When he rose from his nap he went to Anna Pavlovna.
"Well, what is it, Anton Ivanitch?" Bhe said.
" Nothing, ma'am, I humbly thank you for your bread and salt .... and I have had such a sweet sleep; the hay is so fresh, so fragrant."
" I hope it has done you good, Anton Ivanitch. Well, and what did Yevsay say ! You questioned him ? "
" I should think so, indeed! I have found it all out; I know all, it's nothing to trouble about. The whole thing comes from their food there having been, it seems, so poor."
" The food ? "
" Yes, consider yourself, cucumbers are forty pence the dozen, a sucking-pig is two roubles, and the cooking is all done at the confectioner's—and you can't eat your fill. No wonder he's thin! Don't be uneasy, ma'am, we'll set him on his legs here, we'll cure him. You tell them to prepare a good lot of birchwood infusion. I will give you the receipt; I had it from Prokoff Astafich; give it him morning and evening with mm or holy water, a little glass or two, before dinner. You might give it with holy water, have you some ? "
" Yes, yes; you brought me some already.'
"Ah, yes, so I did. Prepare rather more sustaining dishes for him. I have already ordered them to roast a sucking-pig or a turkey for supper."
" Thank you, Anton Ivanitch."
"Oh, it's nothing, ma'am. Shall not we order a little chicken, as well, with white sauce ? "
" I will order it."
"Why should you? Am I good for nothing? I will see to it. . . . let me."
" See to it, help me, my dear friend."
He went away, and she sank into thought. Her woman's instinct and her mother's heart told her that food was not the principal cause of Alexandr's melancholy. She set to work to question him indirectly by hints, but Alexandr did not understand these hints and said nothing. So passed away a fortnight, three weeks. Sucking-pigs, chickens, and turkeys came to Anton Ivanitch in abundance, but Alexandr was still melancholy and thin, and his hair had not grown thicker.
Then Anna Pavlovna decided to have a talk with him straight out
" Listen, my dear one, Sashenka," she said one day, " it's now a month since you've been here, and I have not yet seen you smile once; you move like a cloud, with downcast looks. Is there something you don't like in your native place ? It seems you were happier in a strange place ; are you longing for it, or what ? My heart is torn when I look at you. What has happened to you ? tell me, what is it you haven't got ? I will grudge you nothing. Has someone done you an injury ? I will revenge that too." -
" Don't be uneasy, mamma," said Alexandr, " this is nothing ! I have come to years of discretion, and so I am serious."
" But why are you thin ? and what has become of your hair ? "
" I can't tell you why .... one can't govern everything that has happened in seven years .... perhaps, indeed, my health is a little disordered."
" Do you feel pain anywhere ? "
" Yes, I have a pain here, and here." He pointed to his J h ead an^ his h earts
Anna Pavlovna laid her hand on his forehead.
"There is no fever," she said. "Why should this be so ? Is there a throbbing in your head ? "
"No ... . only . . . ."
" Sashenka! let us go to Ivan Andreitch ! "
" Who is Ivan Andreitch ? "
"The new doctor; it's two years since he came here. Such a clever fellow, he's a wonder! He hardly prescribes any medicines; he makes himself some tiny little pills .... and they do good. Our Foma had a pain in the stomach ; he was groaning three days and nights; the doctor gave him three little pills, it cured him at once! You must physic yourself a little, darling! "
" No, mamma, he will do me no good; this will go on just the same."
" But why are you dull ? What is this trouble ? "
" Oh . . . ."
" What do you want ? "
" I don't know myself."
" What a strange thing, upon my word!" said Anna Pavlovna. " You say you like your food, you have every comfort and a good position .... what more is there ?
and yet you are dull, Sashenka !" she went on softly, after a pause; " isn't it time for you .... to marry ? "
" What are you thinking of! No, I shall not marry."
