UP to the age of fourteen, when my father died, my childhood was the
happiest period of my life. It began very far away from here in the
depths of the province of Tula, where my father filled the position of
steward on the vast estates of the Prince P----. Our house was situated in
one of the Prince’s villages, and we lived a quiet, obscure, but happy,
life. A gay little child was I--my one idea being ceaselessly to run
about the fields and the woods and the garden. No one ever gave me a
thought, for my father was always occupied with business affairs, and
my mother with her housekeeping. Nor did any one ever give me any
lessons--a circumstance for which I was not sorry. At earliest dawn I
would hie me to a pond or a copse, or to a hay or a harvest field, where
the sun could warm me, and I could roam wherever I liked, and scratch my
hands with bushes, and tear my clothes in pieces. For this I used to get
blamed afterwards, but I did not care.
Had it befallen me never to quit that village--had it befallen me to
remain for ever in that spot--I should always have been happy; but fate
ordained that I should leave my birthplace even before my girlhood had
come to an end. In short, I was only twelve years old when we removed
to St. Petersburg. Ah! how it hurts me to recall the mournful gatherings
before our departure, and to recall how bitterly I wept when the time
came for us to say farewell to all that I had held so dear! I remember
throwing myself upon my father’s neck, and beseeching him with tears
to stay in the country a little longer; but he bid me be silent, and
my mother, adding her tears to mine, explained that business matters
compelled us to go. As a matter of fact, old Prince P---- had just died,
and his heirs had dismissed my father from his post; whereupon, since
he had a little money privately invested in St. Petersburg, he bethought
him that his personal presence in the capital was necessary for the
due management of his affairs. It was my mother who told me this.
Consequently we settled here in St. Petersburg, and did not again move
until my father died.
How difficult I found it to grow accustomed to my new life! At the time
of our removal to St. Petersburg it was autumn--a season when, in the
country, the weather is clear and keen and bright, all agricultural
labour has come to an end, the great sheaves of corn are safely garnered
in the byre, and the birds are flying hither and thither in clamorous
flocks. Yes, at that season the country is joyous and fair, but here
in St. Petersburg, at the time when we reached the city, we encountered
nothing but rain, bitter autumn frosts, dull skies, ugliness, and crowds
of strangers who looked hostile, discontented, and disposed to take
offence. However, we managed to settle down--though I remember that
in our new home there was much noise and confusion as we set the
establishment in order. After this my father was seldom at home, and my
mother had few spare moments; wherefore, I found myself forgotten.
The first morning after our arrival, when I awoke from sleep, how sad I
felt! I could see that our windows looked out upon a drab space of wall,
and that the street below was littered with filth. Passers-by were few,
and as they walked they kept muffling themselves up against the cold.
Then there ensued days when dullness and depression reigned supreme.
Scarcely a relative or an acquaintance did we possess in St. Petersburg,
and even Anna Thedorovna and my father had come to loggerheads with one
another, owing to the fact that he owed her money. In fact, our only
visitors were business callers, and as a rule these came but to wrangle,
to argue, and to raise a disturbance. Such visits would make my father
look very discontented, and seem out of temper. For hours and hours he
would pace the room with a frown on his face and a brooding silence on
his lips. Even my mother did not dare address him at these times,
while, for my own part, I used to sit reading quietly and humbly in a
corner--not venturing to make a movement of any sort.
Three months after our arrival in St. Petersburg I was sent to a
boarding-school. Here I found myself thrown among strange people; here
everything was grim and uninviting, with teachers continually shouting
at me, and my fellow-pupils for ever holding me up to derision, and
myself constantly feeling awkward and uncouth. How strict, how exacting
was the system! Appointed hours for everything, a common table,
ever-insistent teachers! These things simply worried and tortured me.
Never from the first could I sleep, but used to weep many a chill, weary
night away. In the evenings everyone would have to repeat or to learn
her lessons. As I crouched over a dialogue or a vocabulary, without
daring even to stir, how my thoughts would turn to the chimney-corner
at home, to my father, to my mother, to my old nurse, to the tales which
the latter had been used to tell! How sad it all was! The memory of the
merest trifle at home would please me, and I would think and think how
nice things used to be at home. Once more I would be sitting in our
little parlour at tea with my parents--in the familiar little parlour
where everything was snug and warm! How ardently, how convulsively I
would seem to be embracing my mother! Thus I would ponder, until at
length tears of sorrow would softly gush forth and choke my bosom, and
drive the lessons out of my head. For I never could master the tasks of
the morrow; no matter how much my mistress and fellow-pupils might gird
at me, no matter how much I might repeat my lessons over and over to
myself, knowledge never came with the morning. Consequently, I used to
be ordered the kneeling punishment, and given only one meal in the day.
How dull and dispirited I used to feel! From the first my fellow-pupils
used to tease and deride and mock me whenever I was saying my lessons.
