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

“I’m in an awful fix, your Excellency,” complained the Pike to the Governor’s lady, laying his white-gloved hand on his scented breast. “His Excellency won’t listen to the idea of a bodyguard! The Secret Service men are dog-tired (excuse the expression) with their everlasting trotting after him⁠ ⁠… and to tell you the truth, it’s all nonsense anyway, because the first scoundrel that comes along could catch him around the corner, or hit his Excellency with a stone over the wall.⁠ ⁠… If anything should happen⁠—which God forbid!⁠—people will say: ‘The Chief of Police is to blame! The Chief of Police did not watch out!’ What can I do against his Excellency’s damned stubbornness? Excuse the expression, your Excellency, but fancy the position I’m in! It really is too⁠—I’ll bid you good day, your Excellency!”

It developed that the Pike had prepared a programme. The Governor was to get a few months’ furlough and travel for his health⁠—any one of the foreign baths would do. Things were quiet in the city now, and he was in high favour at St. Petersburg⁠—there would be no trouble on that score!

“Otherwise I can guarantee nothing, your Excellency!” continued the Chief, with feeling.⁠ ⁠… “Human powers have their limits, your Excellency, and I tell you frankly I cannot answer for anything!⁠ ⁠… After two or three months it will all happily be forgotten, and then⁠—Welcome home, your Excellency. It will be just the season of the Italian Opera. We’ll give a gala performance⁠—and then his Excellency can take his walks abroad to his heart’s content.”

“What nonsense about the opera!” said the Governor’s lady, yet she approved of the proposition, as she herself was most uneasy.

On his way out the Chief of Police stopped at the lodge to bully the porter again.

“I’ll teach you! I’ll make your chin-whiskers stand up, you fat-faced fool! He grows chin-whiskers like a Lord Chancellor⁠—the son of a gun!⁠ ⁠… and thinks he doesn’t have to lock the door! I’ll make you dance. You⁠—”

That evening Maria Petrovna begged her husband to take her abroad with the children.

“Oh, please, Pievna, won’t you?” she said in her tired voice, her eyes drooping under their long dark lashes. Her face was thickly powdered, and her yellow, flabby cheeks dangled like a pointer’s as she shook her head. “You know I’ve not been at all well lately, and really I must go to Carlsbad.”

“Can’t you and the children go without me?”

“Ah, but no, Pievna! What makes you talk like that? I’d be so worried if you were not there. Please.”

She did not say what would worry her⁠—her object was clear without that. To her great surprise, Peter Iljitch readily agreed to the plan⁠—though under ordinary circumstances her mere mention of a wish called forth his opposition.⁠ ⁠… At least that used to be their way!

“They certainly can’t lay that to cowardice,” thought the Governor. “It isn’t any plan of mine⁠—and maybe she really does need a cure. She looks as yellow as a lemon.⁠ ⁠… Besides, there’s always plenty of time for them to kill me⁠ ⁠… and if they don’t attempt anything it will prove that I am right, and they are wrong!⁠ ⁠… Then I’ll resign⁠—and then I shall build the finest kind of a conservatory.⁠ ⁠…”

Even while these thoughts were passing he was convinced that he would neither have the trip nor the conservatory! That was why he had given such prompt assent. And after he had consented, he forgot the circumstances immediately as though they did not concern him in the least. He hesitated for a long time about the arrangements for his furlough, set the date, changed it, and then forgot the thing completely till two days after the time he had appointed. Then again he named a day⁠ ⁠… but again he forgot it deliberately. Moreover, his wife, whose mind was completely set at rest at the mere idea of their departure, did not urge him to hurry⁠—she had her fall wardrobe to finish, and tailors and dressmakers took all her time⁠ ⁠… besides, Cissy was not nearly ready.

In the lonely silence surrounding the Governor since the sudden stopping of the letters, he felt something incomplete⁠—like the echo of a soft voice in the distance⁠—as if he sat in an empty room, with someone speaking behind the wall, the vibrations of whose voice could be felt but not heard. And when another letter came⁠—a final belated letter⁠—he went forward to take it as though he had long been expecting it, and was much surprised to see that it was in a slender, delicately tinted envelope with a forget-me-not stamped on the back. But it did not come in the morning like all the other letters which had been posted the night before, but with the evening mail⁠—showing that it had been written the same day. The notepaper was of the same pale shade, and was also stamped with the blue forget-me-not. The writing was painstaking and distinct; the lines slanted heavily, as though the writer were not quite sure of her syllables and, rather than divide the words, ran them down the page in a small, cramped hand. At times she began to write downhill long before the end of the line, in tiny little letters, in the evident fear that she would not have room for the rest of the sentence. And the words all seemed to be coasting down the snowy page⁠—the smallest one in front, on their little sleds.

The letter was signed “A School Girl.”

“Last night I dreamed about your funeral, and I am going to write you about it⁠—even if it isn’t right, and if it does harm the poor workmen, and the little girls that you killed! But you’re a poor old man yourself, and so I’m writing you this letter.

“I dreamed that you were not buried in a black coffin, as all older people are, but in a white one, like the ones for little girls⁠—and it was policemen that went down Moscow Street carrying your coffin⁠—and they didn’t carry it