________________________________________________
_ "Well, Kapitonitch?" said Seryozha, coming back rosy and good-
humored from his walk the day before his birthday, and giving his
overcoat to the tall old hall-porter, who smiled down at the
little person from the height of his long figure. "Well, has the
bandaged clerk been here to-day? Did papa see him!"
"He saw him. The minute the chief secretary came out, I announced
him," said the hall-porter with a good-humored wink. "Here, I'll
take it off."
"Seryozha!" said the tutor, stopping in the doorway leading to
the inner rooms. "Take it off yourself." But Seryozha, though he
heard his tutor's feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He
stood keeping hold of the hall-porter's belt, and gazing into his
face.
"Well, and did papa do what he wanted for him?"
The hall-porter nodded his head affirmatively. The clerk with his
face tied up, who had already been seven times to ask some favor
of Alexey Alexandrovitch, interested both Seryozha and the
hall-porter. Seryozha had come upon him in the hall, and had
heard him plaintively beg the hall-porter to announce him, saying
that he and his children had death staring them in the face.
Since then Seryozha, having met him a second time in the hall,
took great interest in him.
"Well, was he very glad?" he asked.
"Glad? I should think so! Almost dancing as he walked away."
"And has anything been left?" asked Seryozha, after a pause.
"Come, sir," said the hall-porter; then with a shake of his head
he whispered, "Something from the countess."
Seryozha understood at once that what the hall-porter was
speaking of was a present from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for his
birthday.
"What do you say? Where?"
"Korney took it to your papa. A fine plaything it must be too!"
"How big? Like this?"
"Rather small, but a fine thing."
"A book."
"No, a thing. Run along, run along, Vassily Lukitch is calling
you," said the porter, hearing the tutor's steps approaching, and
carefully taking away from his belt the little hand in the glove
half pulled off, he signed with his head towards the tutor.
"Vassily Lukitch, in a tiny minute!" answered Seryozha with that
gay and loving smile which always won over the conscientious
Vassily Lukitch.
Seryozha was too happy, everything was too delightful for him to
be able to help sharing with his friend the porter the family
good fortune of which he had heard during his walk in the public
gardens from Lidia Ivanovna's niece. This piece of good news
seemed to him particularly important from its coming at the same
time with the gladness of the bandaged clerk and his own gladness
at toys having come for him. It seemed to Seryozha that this was
a day on which every one ought to be glad and happy.
"You know papa's received the Alexander Nevsky to-day?"
"To be sure I do! People have been already to congratulate him."
"And is he glad?"
"Glad at the Tsar's gracious favor! I should think so! It's a
proof he's deserved it," said the porter severely and seriously.
Seryozha fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the porter,
which he had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially the
chin that hung down between the gray whiskers, never seen by any
one but Seryozha, who saw him only from below.
"Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?"
The porter's daughter was a ballet-dancer.
"When is she to come on week-days? They've their lessons to learn
too. And you've your lesson, sir; run along."
On coming into the room, Seryozha, instead of sitting down to his
lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been
brought him must be a machine. "What do you think?" he inquired.
But Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the necessity of
learning the grammar lesson for the teacher, who was coming at
two.
"No, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch," he asked suddenly, when
he was seated at their work-table with the book in his hands,
"what is greater than the Alexander Nevsky? You know papa's
received the Alexander Nevsky?"
Vassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater than the
Alexander Nevsky.
"And higher still?"
"Well, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny."
"And higher than the Andrey?"
"I don't know."
"What, you don't know?" and Seryozha, leaning on his elbows, sank
into deep meditation.
His meditations were of the most complex and diverse character.
He imagined his father's having suddenly been presented with both
the Vladimir and the Andrey to-day, and in consequence being much
better tempered at his lesson, and dreamed how, when he was grown
up, he would himself receive all the orders, and what they might
invent higher than the Andrey. Directly any higher order were
invented, he would win it. They would make a higher one still,
and he would immediately win that too.
The time passed in such meditations, and when the teacher came,
the lesson about the adverbs of place and time and manner of
action was not ready, and the teacher was not only displeased,
but hurt. This touched Seryozha. He felt he was not to blame for
not having learned the lesson; however much he tried, he was
utterly unable to do that. As long as the teacher was explaining
to him, he believed him and seemed to comprehend, but as soon as
he was left alone, he was positively unable to recollect and to
understand that the short and familiar word "suddenly" is an
adverb of manner of action. Still he was sorry that he had
disappointed the teacher.
He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the
book.
"Mihail Ivanitch, when is your birthday?" he asked all, of a
sudden.
"You'd much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of
no importance to a rational being. It's a day like any other on
which one has to do one's work."
Seryozha looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty beard, at
his spectacles, which had slipped down below the ridge on his
nose, and fell into so deep a reverie that he heard nothing of
what the teacher was explaining to him. He knew that the teacher
did not think what he said; he felt it from the tone in which it
was said. "But why have they all agreed to speak just in the same
manner always the dreariest and most useless stuff? Why does he
keep me off; why doesn't he love me?" he asked himself
mournfully, and could not think of an answer. _
Read next: Book Five: Chapter 27
Read previous: Book Five: Chapter 25
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