Instead of Gavrik, the former cook of the owner of the house saw to his samovar and brought him his midday meal. She was a lean, sinister woman, with a red face and eyes that were colourless and staring. Sometimes when he looked at her Ilya felt fear deep down in his soul. "Shall I, then, never see anything beautiful in my life?" And darkly, despairingly, he said to himself: "See how life goes." There had been a time when he had grown accustomed to the manifold impressions of life, and although they irritated him and angered him, he yet felt—it is better to live among men. But now men had disappeared from the world, and there were only customers left. His sense of a common humanity and the longing for a better life vanished together in his indifference towards all and everything, and again the days slipped slowly by in a suffocating stupor.
One evening, when he had closed the shop, he went out into the courtyard, lay down under the elm-tree, and listened to the noise on the further side of the fence. Some one clicked with the tongue, and said softly:
"O—Oh! Good dog! Good little dog!"
Through a chink between the planks Ilya saw a fat old woman, with a long face, sitting on a bench; a big yellow dog had laid one of his fore-paws on her knee, and raising his muzzle, tried to lick her face. The woman turned her face away, and stroked the dog, smiling.
"People caress dogs, then, if there's no one else," Ilya mused. With deep pain in his heart, he thought of Gavrik and his stern sister; then of Pashka, Masha. "If they wanted me they'd come. They can go to the devil. To-morrow I'll go and see Jakov."
"My good dog!" murmured the woman beyond the fence.
"If even Tanyka would come!" thought Ilya, sadly. But Tatiana Vlassyevna was living in a country house a good way from the town, and never appeared in the shop.
[XXIV.]
Ilya did not succeed in visiting Jakov next day, because his uncle Terenti arrived in the town. It was early morning.