The pleasant in life has a way of mixing with the unpleasant. It is pleasant to be a student of the first class, for it gives one a certain standing in the world. But even the life of a student of the first class is not free from unpleasantness.

The first thing of which Shura was conscious when he awoke one morning was that something was tearing on his person. He felt uncomfortable. As he turned on his side he was even more clearly aware of the damage that his shirt had suffered. There was a large gap under the armpits, and presently he realized that it extended down to the very bottom.

Shura was sad. He remembered having told his mother only the day before about the condition of his shirt.

“Wear it another day, Shurochka,” she answered him.

Shura frowned and said rather sadly: “Mother, it won’t stand another day’s wear. To-morrow I shall be a ragamuffin.”

Without looking up from her work she grumbled.

“Let me have some peace. I have already promised you a change to-morrow evening. If you’d only be less mischievous your clothes would last longer. You’d wear out iron.”

Shura, who was a quiet lad, growled back in reply:

“One simply couldn’t be less mischievous than I. Only sometimes you can’t help it, and then in a reasonable sort of way.”

His request went unheeded. And here was the consequence. His shirt was torn to its very hem. It was now good for nothing, all for want of a little foresight.

He jumped out of bed, and ran semi-nude into the next-room, where his mother was making ready to go out to bring back some paying homework. The thought of going to school in discomfort and of waiting till evening vexed him.

“What did I tell you?” he exclaimed. “You wouldn’t give me a shirt when I asked you yesterday. Now look what’s happened!”

Deeply annoyed, she looked at Shura and complained.

“Aren’t you ashamed to run about like that? I fear I’ll never drum any sense into you. You always come bothering me when I’m in a hurry.”

Still, it was quite evident that it would not do to let the lad go in tatters. She found a brand new shirt and gave it to Shura somewhat reluctantly, as she had intended giving him one of the old ones, which were not due to arrive from the laundry until the evening.

Shura was overjoyed. The new linen gave him a pleasant sensation, its harsh cold surface tickled the skin most pleasantly. He laughed, and he pranced about the room as he dressed; and his mother was not there to scold him.

II

The school, as always, seemed such a strange place. It was both gay and depressing, and hummed with a kind of unnatural industry. It was gay in the intervals between the lessons, and extremely tedious during the lessons.

The subjects of study were most singular and useless. They concerned: folk, who had died long ago and did no good while they lived, and whom, for some unknown reason, it was necessary to recall after all these centuries, although some of the personages had never even existed; verbs, which were conjugated with something; nouns, which were declined for some purpose or other, though no use could be found for them in living speech; figures, which call for proofs of something which need not be proven at all; and much else, equally inconsequential and absurd. And there was nothing in all this that one could not do without; there was no correlation of facts, there was no straightforward answer to the eternal question: Why and Wherefore?

III

That morning early, in the assembly room, Mitya Krinin asked Shura: “Well, have you brought it?”

Shura recalled that he had promised to bring Krinin a book of popular songs. He replied: “Just a moment. I’ve left it in my overcoat.”

He ran into the dressing-room. The bells suddenly rang out in all parts of the building, calling the students to prayer, without which the lessons could hardly be expected to begin.

Shura made haste. He put his hand in the overcoat pocket, found nothing; then, on discovering that it was some one else’s overcoat, he exclaimed in vexation:

“There now, that’s something new—my hand in another boy’s overcoat!”

And he began to search in his own.

There was an outburst of derisive laughter. He looked around, startled, to find there the mischievous Dutikov, who called out in his unpleasant voice: “So, my boy, you’re going through other people’s pockets!”

Shura growled back angrily: “It’s not your affair. Anyway, I’m not going through yours.”

He found his book and ran back to the assembly room, where the students were already ranging themselves for the service, forming into long rows, according to height. The smaller students stood in front, near to the ikons, the taller behind; and in each row, in gradation, the lads on the right were taller than those on the left. The school faculty considered it necessary for them to pray in rows, and according to height; otherwise the prayer might come to nothing. Apart from them, there was a group of boys more proficient in chanting, and the leader of these, at the beginning of each chant, changed his voice several times—this was called “setting the tone.” The singing was loud, rapid, expressionless; they might have all been beating drums. The head student was reading in the prayer book the prayers which it was customary to read and not to sing—and his reading was just as loud, just as expressionless. In a word, it was the same as ever.