" But I have a girl in my mind—just like a doll, rosy and delicate, as fair as a lily. Her figure is so slender and neat; she has studied in the town at a boarding-school. She has seventy-five serfs and 25,000 in money, a splendid dowry; they were in business in Moscow, and an excellent connection. Eh ? Sashenka ? I have already broken the ice with her mother once over coffee, but I only dropped a word in joke."
" I shall not marry," repeated Alexandr.
" How, never ? "
" Never."
" Lord have mercy upon us ! How can that be ? All people are like other people, only you are like nobody else! And it would have been such a happiness for me! if God had vouchsafed to me to nurse my grandchildren ! I beg of you, marry her; you will grow to love her."
"I shall not grow to love, mamma; I have outgrown love."
" Outgrown love without being married ? Whom have you loved up there ? "
" A girL"
" Why didn't you marry her ? "
" She deceived me."
" How, deceived you ? Why, you weren't married to her yet?"
Alexandr did not answer.
" You must have nice girls up there, on my word; to love before marriage ! Deceived you indeed ! the wretch ! With happiness itself falling into her hands, she did not know how to value it, good-for-nothing creature ! If I could get a word with her, I would slap her face! What was your uncle thinking about ? Who did she find better ? I would have seen to her! Well, but is she the only one in the world ? you will be in love a second time."
" I have been in love a second time."
" With whom ? "
" A widow."
" Well, why didn't you marry her ? "
" Her, I myself deceived."
Anna Pavlovna looked at Alexandr and did not know what to say.
" Deceived!" she repeated. " I suppose she was some bold creature!" she added. It's really a den of thieves in St. Petersburg—loving before marriage without the sanction of the Church; deceiving That such things should
be done in the world! The end of the world must certainly be at hand ! Well, well, tell me, is there not anything you feel a want of? Perhaps the cooking is not to your taste ? I will write for a cook from the town."
" No, thank you, everything is all right."
" Perhapsyou are dull all alone; I willinvite the neighbours."
" No, no. Don't worry yourself, mamma ! I am peaceful and all right here ; it will pass. I have hardly looked about me yet."
This was all Anna Pavlovna could get out of him.
" No," she thought, " without God's aid we shall not be a step forwarder." She proposed to Alexandr that he should drive with her to Mass at the nearest church, but he slept too late twice, and she could not make up her mind to wake him. At last one evening she pressed him to come to Vespers. "If you like," said Alexandr, and they set off. His mother went into the church and took her stand near the choir, but Alexandr remained at the door.
The sun was already setting and threw slanting rays which played on the golden frames of the images, and lighted up the dark and coarse faces of the sacred figures and dimmed by its brilliance the weak and timid twinkling of the candles. The church was almost empty; the peasants were at work in the fields; only a few old women were huddled together in the corner by the entrance, their heads wrapped up in white kerchiefs. Some were sitting on the stone step of the entrances, their faces leaning on their hands, and now and then they gave vent to loud and grievous sighs, whether over their sins or their domestic cares, God only can tell. Others lay a long while on their faces bowed to the ground in prayer.
A fresh breeze rushed through the iron grating of the window and first lifted the cloth on the altar, then played with the grey hair of the priest or fluttere
d the leaves of the books and blew out the candles. The priest's and deacon's steps resounded loudly on the stone floor in the empty
church ; their voices echoed feebly under the arches of the roof. High up in the steeple were jackdaws cawing and sparrows chirruping as they fluttered from window to window, and the whir of their wings and the ringing of bells sometimes drowned the sounds of the service.
"So long as a man's vital force is abundant," thought Alexandr, "so long as desires and passions work,upon him, he is absorbed in sensation, he avoids the calm, grave, and solemn meditations to which religion leads .... when his strength is broken and squandered, his hopes shattered, weighed down by years, he hastens to seek consolation in religion, then "
Gradually, at the sight of the familiar objects, memories awakened in Alexandra heart. He passed in thought through his childhood and youth up to his departure for Petersburg; he remembered how, when he was a child, he used to repeat his prayers to his mother, how she used to tell him about the guardian angel which stands on guard over the heart of man, and is always waging war with the spirits of evil; how, pointing to the stars, she used to say that these were the eyes of God's angels, who look down upon the world and keep a reckoning of the good and bad actions of men, how the angels weep when the bad seem more than the good in their list, and how they are happy when the good outweigh the bad. Pointing to the blue of the distant horizon she would say that that was Sion. . . . Alexandr sighed, stirred by these memories.
