check cotton handkerchief, a round black snuff-box, and a green
spectacle-case. The neatness and orderliness of all these articles show
clearly that Karl Ivanitch has a clear conscience and a quiet mind.
Sometimes, when tired of running about the salon downstairs, I would
steal on tiptoe to the schoolroom and find Karl sitting alone in his
armchair as, with a grave and quiet expression on his face, he perused
one of his favourite books. Yet sometimes, also, there were moments when
he was not reading, and when the spectacles had slipped down his large
aquiline nose, and the blue, half-closed eyes and faintly smiling lips
seemed to be gazing before them with a curious expression. All would be
quiet in the room--not a sound being audible save his regular breathing
and the ticking of the watch with the hunter painted on the dial. He
would not see me, and I would stand at the door and think: 'Poor, poor
old man! There are many of us, and we can play together and be happy,
but he sits there all alone, and has nobody to be fond of him. Surely
he speaks truth when he says that he is an orphan. And the story of his
life, too--how terrible it is! I remember him telling it to Nicola. How
dreadful to be in his position!' Then I would feel so sorry for him that
I would go to him, and take his hand, and say, 'Dear Karl Ivanitch!'
and he would be visibly delighted whenever I spoke to him like this, and
would look much brighter.
On the second wall of the schoolroom hung some maps-- mostly torn, but
glued together again by Karl's hand. On the third wall (in the middle of
which stood the door) hung, on one side of the door, a couple of rulers
(one of them ours--much bescratched, and the other one his--quite a new
one), with, on the further side of the door, a blackboard on which our
more serious faults were marked by circles and our lesser faults by
crosses. To the left of the blackboard was the corner in which we had to
kneel when naughty. How well I remember that corner--the shutter on the
stove, the ventilator above it, and the noise which it made when turned!
Sometimes I would be made to stay in that corner till my back and knees
were aching all over, and I would think to myself. 'Has Karl Ivanitch
forgotten me? He goes on sitting quietly in his arm-chair and reading
his Hydrostatics, while I--!' Then, to remind him of my presence, I
would begin gently turning the ventilator round. Or scratching some
plaster off the wall; but if by chance an extra large piece fell upon
the floor, the fright of it was worse than any punishment. I would
glance round at Karl, but he would still be sitting there quietly, book
in hand, and pretending that he had noticed nothing.
In the middle of the room stood a table, covered with a torn black
oilcloth so much cut about with penknives that the edge of the table
showed through. Round the table stood unpainted chairs which, through
use, had attained a high degree of polish. The fourth and last wall
contained three windows, from the first of which the view was as
follows. Immediately beneath it there ran a high road on which every
irregularity, every pebble, every rut was known and dear to me. Beside
the road stretched a row of lime-trees, through which glimpses could be
caught of a wattled fence, with a meadow with farm buildings on one side
of it and a wood on the other--the whole bounded by the keeper's hut at
the further end of the meadow. The next window to the right overlooked
the part of the terrace where the 'grownups' of the family used to sit
