The darling / Душечка. Сборник рассказов

He was married and had a little boy, but was separated from his wife because she had been unfaithful to him, and now he hated her and used to send her forty roubles[4 - roubles – Russian currency, 1 rouble = 100 kopecks] a month for the maintenance of their son. And hearing of all this, Olenka sighed and shook her head. She was sorry for him.

“Well, God save you,” she used to say to him at parting, as she lighted him down the stairs with a candle. “Thank you for coming to cheer me up, and may the Mother of God give you health.

”

And she always expressed herself with the same sedateness and dignity, the same reasonableness, in imitation of her husband. As the veterinary surgeon was disappearing behind the door below, she would say:

“You know, Vladimir Platonitch, you’d better make it up with your wife. You should forgive her for the sake of your son. You may be sure the little fellow understands everything.”

And when Pustovalov came back, she told him in a low voice about the veterinary surgeon and his unhappy home life, and both sighed and shook their heads and talked about the boy, who, no doubt, missed his father, and by some strange connection of ideas, they went up to the holy ikons, bowed to the ground before them and prayed that God would give them children.

And so the Pustovalovs lived for six years quietly and peaceably in love and complete harmony.

But behold! one winter day after drinking hot tea in the office, Vassily Andreitch went out into the yard without his cap on to see about sending off some timber, caught cold and was taken ill.

He had the best doctors, but he grew worse and died after four months’ illness. And Olenka was a widow once more.

“I’ve got nobody, now you’ve left me, my darling,” she sobbed, after her husband’s funeral. “How can I live without you, in wretchedness and misery! Have pity on me, good people, I’m all alone in the world!”

She went about dressed in black with long “weepers,” and gave up wearing hat and gloves for good.

She hardly ever went out, except to church, or to her husband’s grave, and led the life of a nun. It was not till six months later that she took off the “weepers” and opened the shutters of the windows. She was sometimes seen in the mornings, going with her cook to market for provisions, but what went on in her house and how she lived now could only be surmised.