Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/67



" orphanhood!" said Arína, drawing a deep breath.

She stopped, and angrily looked at her son. Davýdka immediately wheeled around and, with difficulty lifting his fat leg, in an immense dirty bast shoe, over the threshold, was lost in the opposite door.

"What am I going to do with him, father?" continued Arína, turning to the master. "You see yourself what he is! He is not a bad peasant: he does not drink, is peaceful, and would not harm a child,—it would be a sin to say otherwise; there is nothing bad about him, and God only knows what it is that has befallen him that he has become his own enemy. He himself is not satisfied with it. Really, father, it makes my heart bleed when I see how he worries about it himself. Such as he is, my womb has borne him; I am sorry, very sorry for him! He would do no harm to me, or his father, or the authorities; he is a timid man, I might say, like a child. How can he remain a widower? Do something for us, benefactor," she repeated, evidently trying to correct the bad impression which her scolding might have produced on the master. "Your Grace," she continued, in a confidential whisper, "I have reasoned this way and that way, but I can't make out what has made him so. It cannot be otherwise but that evil people have bewitched him."

She was silent for a moment.

"If the man could be found, he might be cured."