" No, I don't want any, mamma." r " What will you like for breakfast ? Would tea be best or ' coffee ? I have ordered some beef cutlets and sour cream fritters—what will you have ? "
" It's all the same to me, mamma."
Anna Pavlovna went on packing the linen, then stopped and gazed at her son with a look of anguish.
" Sasha! " she said, after a pause.
"What do you want, mamma?"
She hesitated to speak, as if she were afraid of something.
" Where are you going, my dear one, and why ? " she asked at last in a low voice.
"How, where, mamma? To Petersburg—why?—why to w
" Listen, Sasha," she said with great emotion, placing her hand on his shoulder, evidently with the intention of making a last appeal; " it is not too late ; think again, and stop."
"Stop! but how is it possible? Look, my clothes are packed," he said, not knowing what to say.
"Yourclothes packed, but there!—there!—see, now they are unpacked."
In three armfuls she had emptied all out of the trunk.
" How can it be so, mamma ? I am all ready—and to change so suddenly—what will they say ? "
He looked distressed.
" It is not so much for my own sake as for yours, that I persuade you not to go. Why are you going ? To try and find happiness. But have you not been happy here, I wonder? Does not your mother think of nothing_.elsfi.3lL, day long but how"to gratif^every_wish of yours ? Of course, at your age now, your mother's devotion alone is not enough for your happiness : and I don't expect it. Well, * look round you; every one is eager to please you. And Maria "Karpovna's daughter/ Sonushta?* There—you blusKecT Ah, my darling, how shejoves jou—God bless her! They say she has not slept foFthree nights 1"
" There! Mamma! how you talk ! She is so "
" Yes, yes ! as though I don't see. Ah, and, by-the-by, she has taken your handkerchiefs to hem. * I won't let anyone else do them,' she said, 'I will mark them myself.' You see. What more would you have ? Stay!"
He listened in silence, hanging his head and playing with the tassel of his dressing-gown.
" What will you find in Petersburg ?" she continued. " Do you think you will find life as easy there as here? Oh, my dear, God knows what you may have to bear and put up with; you will suffer cold and hunger and want There are plenty of bad people everywhere, but you won't meet with good ones so easily. As for social consideration, whether you are in town or country, you will be just as much a person of consideration. Suppose you don't see Petersburg society —still you may think yourself the best in the land living here; and so it is in everything, my dear one. You are a well-educated, fine, good-looking fellow. I am an old woman, and the only happiness left me in this world is the sight of you. You might marry, God might bless you with children, and I could nurse them and you could live without troubles or anxiety, a peaceful tranquil life, envying no man—but there, perhaps things may not go well—perhaps you will remember my words. Sashenka! stay!"
He coughed and sighed, but did not utter a word.
" A nd look out here." s he continued, opening the door on to the balcony^J^are not you sorry yourself to be leaving sucrTa home?"
From the balcony came a fresh scent. Round the house , right into the distance stretched the garden, full of old lime , trees, thick wild roses, service-berries, and bushes of lilac. And among the trees were beds of bright-coloured flowers, , and here and there, little paths ran zigzagging in and out, v while in the distance was a softly splashing lake, on one side golden with the rays of the morning sun and smo'oth as glass, on the other as dark-blue as the sky mirrored • in it, and stirred by faint ripples./ And then an amphitheatre formed by the fields of waving corn and bordered by a dark forest. L *~ Anna Pavlovna, screening her eyes from the sun with one hand, with the other pointed out every object in turn to her son.
" Look ! " she said, " how abundantly God has blessed our meadows! There, from that field of rye alone we shall harvest four thousand bushels ; and there is the wheat and the buckwheat: only the buckwheat is not as good this year as last; it looks as though it will be poor. And the forest too! how the forest has grown ! Think how great is the wisdom of God 1 The fuel from our share we shall sell for a thousand at least. And the game, too ! And you know all this is yours, my dear; I am only your steward. Look at the lake, how splendid ! It is really heavenly ! The fish are in shoals there \ we only need to buy sturgeon ; the carp and the perch and the gremilles are simply swarming, we have enough for ourselves and our people as well. Over there are your cows and horses grazing. Here you alone are master of all, but in Petersburg I daresay everybody will think himself as good as you are. And you want to run away from all this plenty, you don't even know what you are running to—to your ruin perhaps. God help you! Do stay !" He was silent.
"But you are not listening," she said. "What are you looking at so steadily ? "
He pointed with his hand silently and thoughtfully into the distance. Anna Pavlovna looked and her face fell.
There between the fields ran a path twisting like a snake and disappearing into the forest, the path to the promised land—to Petersburg.
Anna Pavlovna was silent for some minutes, trying to recover herself.
" That's how it is, then ! " she said at last, sadly. " Well, my dear, God bless you ! Go, then, if you are so bent on it. I will not oppose it. You shall not say anyway that your mother monopolised your young life. ,,
Poor mother! This is all the recompense for your love ! Was not this what you expected ?
Ah, but mothers expect no recompense. A mother's love is without reason, without power of choice. If you are great, renowned, proud, handsome, if your name is on men's lips, and your exploits make a noise in the world, then your old mother's head is trembling with happiness, she weeps and laughs and prays long and fervently. And the son, for the most part, does not even think of sharing his triumphs with his mother. If you are poor in mind and spirit, if nature has stamped you with the stigma of deformity, and the pangs of disease torture you body and soul, or if men spurn you from them and there is no place for you among them—the more place for you in your mother's heart. She clasps her misshapen, deficient child all the closer to her heart, and her prayers are still longer and more fervent.
How can we blame Alexandr for egoism, because he was determined to leave Tiome? He was twent y^ From, his nursery life had been all smiles"Tor~1iim—hii mother iddltgeTTTiim and spoiled him^ as mothers do spoil an only son; his nurses all sang to him from his cradle that he would walk in gold and never know sorrow; his teachers declared that he would do something, and, in addition to the adoration of his own household, the daughter of their neighbour smiled on him. And the old cat, Vaska, seemed to be more amiable to him than to any one else in the house.
Sorrow, tears, trouble—all that he knew of only by hearsay, as we know of some disease, which has not appeared openly, but which lurks hidden away somewhere in men. So the future presented itself to him in rainbow colours. Something beckoned him into the distance, but what precisely, that he could not tell. Seductive phantoms glimmered before him, but he could never catch a close view of them; he could hear mingled sounds—now the
voice of glory, nojL the voice of love—and all moved him to a sweet unrest. J
The world of his home soon seemed narrow to him. Nature, and his mother's fondness, the devotion of his nurses and of all the household, his soft bed, and dainty food and purring cats—all these comforts, so dearly prized in the decline of life, he would have gladly exchanged for
i the unknown, full of alluring and mysterious fascination.