The Darling | Page 6

wife
arrived--a thin, plain lady, with short hair and a peevish expression.
With her was her little Sasha, a boy of ten, small for his age, blue-eyed,
chubby, with dimples in his cheeks. And scarcely had the boy walked
into the yard when he ran after the cat, and at once there was the sound
of his gay, joyous laugh.
"Is that your puss, auntie?" he asked Olenka. "When she has little ones,
do give us a kitten. Mamma is awfully afraid of mice."
Olenka talked to him, and gave him tea. Her heart warmed and there
was a sweet ache in her bosom, as though the boy had been her own
child. And when he sat at the table in the evening, going over his
lessons, she looked at him with deep tenderness and pity as she
murmured to herself:
"You pretty pet! . . . my precious! . . . Such a fair little thing, and so
clever."
"'An island is a piece of land which is entirely surrounded by water,'"
he read aloud.
"An island is a piece of land," she repeated, and this was the first
opinion to which she gave utterance with positive conviction after so
many years of silence and dearth of ideas.
Now she had opinions of her own, and at supper she talked to Sasha's
parents, saying how difficult the lessons were at the high schools, but
that yet the high school was better than a commercial one, since with a
high-school education all careers were open to one, such as being a
doctor or an engineer.
Sasha began going to the high school. His mother departed to Harkov
to her sister's and did not return; his father used to go off every day to
inspect cattle, and would often be away from home for three days
together, and it seemed to Olenka as though Sasha was entirely
abandoned, that he was not wanted at home, that he was being starved,
and she carried him off to her lodge and gave him a little room there.

And for six months Sasha had lived in the lodge with her. Every
morning Olenka came into his bedroom and found him fast asleep,
sleeping noiselessly with his hand under his cheek. She was sorry to
wake him.
"Sashenka," she would say mournfully, "get up, darling. It's time for
school."
He would get up, dress and say his prayers, and then sit down to
breakfast, drink three glasses of tea, and eat two large cracknels and a
half a buttered roll. All this time he was hardly awake and a little
ill-humoured in consequence.
"You don't quite know your fable, Sashenka," Olenka would say,
looking at him as though he were about to set off on a long journey.
"What a lot of trouble I have with you! You must work and do your
best, darling, and obey your teachers."
"Oh, do leave me alone!" Sasha would say.
Then he would go down the street to school, a little figure, wearing a
big cap and carrying a satchel on his shoulder. Olenka would follow
him noiselessly.
"Sashenka!" she would call after him, and she would pop into his hand
a date or a caramel. When he reached the street where the school was,
he would feel ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout woman, he
would turn round and say:
"You'd better go home, auntie. I can go the rest of the way alone."
She would stand still and look after him fixedly till he had disappeared
at the school-gate.
Ah, how she loved him! Of her former attachments not one had been so
deep; never had her soul surrendered to any feeling so spontaneously,
so disinterestedly, and so joyously as now that her maternal instincts
were aroused. For this little boy with the dimple in his cheek and the
big school cap, she would have given her whole life, she would have
given it with joy and tears of tenderness. Why? Who can tell why?
When she had seen the last of Sasha, she returned home, contented and
serene, brimming over with love; her face, which had grown younger
during the last six months, smiled and beamed; people meeting her
looked at her with pleasure.
"Good-morning, Olga Semyonovna, darling. How are you, darling?"
"The lessons at the high school are very difficult now," she would

relate at the market. "It's too much; in the first class yesterday they
gave him a fable to learn by heart, and a Latin translation and a
problem. You know it's too much for a little chap."
And she would begin talking about the teachers, the lessons, and the
school books, saying just what Sasha said.
At three o'clock they had dinner together: in the evening they learned
their lessons together