One fall, two crews rode along a high road. Two women sat in the front carriage. One was mistress, thin and pale. The other is a maid, ruddy and full.
Clasping her hands on her knees and closing her eyes, the lady swayed weakly on the pillows and coughed. She was wearing a white night cap, a straight parting was separated by light brown, extremely flat, reminded hair, and there was something dry and dead in the whiteness of this parting. Sluggish, yellowish skin covered the delicate and beautiful shape of the face and blushed on her cheeks and cheekbones. The lady's face expressed fatigue, irritation and habitual suffering.
The carriage was stuffy. The patient slowly opened her eyes. With brilliant dark eyes she eagerly watched the maid's movements. The lady rested her hands on the seat to get taller, but her strength refused. And her whole face was distorted by an expression of impotent, evil irony. The maid, looking at her, bit her red lip. A heavy sigh rose from the patient’s chest and turned into a cough.
The carriage and the carriage drove into the village, the patient, looking at the village church, began to be baptized. They stopped at the station. The husband of the sick woman and the doctor got out of the carriage, went to the carriage and sympathetically inquired:
- How are you feeling?
“If I feel bad, this is not a reason not to have breakfast,” the patient said, “Nobody cares for me,” she added to herself as soon as the doctor trotted up the steps of the station.
“I said: it’s not only to Italy, it may not reach Moscow,” the doctor said.
- So what to do? - objected the husband. - She makes plans for life abroad, as healthy. Tell her everything - kill her.
- Yes, she’s already killed, then a confessor is needed.
- Aksyusha! - the caretaker's daughter squealed, - let's go to the lady, we’ll see that they are being taken abroad from a chest disease. I haven’t seen what they are in consumption.
“Apparently, she became scary,” the patient thought. “If only as soon as possible abroad, I’ll get better soon there.”
- Won't we come back? - said the husband, going to the carriage and chewing a piece.
- And what at home? ... To die at home? - the patient broke out. But the word "die" frightened her, she looked imploringly and inquiringly at her husband, he silently lowered his eyes. The patient burst into tears.
- No, I'll go. - She prayed long and ardently, but in her chest it was also painful and cramped, in the sky, in the fields it was just as gray and cloudy, and the same autumn haze rained down on coachmen who, talking in strong, cheerful voices, laid a carriage .. .
The carriage was laid, but the coachman hesitated. He went into the stuffy, dark pit of the pit. Several coachmen were in the room, the cook was busy at the stove, the patient was lying on the stove.
“I want to ask for a boot, I beat my own,” said the guy. - Uncle Khvedor? He asked, approaching the stove.
- FAQ? - a weak voice was heard, and a red, thin face bent down from the stove.
“You don’t need new boots now,” the guy said shifting. - Give it to me.
Fedor's sunken, dull eyes rose with difficulty to the guy, something began to shimmer and growl in his chest; he bent over and began to choke on a cough.
“Where,” the cook unexpectedly angrily and loudly crackled, “the second month does not come off the stove.” They will not bury in new boots. And it’s already high time, I’ve taken the whole corner!
“You take the boots, Serge,” said the patient, suppressing a cough. “Only, hear, buy a stone as I die,” he added wheezing.
- Thank you, uncle, and I will buy a stone for her.
Serge briskly threw off his torn boots and threw it under the bench. Uncle Fedor’s new boots were just right.
In the hut until the evening the patient was not heard. Before night, the cook climbed onto the stove.
“Don’t be angry with me, Nastasya,” the patient said to her, “I’ll soon corner your corner.”
“Okay, well, nothing,” muttered Nastasya.
At night, the night light shone weakly in the hut, everyone was asleep, only the patient grunted weakly, coughed and tossed and turned. By the morning he was quiet.
“I saw a wonderful dream,” said the cook the next morning. - As if Uncle Khvedor from the furnace of tears and went to chop wood. Well, I say, you were sick after all. No, he says, I’m healthy, but how can I swipe my ax. Didn’t he die? Uncle Khvedor!
The patient did not have relatives - he was distant, so the next day he was buried. Nastasya talked for several days about the dream, and about the fact that the first was grabbed by Uncle Fedor.
***
Spring came, it was joyful in heaven, and on earth, and in the heart of man. In a large manor house on one of the main streets was the very patient who was hurrying abroad. At the door of her room stood a husband and an elderly woman. A priest sat on the couch. In the corner, her mother wept bitterly. The husband in great excitement and confusion asked the cousin to persuade the patient to confess. The priest looked at him, raised his eyebrows to the sky and sighed.
“I will report to you, I was sick in my parish, much worse than Marya Dmitrievna,” said the priest, “and what, a simple tradesman cured with herbs in a short time.”
“No, she can’t live anymore,” the old woman said, and her feelings left her. The sick husband covered his face with his hands and ran out of the room.
In the corridor, he met a six-year-old boy, who was running after the girl. When asked by the nanny, he answered that the patient did not want to see the children, that this would upset her. The boy stopped for a minute, looked intently at his father, and ran on with a cheerful cry.
And in the other room, the cousin tried to prepare the patient for death by skillful conversation. The doctor at the window was in the way of drinking. The patient, all covered with pillows, sat on the bed.
- If my husband had listened to me before, I would have been in Italy and would have been healthy. How much I suffered. I tried to patiently endure my suffering ...
Cousin came out and blinked at the priest. Five minutes later he left the patient’s room, and the cousin and husband came in. The patient cried quietly, looking at the image.
“I feel good now,” the patient said, and a faint smile played on her thin lips. “Isn't God gracious and omnipotent?” - And she again with a greedy plea looked with tearful eyes at the image.
Then she said, as if remembering something:
- How many times have I said that these doctors do not know anything, there are simple medicines, they cure ...
The doctor came up and took her hand - the pulse was beating weaker and weaker. The doctor blinked at her husband, the patient noticed and looked around in dismay. The cousin turned away and cried.
That same evening, the patient was lying in a coffin in the hall in which one clerk sat and read psalms. Bright light fell on the pale forehead of the deceased, on her wax hands. The deacon, not understanding his words, read measuredly, occasionally from the far room children's voices and stomping came.
The deceased's face was stern, calm, majestic and motionless. She was all attention. But did she even now understand these great words?
***
A month later, a stone chapel was erected over the grave of the deceased. There was still no stone above the driver’s grave ...
“You would like to put up a cross,” Serege was blamed. “You wear boots.” Take an ax and go to the grove earlier, so you will cross a cross.
In the early morning, Serge took an ax and went into the grove. Nothing disturbed the silence of the forest. Suddenly, a strange, alien to nature sound rang out at the edge. One of the tops trembled, then the tree started with a whole body, bent and quickly straightened. For a moment, everything calmed down, but the tree bent again, again there was a crack in its trunk, and, breaking branches and lowering the branches, it collapsed onto the damp ground.
The first rays of the sun broke through the cloud and ran through the earth. The birds were singing, twittering something happy; the leaves whispered joyfully and calmly at the peaks, and the branches of living trees slowly, majestically stirred over a dead, drooping tree ...
