I
I was living at that time with my mother in a little seaside town. I was in
my seventeenth year, while my mother was not quite five-and-thirty; she had
married very young. When my father died, I was only seven years old, but I
remember him well. My mother was a fair-haired woman, not very tall, with
a charming, but always sad-looking face, a soft, tired voice and timid
gestures. In her youth she had been reputed a beauty, and to the end she
remained attractive and pretty. I have never seen deeper, tenderer, and
sadder eyes, finer and softer hair; I never saw hands so exquisite. I
adored her, and she loved me.... But our life was not a bright one; a
secret, hopeless, undeserved sorrow seemed for ever gnawing at the very
root of her being. This sorrow could not be accounted for by the loss of my
father simply, great as that loss was to her, passionately as my mother had
loved him, and devoutly as she had cherished his memory.... No! something
more lay hidden in it, which I did not understand, but of which I was
aware, dimly and yet intensely aware, whenever I looked into those soft
and unchanging eyes, at those lips, unchanging too, not compressed in
bitterness, but, as it were, for ever set in one expression.
I have said that my mother loved me; but there were moments when she
repulsed me, when my presence was oppressive to her, unendurable. At such
times she felt a sort of involuntary aversion for me, and was horrified
afterwards, blamed herself with tears, pressed me to her heart. I used to
ascribe these momentary outbreaks of dislike to the derangement of her
health, to her unhappiness.... These antagonistic feelings might indeed, to
some extent, have been evoked by certain strange outbursts of wicked and
criminal passions, which arose from time to time in me, though I could not
myself account for them....
But these evil outbursts were never coincident with the moments of
aversion. My mother always wore black, as though in mourning. We were in
fairly good circumstances, but we hardly knew any one.