Short Stories
have not sacrificed my dignity by that. It is a most comical story, your
Excellency!" cried Ivan Andreyitch, addressing the lady with a supplicating
air. "You, particularly, your Excellency, will laugh! You behold upon the
scene a jealous husband. You see, I abase myself, I abase myself of my own
free will. I did indeed kill Amishka, but ... my God, I don't know what I
am saying!"
"But how, how did you get here?"
"Under cover of night, your Excellency, under cover of night.... I beg your
pardon! Forgive me, your Excellency! I humbly beg your pardon! I am only an
injured husband, nothing more! Don't imagine, your Excellency, that I am a
lover! I am not a lover! Your wife is virtue itself, if I may venture so to
express myself. She is pure and innocent!"
"What, what? What did you have the audacity to say?" cried the old
gentleman, stamping his foot again. "Are you out of your mind or not? How
dare you talk about my wife?"
"He is a villain, a murderer who has killed Amishka," wailed the lady,
dissolving into tears. "And then he dares!..."
"Your Excellency, your Excellency! I spoke foolishly," cried Ivan
Andreyitch in a fluster. "I was talking foolishly, that was all! Think of
me as out of my mind.... For goodness' sake, think of me as out of my
mind.... I assure you that you will be doing me the greatest favour. I
would offer you my hand, but I do not venture to.... I was not alone, I was
an uncle.... I mean to say that you cannot take me for the lover....
Goodness! I have put my foot in it again.... Do not be offended, your
Excellency," cried Ivan Andreyitch to the lady. "You are a lady, you
understand what love is, it is a delicate feeling.... But what am I saying?
I am talking nonsense again; that is, I mean to say that I am an old
man--that is, a middle-aged man, not an old man; that I cannot be your
lover; that a lover is a Richardson--that is, a Lovelace.... I am talking
nonsense, but you see, your Excellency, that I am a well-educated man and
know something of literature. You are laughing, your Excellency. I am
delighted, delighted that I have _provoked_ your mirth, your Excellency.
Oh, how delighted I am that I have provoked your mirth."
"My goodness, what a funny man!" cried the lady, exploding with laughter.
"Yes, he is funny, and in such a mess," said the old man, delighted that
his wife was laughing. "He cannot be a thief, my love. But how did he come
here?"
"It really is strange, it really is strange, it is like a novel! Why! At
the dead of night, in a great city, a man under the bed. Strange, funny!
Rinaldo-Rinaldini after a fashion. But that is no matter, no matter, your
Excellency. I will tell you all about it.... And I will buy you a new
lapdog, your Excellency.... A wonderful lapdog! Such a long coat, such
short little legs, it can't walk more than a step or two: it runs a little,
gets entangled in its own coat, and tumbles over. One feeds it on nothing
but sugar. I will bring you one, I will certainly bring you one."
"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" The lady was rolling from side to side with laughter.
"Oh, dear, I shall have hysterics! Oh, how funny he is!"
"Yes, yes! Ha-ha-ha! Khee-khee-khee! He is funny and he is in a
mess--khee-khee-khee!"
"Your Excellency, your Excellency, I am now perfectly happy. I would offer
you my hand, but I do not venture to, your Excellency. I feel that I have
been in error, but now I am opening my eyes. I am certain my wife is pure
and innocent! I was wrong in suspecting her."
"Wife--his wife!" cried the lady, with tears in her eyes through laughing.
"He married? Impossible! I should never have thought it," said the old
gentleman.
"Your Excellency, my wife--it is all her fault; that is, it is my fault: I
suspected her; I knew that an assignation had been arranged here--here
upstairs; I intercepted a letter, made a mistake about the storey and got
under the bed...."
"He-he-he-he!"
"Ha-ha-ha-ha!"
"Ha-ha-ha-ha!" Ivan Andreyitch began laughing at last. "Oh, how happy I am!
Oh, how wonderful to see that we are all so happy and harmonious! And my
wife is entirely innocent. That must be so, your Excellency!"
"He-he-he! Khee-khee! Do you know, my love, who it was?" said the old man
at last, recovering from his mirth.
"Who? Ha-ha-ha."
"She must be the pretty woman who makes eyes, the one with the dandy. It's
she, I bet that's his wife!"
"No, your Excellency, I am certain it is not she; I am perfectly certain."
"But, my goodness! You are losing time," cried the lady, leaving off
laughing. "Run, go upstairs. Perhaps you will find them."
"Certainly, your Excellency, I will fly. But I shall not find any one, your
Excellency; it is not she, I am certain of it beforehand. She is at home
now. It is all my fault! It is simply my jealousy, nothing else.... What do
you think? Do you suppose that I shall find them there, your Excellency?"
"Ha-ha-ha!"
"He-he-he! Khee-khee!"
"You must go, you must go! And when you come down, come in and tell us!"
cried the lady; "or better still, to-morrow morning. And do bring her too,
I should like to make her acquaintance."
"Good-bye, your Excellency, good-bye! I will certainly bring her, I shall
be very glad for her to make your acquaintance. I am glad and happy that it
was all ended so and has turned out for the best."
"And the lapdog! Don't forget it: be sure to bring the lapdog!"
