A COLLEGIATE assessor called Miguev stopped at a telegraph-post in the
course of his evening walk and heaved a deep sigh. A week before, as he
was returning home from his evening walk, he had been overtaken at that
very spot by his former housemaid, Agnia, who said to him viciously:
“Wait a bit! I’ll cook you such a crab that’ll teach you to ruin
innocent girls! I’ll leave the baby at your door, and I’ll have the law
of you, and I’ll tell your wife, too....”
And she demanded that he should put five thousand roubles into the
bank in her name. Miguev remembered it, heaved a sigh, and once
more reproached himself with heartfelt repentance for the momentary
infatuation which had caused him so much worry and misery.
When he reached his bungalow, he sat down to rest on the doorstep. It
was just ten o’clock, and a bit of the moon peeped out from behind
the clouds. There was not a soul in the street nor near the bungalows;
elderly summer visitors were already going to bed, while young ones were
walking in the wood. Feeling in both his pockets for a match to light
his cigarette, Miguev brought his elbow into contact with something
soft. He looked idly at his right elbow, and his face was instantly
contorted by a look of as much horror as though he had seen a snake
beside him. On the step at the very door lay a bundle. Something oblong
in shape was wrapped up in something--judging by the feel of it,
a wadded quilt. One end of the bundle was a little open, and the
collegiate assessor, putting in his hand, felt something damp and warm.
He leaped on to his feet in horror, and looked about him like a criminal
trying to escape from his warders....
“She has left it!” he muttered wrathfully through his teeth, clenching
his fists. “Here it lies.... Here lies my transgression! O Lord!”
He was numb with terror, anger, and shame... What was he to do now?
What would his wife say if she found out? What would his colleagues at
the office say? His Excellency would be sure to dig him in the ribs,
guffaw, and say: “I congratulate you!... He-he-he! Though your beard
is gray, your heart is gay.... You are a rogue, Semyon Erastovitch!”
The whole colony of summer visitors would know his secret now, and
probably the respectable mothers of families would shut their doors to
him. Such incidents always get into the papers, and the humble name of
Miguev would be published all over Russia....
The middle window of the bungalow was open and he could distinctly hear
his wife, Anna Filippovna, laying the table for supper; in the yard
close to the gate Yermolay, the porter, was plaintively strumming on the
balalaika. The baby had only to wake up and begin to cry, and the secret
would be discovered. Miguev was conscious of an overwhelming desire to
make haste.
“Haste, haste!...” he muttered, “this minute, before anyone sees.
I’ll carry it away and lay it on somebody’s doorstep....”
Miguev took the bundle in one hand and quietly, with a deliberate step
to avoid awakening suspicion, went down the street....
“A wonderfully nasty position!” he reflected, trying to assume an air of
unconcern. “A collegiate assessor walking down the street with a baby!
Good heavens! if anyone sees me and understands the position, I am
done for.... I’d better put it on this doorstep.... No, stay, the
windows are open and perhaps someone is looking. Where shall I put it?
I know! I’ll take it to the merchant Myelkin’s.... Merchants are rich
people and tenderhearted; very likely they will say thank you and adopt
it.”
And Miguev made up his mind to take the baby to Myelkin’s, although the
merchant’s villa was in the furthest street, close to the river.
“If only it does not begin screaming or wriggle out of the bundle,”
thought the collegiate assessor. “This is indeed a pleasant surprise!
Here I am carrying a human being under my arm as though it were a
portfolio. A human being, alive, with soul, with feelings like anyone
else.... If by good luck the Myelkins adopt him, he may turn out
somebody.... Maybe he will become a professor, a great general, an
author.... Anything may happen! Now I am carrying him under my arm
like a bundle of rubbish, and perhaps in thirty or forty years I may not
dare to sit down in his presence....”
As Miguev was walking along a narrow, deserted alley, beside a long
row of fences, in the thick black shade of the lime trees, it suddenly
struck him that he was doing something very cruel and criminal.
“How mean it is really!” he thought. “So mean that one can’t imagine
anything meaner.... Why are we shifting this poor baby from door to
door? It’s not its fault that it’s been born. It’s done us no harm. We
are scoundrels.... We take our pleasure, and the innocent babies have
to pay the penalty. Only to think of all this wretched business! I’ve
done wrong and the child has a cruel fate before it. If I lay it at the
Myelkins’ door, they’ll send it to the foundling hospital, and there it
will grow up among strangers, in mechanical routine,... no love,
no petting, no spoiling.... And then he’ll be apprenticed to a
shoemaker,... he’ll take to drink, will learn to use filthy language,
will go hungry. A shoemaker! and he the son of a collegiate assessor, of
good family.... He is my flesh and blood,... ”
Miguev came out of the shade of the lime trees into the bright moonlight
of the open road, and opening the bundle, he looked at the baby.
