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

always spoke politely to footmen, and prided himself on doing so) “that I shall soon be going, and will pay for the extra time.”

“Yes, sir.”

The footman went away, and Nicholas Semyónovitch was able to finish expressing his view. But both the visitor and the doctor had heard him express it a score of times (or, at any rate, they thought so), and began disproving it, especially the visitor, who quoted instances from history. He knew history very thoroughly.

The doctor sided with the visitor, admired his erudition, and was glad of the opportunity of becoming acquainted with him.

While they were engrossed in their subject the dawn appeared behind the wood on the opposite side of the road, and the birds woke up, but the arguers still kept on smoking and talking, talking and smoking, and the conversation might have gone on still longer, if a maidservant had not appeared at the door.

This servant was an orphan, who had had to take service to earn her living. She had first gone into a tradesman’s house, where one of his assistants seduced her, and she had had a child. The child died, and she entered the house of an official whose son⁠—a gymnasium student⁠—gave her no peace; and now she was under-housemaid in Nicholas Semyónovitch’s family, and considered herself fortunate because she was not pursued by her master’s lust, and had her wages paid regularly. She came to say that her mistress wanted the doctor and Nicholas Semyónovitch.

“Oh dear!⁠ ⁠…” thought Nicholas Semyónovitch, “something must be wrong with Gógo.”

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nicholas Nikoláyevitch seems unwell.” Nicholas Nikoláyevitch⁠—that was little Gógo, who had overeaten himself, and was now suffering from diarrhoea.

“And it’s high time for me to be going,” said the visitor. “Just look how light it is⁠ ⁠… how long we have been sitting here!” He smiled (as if approving of himself and his collocutors for having talked so much and so long) and took his leave.

Iván had to run about on his weary legs, searching for the visitor’s hat and umbrella, which the latter had himself left in the most unlikely places. Iván hoped to get a tip; but the visitor⁠—always generous, and quite ready to give him a rouble⁠—being carried away by the discussion, clean forgot him, and remembered only when well on his way that he had not tipped the footman. “Ah well,” he thought, “it cannot be helped now.”

The driver mounted the box and gathered up the reins, and, sitting sideways, touched up the horses. The bells clanked, and the Petersburg gentleman, rocked on the soft springs of the calèche, drove away, his thoughts full of the narrowness of his friend’s view.

Nicholas Semyónovitch, who had not gone to his wife at once, was thinking the same about his friend. “The shallow narrowness of these Petersburgers is awful, and they can’t get out of it,” he thought. He shrank from going to his wife, because he did not expect anything good from the interview at that moment. It was all on account of some strawberries. In the morning Nicholas Semyónovitch had bought, without even bargaining, two platefuls of not very ripe wild strawberries which some peasant boys were selling. His children came running and asking for some, and began eating them straight from the boys’ plates. Marie had not yet come down. When she came and heard that Gógo, whose stomach was already out of order, had been given strawberries, she became extremely angry. She reproached her husband, and he reproached her; so that they had some very unpleasant words⁠—almost a quarrel.

Towards evening some unsatisfactory symptoms really showed themselves, but Nicholas Semyónovitch thought that after that everything would be all right. However, the fact that the doctor was called proved that things had taken a bad turn.

When he did go in, he found his wife in the nursery, dressed in a favourite bright-coloured silk dressing-gown, about which, however, she was not thinking at that moment, and holding a guttering candle for the doctor, who, with his pince-nez on his nose and a very attentive expression on his face, was carefully making an examination. “Yes,” she said meaningly, “it is all on account of those confounded strawberries.”

“What of the strawberries?” Nicholas Semyónovitch asked timidly.

“What of the strawberries?⁠ ⁠… It’s you that fed him on them, and here am I, not having a wink of sleep all night⁠ ⁠… and the child will die!”

“Oh, come, he won’t die,” said the doctor, with a smile. “Just a small dose of bismuth, and careful diet.⁠ ⁠… Let’s give him some now.”

“He’s asleep,” she said.

“Oh, then, it’s better not to disturb him. I’ll call in again tomorrow.”

“Please do!”

The doctor went away, and the husband, left alone with his wife, was long unable to soothe her. It was broad daylight before he fell asleep.

Early that morning, in the neighbouring village, the lads were returning with the horses they had pastured all night. Some of them had only the one they rode; others were leading a second horse as well, while the colts and two-year-olds ran free behind.

Taráska Resounóf, a lad of twelve in a sheepskin coat, with a cap on his head but barefooted, seated on a piebald mare and leading a gelding by a cord, outdistanced all the others and trotted up the hill to the village. A well-fed piebald colt ran, kicking up its legs (which looked as if they had white stockings on) to right and left. Taráska rode up to his hut, tied the horses to the gate, and entered the passage.

“Hullo, you there⁠ ⁠… oversleeping yourselves!” he cried to his sisters and brother, who were sleeping on some sacking in the passage.

Their mother, who had also slept there, was already up and milking the cow.

Little Ólga jumped up, smoothing down with both hands her tangled flaxen hair. But Fédka, who lay beside her, continued to lie with his head hidden in a sheepskin coat, and only rubbed with a rough little heel the shapely childish foot that peeped from under the coat.

The previous evening the children