‘Of what complaint had Misha died? No doubt....’
Then I bit my tongue ... but the young woman understood my unuttered
hint.... She took a swift glance at me, then looked down again, smiled
mournfully, and said at once: ‘Oh no! he had quite given that up, ever
since he got to know me ... But he had no health at all! ... It was
shattered quite. As soon as he gave up drink, he fell into ill health
directly. He became so steady; he always wanted to help father in his
land or in the garden, ... or any other work there might be ... in spite
of his being of noble birth. But how could he get the strength? ... At
writing, too, he tried to work; as you know, he could do that work
capitally, but his hands shook, and he couldn’t hold the pen properly.
... He was always finding fault with himself; “I’m a white-handed poor
creature,” he would say; “I’ve never done any good to anybody, never
helped, never laboured!” He worried himself very much about that.... He
used to say that our people labour,--but what use are we? ... Ah,
Nikolai Nikolaitch, he was a good man--and he was fond of me ... and
I... Ah, pardon me....’
Here the young woman wept outright. I would have consoled her, but I did
not know how.
‘Have you a child left you?’ I asked at last.
She sighed. ‘No, no child.... Is it likely?’ And her tears flowed faster
than ever.
‘And so that was how Misha’s troubled wanderings had ended,’ the old man
P. wound up his narrative. ‘You will agree with me, I am sure, that I’m
right in calling him a desperate character; but you will most likely
agree too that he was not like the desperate characters of to-day;
still, a philosopher, you must admit, would find a family likeness
between him and them. In him and in them there’s the thirst for
self-destruction, the wretchedness, the dissatisfaction.... And what it
all comes from, I leave the philosopher to decide.’
BOUGIVALLE, _November_ 1881.