Nothing, you may be sure.
And, do you know, Vanya, I had a presentiment he’d end like that, at the time when you used to be always singing his praises, do you remember? It’s easy to say left nothing! Hm! . . . He’s won fame.
Even supposing it’s lasting fame, it doesn’t mean bread and butter.
I always had a foreboding about you, too, Vanya, my boy. Though I praised you, I always had misgivings.
So B.‘s dead?
Yes, and he well might be!
It’s a nice way we live here, and ... a nice place! Look at it!”
And with a rapid, unconscious movement of his hand he pointed to the foggy vista of the street, lighted up by the streetlamps dimly twinkling in the damp mist, to the dirty houses, to the wet and shining flags of the pavement, to the cross, sullen, drenched figures that passed by, to all this picture, hemmed in by the dome of the Petersburg sky, black as though smudged with Indian ink.
We had by now come out into the square; before us in the darkness stood the monument, lighted up below by jets of gas, and further away rose the huge dark mass of St. Isaac’s, hardly distinguishable against the gloomy sky.
You used to say, Vanya, that he was a nice man, good and generous, with feeling, with a heart.
Well, you see, they’re all like that, your nice people, your men with heart!
All they can do is to beget orphans!
Hm! ... and I should think he must have felt cheerful at dying like that!
Eeech!
Anything to get away from here! Even Siberia. . . .
What is it, child?” he asked suddenly, seeing a little girl on the pavement begging alms.
It was a pale, thin child, not more than seven or eight, dressed in filthy rags; she had broken shoes on her little bare feet.
She was trying to cover her shivering little body with a sort of aged semblance of a tiny dress, long outgrown.
Her pale, sickly, wasted face was turned towards us. She looked timidly, mutely at us without speaking, and with a look of resigned dread of refusal held out her trembling little hand to us.
My old friend started at seeing her, and turned to her so quickly that he frightened her.
She was startled and stepped back.
“What is it? What is it, child?” he cried.
“You’re begging, eh?
Here, here’s something for you ... take it!”
And, shaking with fuss and excitement, he began feeling in his pocket, and brought out two or three silver coins.
But it seemed to him too little. He found his purse, and taking out a rouble note – all that was in it – put it in the little beggar’s hand.
“ Christ keep you, my little one ... my child!
God’s angel be with you!”
And with a trembling hand he made the sign of the cross over the child several times. But suddenly noticing that I was looking at him, he frowned, and walked on with rapid steps.
“That’s a thing I can’t bear to see, Vanya,” he began, after a rather prolonged, wrathful silence. “Little innocent creatures shivering with cold in the street . . . all through their cursed fathers and mothers.
Though what mother would send a child to anything so awful if she were not in misery herself! . . .
Most likely she has other helpless little ones in the corner at home, and this is the eldest of them; and the mother ill herself very likely; and ... hm!
They’re not prince’s children!
There are lots in the world, Vanya ... not prince’s children! Hm!”
He paused for a moment, as though at a loss for words.
“You see, Vanya, I promised Anna Andreyevna,” he began, faltering and hesitating a little, “I promised her ... that is Anna Andreyevna and I agreed together to take some little orphan to bring up ... some poor little girl, to have her in the house altogether, do you understand?
For it’s dull for us old people alone. Only, you see, Anna Andreyevna has begun to set herself against it somehow.
So you talk to her, you know, not from me, but as though it came from yourself ... persuade her, do you understand?
I’ve been meaning for a long time to ask you to persuade her to agree; you see, it’s rather awkward for me to press her. But why talk about trifles!
What’s a child to me? I don’t want one; perhaps just as a comfort ... so as to hear a child’s voice ... but the fact is I’m doing this for my wife’s sake – it’ll be livelier for her than being alone with me.
But all that’s nonsense.
Vanya, we shall be a long time getting there like this, you know; let’s take a cab. It’s a long walk, and Anna Andreyevna will have been expecting us.”
It was halfpast seven when we arrived.
Chapter XII
THE Ichmenyevs were very fond of each other.
They were closely united by love and years of habit.
Yet Nikolay Sergeyitch was not only now, but had, even in former days, in their happiest times, always been rather reserved with his Anna Andreyevna, sometimes even surly, especially before other people.
Some delicate and sensitive natures show a peculiar perversity, a sort of chaste dislike of expressing themselves, and expressing their tenderness even to the being dearest to them, not only before people but also in private – even more in private in fact; only at rare intervals their affection breaks out, and it breaks out more passionately and more impulsively the longer it has been restrained.
This was rather how Ichmenyev had been with his Anna Andreyevna from their youth upwards.
He loved and respected her beyond measure in spite of the fact that she was only a goodnatured woman who was capable of nothing but loving him, and that he was sometimes positively vexed with her because in her simplicity she was often tactlessly open with him.