Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

dead. I’ll get up and see,” said one of the drivers who was awake.

A thin hand, covered with reddish hairs, hung down from the stove; it was cold and pale.

“I’ll go and tell the overseer. He’s dead, seemingly,” said the driver.

Fyodor had no relations⁠—he had come from distant parts. The next day he was buried in the new graveyard beyond the copse, and for several days after Nastasya told every one of the dream she had had, and how she had been the first to discover that Uncle Fyodor was dead.

III

Spring had come. Streams of water hurried gurgling between the frozen dung-heaps in the wet streets of the town. The people moving to and fro were gaily dressed and gaily chattering. Behind the fences of the little gardens the buds on the trees were swelling, and their branches rustled faintly in the fresh breeze. Everywhere there was a running and a dripping of clear drops.⁠ ⁠… The sparrows chattered incoherently, and fluttered to and fro on their little wings. On the sunny side, on fences, trees, and houses, all was movement. There was youth and gladness in the sky and in the earth and in the heart of man. In one of the principal streets there was straw lying in front of a large house; in the house lay the dying woman who had been hastening abroad.

At the closed doors of her room stood the sick woman’s husband and an elderly woman; on the sofa sat a priest with downcast eyes, holding something wrapped up in his stole. In a corner an old lady, the mother of the sick woman, lay in a low chair, weeping bitterly. Near her stood a maid holding a clean pocket-handkerchief in readiness for the old lady when she should ask for it. Another maid was rubbing the old lady’s temples with something and blowing on her grey head under her cap.

“Well, Christ be with you, my dear,” said the husband to the elderly woman who was standing with him at the door; “she has such confidence in you, you know so well how to talk to her; go in, and have a good talk with her.” He would have opened the door; but the cousin restrained him, put her handkerchief several times to her eyes, and shook her head.

“Come, now, I don’t look as if I had been crying, I think,” she said, and opening the door herself, she went into the sickroom.

The husband was in great excitement, and seemed utterly distraught. He walked towards the old lady, but stopped short a few paces from her, turned, walked about the room, and went up to the priest. The priest looked at him, raised his eyebrows heavenwards, and sighed. His thick, grizzled beard turned upwards too, and then sank again.

“My God! my God!” said the husband.

“There is nothing one can do,” said the priest, and again his brows and his beard were elevated and drooped again.

“And her mother here!” the husband said, almost in despair. “She will never support this! She loves her, she loves her so that she⁠ ⁠… I don’t know. If you, father, would attempt to soothe her and to persuade her to go out of this room.”

The priest rose and went to the old lady.

“True it is, that none can sound the depths of a mother’s heart,” said he; “but God is merciful.”

The old lady’s face began suddenly twitching, and she sobbed hysterically.

“God is merciful,” the priest went on, when she was a little calmer. “In my parish, I must tell you, there was a man ill, much worse than Marya Dmitryevna, and a simple artisan cured him with herbs in a very short time. And this same artisan is in Moscow now, indeed. I told Vassily Dmitryevitch⁠—he might try him. Anyway, it would be a comfort to the sick woman. With God all things are possible.”

“No, she can’t live,” said the old lady; “if it could have been me, but God takes her.”

The sick woman’s husband hid his face in his hands, and ran out of the room.

The first person that met him in the corridor was a boy of six years old, who was running at full speed after a little girl younger than himself.

“Shouldn’t I take the children to see their mamma?” asked the nurse.

“No, she doesn’t want to see them. It upsets her.”

The boy stood still for a moment, staring intently into his father’s face, then suddenly kicking up his foot, with a merry shriek he ran on.

“I’m pretending she’s my black horse, papa!” shouted the boy, pointing to his sister.

Meanwhile in the next room the cousin was sitting by the sick woman’s bedside, and trying by skilfully leading up to the subject to prepare her for the idea of death. The doctor was at the other window mixing a draught.

The sick woman, in a white dressing-gown, sat propped up with pillows in bed, and gazed at the cousin without speaking.

“Ah, my dear,” she said, suddenly interrupting her, “don’t try to prepare me. Don’t treat me as a child. I am a Christian. I know all about it. I know I haven’t long to live; I know that if my husband would have listened to me sooner, I should have been in Italy, and perhaps, most likely indeed, should have been quite well. Everyone told him so. But it can’t be helped, it seems that it was God’s will. We are all great sinners, I know that; but I put my trust in God’s mercy, to forgive all, surely, all. I try to understand myself. I, too, have sinned greatly, my dear. But, to make up, how I have suffered. I have tried to bear my sufferings with patience.⁠ ⁠…”

“Then may I send for the good father, my dear? You will feel all the easier after the sacrament,” said the cousin. The sick woman bowed her head in token of assent.

“God forgive me, a sinner!” she murmured.

The cousin went out and beckoned to the priest.

“She is