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Updated: July 8, 2025
There was no other such child, there never had been, and there never would be. Lelechka's mother, Serafima Aleksandrovna, was sure of that. Lelechka's eyes were dark and large, her cheeks were rosy, her lips were made for kisses and for laughter. But it was not these charms in Lelechka that gave her mother the keenest joy. Lelechka was her mother's only child.
Serafima Aleksandrovna stood up erect, sighed in a lost way, smiled, and called loudly: "Lelechka!" Lelechka was being carried out. The mother threw herself after the coffin with despairing sobs, but she was held back. She sprang behind the door, through which Lelechka had passed, sat down there on the floor, and as she looked through the crevice, she cried out: "Lelechka, tiu-tiu!"
Serafima Aleksandrovna laid her cheek upon the edge of Lelechka's coffin, and whispered: "Tiu-tiu, little one!" The little one did not reply. Then there was some kind of stir and confusion around Serafima Aleksandrovna; strange, unnecessary faces bent over her, some one held her and Lelechka was carried away somewhere.
Only I'd like to say something you see Lelechka is always hiding herself that's not good." Fedosya looked at her mistress with fixed eyes, which had grown round from fright. "Why not good?" asked Serafima Aleksandrovna, with vexation, succumbing involuntarily to vague fears. "I can't tell you how bad it is," said Fedosya, and her face expressed the most decided confidence.
She glanced at her mother with her dimmed eyes, and lisped in a scarcely audible, hoarse voice: "Tiu-tiu, mamochka! Make tiu-tiu, mamochka!" Serafima Aleksandrovna hid her face behind the curtains near Lelechka's bed. How tragic! "Mamochka!" called Lelechka in an almost inaudible voice.
Something rattled in her throat; Lelechka opened and again closed her rapidly paling lips, and died. Serafima Aleksandrovna was in dumb despair as she left Lelechka, and went out of the room. She met her husband. "Lelechka is dead," she said in a quiet, dull voice. Sergey Modestovich looked anxiously at her pale face. He was struck by the strange stupor in her formerly animated handsome features.
But she soon found that he listened to her without the slightest interest, and only from the habit of politeness. Serafima Aleksandrovna drifted farther and farther away from him. She loved her little girl with the ungratified passion that other women, deceived in their husbands, show their chance young lovers.
Serafima Aleksandrovna remained standing over Lelechka's bed a long while, and she kept looking at Lelechka with tenderness and fear. "I'm a mother: is it possible that I shouldn't be able to protect her?" she thought, as she imagined the various ills that might befall Lelechka. She prayed long that night, but the prayer did not relieve her sadness. Several days passed. Lelechka caught cold.
"Knows!" exclaimed Serafima Aleksandrovna in irritation, as though she wished to protect herself somehow from this sudden anxiety. "What nonsense! Please don't come to me with any such notions in the future. Now you may go." Fedosya, dejected, her feelings hurt, left her mistress. "What nonsense!
Lelechka was dressed, placed in a little coffin, and carried into the parlour. Serafima Aicksandrovna was standing by the coffin and looking dully at her dead child. Sergey Modestovich went to his wife and, consoling her with cold, empty words, tried to draw her away from the coffin. Seranma Aleksandrovna smiled. "Go away," she said quietly. "Lelechka is playing. She'll be up in a minute."
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