Saksaoolov liked to listen to the opinions of Fedota. When he returned
home he told him about the boy Lesha.
“She did it on purpose,” decided Fedota. “Just think what a witch she
is to take the boy such a way from home!”
“Why should she?” Saksaoolov asked.
“It’s simple enough. What can you expect of a stupid woman! She thought
the boy would get lost somewhere, and some one would pick him up. After
all, she’s a stepmother. What’s a homeless child to her?”
Saksaoolov was incredulous. He observed: “But the police would have
found her out.”
“Of course they would; but you can’t tell, she may have meant to leave
town; then find her if you can.”
Saksaoolov smiled.
“Really,” he thought, “my Fedota should be a district attorney.”
He fell into a doze that evening as he sat reading before a lamp. Tamar
appeared to him—the gentle, white Tamar—and sat down beside him. Her
face was strangely like Lesha’s face. She looked steadily and
persistently, and awaited something. It tormented Saksaoolov to see her
bright, pleading eyes, and not to know what she wanted. He rose quickly
and went to the armchair where he thought he saw Tamar sitting. He
stopped before her and asked loudly and with emotion:
“What do you wish? Tell me.”
But she was no longer there.
“It was only a dream,” thought Saksaoolov sadly.
V
The next day, as he was leaving the academy exhibition, Saksaoolov met
the Gorodischevs. He told the girl about Lesha.
“Poor boy,” said Valeria Mikhailovna quietly. “His stepmother is trying
to get rid of him.”
“That’s yet to be proved,” said Saksaoolov.
He felt annoyed that every one, including Fedota and Valeria, should
look so tragically upon a simple incident.
“That’s quite evident,” said Valeria Mikhailovna warmly. “There’s no
father, and only a stepmother to whom he is simply a burden. No good
will come of it—the boy will have a sad end.”
“You take too gloomy a view of the matter,” observed Saksaoolov, with a
smile.
“You ought to take him to yourself,” Valeria Mikhailovna advised him.
“I?” asked Saksaoolov with astonishment.
“You are living alone,” Valeria Mikhailovna persisted. “You have no
one. Here’s a chance for you to do a good deed at Eastertime! At least,
you’ll have some one with whom to exchange the kiss of Easter.”
“I beg you to tell me, Valeria Mikhailovna, what am I to do with a
child?”
“You might engage a governess. Fate itself is sending the boy to you.”
Saksaoolov looked with amazement and involuntary tenderness at the
girl’s flushed, animated face.
When Tamar again appeared to him that evening he seemed already to know
her wish. It was as though, in the silence of the room, he heard her
tranquilly spoken words: “Do as she advised you.”
Saksaoolov rose joyously and rubbed his drowsy eyes with his hand. He
saw a sprig of white lilac on the table, and was astonished. How did it
come there? Did Tamar leave it there as a sign of her wish?
And he suddenly thought that if he married the Gorodischeva girl and
took Lesha into his house he would be carrying out the will of Tamar.
He breathed in the lilac’s aroma happily. He suddenly remembered that
he himself had bought the sprig of lilac that same day.
Then he argued with himself: “It really doesn’t matter that I had
bought it myself; its real significance is that I had an impulse to buy
it; and that later I forgot that I had bought it.”