"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
so-and-so and so-and-so—all have made their way
\But my career and fortune? .... I alone have re-y jmained behind .... but why? what is the reason?" He cast about in anxiety and did not know how to speak to his mother of his plans of going away.
But his mother very soon saved him this trouble: she died. ~~ ~ '
^ This was what he finally wrote to his uncle and aunt in Petersburg. To his aunt:
" Before I left Petersburg, ma tante, with tears in your eyes you sent me on my way with some precious words which have remained printed on my memory. You said, ' If I should ever want warm affection, sincere sympathy, there would always remain a niche in your heart for me.'
The moment came when I understood all the value of these words. The claims which you so generously gave me on your heart mean for me a guarantee of peace, of tranquillity, consolation, and rest—perhaps of happiness for all my life. Three months ago my mother died; I will not add another word. You know from her letters what she was for me, what I have lost in her. I am now leaving here for ever. But where, a solitary pilgrim, should I take my way if not to the place where you are ? . . . . Tell me only one thing: shall I find in you what I left behind a year and a half ago ? Have you not cast me out of your memory ? Will you consent to the dreary duty of healing with your affection—which has already delivered me more than once from grief—a new and deep wound ? All my hopes I rest on you and on another powerful ally—activity.
" You wonder, do you not ? It seems strange to you to hear this from me—to read those lines written in a tranquil strain so unnatural to me ? Do not wonder, and don't be afraid of my return; you will see, not a raving enthusiast, nor a sentimentalist, nor a disillusioned cynic, nor a provincial, but simply a man such as there are many more in Petersburg, and such as I ought long ago to have become. Reassure my uncle especially on that score. When I look back on my past life, I feel uneasy and ashamed both of others and of myself. But it could not have been otherwise. Now only I have recognised my errors—at thirtyj_ The painful discipline I went through in Petersburg and meditation in the country have made my course fully clear to me. Here, removed to a respectful distance from my uncle's lessons and my own experience, I have pondered them in tranquillity more clear-sightedly, and I see what they ought to have led me to long ago; I see how miserably and irrationally I have turned away from the right aim. I am now calm ; I am not torn and harassed, but I do not plume myself on this. It may be that this calm is even yet tne result of egoism ; I feel, however, that soon my insight into life will grow clear enough for me to discover another source of peace—a purer one. At present I cannot still help regretting that I have now reached the boundary where, alas ! youth is over and the time has come for reflection, self-control, and the restraint of every emotion—the time of consciousness.