Fathers and Children Part 8

'Yes, and it's a long while since I have been to see you. Now it is very nice here.'

'Thanks to Nikolai Petrovitch's kindness,' murmured Fenitchka.

'You are more comfortable here than in the little lodge you used to have?' inquired Pavel Petrovitch urbanely, but without the slightest smile.

'Certainly, it's more comfortable.'

'Who has been put in your place now?'

'The laundry-maids are there now.'

'Ah!'

Pavel Petrovitch was silent. 'Now he is going,' thought Fenitchka; but he did not go, and she stood before him motionless.

'What did you send your little one away for?' said Pavel Petrovitch at last. 'I love children; let me see him.'

Fenitchka blushed all over with confusion and delight. She was afraid of Pavel Petrovitch; he had scarcely ever spoken to her.

'Dunyasha,' she called; 'will you bring Mitya, please.' (Fenitchka did not treat any one in the house familiarly.) 'But wait a minute, he must have a frock on,' Fenitchka was going towards the door.

'That doesn't matter,' remarked Pavel Petrovitch.

'I will be back directly,' answered Fenitchka, and she went out quickly.

Pavel Petrovitch was left alone, and he looked round this time with special attention. The small low-pitched room in which he found himself was very clean and snug. It smelt of the freshly painted floor and of camomile. Along the walls stood chairs with lyre-shaped backs, bought by the late general on his campaign in Poland; in one corner was a little bedstead under a muslin canopy beside an iron-clamped chest with a convex lid. In the opposite corner a little lamp was burning before a big dark picture of St. Nikolai the wonder-worker; a tiny porcelain egg hung by a red ribbon from the protruding gold halo down to the saint's breast; by the windows greenish gla.s.s jars of last year's jam carefully tied down could be seen; on their paper covers Fenitchka herself had written in big letters 'Gooseberry'; Nikolai Petrovitch was particularly fond of that preserve. On a long cord from the ceiling a cage hung with a short-tailed siskin in it; he was constantly chirping and hopping about, the cage was constantly shaking and swinging, while hempseeds fell with a light tap on to the floor. On the wall just above a small chest of drawers hung some rather bad photographs of Nikolai Petrovitch in various att.i.tudes, taken by an itinerant photographer; there too hung a photograph of Fenitchka herself, which was an absolute failure; it was an eyeless face wearing a forced smile, in a dingy frame, nothing more could be made out; while above Fenitchka, General Yermolov, in a Circa.s.sian cloak, scowled menacingly upon the Caucasian mountains in the distance, from beneath a little silk shoe for pins which fell right on to his brows.

Five minutes pa.s.sed; bustling and whispering could be heard in the next room. Pavel Petrovitch took up from the chest of drawers a greasy book, an odd volume of Masalsky's _Musketeer_, and turned over a few pages.... The door opened, and Fenitchka came in with Mitya in her arms. She had put on him a little red smock with embroidery on the collar, had combed his hair and washed his face; he was breathing heavily, his whole body working, and his little hands waving in the air, as is the way with all healthy babies; but his smart smock obviously impressed him, an expression of delight was reflected in every part of his little fat person. Fenitchka had put her own hair too in order, and had arranged her kerchief; but she might well have remained as she was. And really is there anything in the world more captivating than a beautiful young mother with a healthy baby in her arms?

'What a chubby fellow!' said Pavel Petrovitch graciously, and he tickled Mitya's little double chin with the tapering nail of his forefinger. The baby stared at the siskin, and chuckled.

'That's uncle,' said Fenitchka, bending her face down to him and slightly rocking him, while Dunyasha quietly set in the window a smouldering perfumed stick, putting a halfpenny under it.

'How many months old is he?' asked Pavel Petrovitch.

'Six months; it will soon be seven, on the eleventh.'

'Isn't it eight, Fedosya Nikolaevna?' put in Dunyasha, with some timidity.

'No, seven; what an idea!' The baby chuckled again, stared at the chest, and suddenly caught hold of his mother's nose and mouth with all his five little fingers. 'Saucy mite,' said Fenitchka, not drawing her face away.

'He's like my brother,' observed Pavel Petrovitch.

'Who else should he be like?' thought Fenitchka.

'Yes,' continued Pavel Petrovitch, as though speaking to himself; 'there's an unmistakable likeness.' He looked attentively, almost mournfully, at Fenitchka.

'That's uncle,' she repeated, in a whisper this time.

'Ah! Pavel! so you're here!' was heard suddenly the voice of Nikolai Petrovitch.

Pavel Petrovitch turned hurriedly round, frowning; but his brother looked at him with such delight, such grat.i.tude, that he could not help responding to his smile.

'You've a splendid little cherub,' he said, and looking at his watch, 'I came in here to speak about some tea.'

And, a.s.suming an expression of indifference, Pavel Petrovitch at once went out of the room.

'Did he come of himself?' Nikolai Petrovitch asked Fenitchka.

'Yes; he knocked and came in.'

