income. Therefore your losses cause me as little anxiety as your gains
give me pleasure. What I really grieve over is your unhappy passion
itself for gambling--a passion which bereaves me of part of your tender
affection and obliges me to tell you such bitter truths as (God knows
with what pain) I am now telling you. I never cease to beseech Him that
He may preserve us, not from poverty (for what is poverty?), but from
the terrible juncture which would arise should the interests of the
children, which I am called upon to protect, ever come into collision
with our own. Hitherto God has listened to my prayers. You have never
yet overstepped the limit beyond which we should be obliged either
to sacrifice property which would no longer belong to us, but to the
children, or--It is terrible to think of, but the dreadful misfortune
at which I hint is forever hanging over our heads. Yes, it is the heavy
cross which God has given us both to carry.
"Also, you write about the children, and come back to our old point
of difference by asking my consent to your placing them at a
boarding-school. You know my objection to that kind of education. I
do not know, dear, whether you will accede to my request, but I
nevertheless beseech you, by your love for me, to give me your promise
that never so long as I am alive, nor yet after my death (if God should
see fit to separate us), shall such a thing be done.
"Also you write that our affairs render it indispensable for you to
visit St. Petersburg. The Lord go with you! Go and return as, soon as
possible. Without you we shall all of us be lonely.
"Spring is coming in beautifully. We keep the door on to the terrace
always open now, while the path to the orangery is dry and the
peach-trees are in full blossom. Only here and there is there a little
snow remaining. The swallows are arriving, and to-day Lubotshka brought
me the first flowers. The doctor says that in about three days' time I
shall be well again and able to take the open air and to enjoy the April
sun. Now, au revoir, my dearest one. Do not be alarmed, I beg of you,
either on account of my illness or on account of your losses at play.
End the crisis as soon as possible, and then return here with the
children for the summer. I am making wonderful plans for our passing of
it, and I only need your presence to realise them."
The rest of the letter was written in French, as well as in a strange,
uncertain hand, on another piece of paper. I transcribe it word for
word:
"Do not believe what I have just written to you about my illness. It is
more serious than any one knows. I alone know that I shall never leave
my bed again. Do not, therefore, delay a minute in coming here with the
children. Perhaps it may yet be permitted me to embrace and bless them.
It is my last wish that it should be so. I know what a terrible blow
this will be to you, but you would have had to hear it sooner or
later--if not from me, at least from others. Let us try to, bear the
Calamity with fortitude, and place our trust in the mercy of God. Let
us submit ourselves to His will. Do not think that what I am writing is
some delusion of my sick imagination. On the contrary, I am perfectly
clear at this moment, and absolutely calm. Nor must you comfort yourself
with the false hope that these are the unreal, confused feelings of a
despondent spirit, for I feel indeed, I know, since God has deigned to
reveal it to me--that I have now but a very short time to live. Will my
love for you and the children cease with my life? I know that that can
never be. At this moment I am too full of that love to be capable of
believing that such a feeling (which constitutes a part of my very
existence) can ever, perish. My soul can never lack its love for you;
and I know that that love will exist for ever, since such a feeling
could never have been awakened if it were not to be eternal. I shall no
longer be with you, yet I firmly believe that my love will cleave to
you always, and from that thought I glean such comfort that I await the
approach of death calmly and without fear. Yes, I am calm, and God knows
passage to a better life. Yet why do tears blind my eyes? Why should the
children lose a mother's love? Why must you, my husband, experience such
a heavy and unlooked-for blow? Why must I die when your love was making
life so inexpressibly happy for me?
"But His holy will be done!
"The tears prevent my writing more. It may be that I shall never see you
again. I thank you, my darling beyond all price, for all the felicity
with which you have surrounded me in this life. Soon I shall appear
before God Himself to pray that He may reward you. Farewell, my dearest!
Remember that, if I am no longer here, my love will none the less NEVER
AND NOWHERE fail you. Farewell, Woloda--farewell, my pet! Farewell, my
Benjamin, my little Nicolinka! Surely they will never forget me?"
With this letter had come also a French note from Mimi, in which the
latter said:
"The sad circumstances of which she has written to you are but too
surely confirmed by the words of the doctor. Yesterday evening she
ordered the letter to be posted at once, but, thinking at she did so in
delirium, I waited until this morning, with the intention of sealing and
sending it then. Hardly had I done so when Natalia Nicolaevna asked
me what I had done with the letter and told me to burn it if not yet
despatched. She is forever speaking of it, and saying that it will kill
you. Do not delay your departure for an instant if you wish to see the
angel before she leaves us. Pray excuse this scribble, but I have not
slept now for three nights. You know how much I love her."