“Asleep!” he murmured. “You little rascal! why, you’ve an aquiline nose
like your father’s.... He sleeps and doesn’t feel that it’s his own
father looking at him!... It’s a drama, my boy... Well, well, you
must forgive me. Forgive me, old boy.... It seems it’s your fate....”
The collegiate assessor blinked and felt a spasm running down his
cheeks.... He wrapped up the baby, put him under his arm, and strode
on. All the way to the Myelkins’ villa social questions were swarming in
his brain and conscience was gnawing in his bosom.
“If I were a decent, honest man,” he thought, “I should damn everything,
go with this baby to Anna Filippovna, fall on my knees before her,
and say: ‘Forgive me! I have sinned! Torture me, but we won’t ruin an
innocent child. We have no children; let us adopt him!’ She’s a good
sort, she’d consent.... And then my child would be with me....
Ech!”
He reached the Myelkins’ villa and stood still hesitating. He imagined
himself in the parlor at home, sitting reading the paper while a little
boy with an aquiline nose played with the tassels of his dressing gown.
At the same time visions forced themselves on his brain of his winking
colleagues, and of his Excellency digging him in the ribs and
guffawing.... Besides the pricking of his conscience, there was
something warm, sad, and tender in his heart....
Cautiously the collegiate assessor laid the baby on the verandah step
and waved his hand. Again he felt a spasm run over his face....
“Forgive me, old fellow! I am a scoundrel,” he muttered. “Don’t remember
evil against me.”
He stepped back, but immediately cleared his throat resolutely and said:
“Oh, come what will! Damn it all! I’ll take him, and let people say what
they like!”
Miguev took the baby and strode rapidly back.
“Let them say what they like,” he thought. “I’ll go at once, fall on
my knees, and say: ‘Anna Filippovna!’ Anna is a good sort, she’ll
understand.... And we’ll bring him up.... If it’s a boy we’ll call
him Vladimir, and if it’s a girl we’ll call her Anna! Anyway, it will be
a comfort in our old age.”
And he did as he determined. Weeping and almost faint with shame and
terror, full of hope and vague rapture, he went into his bungalow, went
up to his wife, and fell on his knees before her.
“Anna Filippovna!” he said with a sob, and he laid the baby on the
floor. “Hear me before you punish.... I have sinned! This is my
child.... You remember Agnia? Well, it was the devil drove me to it.
...”
And, almost unconscious with shame and terror, he jumped up without
waiting for an answer, and ran out into the open air as though he had
received a thrashing....
“I’ll stay here outside till she calls me,” he thought. “I’ll give her
time to recover, and to think it over....”
The porter Yermolay passed him with his balalaika, glanced at him and
shrugged his shoulders. A minute later he passed him again, and again he
shrugged his shoulders.
“Here’s a go! Did you ever!” he muttered grinning. “Aksinya, the
washer-woman, was here just now, Semyon Erastovitch. The silly woman
put her baby down on the steps here, and while she was indoors with me,
someone took and carried off the baby... Who’d have thought it!”
“What? What are you saying?” shouted Miguev at the top of his voice.
Yermolay, interpreting his master’s wrath in his own fashion, scratched
his head and heaved a sigh.
“I am sorry, Semyon Erastovitch,” he said, “but it’s the summer
holidays,... one can’t get on without... without a woman, I mean....”
And glancing at his master’s eyes glaring at him with anger and
astonishment, he cleared his throat guiltily and went on:
“It’s a sin, of course, but there--what is one to do?... You’ve
forbidden us to have strangers in the house, I know, but we’ve none of
our own now. When Agnia was here I had no women to see me, for I had one
at home; but now, you can see for yourself, sir,... one can’t
help having strangers. In Agnia’s time, of course, there was nothing
irregular, because...”
“Be off, you scoundrel!” Miguev shouted at him, stamping, and he went
back into the room.
Anna Filippovna, amazed and wrathful, was sitting as before, her
tear-stained eyes fixed on the baby....
“There! there!” Miguev muttered with a pale face, twisting his lips
into a smile. “It was a joke.... It’s not my baby,... it’s
the washer-woman’s!... I... I was joking.... Take it to the
porter.”