The Darling
Part 3
by Anton Chekov
"My dear Vladimir Platonitch! What fate has brought you?"
She muttered, trembling with joy. "I want to settle here for good,
Olga Semyonovna," he told her. "I have resigned my post, and have come
to settle down and try my luck on my own account. Besides, it's time for
my boy to go to school. He's a big boy. I am reconciled with my wife,
you know."
"Where is she?' asked Olenka. "She's at the hotel with the boy, and
I'm looking for lodgings." "Good gracious, my dear soul! Lodgings? Why
not have my house? Why shouldn't that suit you? Why, my goodness, I
wouldn't take any rent!" cried Olenka in a flutter, beginning to cry
again.

"You live here, and the lodge will do nicely for me. Oh dear! how
glad I am!" Next day the roof was painted and the walls were
whitewashed, and Olenka, with her arms akimbo walked about the yard
giving directions. Her face was beaming with her old smile, and she was
brisk and alert as though she had waked from a long sleep. The
veterinary's 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 and cried. When she put him to bed, she
would stay a long time making the Cross over him and murmuring a prayer;
then she would go to bed and dream of that far-away misty future when
Sasha would finish his studies and become a doctor or an engineer, would
have a big house of his own with horses and a carriage, would get
married and have children. . . . She would fall asleep still thinking of
the same thing, and tears would run down her cheeks from her closed
eyes, while the black cat lay purring beside her: "Mrr, mrr, mrr."
Suddenly there would come a loud knock at the gate. Olenka would wake up
breathless with alarm, her heart throbbing. Half a minute later would
come another knock. "It must be a telegram from Harkov," she would
think, beginning to tremble from head to foot. "Sasha's mother is
sending for him from Harkov. . . . Oh, mercy on us!" She was in despair.
Her head, her hands, and her feet would turn chill, and she would feel
that she was the most unhappy woman in the world. But another minute
would pass, voices would be heard: it would turn out to be the
veterinary surgeon coming home from the club.
"Well, thank God!" she would think. And gradually the load in her
heart would pass off, and she would feel at ease. She would go back to
bed thinking of Sasha, who lay sound asleep in the next room, sometimes
crying out in his sleep: "I'll give it you! Get away! Shut up!" |