The Little Demon by Fyodor Sologub (reading e books .TXT) 📕

taunted him and foreboded new and worse disappointments. Peredonov wrapped his scarf round his neck and thought that in such weather it was easy to catch cold.

“What sort of flowers are those, Pavloushka?” he asked as he pointed out to Volodin some small yellow flowers by a garden fence.

“That’s liutiki,26 Ardasha,” said Volodin sadly. Peredonov recalled that many such flowers grew in his own garden, and what a terrible name they had! Perhaps they were poisonous. One day Varvara would take a handful of them and boil them instead of tea, and would poison him⁠—then when the inspector’s certificate arrived, she would poison him and make Volodin take his place. Perhaps they had already agreed upon it. It was not for nothing that he knew the name of this flower. In the meantime Volodin was saying:

“Let God be her judge! Why did she humiliate me? She’s waiting for an aristocrat and it doesn’t occur to her that there are all sorts of aristocrats⁠—she might be miserable with one of them; but a simple, good man might make her happy. And now I’ll go to church and put a candle for her health and pray: May God give her a drunken husband, who will beat her, who will squander her money and leave her penniless in the world. Then she will remember me, but it will be too late. She will dry her tears with her hand and say, ‘What a fool I was to reject Pavel Vassilyevitch. There’s no one to direct me now. He was a good man!’ ”

Touched by his own words, a few tears came into Volodin’s eyes and he wiped them from his sheepish, bulging eyes with his hands.

“You’d better break some of her windows one night,” advised Peredonov.

“Well, God be with her,” said Volodin sadly. “I might be caught. No, and what a miserable little boy that is! O Lord, what have I done to him that he should think of harming me? Haven’t I tried hard for him, and look what mischief he’s done me! What do you think of such an infant; what will become of him? Tell me.”

“Yes,” said Peredonov savagely, “you couldn’t even manage the little boy. Oh, you lover!”

“Well, what of that?” said Volodin. “Of course I’m a lover. I’ll find another. She needn’t think that I’ll grieve for her.”

“Oh, you lover,” Peredonov continued to taunt him. “And he put a new tie on! How can a chap like you expect to be a gentleman? Lover!”

“Well, I’m the lover and you’re the matchmaker, Ardasha,” argued Volodin. “You yourself aroused hopes in me and couldn’t fulfil them. Oh, you matchmaker!”

And they began zealously to taunt one another and to argue as if they were discussing some important business matter.

Nadezhda escorted her visitors to the door and returned to the drawing-room. Misha was lying on the sofa laughing. His sister pulled him off the sofa by his shoulders and said:

“But you have forgotten that you oughtn’t to listen behind doors.”

She lifted her hands and made as if to cross her little fingers at an angle, a sign for him to go into the corner, but suddenly burst out laughing, and the little fingers did not come together. Misha threw himself towards her. They embraced and laughed for a long time.

“All the same,” she said, “you ought to go in the corner for listening.”

“You ought to let me off,” said Misha. “I saved you from that bridegroom, so you ought to be grateful.”

“Who saved whom? You heard how they were talking of giving you a birching. Now go into the corner.”

“Well, I’d better kneel here,” said Misha.

He lowered himself on to his knees at his sister’s feet and laid his head in her lap. She caressed him and tickled him. Misha laughed, scrabbling with his knees on the floor. Suddenly his sister pushed him from her and sat down on the sofa. Misha remained alone. He stayed awhile on his knees, and looked questioningly at his sister. She seated herself more comfortably and picked up a book as if to read, but watched her brother over it.

“Well, I’m tired now,” he said plaintively.

“I’m not keeping you there, you put yourself there,” answered Nadezhda, smiling over her book.

“Well, I’ve been punished, let me go, please,” entreated Misha.

“Did I put you on your knees?” said Nadezhda in a voice of assumed indifference. “Why do you bother me?”

“I’ll not get up until you’ve forgiven me.”

Nadezhda burst out laughing, put the book aside, and taking hold of Misha’s shoulders, pulled him to her. He gave a squeal and threw himself into her arms exclaiming:

“Pavloushka’s bride!”

XVI

The dark-eyed boy occupied all Liudmilla’s thoughts. She often talked about him with her own family and with acquaintances, sometimes unseasonably. Almost every night she saw him in a dream, sometimes quiet and ordinary but often in a wild and fantastic guise. Her accounts of these dreams became so habitual with her that her sisters began to ask her every morning how she had dreamed of Sasha. She spent all her leisure thinking about him.

On Sunday Liudmilla prevailed on her sisters to ask Kokovkina in after Mass and to keep her a while. She wanted to find Sasha alone. She herself did not go to church. She instructed her sisters: “Tell her that I overslept myself.”

Her sisters laughed at her plot but agreed to help her. They lived very amicably together. Besides this suited them admirably⁠—Liudmilla would occupy herself with a boy and that would leave them the more eligible young men. And they did as they promised⁠—they invited Kokovkina to come in after Mass.

In the meantime Liudmilla got ready to go. She dressed herself very gaily and handsomely and scented herself with soft syringa perfume, and she put a new bottle of scent and a small sprinkler into her white bead-trimmed handbag, and stood just behind the blind in the drawing-room so that she could see whether Kokovkina was coming. She had