Later I heard from Natalia Savishna (who passed the whole of the night
of the 11th April at Mamma's bedside) that, after writing the first part
of the letter, Mamma laid it down upon the table beside her and went to
sleep for a while.
"I confess," said Natalia Savishna, "that I too fell asleep in the
arm-chair, and let my knitting slip from my hands. Suddenly, towards one
o'clock in the morning, I heard her saying something; whereupon I opened
my eyes and looked at her. My darling was sitting up in bed, with her
hands clasped together and streams of tears gushing from her eyes.
"'It is all over now,' she said, and hid her face in her hands.
"I sprang to my feet, and asked what the matter was.
"'Ah, Natalia Savishna, if you could only know what I have just
seen!' she said; yet, for all my asking, she would say no more,
beyond commanding me to hand her the letter. To that letter she added
something, and then said that it must be sent off directly. From that
moment she grew, rapidly worse."
XXVI -- WHAT AWAITED US AT THE COUNTRY-HOUSE
On the 18th of April we descended from the carriage at the front door
of the house at Petrovskoe. All the way from Moscow Papa had been
preoccupied, and when Woloda had asked him "whether Mamma was ill" he
had looked at him sadly and nodded an affirmative. Nevertheless he had
grown more composed during the journey, and it was only when we were
actually approaching the house that his face again began to grow
anxious, until, as he leaped from the carriage and asked Foka (who
had run breathlessly to meet us), "How is Natalia Nicolaevna now?" his
voice, was trembling, and his eyes had filled with tears. The good, old
Foka looked at us, and then lowered his gaze again. Finally he said as
he opened the hall-door and turned his head aside: "It is the sixth day
since she has not left her bed."
Milka (who, as we afterwards learned, had never ceased to whine from the
day when Mamma was taken ill) came leaping, joyfully to meet Papa, and
barking a welcome as she licked his hands, but Papa put her aside, and
went first to the drawing-room, and then into the divannaia, from which
a door led into the bedroom. The nearer he approached the latter, the
more, did his movements express the agitation that he felt. Entering the
divannaia he crossed it on tiptoe, seeming to hold his breath. Even then
he had to stop and make the sign of the cross before he could summon up
courage to turn the handle. At the same moment Mimi, with dishevelled
hair and eyes red with weeping came hastily out of the corridor.
"Ah, Peter Alexandritch!" she said in a whisper and with a marked
expression of despair. Then, observing that Papa was trying to open the
door, she whispered again:
"Not here. This door is locked. Go round to the door on the other side."
Oh, how terribly all this wrought upon my imagination, racked as it was
by grief and terrible forebodings!
So we went round to the other side. In the corridor we met the gardener,
Akim, who had been wont to amuse us with his grimaces, but at this
moment I could see nothing comical in him. Indeed, the sight of his
thoughtless, indifferent face struck me more painfully than anything
else. In the maidservants' hall, through which we had to pass, two maids
were sitting at their work, but rose to salute us with an expression so
mournful that I felt completely overwhelmed.
Passing also through Mimi's room, Papa opened the door of the bedroom,
and we entered. The two windows on the right were curtained over, and
close to them was seated, Natalia Savishna, spectacles on nose and
engaged in darning stockings. She did not approach us to kiss me as she
had been used to do, but just rose and looked at us, her tears beginning
to flow afresh. Somehow it frightened me to see every one, on beholding
us, begin to cry, although they had been calm enough before.
On the left stood the bed behind a screen, while in the great arm-chair
the doctor lay asleep. Beside the bed a young, fair-haired and
remarkably beautiful girl in a white morning wrapper was applying ice to
Mamma's head, but Mamma herself I could not see. This girl was "La
Belle Flamande" of whom Mamma had written, and who afterwards played so
important a part in our family life. As we entered she disengaged one
of her hands, straightened the pleats of her dress on her bosom, and
whispered, "She is insensible." Though I was in an agony of grief, I
observed at that moment every little detail.
It was almost dark in the room, and very hot, while the air was heavy
with the mingled, scent of mint, eau-de-cologne, camomile, and Hoffman's
pastilles. The latter ingredient caught my attention so strongly that
even now I can never hear of it, or even think of it, without my memory
carrying me back to that dark, close room, and all the details of that
dreadful time.
