I rose in the morning with a headache. My agitation of the night before
had vanished. It had been replaced by an oppressive perplexity and a
certain, hitherto unknown sadness,--exactly as though something had died
in me.
“What makes you look like a rabbit which has had half of its brain
removed?”--said Lúshin, who happened to meet me. At breakfast I kept
casting covert glances now at my father, now at my mother; he was calm,
as usual; she, as usual, was secretly irritated. I waited to see
whether my father would address me in a friendly way, as he sometimes
did.... But he did not even caress me with his cold, everyday
affection.--“Shall I tell Zinaída all?”--I thought.... “For it makes no
difference now--everything is over between us.” I went to her, but I not
only did not tell her anything,--I did not even get a chance to talk to
her as I would have liked. The old Princess’s son, a cadet aged twelve,
had come from Petersburg to spend his vacation with her; Zinaída
immediately confided her brother to me.--“Here, my dear Volódya,”--said
she (she called me so for the first time), “is a comrade for you. His
name is Volódya also. Pray, like him; he’s a wild little fellow still,
but he has a good heart. Show him Neskútchny Park, walk with him, take
him under your protection. You will do that, will you not? You, too, are
such a good fellow!”--She laid both hands affectionately on my
shoulder--and I was reduced to utter confusion. The arrival of that boy
turned me into a boy. I stared in silence at the cadet, who riveted his
eyes in corresponding silence on me. Zinaída burst out laughing and
pushed us toward each other.--“Come, embrace, children!”--We
embraced.--“I’ll take you into the garden if you wish,--shall I?”--I
asked the cadet.
“Certainly, sir,”--he replied, in a hoarse, genuine cadet voice. Again
Zinaída indulged in a burst of laughter.... I managed to notice that
never before had she had such charming colour in her face. The cadet and
I went off together. In our garden stood an old swing. I seated him on
the thin little board and began to swing him. He sat motionless in his
new little uniform of thick cloth with broad gold galloon, and clung
tightly to the ropes.
“You had better unhook your collar,”--I said to him.
“Never mind, sir,[7] we are used to it, sir,”--he said, and cleared his
throat.
He resembled his sister; his eyes were particularly suggestive of her.
It was pleasant to me to be of service to him; and, at the same time,
that aching pain kept quietly gnawing at my heart. “Now I really am a
child,” I thought; “but last night....” I remembered where I had dropped
my knife and found it. The cadet asked me to lend it to him, plucked a
thick stalk of lovage, cut a whistle from it, and began to pipe. Othello
piped also.
But in the evening, on the other hand, how he did weep, that same
Othello, over Zinaída’s hands when, having sought him out in a corner of
the garden, she asked him what made him so melancholy. My tears streamed
with such violence that she was frightened.--“What is the matter with
you? What is the matter with you, Volódya?”--she kept repeating, and
seeing that I made her no reply, she took it into her head to kiss my
wet cheek. But I turned away from her and whispered through my sobs:--“I
know everything: why have you trifled with me?... Why did you want my
love?”
“I am to blame toward you, Volódya” ... said Zinaída.--“Akh, I am very
much to blame” ... she said, and clenched her hands.--“How much evil,
dark, sinful, there is in me!... But I am not trifling with you now, I
love you--you do not suspect why and how.... But what is it you know?”
What could I say to her? She stood before me and gazed at me--and I
belonged to her wholly, from head to foot, as soon as she looked at
me.... A quarter of an hour later I was running a race with the cadet
and Zinaída; I was not weeping; I was laughing, although my swollen
eyelids dropped tears from laughing; on my neck, in place of a tie, was
bound a ribbon of Zinaída’s, and I shouted with joy when I succeeded in
seizing her round the waist. She did with me whatsoever she would.