The evening service was over. Alexandr returned home, still more depressed than when he started. Anna Pavlovna did not know what to do. One day he woke up earlier than usual and heard a noise near his pillow. He looked round; an old woman was standing over him muttering. She at once disappeared as soon as she saw that she was observed. Under his pillow Alexandr found a herb of some sort; round his neck was hanging an amulet.
" What does this mean ? " asked Alexandr of his mother; " who was the old woman in my room ? "
Anna Pavlovna was confused.
"It ... . was Nikitishna ?" she said.
" What! Nikitishna ? "
" She, you know, my dear .... you won't be angry ? "
" But what is it all about ? tell me."
"She, they say, can do a great deal If she only
whispers over water, and breathes on a person asleep, everything will go away."
"The year before last," put in Agrafena, "the widow Sidovicha was haunted at night by a fiery dragon through the chimney."
Anna Pavlovna made a gesture of horror.
" Nikitishna," continued Agrafena, " charmed away the dragon ; it left off haunting her."
"Well, and what became of Sidovicha?" inquired Alexandr.
'• She was brought to bed of .... oh, such a wretched black little brat! it died two days afterwards."
Alexandr laughed, perhaps for the first time since his return to the country.
"Where did you pick her up? " he asked.
" Anton Ivanitch brought her," replied Anna Pavlovna.
" You are ready to listen to that fool! "
" Ob, Sashenka, what are you saying ? aren't you ashamed ? Anton Ivanitch a fool! How can you. bring yourself to say such a thing? Anton Ivanitch—he is our friend, our benefactor !"
" Well, then, take the amulet, mamma, and give it to our friend and benefactor; let him hang it round his neck."
From that time he took to locking his door at night.
Two, three months passed away. Gradually the solitude, the peace, the home life, with all the material comforts that went with it, went some way to restoring Alexandr to health.
And here he was better, wiser than any one! Here he was the idol of all for some miles round. And here at every step his soul expanded with peaceful soothing emotions at the aspect of Nature. The prattle of the stream, the whisper of the leaves, the cool shade, at times the very silence of Nature—all begot meditation and kindled emotion. In the meadows, in the garden, at home he was haunted by memories of his childhood and youth. Anna Pavlovna, sitting sometimes near him, seemed to divine his thoughts. She helped him to renew in his memory the trifling details of life so precious to the heart, or told him of something he did not remember at all.
"You see those lime-trees," she said, pointing to the
R
garden ; " your father planted them. It was not long before you were born. I was sitting, as it happened, on the balcony and looking at him. He was working and working away, and then he would look at me, and the perspiration was streaming on him. ' Ah ! are you there ?' he said. * That's why I work with so much pleasure/ and he set to again. And that's the little field where you used to play with the children; so passionate you were; the least thing not to your liking and you'd scream at the top of your voice. One day Agashka, the one who's Kouzmiy's wife now—his hut is the third from the paddock—gave you a push somehow and your nose was cut and bleeding ; such a thrashing your father gave her, it was all I could do to beg her off."
Alexandr mentally filled out these memories with others. " On that seat, under the tree," he thought, " I used to sit with Sophia, and I was happy then. And there between the two lilac bushes, she gave me the first kiss." And all this was before his eyes. He smiled at these recollections, and used to sit for whole hours on the balcony basking in the sunshine and following it about, listening to the singing of the birds, the plash of the lake and the humming of unseen insects.
