'Why are you going? Stay a little; mamma is coming down directly.'
'No; I can't now,' I said: 'I had better call and see her another
time.'
At that instant, to my horror, to my positive horror, Sophia walked
with resolute steps into the drawing-room. Her face was paler than
usual, and her eyelids were a little red. She never even glanced at me.
'Look, Sonia,' observed Varvara; 'there's a clerk keeps continually
passing our house.'
'A spy, perhaps...' Sophia remarked coldly and contemptuously.
This was too much. I went away, and I really don't know how I got home.
I felt very miserable, wretched and miserable beyond description. In
twenty-four hours two such cruel blows! I had learned that Sophia loved
another man, and I had for ever forfeited her respect. I felt myself so
utterly annihilated and disgraced that I could not even feel indignant
with myself. Lying on the sofa with my face turned to the wall, I was
revelling in the first rush of despairing misery, when I suddenly heard
footsteps in the room. I lifted my head and saw one of my most intimate
friends, Yakov Pasinkov.
I was ready to fly into a rage with any one who had come into my room
that day, but with Pasinkov I could never be angry. Quite the contrary;
in spite of the sorrow devouring me, I was inwardly rejoiced at his
coming, and I nodded to him. He walked twice up and down the room, as
his habit was, clearing his throat, and stretching out his long limbs;
then he stood a minute facing me in silence, and in silence he seated
himself in a corner.
I had known Pasinkov a very long while, almost from childhood. He had
been brought up at the same private school, kept by a German,
Winterkeller, at which I had spent three years. Yakov's father, a poor
major on the retired list, a very honest man, but a little deranged
mentally, had brought him, when a boy of seven, to this German; had
paid for him for a year in advance, and had then left Moscow and been
lost sight of completely.... From time to time there were dark, strange
rumours about him. Eight years later it was known as a positive fact
that he had been drowned in a flood when crossing the Irtish. What had
taken him to Siberia, God knows. Yakov had no other relations; his
mother had long been dead. He was simply left stranded on
Winterkeller's hands. Yakov had, it is true, a distant relation, a
great-aunt; but she was so poor, that she was afraid at first to go to
her nephew, for fear she should have the care of him thrust upon her.
Her fears turned out to be groundless; the kind-hearted German kept
Yakov with him, let him study with his other pupils, fed him (dessert,
however, was not offered him except on Sundays), and rigged him out in
clothes cut out of the cast-off morning-gowns--usually
snuff-coloured--of his mother, an old Livonian lady, still alert and
active in spite of her great age. Owing to all these circumstances, and
owing generally to Yakov's inferior position in the school, his
schoolfellows treated him in rather a casual fashion, looked down upon
him, and used to call him 'mammy's dressing-gown,' the 'nephew of the
mob-cap' (his aunt invariably wore a very peculiar mob-cap with a bunch
of yellow ribbons sticking straight upright, like a globe artichoke,
upon it), and sometimes the 'son of Yermak' (because his father had,
like that hero, been drowned in the Irtish). But in spite of those
nicknames, in spite of his ridiculous garb, and his absolute
destitution, every one was fond of him, and indeed it was impossible
not to be fond of him; a sweeter, nobler nature, I imagine, has never
existed upon earth. He was very good at lessons too.
When I saw him first, he was sixteen years old, and I was only just
thirteen. I was an exceedingly selfish and spoilt boy; I had grown up
in a rather wealthy house, and so, on entering the school, I lost no
time in making friends with a little prince, an object of special
solicitude to Winterkeller, and with two or three other juvenile
aristocrats; while I gave myself great airs with all the rest. Pasinkov
I did not deign to notice at all. I regarded the long, gawky lad, in a
shapeless coat and short trousers, which showed his coarse thread
stockings, as some sort of page-boy, one of the house-serfs--at best, a
person of the working class. Pasinkov was extremely courteous and
gentle to everybody, though he never sought the society of any one. If
he were rudely treated, he was neither humiliated nor sullen; he simply
withdrew and held himself aloof, with a sort of regretful look, as it
were biding his time. This was just how he behaved with me. About two
months passed. One bright summer day I happened to go out of the
playground after a noisy game of leap-frog, and walking into the garden
I saw Pasinkov sitting on a bench under a high lilac-bush. He was
reading. I glanced at the cover of the book as I passed, and read
_Schiller's Werke_ on the back. I stopped short.
'Do you mean to say you know German?' I questioned Pasinkov....
I feel ashamed to this day as I recall all the arrogance there was in
the very sound of my voice.... Pasinkov softly raised his small but
expressive eyes and looked at me.
'Yes,' he answered; 'do you?'
'I should hope so!' I retorted, feeling insulted at the question, and I
was about to go on my way, but something held me back.
'What is it you are reading of Schiller?' I asked, with the same
haughty insolence.
'At this moment I am reading "Resignation," a beautiful poem. Would you
like me to read it to you? Come and sit here by me on the bench.'