It was an inquiry for Smith; traces of him had unexpectedly turned up.
“Your grandfather? But he’s dead!” I said suddenly, being taken unawares by her question, and I immediately regretted my abruptness.
For a minute she stood still in the same position, then she suddenly began trembling all over, so violently that it seemed as though she were going to be overcome by some sort of dangerous, nervous fit.
I tried to support her so that she did not fall.
In a few minutes she was better, and I saw that she was making an unnatural effort to control her emotion before me.
“Forgive me, forgive me, girl!
Forgive me, my child!” I said. “I told you so abruptly, and who knows perhaps it’s a mistake ... poor little thing! ...
Who is it you’re looking for?
The old man who lived here?”
“Yes,” she articulated with an effort, looking anxiously at me.
“His name was Smith?
Was it?” I asked.
“Yyes!”
“Then he ... yes, then he is dead.... Only don’t grieve, my dear.
Why haven’t you been here?
Where have you come from now?
He was buried yesterday; he died suddenly. . . . So you’re his granddaughter?”
The child made no answer to my rapid and incoherent questions.
She turned in silence and went quietly out of the room.
I was so astonished that I did not try to stop her or question her further.
She stopped short in the doorway, and halfturning asked me
“Is Azorka dead, too?”
“Yes, Azorka’s dead, too,” I answered, and her question struck me as strange; it seemed as though she felt sure that Azorka must have died with the old man.
Hearing my answer the girl went noiselessly out of the room and carefully closed the door after her.
A minute later I ran after her, horribly vexed with myself for having let her go.
She went out so quickly that I did not hear her open the outer door on to the stairs.
“She hasn’t gone down the stairs yet,” I thought, and I stood still to listen.
But all was still, and there was no sound of footsteps.
All I heard was the slam of a door on the ground floor, and then all was still again.
I went hurriedly downstairs.
The staircase went from my flat in a spiral from the fifth storey down to the fourth, from the fourth it went straight.
It was a black, dirty staircase, always dark, such as one commonly finds in huge blocks let out in tiny flats.
At that moment it was quite dark.
Feeling my way down to the fourth storey, I stood still, and I suddenly had a feeling that there was someone in the passage here, hiding from me.
I began groping with my hands. The girl was there, right in the corner, and with her face turned to the wall was crying softly and inaudibly.
“Listen, what are you afraid of?” I began.
“I frightened you so, I’m so sorry.
Your grandfather spoke of you when he was dying; his last words were of you.... I’ve got some books, no doubt they’re yours.
What’s your name? Where do you live?
He spoke of Sixth Street . . .”
But I did not finish.
She uttered a cry of terror as though at my knowing where she lived; pushed me away with her thin, bony, little hand, and ran downstairs.
I followed her; I could till hear her footsteps below.
Suddenly they ceased.... When I ran out into the street she was not to be seen.
Running as far as Voznesensky Prospect I realized that all my efforts were in vain. She had vanished.
“Most likely she hid from me somewhere,” I thought “on her way downstairs.”
Chapter XI
But I had hardly stepped out on the muddy wet pavement of the Prospect when I ran against a passerby, who was hastening somewhere with his head down, apparently lost in thought.
To my intense amazement I recognized my old friend Ichmenyev.
It was an evening of unexpected meetings for me.