'Well, and has Arkasha been in to see you again?'

'No. Hadn't I better move into the lodge, Nikolai Petrovitch?'

'Why so?'

'I wonder whether it wouldn't be best just for the first.'

'N ... no,' Nikolai Petrovitch brought out hesitatingly, rubbing his forehead. 'We ought to have done it before.... How are you, fatty?' he said, suddenly brightening, and going up to the baby, he kissed him on the cheek; then he bent a little and pressed his lips to Fenitchka's hand, which lay white as milk upon Mitya's little red smock.

'Nikolai Petrovitch! what are you doing?' she whispered, dropping her eyes, then slowly raising them. Very charming was the expression of her eyes when she peeped, as it were, from under her lids, and smiled tenderly and a little foolishly.

Nikolai Petrovitch had made Fenitchka's acquaintance in the following manner. He had once happened three years before to stay a night at an inn in a remote district town. He was agreeably struck by the cleanness of the room a.s.signed to him, the freshness of the bed-linen. Surely the woman of the house must be a German? was the idea that occurred to him; but she proved to be a Russian, a woman of about fifty, neatly dressed, of a good-looking, sensible countenance and discreet speech. He entered into conversation with her at tea; he liked her very much. Nikolai Petrovitch had at that time only just moved into his new home, and not wishing to keep serfs in the house, he was on the look-out for wage-servants; the woman of the inn on her side complained of the small number of visitors to the town, and the hard times; he proposed to her to come into his house in the capacity of housekeeper; she consented.

Her husband had long been dead, leaving her an only daughter, Fenitchka. Within a fortnight Arina Savishna (that was the new housekeeper's name) arrived with her daughter at Maryino and installed herself in the little lodge. Nikolai Petrovitch's choice proved a successful one. Arina brought order into the household. As for Fenitchka, who was at that time seventeen, no one spoke of her, and scarcely any one saw her; she lived quietly and sedately, and only on Sundays Nikolai Petrovitch noticed in the church somewhere in a side place the delicate profile of her white face. More than a year pa.s.sed thus.

One morning, Arina came into his study, and bowing low as usual, she asked him if he could do anything for her daughter, who had got a spark from the stove in her eye. Nikolai Petrovitch, like all stay-at-home people, had studied doctoring and even compiled a h.o.m.oeopathic guide.

He at once told Arina to bring the patient to him. Fenitchka was much frightened when she heard the master had sent for her; however, she followed her mother. Nikolai Petrovitch led her to the window and took her head in his two hands. After thoroughly examining her red and swollen eye, he prescribed a fomentation, which he made up himself at once, and tearing his handkerchief in pieces, he showed her how it ought to be applied. Fenitchka listened to all he had to say, and then was going. 'Kiss the master's hand, silly girl,' said Arina. Nikolai Petrovitch did not give her his hand, and in confusion himself kissed her bent head on the parting of her hair. Fenitchka's eye was soon well again, but the impression she had made on Nikolai Petrovitch did not pa.s.s away so quickly. He was for ever haunted by that pure, delicate, timidly raised face; he felt on the palms of his hands that soft hair, and saw those innocent, slightly parted lips, through which pearly teeth gleamed with moist brilliance in the sunshine. He began to watch her with great attention in church, and tried to get into conversation with her. At first she was shy of him, and one day meeting him at the approach of evening in a narrow footpath through a field of rye, she ran into the tall thick rye, overgrown with cornflowers and wormwood, so as not to meet him face to face. He caught sight of her little head through a golden network of ears of rye, from which she was peeping out like a little animal, and called affectionately to her--

'Good-evening, Fenitchka! I don't bite.'

'Good-evening,' she whispered, not coming out of her ambush.

By degrees she began to be more at home with him, but was still shy in his presence, when suddenly her mother, Arina, died of cholera. What was to become of Fenitchka? She inherited from her mother a love for order, regularity, and respectability; but she was so young, so alone.

Nikolai Petrovitch was himself so good and considerate.... It's needless to relate the rest....

'So my brother came in to see you?' Nikolai Petrovitch questioned her.

'He knocked and came in?'

'Yes.'

'Well, that's a good thing. Let me give Mitya a swing.'

And Nikolai Petrovitch began tossing him almost up to the ceiling, to the huge delight of the baby, and to the considerable uneasiness of the mother, who every time he flew up stretched her arms up towards his little bare legs.

Pavel Petrovitch went back to his artistic study, with its walls covered with handsome bluish-grey hangings, with weapons hanging upon a variegated Persian rug nailed to the wall; with walnut furniture, upholstered in dark green velveteen, with a _renaissance_ bookcase of old black oak, with bronze statuettes on the magnificent writing-table, with an open hearth. He threw himself on the sofa, clasped his hands behind his head, and remained without moving, looking with a face almost of despair at the ceiling. Whether he wanted to hide from the very walls that which was reflected in his face, or for some other reason, he got up, drew the heavy window curtains, and again threw himself on the sofa.