Short Fiction, Leonid Andreyev [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

she was tugging at the knob of the heavy door Mitrofan Krilov overtook her and looked at her face with a generous smile in order to show her that the joke was ended, and that all was well. But breathing with difficulty, she passed into the half opened door, hurling at his smiling face:

“Scoundrel!”

And she disappeared. Through the glass her silhouette flashed⁠—and then she disappeared completely. Still smiling generously, Mitrofan touched the cold knob of the door, made an attempt to open it, but in the hallway, under the staircase, he saw the porter’s galoons, and he walked away slowly. He stopped a few steps away and for about two minutes stood shrugging his shoulders. He adjusted his spectacles with dignity, threw his head back and thought:

“How stupid. She did not allow me to say a word, but scolded me at once. The nasty girl could not understand that it was all a joke. I was doing it all for her own sake, while she⁠—As if I needed her with her papers. Break your neck as much as you please. I suppose she is sitting now and telling all sorts of students, all sorts of long-haired students, how a spy was pursuing her. And they are sighing. The idiots! I am a university graduate myself, and am no worse than you are.”

He felt warm after his brisk walk, and he unbuttoned his coat, but he recalled that he might catch a cold, so he buttoned his coat again, tugging with aversion at the loose, dangling button.

He stood in the same spot for a time, cast a helpless glance at the rows of lighted and dark windows and went on thinking:

“And the shaggy students are no doubt happy, and they believe her. Fools! I myself was a shaggy student⁠—my hair was so long! I would not have cut my hair even now if it weren’t falling out. It is falling out rapidly. I’ll soon be bald. And I can’t wear a wig like⁠—a spy.”

He lit a cigarette and felt that it was too much for him⁠—the smoke was so bitter and unpleasant.

“Shall I go up and say to them: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it was all a joke, just a joke’? But they will not believe me. They may even give me a thrashing.”

Mitrofan walked away about twenty steps and paused. It was growing cold.

He felt his light coat and the newspaper in his side pocket⁠—and he was seized with a sense of bitterness. He felt so offended that he was on the point of crying. He could have gone home, had his dinner, drunk his tea and read his newspaper⁠—and his soul would have been calm, cloudless; the copy books had already been corrected, and tomorrow, Saturday, there would be a whist party at the inspector’s house. And there, in her little room, his deaf grandmother was sitting and knitting socks⁠—the dear, kind, devoted grandmother had already finished two pairs of socks for him. And the little oil lamp must be burning in her room⁠—and he recalled that he had been scolding her for using too much oil. Where was he now? In some kind of a side street. In front of some house⁠—in which there were shaggy students.

Two students came out of the lighted entrance of the house, slamming the door loudly, and turned in the direction of Mitrofan.

He came to himself somewhere on the boulevard and for a long time was unable to recognise the neighbourhood. It was quiet and deserted. A rain was falling. The students were not there. He smoked two cigarettes, one after another, and his hands were trembling when he lit the cigarettes.⁠ ⁠…

“I must compose myself and look at the affair soberly,” he thought. “It isn’t so bad, after all. The deuce take that girl. She thinks that I am a spy; well, let her think what she pleases. But she does not know me. And the students didn’t see me either. I am no fool⁠—I raised the collar of my coat!”

He laughed for joy, and even opened his mouth⁠—but suddenly he stood still as though petrified by a terrible thought.

“My God! But she saw me! I demonstrated my face to her for a whole hour. She may meet me somewhere⁠—”

And a long series of possibilities occurred to Mitrofan Krilov; he was an intelligent man, fond of science and art; he frequented theatres, attended various meetings and lectures, and he might meet that girl at any of those places. She never goes alone to such places, he thought; such girls never go alone, but with a whole crowd of student girls and audacious students⁠—and he was terrified at the thought of what might happen when she pointed her finger at him and said: “Here’s a spy!”

“I must take off my spectacles, shave off my beard,” thought Mitrofan. “Never mind the eyes⁠—it may be that the doctor was lying about them. But will my face be changed any if I remove my beard? Is this a beard?”

He touched his thin little beard with his fingers and felt his face.

“Even my beard does not grow properly!” He thought with sorrow and aversion.

“But it is all nonsense. Even if she recognised me it wouldn’t matter. Such a thing must be proven. It must be proven calmly and logically, even as a theorem must be proven.”

He pictured to himself a meeting of the shaggy students, before whom he was defending himself firmly and calmly.

Mitrofan Krilov adjusted his spectacles sternly, with dignity, and smiled contemptuously. Then he began to prove to them⁠—but he convinced himself, to his horror, that all logic and theorem are one thing, while his life was quite another thing, and there were no logic, no proofs in his life to show that Mitrofan Krilov was not a spy. If someone, even that girl, accused him of being a spy, would he find anything definite, clear, convincing in his life by which he could offset this base accusation? Now it seemed to him she looked at him