“I didn’t steal it. Sonia lent it to me herself.”
“Yes,” he answered thoughtfully. “I know; I am guilty before you, boy,
but you will try to forget it sometime, won’t you?”
I seized his hand and kissed it. I knew that he would never again
look at me with the dreadful eyes which I had seen only a few moments
before, and my long pent-up love burst forth in a torrent. I did not
fear him now.
“Will you let me go to the hill?” I suddenly asked, remembering
Tiburtsi’s invitation.
“Ye-es--go, boy, and say good-bye,” he answered tenderly, but with
still the same shade of hesitation in his voice. “No, wait a minute;
wait a minute, boy, please.”
He went into his bed-room and came back in a minute with a few bills
which he thrust into my hand.
“Give these to Tiburtsi. Tell him that I beg him--do you
understand?--that I beg him to accept this money--from you. Do you
understand? And say, too,” added my father, “say that if he knows any
one called Feodorovich he had better tell that Feodorovich to leave
this town. And now run along boy, quickly.”
Panting and incoherent, I overtook Tiburtsi on the hill and gave him my
father’s message.
“My father begs you to----” I said, and pressed the money which I had
received into his hand.
I did not look at his face. He took the money, and gloomily listened to
my message concerning Feodorovich.
In the crypt, on a bench in a dark corner, I found Marusia lying. The
word death has little meaning for a child, but bitter tears choked me
at the sight of her lifeless body. My little friend was lying there
looking very serious and sad, and her tiny face was pitifully drawn.
Her closed eyes were a little sunken and the blue circles around them
were darker than before. Her little mouth was slightly open, and wore
an expression of childish grief. This little grimace was Marusia’s
answer to our tears.
The Professor was standing at her bedside, indifferently shaking his
head. The Grenadier was hammering in a corner, making a coffin out of
some old boards torn from the chapel roof. Lavrovski, sober and with a
look of perfect understanding, was strewing Marusia’s body with autumn
flowers which he himself had gathered. Valek was lying asleep in a
corner, shuddering all over in his dreams, and crying out restlessly
from time to time.
X