Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Five/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI
"Well, Kapitonuitch?" said Serozha, as he came in, rosy and gay, after his walk, on the evening before his birthday, while the old Swiss, smiling down from his superior height, helped the young man off with his coat, "did the bandaged chinovnik come to-day? Did papa see him?"
"Yes; the manager had only just got here when I announced him," replied the Swiss, winking one eye gayly. "Permit me, I will take it."
"Serozha! Serozha!" called the Slavophile tutor, who was standing by the door that led to the inner rooms, "take off your coat yourself."
But Serozha, though he heard his tutor's weak voice, paid no heed to him; standing by the Swiss, he held him by the belt, and looked him straight in the face.
"And did papa do what he wanted?"
The Swiss nodded.
This chinovnik, with his head in a bandage, who had come seven times to ask some favor of Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, interested Serozha and the Swiss. Serozha had met him one day in the vestibule, and overheard how he begged the Swiss to let him be admitted, saying that nothing was left for him and his children but to die. Since that time the lad had felt great concern for the poor man.
"Say, did he seem very glad?" asked Serozha.
"Glad as he could be; he went off almost leaping."
"Has anything come?" asked Serozha, after a moment's silence.
"Well, sir," whispered the Swiss, shaking his head "there is something from the countess."
Serozha instantly understood that what the Swiss meant was a birthday present from the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
"What did you say? Where is it?"
"Kornei took it to papa; it must be some beautiful toy!"
"How big? as big as this?"
"Smaller, but beautiful."
"A little book?"
"No; a toy. Run away, run away. Vasili Lukitch is calling you," said the Swiss, hearing the tutor's steps approach, and gently removing the little gloved hand which held his belt.
"In a little bit of a moment, Vasili Lukitch," said Serozha, with the amiable and gracious smile to whose influence even the stern tutor submitted.
Serozha was in radiant spirits, and wanted to tell his friend, the Swiss, about a piece of good fortune which the Countess Lidia Ivanovna's niece had told him, while they were walking in the summer garden, had befallen the family. His happiness seemed greater still since he heard about the chinovnik's success and his present. It seemed to Serozha that every one ought to be happy this beautiful day.
"Do you know papa has received the Alexander Nevsky order?"
"Why shouldn't I know? He has been receiving congratulations."
"Is he glad?"
"How could he help being glad of the Tsar's favor? Of course he deserves it!" said the old Swiss, gravely.
Serozha reflected as he looked into the Swiss's face, which he knew even to the least detail, but especially the chin, between his gray side-whiskers. No one had seen his chin except Serozha, who looked up at it from below.
"Well! and your daughter? Isn't it a long time since she has been to see us?"
The Swiss's daughter was a ballet-dancer.
"How could she find time to come on work-days?" he exclaimed. "They have their lessons as well as you; and you had better be off to yours, sir."
When Serozha reached his room, instead of attending to his tasks, he poured out into the tutor's ears all his surmises about the present which had been brought him. "It must be a locomotive engine; what do you think about it?" he asked; but Vasili Lukitch was thinking of nothing except the grammar lesson, which had to be ready for the professor, who came at two o'clock.
"No, but you must just tell me one thing, Vasili Lukitch," asked the child, who was now sitting at his desk, with his book in his hands: "what is there higher than the Alexander Nevsky? You know that papa has just received the Alexander Nevsky."
Vasili Lukitch replied that the order of Vladimir was higher.
"And above that?"
"St. Andrew[1] above them all."
"And above that?"
"I don't know."
"Why don't you know?" and Serozha, leaning his head on his hand, began to think.
The child's thoughts were very varied and complicated; he imagined that his father perhaps was going to have the orders of Vladimir and St. Andrew, and that therefore he would be more indulgent for that day's lessons; and that he himself When he grew up, would do his best to deserve all the decorations, even those that would be given higher than that of St. Andrew. A new order would scarcely have time to be founded before he would make himself worthy of it.
These thoughts made the time pass so quickly that, when the professor came, his lesson about the circumstances of time, and place, and mode of action was not prepared at all; and the professor seemed not only dissatisfied, but distressed. His professor distress touched Serozha. He felt that he was to blame for not having learned his lesson. In spite of all his efforts, he really had been unable to do it. When the professor was talking to him, he imagined that he understbod; but when he was alone, he really could not remember or comprehend that such a short and easy word as vdrug, "suddenly," is a circumstance of the mode of action; but still he was sorry that he had tried his teacher.
He seized on a moment when his teacher was silently looking into a book, to ask him:—
"Mikhaïl Ivanovitch, when will your birthday be?"
"You would do better to think about your work; birthdays have no importance for a reasonable being. It is only a day just like any other, and must be spent in work."
Serozha looked attentively at his teacher, studied his sparse beard, his eye-glasses far down on his nose, and got into such a deep brown study that he heard nothing of what the teacher was explaining to him. He had a dim comprehension that his teacher did not believe what he said. By the tone in which he said it, he felt that it was incredible.
"But why do they all try to say to me the most tiresome things and the most useless things, and all in the same way? Why does this man keep me from him, and not love me?" he asked himself sadly, and he could not discover any answer.
- ↑ Andreï Pervozbanny, Andrew the First-called or Protokletos.