" 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 fluttered 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.