But after prayers something happened.

IV

Student Epiphanov, of the second class, brought with him to school that morning a pearl-handled penknife and a silver rouble, and now these were nowhere to be found. He raised a cry and went to complain.

An investigation was started.

Dutikov reported that he had seen Shura Dolinin going through the pockets of some one’s overcoat. Shura was called into the cabinet of the director.

Sergey Ivanovich, the director, fixed his suspicious eyes on the lad. The old tutor, who saw an excellent chance of catching a thief, and incidentally of balancing accounts somewhat for tricks that had been played upon him by the mischievous lads, experienced malicious pleasure and pounced upon the confused, flushing lad with questions.

“Why were you in the dressing-room during prayer?”

“Before prayer, Sergey Ivanovich,” whimpered Shura in a voice squeaky from fright.

“Very well, before prayer,” said the director with irony in his voice. “What I want to know is why were you there?”

Shura explained.

The director continued: “Very well, after a book. But why in some one else’s pocket?”

“It was a mistake,” said Shura, distressed.

“A nice mistake,” remarked the director dryly. “Now confess, haven’t you taken by mistake a penknife and a rouble. By mistake, mind you? Look through your pockets, my lad.”

Shura began to cry, and said through his tears: “I haven’t stolen anything.”

The director smiled. It was pleasant to provoke tears. Such beautiful and such large childish tears trickled down the pink cheeks in three separate streams: two streams of tears came from one eye, and only one from the other.

“If you haven’t stolen anything why do you cry?” said the director in a bantering tone. “I don’t even say that you have stolen. I assume that you merely made a mistake: caught hold of something that came into your hand, and then forgot all about it. Suppose you look through your pockets.”

Shura quickly drew from his pockets all the absurd trifles usually found on boys, and then turned both his pockets inside out.

“Nothing,” he said sadly.

The director gave him a searching look.

“You are sure it hasn’t dropped down in your clothes somewhere—the knife might have slipped into your boots, eh?”

He rang. The watchman came.

Shura was crying. And everything round him seemed to float in a rose mist, in the incomprehensible mental void of his degradation. They turned Shura about, felt him all over, searched him. Little by little they undressed him. First they took off his boots and shook them out; they did the same with his stockings. His belt, blouse and breeches followed. Everything was shaken out and searched.

And through all this torment of shame, through all this indignity of a degrading and needless ceremony there penetrated one resplendent ray of joy; the torn shirt was at home, and the new, clean one rustled in the coarse hands of the zealous pedagogue.

Shura stood in his shirt, crying. Behind the door he could hear tumultuous voices and cries of joy.

The door burst open, and a little, red-cheeked, smiling chap entered hurriedly. And through his shame, through his tears, and through his joy about the new shirt, Shura heard a confused and panting voice say:

“It’s been found, Sergey Ivanovich. On Epiphanov himself. There was a hole in his pocket—the penknife and rouble slipped down into his boot.”

Then, suddenly, they became gentle with Shura. They stroked his head, comforted him, and helped him to dress.

V

Now he cried, now he laughed. At home he again cried and laughed. He complained:

“I was entirely undressed. It would have been nice, wouldn’t it, if I had been wearing that torn shirt!”

Later—yes, what happened later? His mother would go to the director. She wished to make a scene. Afterwards she would lodge a complaint against him. But she recalled, in the street, that her boy was a non-paying student. There was no scene. Besides, the director received her pleasantly. He was so apologetic.

The impression of his degradation remained with the boy. All its incidents had impressed themselves upon him: he had been suspected of theft, and searched, and he had stood, almost naked, undergoing the scrutiny of an officious person. Shameful? Let us, by all means, console ourselves that it is an experience useful to life.

Weeping, the mother said: “Who knows—perhaps when you grow up, something of the sort will really happen. We’ve heard of such things in our time.”