I
Everything in Lelechka’s nursery was bright, pretty, and cheerful.
Lelechka’s sweet voice charmed her mother. Lelechka was a delightful
child. There was no other such child, there never had been, and there
never would be. Lelechka’s mother, Serafima Alexandrovna, was sure of
that. Lelechka’s eyes were dark and large, her cheeks were rosy, her
lips were made for kisses and for laughter. But it was not these charms
in Lelechka that gave her mother the keenest joy. Lelechka was her
mother’s only child. That was why every movement of Lelechka’s
bewitched her mother. It was great bliss to hold Lelechka on her knees
and to fondle her; to feel the little girl in her arms—a thing as
lively and as bright as a little bird.
To tell the truth, Serafima Alexandrovna felt happy only in the
nursery. She felt cold with her husband.
Perhaps it was because he himself loved the cold—he loved to drink cold
water, and to breathe cold air. He was always fresh and cool, with a
frigid smile, and wherever he passed cold currents seemed to move in
the air.
The Nesletyevs, Sergei Modestovich and Serafima Alexandrovna, had
married without love or calculation, because it was the accepted thing.
He was a young man of thirty-five, she a young woman of twenty-five;
both were of the same circle and well brought up; he was expected to
take a wife, and the time had come for her to take a husband.
It even seemed to Serafima Alexandrovna that she was in love with her
future husband, and this made her happy. He looked handsome and
well-bred; his intelligent grey eyes always preserved a dignified
expression; and he fulfilled his obligations of a fiancé with
irreproachable gentleness.
The bride was also good-looking; she was a tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired
girl, somewhat timid but very tactful. He was not after her dowry,
though it pleased him to know that she had something. He had
connexions, and his wife came of good, influential people. This might,
at the proper opportunity, prove useful. Always irreproachable and
tactful, Nesletyev got on in his position not so fast that any one
should envy him, nor yet so slow that he should envy any one
else—everything came in the proper measure and at the proper time.
After their marriage there was nothing in the manner of Sergei
Modestovich to suggest anything wrong to his wife. Later, however, when
his wife was about to have a child, Sergei Modestovich established
connexions elsewhere of a light and temporary nature. Serafima
Alexandrovna found this out, and, to her own astonishment, was not
particularly hurt; she awaited her infant with a restless anticipation
that swallowed every other feeling.
A little girl was born; Serafima Alexandrovna gave herself up to her.
At the beginning she used to tell her husband, with rapture, of all the
joyous details of Lelechka’s existence. But she soon found that he
listened to her without the slightest interest, and only from the habit
of politeness. Serafima Alexandrovna drifted farther and farther away
from him. She loved her little girl with the ungratified passion that
other women, deceived in their husbands, show their chance young
lovers.
“_Mamochka_, let’s play _priatki_,” (hide and seek), cried Lelechka,
pronouncing the _r_ like the _l_, so that the word sounded “pliatki.”
This charming inability to speak always made Serafima Alexandrovna
smile with tender rapture. Lelechka then ran away, stamping with her
plump little legs over the carpets, and hid herself behind the curtains
near her bed.
“_Tiu-tiu, mamochka_!” she cried out in her sweet, laughing voice, as
she looked out with a single roguish eye.
“Where is my baby girl?” the mother asked, as she looked for Lelechka
and made believe that she did not see her.
And Lelechka poured out her rippling laughter in her hiding place. Then
she came out a little farther, and her mother, as though she had only
just caught sight of her, seized her by her little shoulders and
exclaimed joyously: “Here she is, my Lelechka!”
Lelechka laughed long and merrily, her head close to her mother’s
knees, and all of her cuddled up between her mother’s white hands. Her
mother’s eyes glowed with passionate emotion.
“Now, _mamochka_, you hide,” said Lelechka, as she ceased laughing.
Her mother went to hide. Lelechka turned away as though not to see, but
watched her _mamochka_ stealthily all the time. Mamma hid behind the
cupboard, and exclaimed: “_Tiu-tiu_, baby girl!”
Lelechka ran round the room and looked into all the corners, making
believe, as her mother had done before, that she was seeking—though she
really knew all the time where her _mamochka_ was standing.
“Where’s my _mamochka_?” asked Lelechka. “She’s not here, and she’s not
here,” she kept on repeating, as she ran from corner to corner.
Her mother stood, with suppressed breathing, her head pressed against
the wall, her hair somewhat disarranged. A smile of absolute bliss
played on her red lips.
The nurse, Fedosya, a good-natured and fine-looking, if somewhat stupid
woman, smiled as she looked at her mistress with her characteristic
expression, which seemed to say that it was not for her to object to
gentlewomen’s caprices. She thought to herself: “The mother is like a
little child herself—look how excited she is.”
Lelechka was getting nearer her mother’s corner. Her mother was growing
more absorbed every moment by her interest in the game; her heart beat
with short quick strokes, and she pressed even closer to the wall,
disarranging her hair still more. Lelechka suddenly glanced toward her
mother’s corner and screamed with joy.
“I’ve found ’oo,” she cried out loudly and joyously, mispronouncing her
words in a way that again made her mother happy.
She pulled her mother by her hands to the middle of the room, they were
merry and they laughed; and Lelechka again hid her head against her
mother’s knees, and went on lisping and lisping, without end, her sweet
little words, so fascinating yet so awkward.
Sergei Modestovich was coming at this moment toward the nursery.
Through the half-closed doors he heard the laughter, the joyous
outcries, the sound of romping. He entered the nursery, smiling his
genial cold smile; he was irreproachably dressed, and he looked fresh
and erect, and he spread round him an atmosphere of cleanliness,
freshness and coldness. He entered in the midst of the lively game, and
he confused them all by his radiant coldness. Even Fedosya felt
abashed, now for her mistress, now for herself. Serafima Alexandrovna
at once became calm and apparently cold—and this mood communicated
itself to the little girl, who ceased to laugh, but looked instead,
silently and intently, at her father.
Sergei Modestovich gave a swift glance round the room. He liked coming
here, where everything was beautifully arranged; this was done by
Serafima Alexandrovna, who wished to surround her little girl, from her
very infancy, only with the loveliest things. Serafima Alexandrovna
dressed herself tastefully; this, too, she did for Lelechka, with the
same end in view. One thing Sergei Modestovich had not become
reconciled to, and this was his wife’s almost continuous presence in
the nursery.
“It’s just as I thought.... I knew that I’d find you here,” he said
with a derisive and condescending smile.
They left the nursery together. As he followed his wife through the
door Sergei Modestovich said rather indifferently, in an incidental
way, laying no stress on his words: “Don’t you think that it would be
well for the little girl if she were sometimes without your company?
Merely, you see, that the child should feel its own individuality,” he
explained in answer to Serafima Alexandrovna’s puzzled glance.
“She’s still so little,” said Serafima Alexandrovna.
“In any case, this is but my humble opinion. I don’t insist. It’s your
kingdom there.”
“I’ll think it over,” his wife answered, smiling, as he did, coldly but
genially.
Then they began to talk of something else.