hare, but subsequently thought it better to change it into a blue bush.
Yet the blue bush did not wholly please me, so I changed it into a tree,
and then into a rick, until, the whole paper having now become one blur
of blue, I tore it angrily in pieces, and went off to meditate in the
large arm-chair.
Mamma was playing Field's second concerto. Field, it may be said, had
been her master. As I dozed, the music brought up before my imagination
a kind of luminosity, with transparent dream-shapes. Next she played the
'Sonate Pathetique' of Beethoven, and I at once felt heavy, depressed,
and apprehensive. Mamma often played those two pieces, and therefore I
well recollect the feelings they awakened in me. Those feelings were a
reminiscence--of what? Somehow I seemed to remember something which had
never been.
Opposite to me lay the study door, and presently I saw Jakoff enter it,
accompanied by several long-bearded men in kaftans. Then the door shut
again.
'Now they are going to begin some business or other,' I thought. I
believed the affairs transacted in that study to be the most important
ones on earth. This opinion was confirmed by the fact that people only
approached the door of that room on tiptoe and speaking in whispers.
Presently Papa's resonant voice sounded within, and I also scented
cigar smoke--always a very attractive thing to me. Next, as I dozed, I
suddenly heard a creaking of boots that I knew, and, sure enough,
saw Karl Ivanitch go on tiptoe, and with a depressed, but resolute,
expression on his face and a written document in his hand, to the study
door and knock softly. It opened, and then shut again behind him.
'I hope nothing is going to happen,' I mused. 'Karl Ivanitch is
offended, and might be capable of anything--' and again I dozed off.
Nevertheless something DID happen. An hour later I was disturbed by
the same creaking of boots, and saw Karl come out, and disappear up
the stairs, wiping away a few tears from his cheeks with his pocket
handkerchief as he went and muttering something between his teeth. Papa
came out behind him and turned aside into the drawing-room.
'Do you know what I have just decided to do?' he asked gaily as he laid
a hand upon Mamma's shoulder.
'What, my love?'
'To take Karl Ivanitch with the children. There will be room enough for
him in the carriage. They are used to him, and he seems greatly attached
to them. Seven hundred roubles a year cannot make much difference to us,
and the poor devil is not at all a bad sort of a fellow.' I could not
understand why Papa should speak of him so disrespectfully.
'I am delighted,' said Mamma, 'and as much for the children's sake as
his own. He is a worthy old man.'
'I wish you could have seen how moved he was when I told him that he
might look upon the 500 roubles as a present! But the most amusing thing
of all is this bill which he has just handed me. It is worth
seeing,' and with a smile Papa gave Mamma a paper inscribed in Karl's
handwriting. 'Is it not capital?' he concluded.
The contents of the paper were as follows: [The joke of this bill
consists chiefly in its being written in very bad Russian, with
continual mistakes as to plural and singular, prepositions and so
forth.]
'Two book for the children--70 copeck. Coloured paper, gold frames, and
a pop-guns, blockheads [This word has a double meaning in Russian.] for
cutting out several box for presents--6 roubles, 55 copecks. Several
book and a bows, presents for the childrens--8 roubles, 16 copecks. A
gold watches promised to me by Peter Alexandrovitch out of Moscow, in