Also, they used to pinch me as we were on our way to dinner or tea, and
to make groundless complaints of me to the head mistress. On the other
hand, how heavenly it seemed when, on Saturday evening, my old nurse
arrived to fetch me! How I would embrace the old woman in transports
of joy! After dressing me, and wrapping me up, she would find that
she could scarcely keep pace with me on the way home, so full was I of
chatter and tales about one thing and another. Then, when I had arrived
home merry and lighthearted, how fervently I would embrace my parents,
as though I had not seen them for ten years. Such a fussing would there
be--such a talking and a telling of tales! To everyone I would run with
a greeting, and laugh, and giggle, and scamper about, and skip for
very joy. True, my father and I used to have grave conversations about
lessons and teachers and the French language and grammar; yet we were
all very happy and contented together. Even now it thrills me to think
of those moments. For my father’s sake I tried hard to learn my lessons,
for I could see that he was spending his last kopeck upon me, and
himself subsisting God knows how. Every day he grew more morose and
discontented and irritable; every day his character kept changing for
the worse. He had suffered an influx of debts, nor were his business
affairs prospering. As for my mother, she was afraid even to say a word,
or to weep aloud, for fear of still further angering him. Gradually
she sickened, grew thinner and thinner, and became taken with a painful
cough. Whenever I reached home from school I would find every one
low-spirited, and my mother shedding silent tears, and my father raging.
Bickering and high words would arise, during which my father was wont
to declare that, though he no longer derived the smallest pleasure or
relaxation from life, and had spent his last coin upon my education, I
had not yet mastered the French language. In short, everything began to
go wrong, to turn to unhappiness; and for that circumstance, my father
took vengeance upon myself and my mother. How he could treat my poor
mother so I cannot understand. It used to rend my heart to see her, so
hollow were her cheeks becoming, so sunken her eyes, so hectic her
face. But it was chiefly around myself that the disputes raged. Though
beginning only with some trifle, they would soon go on to God knows
what. Frequently, even I myself did not know to what they related.
Anything and everything would enter into them, for my father would say
that I was an utter dunce at the French language; that the head mistress
of my school was a stupid, common sort of women who cared nothing for
morals; that he (my father) had not yet succeeded in obtaining another
post; that Lamonde’s “Grammar” was a wretched book--even a worse one
than Zapolski’s; that a great deal of money had been squandered upon me;
that it was clear that I was wasting my time in repeating dialogues
and vocabularies; that I alone was at fault, and that I must answer for
everything. Yet this did not arise from any WANT OF LOVE for me on the
part of my father, but rather from the fact that he was incapable of
putting himself in my own and my mother’s place. It came of a defect of
character.
All these cares and worries and disappointments tortured my poor father
until he became moody and distrustful. Next he began to neglect his
health, with the result that, catching a chill, he died, after a short
illness, so suddenly and unexpectedly that for a few days we were almost
beside ourselves with the shock--my mother, in particular, lying for
a while in such a state of torpor that I had fears for her reason. The
instant my father was dead creditors seemed to spring up out of the
ground, and to assail us en masse. Everything that we possessed had to
be surrendered to them, including a little house which my father had
bought six months after our arrival in St. Petersburg. How matters
were finally settled I do not know, but we found ourselves roofless,
shelterless, and without a copper. My mother was grievously ill, and
of means of subsistence we had none. Before us there loomed only ruin,
sheer ruin. At the time I was fourteen years old. Soon afterwards Anna
Thedorovna came to see us, saying that she was a lady of property and
our relative; and this my mother confirmed--though, true, she added that
Anna was only a very DISTANT relative. Anna had never taken the least
notice of us during my father’s lifetime, yet now she entered our
presence with tears in her eyes, and an assurance that she meant to
better our fortunes. Having condoled with us on our loss and destitute
position, she added that my father had been to blame for everything, in
that he had lived beyond his means, and taken upon himself more than he
was able to perform. Also, she expressed a wish to draw closer to us,
and to forget old scores; and when my mother explained that, for her own
part, she harboured no resentment against Anna, the latter burst into
tears, and, hurrying my mother away to church, then and there ordered
Mass to be said for the “dear departed,” as she called my father. In
this manner she effected a solemn reconciliation with my mother.
Next, after long negotiations and vacillations, coupled with much
vivid description of our destitute position, our desolation, and our
helplessness, Anna invited us to pay her (as she expressed it) a
“return visit.” For this my mother duly thanked her, and considered the
invitation for a while; after which, seeing that there was nothing
else to be done, she informed Anna Thedorovna that she was prepared,
gratefully, to accept her offer. Ah, how I remember the morning when we
removed to Vassilievski Island! [A quarter of St. Petersburg.] It was a
clear, dry, frosty morning in autumn. My mother could not restrain
her tears, and I too felt depressed. Nay, my very heart seemed to be
breaking under a strange, undefined load of sorrow. How terrible it all
seemed!...