don't let i.lnyone have my harmonium. I remain, your grandson, Ivan Jukov, dear grandpapa, do come."
Vanka folded his .sheet of paper in four, and put it into an envelope, purchased the night before for a kopeck. He thought a little, dipped the pen into the ink, and wrote the address: "The village, to my grandfather." He then scratched his head, thought again, and added: "Constantin Makaritch." Pleased at having been able to write without disturbance, he put on his cap, and, omitting his sheep-skin coat, ran out in his shirt-sleeves into the street.
The shopman at the poulterer's, from whom he had in- quired the night before, had told him that letters were to be put into post-boxes, and from thence they were conveyed over the whole earth in mail troikas by drunken post-boys and to the sound of bells. Vanka ran to the first post-box and slipped his precious letter into the slit.
An hour afterwards, lulled by hope, he was sleeping soundly. In his dreams he saw a stove, by the stove sat his grandfather with his lsgs dangling down, barefooted, and reading a letter to the cooks. . . . Around the stove walks Viune wagging his tail. . . .
LA CIGALE
i
To Olga Ivanovna's wedding came all her friends and ac- quaintances.
"Look at him! Isn't it true there is something in him?" she said to them, nodding towards her husband, as if to justify her marriage to this simple, commonplace, in no way remarkable man.
The bridegroom, Osip Stepanych Dymov, was a doctor, with the rank of Titular Councillor. He worked at two hos- pitals; in one as supernumerary ordinator; as dissector in the other. At one, from nine in the morning till midday, he received out-patients and worked in the wards; and, finished with this, he took a tram to the second hospital, and dissected bodies. His private practice was small, worth some five hundred rubles a year. That was all. \Yhat more could be said of him? On the other hand, Olga Ivanovna, her friends and acquaintances, were by no means ordinary. All were noted for something, and fairly well known; they had names; they were celebrated, or if not celebrated yet, they inspired great hope for the future. A talented actor, clever, modest, a fine gentleman, a ma!'ter of declamation, who taught Olga Ivanovna to recite; a good-humoured opera- silger who told Olga Ivanovna with a sigh that she was throwing herself away—if she gave up idling and took her- self in hand, she would make a famous singer; a few artists, chief of them the genre-ist, animal-, and landscape-painter Riabovsky, handsome, fair-haired, twenty-five, successful at exhibitions who sold his last picture for five hundred rubles -—he touched up Olga Ivanovna's etudes, and predicted a
77
future for her; a violoncellist, whose instrument wept, who frankly said that of all the women he knew Olga Ivanovna alone could accompany; a man of letters, young, but already known for his short stories, sketches, and plays. Who else? Yes, Vasily Vasilych, country gentleman, dilettante illus- trator and vignettist, with his love of the national epos and his passion for old Russian art—on paper, china, and smoked plates he turned out veritable masterpieces. In such society— artistic, free, and spoiled by fate; and (though delicate and modest) oblivious of doctors save when ill; to whom "Dymov" sounded as impersonal as "Tarasov" or "Sidorov"—in such society, the bridegroom seemed out-of-place, needless, and even insignificant, although he was really a very tall and very broad-shouldered man. His evening dress seemed made for some one else. His beard was like a shopman's. Though it is true that had he been a writer or artist, this beard would have reminded them of Zola.
The artist told Olga Ivanovna that with her flaxen hair and wedding dress she was a graceful cherry-tree covered with tender, white blossoms in spring.
"No, but listen!" replied Olga Ivanovna, seizing his hand. "How suddenly all this happened! Listen, listen! • . . I should tell you that Dymov and my father were at the same hospital. While my poor father was ill, Dymov watched day and night at his bedside. Such self-sacrifice! Listen, Riabov- sky! . . . And you, writer, listen—this is very interesting! Come nearer! Such sacrifice of self, such sincere concern! I myself could not sleep at night, and sat at my father's bedside, and suddenly! ... I captivated the poor young man! My Dymov was up to his neck in love! In truth, things happened strangely. Well, after my father's death we sometimes met in the street; he paid me occasional visits, and one fine evening suddenly—he proposed to me! . . . I cried all night, and myself fell in love with him. And now, you see, I am married. Don't you think there is something in him? Something strong, mighty, leonine! Just now his iace is turned three-quarters from us and the light is bad, but when he turns round just look at his forehead! RiaboTsky, what do you think of his forehead? Dymov, we are speaking of you." She turned to her husband. "Comt: here! Give your honest hand to Riabovsky. . . . That's right. Be friends!"
With a simple, kindly smile, Dymov gave his hand to the artist, and said—
"I'm delighted! There was a Riabovsky at college with me. Was he a relation of yours?"
ii
Olga Ivanovna was twenty-two years old, Dymov thirty- one. After the marriage they lived well. Olga Ivanovna hung the drawing-room with drawings, her own and her friends', framed and unframed; and about the piano and furniture, arranged in pretty confusion Chinese parasols, easels, many- coloured draperies, poniards, busts, photographs. The dining- room she decked with the bright-coloured oleographs beloved by peasants, bast-shoes and sickles, and these, with the scythe and hay-rake in the comer, made a room in national style. To make her bedroom like a cave, she draped the ceiling and walls with dark cloth, hung a Venetian lantern over the bed, and set near the door a figure with a halberd. And every one agreed that the young couple had a charming flat.