The Created Legend | Page 8

working men did not belong to the place, but were brought
from a distance. Dark and short and rather gruff-looking, they did not
understand the local speech, and seldom showed themselves in the
streets.
"They are wicked and dark" was said about them in the town. "They
carry knives about with them, and dig underground passages in Navii's
playground. He himself is clean-shaven like a German, and he's
imported these foreign earth-diggers."
* * * * *

"I like that red-haired instructress, Nadezhda Vestchezerova," said
Elena.
She looked searchingly at her sister.
"Yes, she's very sincere," answered Elisaveta. '"A fine girl."
"They are all charming," said Elena with greater assurance.
"Yes," observed Elisaveta, with indecision in her voice. "But there is
that other--the one that ran away from us--there's something I don't like
about her. Perhaps it's a slight veneer of hypocrisy."
"Why do you say so?" asked Elena.
"I simply feel it. She smiles too pleasantly, too lovingly. She seems in
every way phlegmatic, yet she tries to appear animated. Her words
come rather easily sometimes, and she exaggerates."
* * * * *
It was quiet in the garden behind the stone wall. This was Kirsha's free
hour. But he could not play, though he tried to.
Little Kirsha, Trirodov's son, whose mother had died not long before,
was dark and thin. He had a very mobile face and restless dark eyes. He
was dressed like the boys in the wood. He was quite restless to-day. He
felt sad without knowing why. He felt as if some invisible being were
drawing him on, calling to him in an inaudible whisper, demanding
something--what? And who was it approaching their house? Why?
Friend or foe? It was a stranger--yet curiously intimate.
At that moment, when the sisters were taking leave of the children in
the wood, Kirsha felt especially perturbed. In the far corner of the
garden he saw a boy in white dress; he ran up to him. They spoke long
and quietly. Then Kirsha ran to his father.
Giorgiy Sergeyevitch Trirodov was all alone at home. He was lying on
the sofa, reading a book by Wilde.

Trirodov was forty years old. He was slender and erect. His
short-trimmed hair and clean-shaven face made him look very young.
Only on closer scrutiny it was possible to detect the many grey hairs,
the wrinkles on the forehead around the eyes. His face was pale. His
broad forehead seemed very large--it was partly due to a narrow chin,
lean cheeks, and baldness.
The room where Trirodov was reading--his study--was large, bright,
and simple, with a white, unpainted floor as smooth as a mirror. The
walls were lined with open bookcases. In the wall opposite the
windows, between the bookcases, a narrow space was left, large
enough for a man to stand in. It gave the impression of a door being
there, hidden by hangings. In the middle of the room stood a very large
table, upon which lay books, papers, and several strange
objects--hexahedral prisms of an unfamiliar substance, heavy and solid
in appearance, dark red in colour, with purple, blue, grey, and black
spots, and with veins running across it.
Kirsha knocked on the door and entered--quiet, small, troubled.
Trirodov looked at him anxiously. Kirsha said:
"There are two young women in the wood. Such an inquisitive pair.
They have been looking over our colony. Now they'd like to come here
to take a look round."
Trirodov let the pale green ribbon with a lightly stamped pattern fall
upon the page he was reading and laid the book on the small table at his
side. He then took Kirsha by the hand, drew him close, and looked
attentively at him, with a slight stir in his eyes; then said quietly:
"You've been asking questions of those quiet boys again."
Kirsha grew red, but stood erect and calm, Trirodov continued to
reproach him:
"How often have I told you that this is wicked. It is bad for you and for
them."

"It's all the same to them," said Kirsha quietly.
"How do you know?" asked Trirodov.
Kirsha shrugged his shoulders and said obstinately:
"Why are they here? What are they to us?"
Trirodov turned away, then rose abruptly, went to the window, and
looked gloomily into the garden. Clearly something was agitating his
consciousness, something that needed deciding. Kirsha quietly walked
up to him, stepping softly upon the white, warm floor with his sunburnt
graceful feet, high in instep, and with long, beautiful, well-formed toes.
He touched his father on the shoulder, quietly rested his sunburnt hand
there, and said:
"You know, daddy, that I seldom do this, only when I must. I felt very
much troubled to-day. I knew that something would happen."
"What will happen?" asked his father.
"I have a