'Yermolaï, the huntsman, brought me here. But you tell me...'
'Tell you about my trouble? Certainly, sir. It happened to me a long while ago now--six or seven years. I had only just been betrothed then to Vassily Polyakov--do you remember, such a fine-looking fellow he was, with curly hair?--he waited at table at your mother's. But you weren't in the country then; you had gone away to Moscow to your studies. We were very much in love, Vassily and me; I could never get him out of my head; and it was in the spring it all happened. Well, one night...not long before sunrise, it was...I couldn't sleep; a nightingale in the garden was singing so wonderfully sweet!... I could not help getting up and going out on to the steps to listen. It trilled and trilled... and all at once I fancied some one called me; it seemed like Vassya's voice, so softly, "Lusha!"... I looked round, and being half asleep, I suppose, I missed my footing and fell straight down from the top-step, and flop on to the ground! And I thought I wasn't much hurt, for I got up directly and went back to my room. Only it seems something inside me--in my body--was broken.... Let me get my breath...half a minute... sir.'
Lukerya ceased, and I looked at her with surprise. What surprised me particularly was that she told her story almost cheerfully, without sighs and groans, not complaining nor asking for sympathy.
'Ever since that happened,' Lukerya went on, 'I began to pine away and get thin; my skin got dark; walking was difficult for me; and then--I lost the use of my legs altogether; I couldn't stand or sit; I had to lie down all the time. And I didn't care to eat or drink; I got worse and worse. Your mamma, in the kindness of her heart, made me see doctors, and sent me to a hospital. But there was no curing me. And not one doctor could even say what my illness was. What didn't they do to me?--they burnt my spine with hot irons, they put me in lumps of ice, and it was all no good. I got quite numb in the end....
So the gentlemen decided it was no use doctoring me any more, and there was no sense in keeping cripples up at the great house... well, and so they sent me here--because I've relations here. So here I live, as you see.'
Lukerya was silent again, and again she tried to smile.
'But this is awful--your position!' I cried... and not knowing how to go on, I asked: 'and what of Vassily Polyakov?' A most stupid question it was.
Lukerya turned her eyes a little away.
'What of Polyakov? He grieved--he grieved for a bit--and he is married to another, a girl from Glinnoe. Do you know Glinnoe? It's not far from us. Her name's Agrafena. He loved me dearly--but, you see, he's a young man; he couldn't stay a bachelor. And what sort of a helpmeet could I be? The wife he found for himself is a good, sweet woman--and they have children. He lives here; he's a clerk at a neighbour's; your mamma let him go off with a passport, and he's doing very well, praise God.'
'And so you go on lying here all the time?' I asked again.