MORNING. Brilliant sunshine is piercing through the frozen lacework
on the window-panes into the nursery. Vanya, a boy of six, with a
cropped head and a nose like a button, and his sister Nina, a short,
chubby, curly-headed girl of four, wake up and look crossly at each
other through the bars of their cots.
"Oo-oo-oo! naughty children!" grumbles their nurse. "Good people
have had their breakfast already, while you can't get your eyes
open."
The sunbeams frolic over the rugs, the walls, and nurse's skirts,
and seem inviting the children to join in their play, but they take
no notice. They have woken up in a bad humour. Nina pouts, makes a
grimace, and begins to whine:
"Brea-eakfast, nurse, breakfast!"
Vanya knits his brows and ponders what to pitch upon to howl over.
He has already begun screwing up his eyes and opening his mouth,
but at that instant the voice of mamma reaches them from the
drawing-room, saying: "Don't forget to give the cat her milk, she
has a family now!"
The children's puckered countenances grow smooth again as they look
at each other in astonishment. Then both at once begin shouting,
jump out of their cots, and filling the air with piercing shrieks,
run barefoot, in their nightgowns, to the kitchen.
"The cat has puppies!" they cry. "The cat has got puppies!"
Under the bench in the kitchen there stands a small box, the one
in which Stepan brings coal when he lights the fire. The cat is
peeping out of the box. There is an expression of extreme exhaustion
on her grey face; her green eyes, with their narrow black pupils,
have a languid, sentimental look. From her face it is clear that
the only thing lacking to complete her happiness is the presence
in the box of "him," the father of her children, to whom she had
abandoned herself so recklessly! She wants to mew, and opens her
mouth wide, but nothing but a hiss comes from her throat; the
squealing of the kittens is audible.
The children squat on their heels before the box, and, motionless,
holding their breath, gaze at the cat. . . . They are surprised,
impressed, and do not hear nurse grumbling as she pursues them. The
most genuine delight shines in the eyes of both.
Domestic animals play a scarcely noticed but undoubtedly beneficial
part in the education and life of children. Which of us does not
remember powerful but magnanimous dogs, lazy lapdogs, birds dying
in captivity, dull-witted but haughty turkeys, mild old tabby cats,
who forgave us when we trod on their tails for fun and caused them
agonising pain? I even fancy, sometimes, that the patience, the
fidelity, the readiness to forgive, and the sincerity which are
characteristic of our domestic animals have a far stronger and more
definite effect on the mind of a child than the long exhortations
of some dry, pale Karl Karlovitch, or the misty expositions of a
governess, trying to prove to children that water is made up of
hydrogen and oxygen.
"What little things!" says Nina, opening her eyes wide and going
off into a joyous laugh. "They are like mice!"
"One, two, three," Vanya counts. "Three kittens. So there is one
for you, one for me, and one for somebody else, too."
"Murrm . . . murrm . . ." purrs the mother, flattered by their
attention. "Murrm."
After gazing at the kittens, the children take them from under the
cat, and begin squeezing them in their hands, then, not satisfied
with this, they put them in the skirts of their nightgowns, and run
into the other rooms.
"Mamma, the cat has got pups!" they shout.
Mamma is sitting in the drawing-room with some unknown gentleman.
Seeing the children unwashed, undressed, with their nightgowns held
up high, she is embarrassed, and looks at them severely.
"Let your nightgowns down, disgraceful children," she says. "Go out
of the room, or I will punish you."
But the children do not notice either mamma's threats or the presence
of a stranger. They put the kittens down on the carpet, and go off
into deafening squeals. The mother walks round them, mewing
imploringly. When, a little afterwards, the children are dragged
off to the nursery, dressed, made to say their prayers, and given
their breakfast, they are full of a passionate desire to get away
from these prosaic duties as quickly as possible, and to run to the
kitchen again.
Their habitual pursuits and games are thrown completely into the
background.
The kittens throw everything into the shade by making their appearance
in the world, and supply the great sensation of the day. If Nina
or Vanya had been offered forty pounds of sweets or ten thousand
kopecks for each kitten, they would have rejected such a barter
without the slightest hesitation. In spite of the heated protests
of the nurse and the cook, the children persist in sitting by the
cat's box in the kitchen, busy with the kittens till dinner-time.
Their faces are earnest and concentrated and express anxiety. They
are worried not so much by the present as by the future of the
kittens. They decide that one kitten shall remain at home with the
old cat to be a comfort to her mother, while the second shall go
to their summer villa, and the third shall live in the cellar, where
there are ever so many rats.
"But why don't they look at us?" Nina wondered. "Their eyes are
blind like the beggars'."
Vanya, too, is perturbed by this question. He tries to open one
kitten's eyes, and spends a long time puffing and breathing hard
over it, but his operation is unsuccessful. They are a good deal
troubled, too, by the circumstance that the kittens obstinately
refuse the milk and the meat that is offered to them. Everything
that is put before their little noses is eaten by their grey mamma.
