The Created Legend | Page 8

us--there's something I don't like about her. Perhaps it's a slight veneer of hypocrisy."
"Why do you say so?" asked Elena.
"I simply feel it. She smiles too pleasantly, too lovingly. She seems in every way phlegmatic, yet she tries to appear animated. Her words come rather easily sometimes, and she exaggerates."
* * * * *
It was quiet in the garden behind the stone wall. This was Kirsha's free hour. But he could not play, though he tried to.
Little Kirsha, Trirodov's son, whose mother had died not long before, was dark and thin. He had a very mobile face and restless dark eyes. He was dressed like the boys in the wood. He was quite restless to-day. He felt sad without knowing why. He felt as if some invisible being were drawing him on, calling to him in an inaudible whisper, demanding something--what? And who was it approaching their house? Why? Friend or foe? It was a stranger--yet curiously intimate.
At that moment, when the sisters were taking leave of the children in the wood, Kirsha felt especially perturbed. In the far corner of the garden he saw a boy in white dress; he ran up to him. They spoke long and quietly. Then Kirsha ran to his father.
Giorgiy Sergeyevitch Trirodov was all alone at home. He was lying on the sofa, reading a book by Wilde.
Trirodov was forty years old. He was slender and erect. His short-trimmed hair and clean-shaven face made him look very young. Only on closer scrutiny it was possible to detect the many grey hairs, the wrinkles on the forehead around the eyes. His face was pale. His broad forehead seemed very large--it was partly due to a narrow chin, lean cheeks, and baldness.
The room where Trirodov was reading--his study--was large, bright, and simple, with a white, unpainted floor as smooth as a mirror. The walls were lined with open bookcases. In the wall opposite the windows, between the bookcases, a narrow space was left, large enough for a man to stand in. It gave the impression of a door being there, hidden by hangings. In the middle of the room stood a very large table, upon which lay books, papers, and several strange objects--hexahedral prisms of an unfamiliar substance, heavy and solid in appearance, dark red in colour, with purple, blue, grey, and black spots, and with veins running across it.
Kirsha knocked on the door and entered--quiet, small, troubled. Trirodov looked at him anxiously. Kirsha said:
"There are two young women in the wood. Such an inquisitive pair. They have been looking over our colony. Now they'd like to come here to take a look round."
Trirodov let the pale green ribbon with a lightly stamped pattern fall upon the page he was reading and laid the book on the small table at his side. He then took Kirsha by the hand, drew him close, and looked attentively at him, with a slight stir in his eyes; then said quietly:
"You've been asking questions of those quiet boys again."
Kirsha grew red, but stood erect and calm, Trirodov continued to reproach him:
"How often have I told you that this is wicked. It is bad for you and for them."
"It's all the same to them," said Kirsha quietly.
"How do you know?" asked Trirodov.
Kirsha shrugged his shoulders and said obstinately:
"Why are they here? What are they to us?"
Trirodov turned away, then rose abruptly, went to the window, and looked gloomily into the garden. Clearly something was agitating his consciousness, something that needed deciding. Kirsha quietly walked up to him, stepping softly upon the white, warm floor with his sunburnt graceful feet, high in instep, and with long, beautiful, well-formed toes. He touched his father on the shoulder, quietly rested his sunburnt hand there, and said:
"You know, daddy, that I seldom do this, only when I must. I felt very much troubled to-day. I knew that something would happen."
"What will happen?" asked his father.
"I have a feeling," said Kirsha with a pleading voice, "that you must let them in to us--these inquisitive girls."
Trirodov looked very attentively at his son and smiled. Kirsha said gravely:
"The elder one is very charming. In some way she is like mother. But the other is also nice."
"What brings them here?" again asked Trirodov. "They might have waited until their elders brought them here."
Kirsha smiled, sighed lightly, and said thoughtfully, shrugging his small shoulders:
"All women are curious. What's to be done with them?"
Smiling now joyously, now gravely, Trirodov asked:
"And will mother not come to us?"
"Oh, if she only came, if only for one little minute!" exclaimed Kirsha.
"What are we to do with these girls?" asked Trirodov.
"Invite them in, show them the house," replied Kirsha.
"And the quiet children?" quietly asked Trirodov.
"The quiet children also like the elder one," answered Kirsha.
"And who are they, these girls?" asked Trirodov.
"They are our neighbours, the