When he had drunk his tea, he cleaned a herring, and squeezed onion on it with such vigour that tears of emotion sprang into his eyes. He spoke again of the totalisator, of his winnings, and of a hat of Panama straw for which he had paid sixteen roubles the day before. He lied with the same appetite with which he had drunk and devoured the herring. His son sat silently for more than an hour, and then rose to take leave.
"I wouldn't think of detaining you," said Musátoff stiffly. "I ask your pardon, young man, for not living in the way to which you are accustomed."
He bristled up, sniffed with dignity, and winked to the women.
"Good-bye, young man!" he said, escorting his son into the hall. "Attendez!"
But in the hall, where it was quite dark, he suddenly pressed his face to his son's arm, and sobbed. "If I could only see Sóniushka!" he whispered. "Arrange it, Bórenka, angel mine! I will have a shave, and put on one of your suits ... and make a severe face. I won't open my mouth while she's present I won't say a word. I swear to God!"
He glanced timidly at the door, from behind which came the shrill voices of the women, smothered his sobs, and said in a loud voice:
"Well, good-bye, young man! Attendez!"
[TWO TRAGEDIES]
At ten o'clock on a dark September evening six-year-old Andrei, the only son of Dr. Kiríloff, a Zemstvo physician, died from diphtheria. The doctor's wife had just thrown herself upon her knees at the bedside of her dead child, and was giving way to the first ecstacy of despair, when the hall-door bell rang loudly. Owing to the danger of infection all the servants had been sent out of the house that morning; and Kiríloff, in his shirtsleeves, with unbuttoned waistcoat, with sweating face, and hands burned with carbolic acid, opened the door himself. The hall was dark, and the stranger who entered it was hardly visible. All that Kiríloff could distinguish was that he was of middle height, that he wore a white muffler, and had a big, extraordinarily pale face—a face so pale that at first it seemed to illumine the darkness of the hall.