The Little Demon, Fyodor Sologub [reading the story of the TXT] 📗

thought of taking the scent before this⁠—to scent the schoolboy so that he would not smell of his detestable Latin, ink and boyishness. Liudmilla loved perfumes, ordered them from Peterburg and consumed a great deal of them. She loved aromatic flowers. Her room was always full of some sweet scent⁠—with flowers, with perfumes, with pines, and in the spring with birch-twigs.

But here were the sisters, and Kokovkina with them. Liudmilla ran through the kitchen, across the vegetable garden, by the little gate, along a lane in order not to meet Kokovkina. She smiled happily, walked quickly towards Kokovkina’s house and playfully swung her handbag and white parasol. The warm autumn day gladdened her and it seemed as if she were bringing with her and spreading around her her own spirit of gaiety.

At Kokovkina’s the maid told her that her mistress was not at home. Liudmilla laughed noisily and joked with the red-cheeked girl who opened the door.

“But perhaps you’re fooling me,” she said; “perhaps your mistress is hiding from me.”

“He-he! Why should she hide?” replied the maid with a laugh. “But you can come in if you don’t believe me.”

Liudmilla looked into the drawing-room and shouted playfully:

“Is there a live person in the place? Ah, a student!”

Sasha looked out from his room and was delighted to see Liudmilla, and seeing his joyous eyes Liudmilla became even gayer. She asked:

“And where’s Olga Vassilyevna?”

“She’s not at home,” replied Sasha, “that is, she hasn’t come back yet. She must have gone somewhere after church. Here I’m back and she’s not here yet.”

Liudmilla pretended to be astonished. She swung her parasol and said as if in annoyance:

“How can it be? Everyone else is back from church. She’s always at home, and then I come and she’s out. Is it because you make such a noise, young man, that the old woman can’t sit at home?”

Sasha smiled quietly. He was delighted to hear Liudmilla’s voice, Liudmilla’s cheerful laughter. He was wondering at the moment how he could best offer to escort her⁠—so that he would be with her even a few more minutes, to look at her and to listen to her.

But Liudmilla did not think of going. She looked at Sasha with a shy smile and said:

“Well, why don’t you ask me to sit down, you polite young man? Don’t you see that I’m tired! Let me rest for a moment.”

And she entered the drawing-room laughing and caressing Sasha with her quick, tender eyes. Sasha grew red with confusion but was glad that she would remain longer with him.

“If you like I’ll scent you,” said Liudmilla gaily. “Would you like it?”

“What a person you are!” said Sasha. “You suddenly want to suffocate27 me! Why are you so cruel?”

Liudmilla burst out laughing and threw herself back in her chair.

“You stupid! You don’t understand. I don’t mean to suffocate with the hands, but with scents.”

Sasha said:

“Ah! Scents! I don’t mind that.”

Liudmilla took the sprinkler from her handbag and turned before Sasha’s eyes the pretty little glass vessel, dark red with gold ornaments, with its rubber ball and bronze mouthpiece, and said:

“Do you see, I bought a new sprinkler and I forgot to take it out of my bag at home.”

Then she took out a large scent-bottle with a varicoloured label⁠—Guerlain’s Roa-Rosa.

Sasha said:

“What a deep handbag you’ve got!”

Liudmilla answered:

“Well, you needn’t expect anything else. I haven’t brought you any gingerbread.”

“Gingerbread!” repeated Sasha in amusement.

He looked on with curiosity as Liudmilla uncorked the scent-bottle. He asked:

“And how will you pour it out from that without a funnel?”

“I expect you to get me a funnel,” said Liudmilla.

“But I haven’t one,” said Sasha.

“Do as you like, but you must get me a funnel,” persisted Liudmilla, laughing.

“I would get one from Milanya, only it’s used for paraffin,” said Sasha.

Liudmilla again burst into gay laughter.

“Oh, you dull young man, get me a piece of paper, if you can spare it⁠—and there’s your funnel.”

“That’s true,” exclaimed Sasha joyously, “it’s easy to make one from paper. I’ll get it at once.”

Sasha ran into his room.

“Shall I take it from an exercise-book?” he shouted from his room.

Liudmilla replied:

“You can tear it out from a book⁠—a Latin grammar if you like. I don’t mind.”

“No, I’d better take it from the exercise-book,” said Sasha laughingly.

He found a clean exercise-book, tore out the middle page and was about to run back to the drawing-room when he saw Liudmilla at the door.

“May I come in, master of the house?” she asked playfully.

“Please, I shall be very glad!” exclaimed Sasha.

Liudmilla seated herself at his table and twisted a funnel from a piece of paper. With a preoccupied expression, she began to pour the scent from the bottle into the sprinkler. The paper funnel, at the bottom and the side, where the trickle of scent ran, became wet and dark. The aromatic liquid accumulated in the funnel and dripped into the sprinkler below. There was a warm, sweet aroma of rose mixed with a poignant odour of spirit. Liudmilla poured half of the scent from the bottle into the sprinkler and said:

“That’ll be enough.”

And she began to screw the top on the scent-sprinkler. Then she rolled up the piece of wet paper and rubbed it between the palms of her hands.

“Smell!” she said to Sasha and put her palm to his face.

Sasha bent over, closed his eyes, and inhaled. Liudmilla laughed, lightly touched his lips with her palm and held her hand to his mouth. Sasha blushed and kissed her warm, scented hand with a gentle contact of his trembling lips. Liudmilla sighed; a tender expression crossed her attractive face, and then changed to her habitual expression of careless gaiety. She said:

“Now, just keep still while I sprinkle you.”

And she pressed the rubber bulb. The aromatic spray-dust spurted out, spreading into minute drops upon Sasha’s blouse. Sasha laughed as he turned obediently when Liudmilla pushed him.

“It smells nice, eh?” she asked.

“Very nice,” replied Sasha. “What sort of scent is it?”

“What a baby you are!” said Liudmilla in a