Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Other Stories / Леди Макбет Мценского уезда и другие повести. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Won’t you go to sleep, Fedya?”

“No, auntie, I’ll wait for my old aunt.”

“Why wait for her?”

“She promised to bring me some blessed bread from the vigil.”

Katerina Lvovna suddenly went pale, her own child turned for the first time under her heart, and she felt a chill in her breast. She stood for a while in the middle of the room and then went out, rubbing her cold hands.

“Well!” she whispered, quietly going into her bedroom and finding Sergei again in the same position by the stove.

“What?” Sergei asked barely audibly and choked.

“He’s alone.”

Sergei scowled and started breathing heavily.

“Let’s go,” said Katerina Lvovna, abruptly turning to the door.

Sergei quickly took off his boots and asked:

“What shall I take?”

“Nothing,” Katerina Lvovna replied under her breath and quietly led him after her by the hand.

Chapter Eleven

The sick boy gave a start and lowered the book to his knees when Katerina Lvovna came into his room for the third time.

“What’s wrong, Fedya?”

“Oh, auntie, I got frightened of something,” he said, smiling anxiously and pressing himself to the corner of the bed.

“What are you frightened of?”

“Who is it that came with you, auntie?”

“Where? Nobody came, dearest.”

“Nobody?”

The boy leaned towards the foot of the bed and, narrowing his eyes, looked in the direction of the door through which his aunt had come, and was reassured.

“I probably imagined it,” he said.

Katerina Lvovna stood leaning her elbow on the headboard of her nephew’s bed.

Fedya looked at his aunt and remarked that for some reason she was very pale.

In reply to this remark, Katerina Lvovna coughed deliberately and glanced expectantly at the door to the drawing room. A floorboard creaked softly there.

“I’m reading the life of my guardian angel, St. Feodor Stratilatos, auntie. There was a man pleasing to God.”

Katerina Lvovna stood silently.

“Sit down if you like, auntie, and I’ll read it over to you,” her nephew tried to make up to her.

“Wait, I’ll just go and tend to that icon lamp in the reception room,” Katerina Lvovna replied and went out with hurried steps.

There was the softest whispering in the drawing room; but amidst the general silence it reached the child’s keen ear.

“Auntie, what is it? Who are you whispering to there?” the boy cried with tears in his voice.