Lelechka was asleep, and Serafima Alexandrovna was sitting in her own
room, thinking with joy and tenderness of Lelechka. Lelechka was in her
thoughts, first a sweet, tiny girl, then a sweet, big girl, then again
a delightful little girl; and so until the end she remained mamma’s
little Lelechka.
Serafima Alexandrovna did not even notice that Fedosya came up to her
and paused before her. Fedosya had a worried, frightened look.
“_Barinya, barinya_” she said quietly, in a trembling voice.
Serafima Alexandrovna gave a start. Fedosya’s face made her anxious.
“What is it, Fedosya?” she asked with great concern. “Is there anything
wrong with Lelechka?”
“No, _barinya_,” said Fedosya, as she gesticulated with her hands to
reassure her mistress and to make her sit down. “Lelechka is asleep,
may God be with her! Only I’d like to say something—you see—Lelechka is
always hiding herself—that’s not good.”
Fedosya looked at her mistress with fixed eyes, which had grown round
from fright.
“Why not good?” asked Serafima Alexandrovna, with vexation, succumbing
involuntarily to vague fears.
“I can’t tell you how bad it is,” said Fedosya, and her face expressed
the most decided confidence.
“Please speak in a sensible way,” observed Serafima Alexandrovna dryly.
“I understand nothing of what you are saying.”
“You see, _barinya_, it’s a kind of omen,” explained Fedosya abruptly,
in a shamefaced way.
“Nonsense!” said Serafima Alexandrovna.
She did not wish to hear any further as to the sort of omen it was, and
what it foreboded. But, somehow, a sense of fear and of sadness crept
into her mood, and it was humiliating to feel that an absurd tale
should disturb her beloved fancies, and should agitate her so deeply.
“Of course I know that gentlefolk don’t believe in omens, but it’s a
bad omen, _barinya_,” Fedosya went on in a doleful voice, “the young
lady will hide, and hide....”
Suddenly she burst into tears, sobbing out loudly: “She’ll hide, and
hide, and hide away, angelic little soul, in a damp grave,” she
continued, as she wiped her tears with her apron and blew her nose.
“Who told you all this?” asked Serafima Alexandrovna in an austere low
voice.
“Agathya says so, _barinya_” answered Fedosya; “it’s she that knows.”
“Knows!” exclaimed Serafima Alexandrovna in irritation, as though she
wished to protect herself somehow from this sudden anxiety. “What
nonsense! Please don’t come to me with any such notions in the future.
Now you may go.”
Fedosya, dejected, her feelings hurt, left her mistress.
“What nonsense! As though Lelechka could die!” thought Serafima
Alexandrovna to herself, trying to conquer the feeling of coldness and
fear which took possession of her at the thought of the possible death
of Lelechka. Serafima Alexandrovna, upon reflection, attributed these
women’s beliefs in omens to ignorance. She saw clearly that there could
be no possible connexion between a child’s quite ordinary diversion and
the continuation of the child’s life. She made a special effort that
evening to occupy her mind with other matters, but her thoughts
returned involuntarily to the fact that Lelechka loved to hide herself.
When Lelechka, was still quite small, and had learned to distinguish
between her mother and her nurse, she sometimes, sitting in her nurse’s
arms, made a sudden roguish grimace, and hid her laughing face in the
nurse’s shoulder. Then she would look out with a sly glance.
Of late, in those rare moments of the _barinya’s_ absence from the
nursery, Fedosya had again taught Lelechka to hide; and when Lelechka’s
mother, on coming in, saw how lovely the child looked when she was
hiding, she herself began to play hide and seek with her tiny daughter.