The Little Demon - Fyodor Sologub (reading the story of the TXT) 📗

weak and frail, and she envied her sisters⁠—she envied Darya her gay laughter and even Liudmilla’s tears. Liudmilla said again:

“You don’t understand anything. I don’t love him at all as you think. To love a boy is better than to fall in love with a commonplace face with moustaches. I love him innocently. I don’t want anything from him.”

“If you don’t want anything from him, why do you torment him?” said Darya harshly.

Liudmilla grew red and a guilty expression came on to her face. Darya took pity on her; she walked up to Liudmilla, put her arms round her and said:

“Don’t mind what we say⁠—it’s only our spitefulness!”

Liudmilla began to cry again, and pressing against Darya’s shoulder, said sadly:

“I know there’s nothing for me to hope for from him but if he would only caress me a little!”

“What’s the matter?” said Darya as she walked away from Liudmilla; she put her hands on her hips and sang loudly:

“Last night I left my darling⁠ ⁠…”

Valeria broke into a clear, fragile laugh. And Liudmilla’s eyes looked gay and mischievous again. She walked into her room impetuously and sprinkled herself with Korylopsis⁠—the sweet, piquant, odour seized upon her seductively. She walked out into the street, in her best clothes, feeling distraught; and an indiscreet attractiveness was wafted from her. “Perhaps I shall meet him,” she thought.

She did meet him.

“Well, you’re a nice one,” she exclaimed reproachfully and yet happily.

Sasha felt both confused and glad.

“I had no time,” he said. “There are too many lessons to do. Really I had no time.”

“You’re fibbing, little one, but come along.”

He resisted for a while, but it was clear that he was glad to let Liudmilla take him away with her. And Liudmilla brought him home.

“I’ve found him,” she said to her sisters triumphantly, and taking Sasha by the shoulders, she led him into her room.

Sasha, putting his hands inside his belt, stood uneasily in the middle of the room, and felt both happy and sad. There seemed to be an odour of new pleasant scents there, and in this odour there was something that provoked and irritated the nerves like the contact of living rough little snakes.

XVIII

Peredonov was returning from the lodgings of one of his pupils. Quite suddenly he was caught in a drizzling rain. He tried to think where he could shelter for a while, so as not to spoil his new silk umbrella in the rain. Across the way was a detached, two-storeyed, stone house; on it was the brass plate of the Notary Public, Goudayevsky. The notary’s son was a pupil in the second form of the gymnasia. Peredonov decided to go in. Incidentally he would make a complaint against the notary’s son.

He found both parents at home. They met him with a good deal of fuss. Everything was done there in that way.

Nikolai Mikhailovitch Goudayevsky was a short, robust, dark man, bald and with a long beard. His movements were impetuous and unexpected. He seemed not to walk but to flutter along. He was small like a sparrow, and it was always impossible to tell from his face and attitude what he would do the next minute. In the midst of a serious conversation he would suddenly throw out his knee, which would not so much amuse people as perplex them as to his motive. At home or when visiting he would sit quiet for a long time and then suddenly jump up without any visible cause, pace quickly up and down the room, and exclaim or knock something. In the street he would walk, then suddenly pause, or make some gesture or gymnastic exercise, and then he would continue his walk. On the documents which he drew up or attested Goudayevsky liked to write ridiculous remarks, as, for example, instead of writing about Ivan Ivanitch Ivanov that he lived on the Moscow Square in Ermillova’s house, he would write Ivan Ivanitch Ivanov who lived on the Market Square in that quarter where it was impossible to breathe for the stench; and so forth; and he even made a note sometimes of the number of geese and hens kept by the man whose signature he was attesting.

Julia Goudayevskaya was a tall, slim, bony woman, passionate and extremely sentimental, who, in spite of the disparity of their figures, resembled her husband in certain habits: she had the same impetuous and disproportionate movements, unlike those of other people. She was dressed youthfully and in colours, and whenever she made her quick movements the long variegated ribbons, with which she loved to adorn in abundance her dress and hair, flew in all directions.

Antosha, a slender, alert boy, bowed courteously. Peredonov was seated in the drawing-room and he immediately began to complain of Antosha: that he was lazy, inattentive, and did not listen in class but chattered and laughed, and was mischievous during recess. Antosha was astonished⁠—he did not know that he was considered such a wicked boy⁠—and he began to defend himself hotly. Both parents were annoyed.

“Will you be good enough to tell me,” shouted the father, “in what precisely his mischievousness consists?”

“Nika, don’t defend him,” cried the mother. “He shouldn’t get up to mischief.”

“But what mischief has he done?” enquired the father, running, almost rolling on his short legs.

“He’s generally mischievous. He raises a racket and he fights,” said Peredonov morosely. “He’s always in mischief.”

“I don’t fight at all,” exclaimed Antosha dolefully. “Ask anyone you like. I haven’t fought with anybody.”

“He doesn’t let anyone pass,” said Peredonov.

“Very well, I’ll go to the gymnasia myself and I’ll ask the inspector,” said Goudayevsky decisively.

“Nika, Nika, why don’t you believe him?” cried Julia. “Would you like to see Antosha turn out a good-for-nothing? He needs a beating.”

“Nonsense, nonsense!” cried the father.

“I’ll give him a beating without fail,” exclaimed Julia, as she caught her son by the shoulder and was about to drag him into the kitchen.

“Antosha!” she cried. “Come along; I’ll give you a whipping.”

“I’ll not let you have him,”