Short Fiction, Fyodor Sologub [most popular novels of all time .txt] 📗

hands bound. And I have obeyed his will, and I sit here and wait.”

She looked at Kragaef, and on her face was that blending of expression which he afterwards represented with such art in the picture.

He got up with a somewhat unnecessary haste; his face had become very pale. He felt in himself an evil passion, and seizing the lady by the shoulder he cried out to her in a hoarse voice which he could not recognise as his own:

“It’s been like this every year, and this year will be no different from the others. Come!”

She stood up and began to weep. Kragaef, still grasping her by the shoulder, drew her towards the house, and she followed him, trembling with cold and the dampness of the gravel path under her bare feet, hastening and stumbling, feeling at each step the painful restraint of her golden chain, and making her golden anklets jangle⁠—so they passed into the house.

The Kiss of the Unborn I

A pert little boy in buttons put his close-cropped head in at the door of a room where five lady-typists were clattering on their machines, and said:

“Nadezhda Alexevna, Mrs. Kolimstcheva is asking for you on the telephone.”

A tall well-built girl of twenty-seven got up and went downstairs to the telephone. She walked with quiet self-possession, and had that deep steadfastness of gaze only given to those who have outlived heavy sorrows and patiently endured them to the end. She was thinking to herself:

“What has happened now?”

She knew already that if her sister wanted to speak to her it was because something unpleasant had occurred⁠—the children were ill, the husband worried over business, they were in need of money⁠—something of that sort. She would have to go there and see what could be done⁠—to help, to sympathise, to put matters right. Her sister was ten years older than herself, and as she lived in a remote suburb they rarely met.

She went into the tiny telephone-box, smelling of tobacco, beer, and mice, took up the speaking-tube, and said:

“Yes. Is it you, Tanichka?”

The voice of her sister, tearful, agitated, exactly as she had expected to hear it, answered her:

“Nadia, for God’s sake come here quickly! Something dreadful has happened. Serezha is dead. He’s shot himself.”

Nadezhda Alexevna could hardly realise the news. Her little nephew was dead⁠—dear little Serezha, only fifteen years old. She spoke hurriedly and incoherently:

“What is it, Tanya? How terrible! Why did he do it? When did it happen?”

And neither hearing nor waiting for answer, she added quickly:

“I’ll come at once, at once.”

She put down the speaking-tube, forgetting even to hang it up in its place again, and hurried away to ask the manager for leave of absence.

It was given her, though unwillingly. “You know we have a specially busy time just now, before the holidays,” grumbled the manager. “You always seem to want leave at the most awkward moment. You can go if it’s really necessary, but don’t forget that your work must be made up.”

II

A few minutes later Nadezhda Alexevna got into a tramcar and began her twenty minutes’ journey. She felt depressed and uncertain. Spasms of keen pity for her sister and regret for the dead boy caught at her heart.

It was terrible to think that this fifteen-year-old child, but lately a lighthearted schoolboy, should have suddenly shot himself⁠—painful to imagine the mother’s grief. How she would weep⁠—her life seemed always to have been unhappy and unsuccessful.

Yet Nadezhda Alexevna could not give herself up entirely to such thoughts. Her mind was dwelling on something else. It was always so with her when she came to one of those times common enough in this life of unexpected happenings⁠—the interruption of the ordinary daily routine by some unpleasant occurrence. There was an event in the background of her own life which weighed her down with a continuous and gnawing sorrow. For her there could be no relief in tears, they seemed to have been stopped at their source; rare indeed was it for a few miserable drops to force themselves to her eyes. She generally looked out upon the world with an expression of dull indifference.

So now, once again, memory revolved before her that passionate flaming circle of her past life. She recalled once more that short time of love and self-forgetfulness, of passion and of self-abandonment.

Those bright summer days had been a festival. The blue heaven had outspread itself joyously for her delight, the summer rain had pattered down for her amusement. For her the pine odours had been more intoxicatingly sweet than roses. Roses would not grow in such a climate. Yet it was a place that the heart loved. The greeny-grey moss in the dark forest was a soft and tender couch; the forest rivulets flowing over the tumbled boulders lisped clear and sweet as streams of Arcady; their coolness gladdened and refreshed.

How quickly had the days passed in the glad rapture of love! The last day dawned, which she knew not then to be the last. The sky was cloudless, the heavens clear. Simple happiness was all around. The broad shadowy glades of the scented pine-forest were cool and dreamy, the tender moss underfoot was soft and warm. All was as it had been on other days. Only the birds had ceased to sing⁠—they had nested and flown away with their little ones.

But there had been a shadow on the countenance of her beloved⁠—he had received an unpleasant letter that morning.

As he himself said:

“A dreadfully unpleasant letter. I am desperate. So many days before I see you again!”

“How is that?” she had said. Sadness had not yet touched her.

“My father writes to say that my mother is ill and that I ought to go home.”

His father had written something quite different⁠—but Nadezhda Alexevna did not know that. She had not yet learnt that it is possible to be deceived in love, that the lips that kiss may speak lies instead of truth.

With his arms