Sometimes he moved over to the window which looked out on to the court and the village street. There was a different picture, in the style of Teniers, full of bustling family life. Barbos lay stretched in his kennel out of the heat, his muzzle lying on his paws. Dozens of hens were greeting the morning with emulous clucking; the cocks were fighting. A herd was driven along the street to the meadow. Sometimes one cow left behind by the herd would low anxiously, standing in the middle of the street and looking round her in all directions. Peasants and women with hoes and scythes over their shoulders go by to their work. Now and then two or three words of their talk are snatched up by the wind and carried up to the window. Further off, a peasant's cart goes rumbling over the bridge and after it slowly crawls a waggon of hay. Unkempt, white-haired children are strolling about the fields lifting up their smocks. Looking at this picture, Alexandr began to understand the poetry of "grey skies, broken hedges, agate, earth-stained toil and the trepaka? His tight trim coat he exchanged for the wide smock of manual labour. And every
incident of this tranquil life, every impression of morning and evening, of meals and of repose, was pervaded by the ever-watchful love of his mother.
She could not be thankful enough when she saw that Alexandr was growing fatter, that the colour had come back to his cheeks, and that a peaceful light was shining in his eyes. " Only his curls do not grow again," she said, " and they were like silk/
Alexandr often took walks about the neighbourhood. One day he met a troop of peasant women and girls, roaming in the forest after mushrooms, so he joined them and spent the whole day with them. On his return home he praised one girl, Masha, for her quickness and smartness, and Masha was chosen in the household to " wait on the master."
He sometimes rode out to look at the field-work and learnt by experience what he had often translated and written about for the journal. " How many lies I told in it," he thought, shaking his head, and he began to go into the subject more deeply and thoroughly. ^ One day in bad weather he tried to occupy himself with work, sat down to write and was well pleased with the beginning of his attempt. Some book was needed for reference; he wrote for it to Petersburg, and it was sent him. He set to work in earnest. He wrote for more books to be sent. In vain did Anna Pavlovna try to persuade him not to write, " not to cramp his chest," he would not listen to her. She sent Anton Ivanitch to him. Alexandr would not listen to him either, and continued to write. When three or four months had passed, and he not only had not grown thin from writing, but had grown stouter, Anna Pavlovna's mind was set at rest.
; So passed a year and a half. All would have been well, but at the end of that period Alexandr began to grow melancholy again. He had no desires of any kind, or at least such as he had were easy to content; they did not go beyond the limits of family life. Nothing agitated him; not a care nor a doubt, but he was depressed! By degrees the narrow round of home-life had grown repulsive to him ; his mother's blandishments bored him; and Anton Ivanitch he detested; his work too sickened him, and Nature could not charm him.
He used to sit silently at the window, and now gazed with indifference at his father's lime-trees, and listened with irritation to the plash of the lake. He began to reflect on the cause of this new uneasiness, and discovered that he was homesick—for Petersburg! Now that he was removed to a distance from the past, he began to regret it. His blood was still hot, his heart was still beating, body and soul
demanded activity A failure again 1 Alas ! he almost
wept over this discovery. He thought that this depression would pass, that he would grow used to the country, would be habituated to it, but no ; the longer he lived there, the more his heart sank and was adrift again on the tossing sea he now knew so well.
He grew reconciled to the past; it became dear to him. His bitterness, his gloomy views, his moroseness and misanthropy were softened in his mind to a love of solitude and meditation. The past presented itself in a glorified light, and even the traitor Nadinka was almost irradiated by it. " And what am I doing here ? " he asked himself in exasperation, " why should I wither away. Why should my gifts be wasted ? what prevents me from shining there by my efforts ? Now I have grown more sensible. In what way is my uncle better than I ? Cannot I find out a line for myself? Even though I have not succeeded so far, I attempted what I was not fit for—what then ? I have come to my senses now; it's high time I did. But my departure would break my mother's heart! And yet to go is inevitable ; I cannot be going to seed here ! Up there
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