Mamma's eyes were wide open, but they could not see us. Never shall I
forget the terrible expression in them--the expression of agonies of
suffering!
Then we were taken away.
When, later, I was able to ask Natalia Savishna about Mamma's last
moments she told me the following:
"After you were taken out of the room, my beloved one struggled for a
long time, as though some one were trying to strangle her. Then at last
she laid her head back upon the pillow, and slept softly, peacefully,
like an angel from Heaven. I went away for a moment to see about her
medicine, and just as I entered the room again my darling was throwing
the bedclothes from off her and calling for your Papa. He stooped over
her, but strength failed her to say what she wanted to. All she could
do was to open her lips and gasp, 'My God, my God! The children, the
children!' I would have run to fetch you, but Ivan Vassilitch stopped
me, saying that it would only excite her--it were best not to do so.
Then suddenly she stretched her arms out and dropped them again. What
she meant by that gesture the good God alone knows, but I think that in
it she was blessing you--you the children whom she could not see. God
did not grant her to see her little ones before her death. Then she
raised herself up--did my love, my darling--yes, just so with her hands,
and exclaimed in a voice which I cannot bear to remember, 'Mother of
God, never forsake them!'"
"Then the pain mounted to her heart, and from her eyes it as, plain that
she suffered terribly, my poor one! She sank back upon the pillows, tore
the bedclothes with her teeth, and wept--wept--"
"Yes and what then?" I asked but Natalia Savishna could say no more. She
turned away and cried bitterly.
Mamma had expired in terrible agonies.
XXVII -- GRIEF
LATE the following evening I thought I would like to look at her once
more; so, conquering an involuntary sense of fear, I gently opened the
door of the salon and entered on tiptoe.
In the middle of the room, on a table, lay the coffin, with wax candles
burning all round it on tall silver candelabra. In the further corner
sat the chanter, reading the Psalms in a low, monotonous voice. I
stopped at the door and tried to look, but my eyes were so weak with
crying, and my nerves so terribly on edge, that I could distinguish
nothing. Every object seemed to mingle together in a strange blur--the
candles, the brocade, the velvet, the great candelabra, the pink satin
cushion trimmed with lace, the chaplet of flowers, the ribboned cap, and
something of a transparent, wax-like colour. I mounted a chair to see
her face, yet where it should have been I could see only that wax-like,
transparent something. I could not believe it to be her face. Yet, as
I stood grazing at it, I at last recognised the well-known, beloved
features. I shuddered with horror to realise that it WAS she. Why were
those eyes so sunken? What had laid that dreadful paleness upon her
cheeks, and stamped the black spot beneath the transparent skin on one
of them? Why was the expression of the whole face so cold and severe?
Why were the lips so white, and their outline so beautiful, so majestic,
so expressive of an unnatural calm that, as I looked at them, a chill
shudder ran through my hair and down my back?
Somehow, as I gazed, an irrepressible, incomprehensible power seemed
to compel me to keep my eyes fixed up
on that lifeless face. I could not
turn away, and my imagination began to picture before me scenes of her
active life and happiness. I forgot that the corpse lying before me
now--the THING at which I was gazing unconsciously as at an object which
had nothing in common with my dreams--was SHE. I fancied I could
see her--now here, now there, alive, happy, and smiling. Then some
well-known feature in the face at which I was gazing would suddenly
arrest my attention, and in a flash I would recall the terrible reality
and shudder-though still unable to turn my eyes away.
Then again the dreams would replace reality--then again the reality put
to flight the dreams. At last the consciousness of both left me, and for
a while I became insensible.
How long I remained in that condition I do not know, nor yet how it
occurred. I only know that for a time I lost all sense of existence, and
experienced a kind of vague blissfulness which though grand and sweet,
was also sad. It may be that, as it ascended to a better world, her
beautiful soul had looked down with longing at the world in which she
had left us--that it had seen my sorrow, and, pitying me, had returned
to earth on the wings of love to console and bless me with a heavenly
smile of compassion.
The door creaked as the chanter entered who was to relieve his
predecessor. The noise awakened me, and my first thought was that,
seeing me standing on the chair in a posture which had nothing touching
in its aspect, he might take me for an unfeeling boy who had climbed
on to the chair out of mere curiosity: wherefore I hastened to make the
sign of the cross, to bend down my head, and to burst out crying. As I
recall now my impressions of that episode I find that it was only during
my moments of self-forgetfulness that my grief was wholehearted. True,