walking away several times, I brought the shopman to knocking down the price and asking no more than ten roubles in silver. How I enjoyed bargaining! . . . Poor Matrona could not make out what was the matter with me and what possessed me to buy so many books. But, oh, horror! My whole capital consisted of thirty roubles in paper, sind the shopman would not consent to let tiie books go cheaper. At last I began beseeching him, begged and begged him and at last persuaded him. He gave way but only took off two and a half roubles and swore he only made that concession for my sake because I was such a nice young lady and he would not have done it for anyone else. I still had not enough by two and a half roubles. I was ready to cry with vexation. But the most unexpected circumstance came to my assistance in my distress.
Not far off at another bookstall I saw old Pokrovsky. Four or five second-hand dealers were clustering about him; they were bewildering him completely and he weis at his wits' end. Each of them was proffering his wares and there was no end to the books they offered and he longed to buy. The poor old man stood in the midst of them, looking a disconsolate figure and did not know what to choose from what was offered him. I went up and asked him what he was doing here. The old man was delighted to see me; he was extremely fond of me, hardly less than of his Petinka, perhaps.
'Why, I'm buying books, Varvara Alexyevna,' he answered. 'I am bu}dng books for Petinka. Here it will soon be his birthday and he is fond of books, so, you see, I am going to buy them for him. ...'
The old man always expressed himself in a very funny way and now he was in the utmost confusion besides. Whatever he asked the price of, it was always a silver rouble, or two or three silver roubles; he had by now given up inquiring about the bigger books and only looked covetously at them, turning over the leaves, weighing them in his hands and putting them back again in their places.
'No, no, that's dear,' he would say in an undertone, 'but maybe there'll be something here.'
And then he would begin turning over thin pamphlets, song-books, almanacs; these were all very cheap.
'But why do you want to buy those?' I asked him. 'They are all awful rubbish.'
'Oh, no,' he answered. 'No, you only look what good little books there are here. They are very, very good little books!'
And the last words he brought out in such a plaintive singsong that I fancied he was ready to cry with vexation at the good books being so dear, and in another moment a tear would drop from his pale cheeks on his red nose. I asked him whether he had plenty of money.
'Why, here,' the poor fellow pulled out at once all his money wrapped up in a piece of greasy newspaper. 'Here there's half a rouble, a twenty-kopeck piece and twenty kopecks in copper.'
I carried him off at once to my second-hand bookseller.
'Here, these eleven volumes cost only thirty-two roubles and a half; I have thirty; put your two and a half to it and we will buy all these books and give them to him together.'
The old man was beside himself with delight, he shook out all his money, and the bookseller piled all our purchased volumes upon him. The old man stuffed volumes in all his pockets, carried them in both hands and under his arms and bore them all off to his home, giving me his word to bring them all to me in secret next day.
Next day the old man came to see his son, spent about an hour with him as usual, then came in to us and sat down beside me with a very comical mysterious air. Rubbing his hands in proud deUght at being in possession of a secret, he began with a smile by telling me that all the books had been conveyed here unnoticed and were standing in a comer in the kitchen under Matrona's protection. Then the conversation naturally passed to the day we were looking forward to; the old man talked at length of how we would give our present, and the more absorbed he became in the subject the more apparent it was to me that he had something in his heart of which he could not, dared not, speak, which, in fact, he was afraid to put into words. I waited and said nothing. The secret joy, the secret satisfaction which I had readily discerned at first in his strange gestures and grimaces and the winking of his
,i66
left eye, disappeared. Every moment he grew more uneasy and disconsolate; at last he could not contain himself.
'Listen,' he began timidly in an undertone.
'Listen, Varvara Alexyevna ... do you know what, Varvara Alexyevna . . . ?' The old man was in terrible confusion. 'When the day of his birthday comes, you know, you take ten books and give them yourself, that is from yourself, on your own account; I'll take only the eleventh, and I, too, will give it from myself, that is, apart, on my own account. So then, do you see—^you will have something to give, and I shall have something to give; we shall both have something to give.'
At this paint the old man was overcome with confusion and relapsed into silence. I glanced at him; he was waiting for my verdict with timid expectation.
'But why do you want us not to give them together, Zahar Petrovitch?'
'Why, you see, Varvara Alexyevna, it's just . . . it's only, you know ...'
In short, the old man faltered, flushed, got stuck in his sentence and could not proceed.
'You see,' he explained at last, 'Varvara Alexyevna, I indulge at times . . . that is, I want to teU you that I am almost always indulging, constantly indulging ... I have a habit which is very bad . . . that is, you know, it's apt to be so cold outdoors and at times there are unpleasantnesses of all sorts, or something makes one sad, or something happens amiss and then I give way at once and begin to indulge and sometimes drink too much. Petrusha dislikes that very much. He gets angry with me, do you see, Varvara Alexyevna, scolds me and gives me lectures, so that I should have liked now to show him by my present that I am reforming and beginning to behave properly, that here I've saved up to buy the book, saved up for ever so long, for I scarcely ever have any money except it may happen Petrusha gives me something. He knows that. So here he will see how I have used my money and wiU know that I have done all that only for him.
I felt dreadfully sorry for the old man. I thought for a moment. The old man looked at me uneasily.
'Listen, Zahar Petrovitch,' I said; 'you give him them aU.'
'How all? Do you mean all the books?'
'Why, yes, all the books.'
''And from myself?'
'Yes, from yourself.'
'From myself alone? Do you mean on my ovm account?'
'Why yes, on your own account.'
I believe I made my meaning very clear, but it was a long time before the old man could understand me.
'Why yes,' he said, after pondering. 'Yes! That would be very nice, but how about you, Varvara Alexyevna?'
'Oh, well, I shall give nothing.'
'What!' cried the old man, almost alarmed. 'So you don't want to give Petinka an5rthing?'
The old man was dismayed; at tiiat moment he was ready, I believe, to give up his project in order that I might be able to give his son something. He was a kind-hearted old fellow! I assured him that I should have been glad to give something, but did not want to deprive him of the pleasure.
'If your son is satisfied and you are glad,' I added, 'then I shall be glad, for I shall feel secretly in my heart as though I were really giving it myself.'
With that the old man was completely satisfied. He spent another two hours with us, but could not sit still in his place and was continually getting up, fussing noisily about, plajdng with Sasha, stealtiiily kissing me, pinching my hand and making faces at Anna Fyodorovna on the sly. Anna Fyodorovna turned him out of the house at last. The old man was, in fact, in his delight, more excited than he had perhaps ever been before.
On the festive day he appeared exactly at eleven o'clock, coming straight from mass in a decently mended swallow-tail coat and actually wearing a new waistcoat and new boots. He had a bundle of books in each hand. We were all sitting drinking cofEee in Anna Fyodorovna's drawing-room at the time (it was Sunday). The old man began by saying, I beUeve, that Pushkin was a very fine poet; Iben, with much hesitation and confusion, he passed suddenly to the necessity of one's behaving oneself properly, and that if a man does not behave properly then he will indulge; that bad habits are the ruin and destruction of a man; he even enumerated several fatal instances of intemperance, and wound up by saying that for some time past he had been completely reformed and his behaviour now was excellent and exemplary; that he had even, in the past, felt the justice of his son's exhortations, that he felt it all long ago and laid it to heart, but now he had begun
