M---- VILLAGE, _June 16, 1850_.
Well, my dear boy, I have been to her house; I have seen her. First of
all I must tell you one astonishing fact: you may believe me or not
as you like, but she has scarcely changed at all either in face or in
figure. When she came to meet me, I almost cried out in amazement; it
was simply a little girl of seventeen! Only her eyes are not a little
girl’s; but then her eyes were never like a child’s, even in her young
days,--they were too clear. But the same composure, the same serenity,
the same voice, not one line on her brow, as though she had been laid
in the snow all these years. And she’s twenty-eight now, and has had
three children.… It’s incomprehensible! Don’t imagine, please, that I
had some preconceived preference, and so am exaggerating; quite the
other way; I don’t like this absence of change in her a bit.
A woman of eight-and-twenty, a wife and a mother, ought not to be
like a little girl; she should have gained something from life. She
gave me a very cordial welcome; but Priemkov was simply overjoyed at
my arrival; the dear fellow seems on the look-out for some one to
make much of. Their house is very cosy and clean. Vera Nikolaevna
was dressed, too, like a girl; all in white, with a blue sash, and a
slender gold chain on her neck. Her daughter is very sweet and not at
all like her. She reminds one of her grandmother. In the drawing-room,
just over a sofa, there hangs a portrait of that strange woman, a
striking likeness. It caught my eye directly I went into the room.
It seemed as though she were gazing sternly and earnestly at me. We
sat down, spoke of old times, and by degrees got into conversation. I
could not help continually glancing at the gloomy portrait of Madame
Eltsov. Vera Nikolaevna was sitting just under it; it is her favourite
place. Imagine my amazement: Vera Nikolaevna has never yet read a
single novel, a single poem--in fact, not a single invented work, as
she expresses it! This incomprehensible indifference to the highest
pleasures of the intellect irritated me. In a woman of intelligence,
and as far as I can judge, of sensibility, it’s simply unpardonable.
‘What? do you make it a principle,’ I asked, ‘never to read books of
that sort?’
‘I have never happened to,’ she answered; ‘I haven’t had time!’
‘Not time! You surprise me! I should have thought,’ I went on,
addressing Priemkov, ‘you would have interested your wife in poetry.’
‘I should have been delighted----’ Priemkov was beginning, but Vera
Nikolaevna interrupted him--
‘Don’t pretend; you’ve no great love for poetry yourself.’
‘Poetry; well, no,’ he began; ‘I’m not very fond of it; but novels,
now.…’
‘But what do you do, how do you spend your evenings?’ I queried; ‘do
you play cards?’
‘We sometimes play,’ she answered; ‘but there’s always plenty to do. We
read, too; there are good books to read besides poetry.’
‘Why are you so set against poetry?’
‘I’m not set against it; I have been used to not reading these invented
works from a child. That was my mother’s wish, and the longer I live
the more I am convinced that everything my mother did, everything she
said, was right, sacredly right.’
‘Well, as you will, but I can’t agree with you; I am certain you are
depriving yourself quite needlessly of the purest, the most legitimate
pleasure. Why, you’re not opposed to music and painting, I suppose; why
be opposed to poetry?’
‘I’m not opposed to it; I have never got to know anything of it--that’s
all.’
‘Well, then, I will see to that! Your mother did not, I suppose, wish
to prevent your knowing anything of the works of creative, poetic art
all your life?’
‘No; when I was married, my mother removed every restriction; it never
occurred to me to read--what did you call them?… well, anyway, to read
novels.’