"Let's build the kittens little houses," Vanya suggests. "They shall
live in different houses, and the cat shall come and pay them
visits. . . ."
Cardboard hat-boxes are put in the different corners of the kitchen
and the kittens are installed in them. But this division turns out
to be premature; the cat, still wearing an imploring and sentimental
expression on her face, goes the round of all the hat-boxes, and
carries off her children to their original position.
"The cat's their mother," observed Vanya, "but who is their father?"
"Yes, who is their father?" repeats Nina.
"They must have a father."
Vanya and Nina are a long time deciding who is to be the kittens'
father, and, in the end, their choice falls on a big dark-red horse
without a tail, which is lying in the store-cupboard under the
stairs, together with other relics of toys that have outlived their
day. They drag him up out of the store-cupboard and stand him by
the box.
"Mind now!" they admonish him, "stand here and see they behave
themselves properly."
All this is said and done in the gravest way, with an expression
of anxiety on their faces. Vanya and Nina refuse to recognise the
existence of any world but the box of kittens. Their joy knows no
bounds. But they have to pass through bitter, agonising moments,
too.
Just before dinner, Vanya is sitting in his father's study, gazing
dreamily at the table. A kitten is moving about by the lamp, on
stamped note paper. Vanya is watching its movements, and thrusting
first a pencil, then a match into its little mouth. . . . All at
once, as though he has sprung out of the floor, his father is beside
the table.
"What's this?" Vanya hears, in an angry voice.
"It's . . . it's the kitty, papa. . . ."
"I'll give it you; look what you have done, you naughty boy! You've
dirtied all my paper!"
To Vanya's great surprise his papa does not share his partiality
for the kittens, and, instead of being moved to enthusiasm and
delight, he pulls Vanya's ear and shouts:
"Stepan, take away this horrid thing."
At dinner, too, there is a scene. . . . During the second course
there is suddenly the sound of a shrill mew. They begin to investigate
its origin, and discover a kitten under Nina's pinafore.
"Nina, leave the table!" cries her father angrily. "Throw the kittens
in the cesspool! I won't have the nasty things in the house! . . ."
Vanya and Nina are horrified. Death in the cesspool, apart from its
cruelty, threatens to rob the cat and the wooden horse of their
children, to lay waste the cat's box, to destroy their plans for
the future, that fair future in which one cat will be a comfort to
its old mother, another will live in the country, while the third
will catch rats in the cellar. The children begin to cry and entreat
that the kittens may be spared. Their father consents, but on the
condition that the children do not go into the kitchen and touch
the kittens.
After dinner, Vanya and Nina slouch about the rooms, feeling
depressed. The prohibition of visits to the kitchen has reduced
them to dejection. They refuse sweets, are naughty, and are rude
to their mother. When their uncle Petrusha comes in the evening,
they draw him aside, and complain to him of their father, who wanted
to throw the kittens into the cesspool.
"Uncle Petrusha, tell mamma to have the kittens taken to the nursery,"
the children beg their uncle, "do-o tell her."
"There, there . . . very well," says their uncle, waving them off.
"All right."
Uncle Petrusha does not usually come alone. He is accompanied by
Nero, a big black dog of Danish breed, with drooping ears, and a
tail as hard as a stick. The dog is silent, morose, and full of a
sense of his own dignity. He takes not the slightest notice of the
children, and when he passes them hits them with his tail as though
they were chairs. The children hate him from the bottom of their
hearts, but on this occasion, practical considerations override
sentiment.
"I say, Nina," says Vanya, opening his eyes wide. "Let Nero be their
father, instead of the horse! The horse is dead and he is alive,
you see."
They are waiting the whole evening for the moment when papa will
sit down to his cards and it will be possible to take Nero to the
kitchen without being observed. . . . At last, papa sits down to
cards, mamma is busy with the samovar and not noticing the
children. . . .
The happy moment arrives.
"Come along!" Vanya whispers to his sister.
But, at that moment, Stepan comes in and, with a snigger, announces:
"Nero has eaten the kittens, madam."
Nina and Vanya turn pale and look at Stepan with horror.
"He really has . . ." laughs the footman, "he went to the box and
gobbled them up."
The children expect that all the people in the house will be aghast
and fall upon the miscreant Nero. But they all sit calmly in their
seats, and only express surprise at the appetite of the huge dog.
Papa and mamma laugh. Nero walks about by the table, wags his tail,
and licks his lips complacently . . . the cat is the only one who
is uneasy. With her tail in the air she walks about the rooms,
looking suspiciously at people and mewing plaintively.
"Children, it's past nine," cries mamma, "it's bedtime."
Vanya and Nina go to bed, shed tears, and spend a long time thinking
about the injured cat, and the cruel, insolent, and unpunished Nero.