'Yes, yes, yes,' sighed Mr. Ratsch. 'It... it really has been, as they
say, a thunderbolt from a clear sky! Ein Blitz aus heiterem Himmel!'
'And Susanna Ivanovna said nothing before her death, left nothing?'
'Nothing, positively! Not a scrap of anything! Not a bit of paper! Only
fancy, when they called me to her, when they waked me up--she was stiff
already! Very distressing it was for me; she has grieved us all
terribly! Alexander Daviditch will be sorry too, I dare say, when he
knows.... They say he is not in Moscow.'
'He did leave town for a few days...' I began.
'Viktor Ivanovitch is complaining they're so long getting his sledge
harnessed,' interrupted a servant girl coming in--the same girl I had
seen in the passage. Her face, still looking half-awake, struck me this
time by the expression of coarse insolence to be seen in servants when
they know that their masters are in their power, and that they do not
dare to find fault or be exacting with them.
'Directly, directly,' Ivan Demianitch responded nervously. 'Eleonora
Karpovna! Leonora! Lenchen! come here!'
There was a sound of something ponderous moving the other side of the
door, and at the same instant I heard Viktor's imperious call: 'Why on
earth don't they put the horses in? You don't catch me trudging off to
the police on foot!'
'Directly, directly,' Ivan Demianitch faltered again. 'Eleonora
Karpovna, come here!'
'But, Ivan Demianitch,' I heard her voice, 'ich habe keine Toilette
gemacht!'
'Macht nichts. Komm herein!'
Eleonora Karpovna came in, holding a kerchief over her neck with two
fingers. She had on a morning wrapper, not buttoned up, and had not yet
done her hair. Ivan Demianitch flew up to her.
'You hear, Viktor's calling for the horses,' he said, hurriedly pointing
his finger first to the door, then to the window. 'Please, do see to it,
as quick as possible! Der Kerl schreit so!'
'Der Viktor schreit immer, Ivan Demianitch, Sie wissen wohl,' responded
Eleonora Karpovna, 'and I have spoken to the coachman myself, but he's
taken it into his head to give the horses oats. Fancy, what a calamity
to happen so suddenly,' she added, turning to me; 'who could have
expected such a thing of Susanna Ivanovna?'
'I was always expecting it, always!' cried Ratsch, and threw up his
arms, his dressing-gown flying up in front as he did so, and displaying
most repulsive unmentionables of chamois leather, with buckles on the
belt. 'Rupture of the heart! rupture of the external membrane!
Hypertrophy!'
'To be sure,' Eleonora Karpovna repeated after him, 'hyper... Well, so
it is. Only it's a terrible, terrible grief to me, I say again...' And
her coarse-featured face worked a little, her eyebrows rose into the
shape of triangles, and a tiny tear rolled over her round cheek, that
looked varnished like a doll's.... 'I'm very sorry that such a young
person who ought to have lived and enjoyed everything... everything...
And to fall into despair so suddenly!'
'Na! gut, gut... geh, alte!' Mr. Ratsch cut her short.
'Geh' schon, geh' schon,' muttered Eleonora Karpovna, and she went away,
still holding the kerchief with her fingers, and shedding tears.
And I followed her. In the passage stood Viktor in a student's coat with
a beaver collar and a cap stuck jauntily on one side. He barely glanced
at me over his shoulder, shook his collar up, and did not nod to me, for
which I mentally thanked him.