"I will bring it, your Excellency, I will certainly bring it," responded
Ivan Andreyitch, darting back into the room, for he had already made his
bows and withdrawn. "I will certainly bring it. It is such a pretty one. It
is just as though a confectioner had made it of sweet-meats. And it's such
a funny little thing--gets entangled in its own coat and falls over. It
really is a lapdog! I said to my wife: 'How is it, my love, it keeps
tumbling over?' 'It is such a little thing,' she said. As though it were
made of sugar, of sugar, your Excellency! Good-bye, your Excellency, very,
very glad to make your acquaintance, very glad to make your acquaintance!"
Ivan Andreyitch bowed himself out.
"Hey, sir! Stay, come back," cried the old gentleman, after the retreating
Ivan Andreyitch.
The latter turned back for the third time.
"I still can't find the cat, didn't you meet him when you were under the
bed?"
"No, I didn't, your Excellency. Very glad to make his acquaintance, though,
and I shall look upon it as an honour...."
"He has a cold in his head now, and keeps sneezing and sneezing. He must
have a beating."
"Yes, your Excellency, of course; corrective punishment is essential with
domestic animals."
"What?"
"I say that corrective punishment is necessary, your Excellency, to enforce
obedience in the domestic animals."
"Ah!... Well, good-bye, good-bye, that is all I had to say."
Coming out into the street, Ivan Andreyitch stood for a long time in an
attitude that suggested that he was expecting to have a fit in another
minute. He took off his hat, wiped the cold sweat from his brow, screwed up
his eyes, thought a minute, and set off homewards.
What was his amazement when he learned at home that Glafira Petrovna had
come back from the theatre a long, long time before, that she had
toothache, that she had sent for the doctor, that she had sent for leeches,
and that now she was lying in bed and expecting Ivan Andreyitch.
Ivan Andreyitch slapped himself on the forehead, told the servant to help
him wash and to brush his clothes, and at last ventured to go into his
wife's room.
"Where is it you spend your time? Look what a sight you are! What do you
look like? Where have you been lost all this time? Upon my word, sir; your
wife is dying and you have to be hunted for all over the town. Where have
you been? Surely you have not been tracking me, trying to disturb a
rendezvous I am supposed to have made, though I don't know with whom. For
shame, sir, you are a husband! People will soon be pointing at you in the
street."
"My love ..." responded Ivan Andreyitch.
But at this point he was so overcome with confusion that he had to feel in
his pocket for his handkerchief and to break off in the speech he was
beginning, because he had neither words, thoughts or courage.... What was
his amazement, horror and alarm when with his handkerchief fell out of his
pocket the corpse of Amishka. Ivan Andreyitch had not noticed that when he
had been forced to creep out from under the bed, in an access of despair
and unreasoning terror he had stuffed Amishka into his pocket with a
far-away idea of burying the traces, concealing the evidence of his crime,
and so avoiding the punishment he deserved.
"What's this?" cried his spouse; "a nasty dead dog! Goodness! where has it
come from?... What have you been up to?... Where have you been? Tell me at
once where have you been?"
"My love," answered Ivan Andreyitch, almost as dead as Amishka, "my
love...."
But here we will leave our hero--till another time, for a new and quite
different adventure begins here. Some day we will describe all these
calamities and misfortunes, gentlemen. But you will admit that jealousy is
an unpardonable passion, and what is more, it is a positive misfortune.
THE HEAVENLY CHRISTMAS TREE
I am a novelist, and I suppose I have made up this story. I write "I
suppose," though I know for a fact that I have made it up, but yet I keep
fancying that it must have happened somewhere at some time, that it must
have happened on Christmas Eve in some great town in a time of terrible
frost.
I have a vision of a boy, a little boy, six years old or even younger. This
boy woke up that morning in a cold damp cellar. He was dressed in a sort of
little dressing-gown and was shivering with cold. There was a cloud of
white steam from his breath, and sitting on a box in the corner, he blew
the steam out of his mouth and amused himself in his dullness watching it
float away. But he was terribly hungry. Several times that morning he went
up to the plank bed where his sick mother was lying on a mattress as thin
as a pancake, with some sort of bundle under her head for a pillow. How had
she come here? She must have come with her boy from some other town and
suddenly fallen ill. The landlady who let the "corners" had been taken two
days before to the police station, the lodgers were out and about as the
holiday was so near, and the only one left had been lying for the last
twenty-four hours dead drunk, not having waited for Christmas. In another
corner of the room a wretched old woman of eighty, who had once been a
children's nurse but was now left to die friendless, was moaning and
groaning with rheumatism, scolding and grumbling at the boy so that he was
afraid to go near her corner. He had got a drink of water in the outer
room, but could not find a crust anywhere, and had been on the point of
waking his mother a dozen times. He felt frightened at last in the
darkness: it had long been dusk, but no light was kindled. Touching his
mother's face, he was surprised that she did not move at all, and that she
was as cold as the wall. "It is very cold here," he thought. He stood a
little, unconsciously letting his hands rest on the dead woman's shoulders,
then he breathed on his fingers to warm them, and then quietly fumbling for
his cap on the bed, he went out of the cellar. He would have gone earlier,
but was afraid of the big dog which had been howling all day at the
neighbour's door at the top of the stairs. But the dog was not there now,
and he went out into the street.
Mercy on us, what a town! He had never seen anything like it before. In the
town from which he had come, it was always such black darkness at night.
There was one lamp for the whole street, the little, low-pitched, wooden