She cried bitterly and lay down, rolling herself up in the blanket, looking very silly, small, and pathetic. Nadya went to her room, dressed, and sat at the window to wait for the dawn. All night she sat there thinking, while someone down below in the courtyard seemed to be tapping the shutters and whistling.
The next morning Grandmother complained that during the night the wind had blown down all the apples in the garden and thrown down an old plum tree. It was a dull gray desolate day: one of those mornings when you want to light the lamps; everyone complained of the cold, and the raindrops kept tapping on the windowpanes. After breakfast Nadya went to Sasha’s room, and without saying a word she fell on her knees before a chair in the corner and covered her face with her hands.
“What’s the matter?” Sasha asked.
“I can’t go on,” she said. “I don’t know how I was able to live here before. I don’t understand it. I despise my fiance, I despise myself, I despise all idle, nonsensical life!”
“What’s come over you?” said Sasha, who was still unable to understand what it was all about. “You know … everything will turn out all right.”
“I am disgusted with my life,” Nadya went on. “I can’t endure the thought of another day here! I’m leaving here tomorrow. Take me with you, for God’s sake!”
For a moment Sasha gazed at her in astonishment. At last the truth dawned on him, and he was as delighted as a child. He waved his arms and began to shuffle around the room in his slippers, like someone dancing for joy.
“Wonderful!” he said, rubbing his hands together. “God, how wonderful!”
And she gazed at him steadily with wide-open eyes full of love, like someone spellbound, and she waited for him to say something important, something which would have infinite meaning for her. He had told her nothing yet, but already it seemed to her that something new and great, something she had never known before, was opening before her, and already she was gazing at him with a look of expectation, prepared for everything, even for death.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he told her after some thought. “You can come to the station to see me off.… I’ll have your baggage in my trunk and get your ticket, and then when the third bell rings you can jump on the train, and we’ll go away. You can come with me to Moscow and then go off alone to St. Petersburg. Have you a passport?”
“Yes.”
“I swear you’ll never regret it, never repent,” Sasha said with enthusiasm. “You can leave here and study, and then go where-ever fate beckons. When your life is completely revolutionized, then everything will change. The important thing is to revolutionize your life, and nothing else is of any importance. Shall we leave tomorrow?”
“Yes, for God’s sake, let’s leave tomorrow!”
Nadya, who imagined that she was deeply moved and that her heart had never felt so heavy, was quite sure she would spend all the time before her departure in anguish and torment. Yet she had scarcely reached her room and lain down on the bed when she was overcome with sleep; and she slept soundly, her face wet with tears and a smile on her lips, till evening came.
V
They sent for a cab. Nadya went upstairs, in her hat and coat, to take one last look at her mother, at all the things that had belonged to her for so long. First she went to her own room and stood beside the bed, which was still warm, and for a while she looked around her; then she went softly into her mother’s room. After kissing her mother and smoothing her hair, she remained there a few moments before walking slowly downstairs.
A heavy rain fell. In front of the porch stood a droshky, the hood up, drenched with rain.
“There’s no room for you, Nadya,” said Grandmother while a servant was stowing the luggage. “I wonder you want to see him off in this weather! Much better to stay at home! Oh, look at the rain!”
Nadya tried to say something, but words failed her. Sasha helped her into the droshky, and covered her legs with a rug. Then he sat down beside her.
“Good luck! May God keep you!” Grandmother shouted from the steps. “Write to us when you get to Moscow!”
“Yes, of course. Good-by, Granny!”
“May the Queen of Heaven have you in her keeping.”
“What rotten weather!” Sasha said.
At this point Nadya burst out sobbing. Now for the first time she realized she was really going away, and this was something she had not permitted herself to believe when she was gazing at her mother or saying good-by to her grandmother. Good-by, town! It all came back to her with a rush: Andrey, the father, the new house, the naked lady with the vase; but these things no longer oppressed her, no longer frightened her, but on the contrary seemed naive and unimportant, fading deeper and deeper into the distance. And when they were sitting in the railroad carriage and the train started, the whole of the past, once so huge and imposing, shrank almost to nothing: instead the broad roads of the future, scarcely perceptible until this moment, opened out to her. The rain rapped on the carriage windows, nothing could be seen but the green fields and the telegraph poles flashing past—the birds sitting on the wires. Quite suddenly she found she was almost choking with joy. It seemed to her she would soon enter her freedom, spending her time studying, “running wild,” as people used to say. She was simultaneously laughing and crying and saying her prayers.
“Everything is going to be all right,” Sasha was saying with a broad smile. “You’ll see.…”
VI
Autumn had gone, and winter, too, had passed away. Nadya was now very homesick, and every day she thought of her mother and her grandmother; she thought of Sasha, too. Letters from home were resigned and kindly, everything seemed to have been forgiven and forgotten. In May after the examinations she went home in good health and high spirits, breaking her journey in Moscow to see Sasha. He had changed very little since the previous summer—the same beard, the same disheveled hair, the same large and beautiful eyes, and he wore the same coat and the same canvas trousers. Yet he looked ill and troubled, and seemed much older and thinner, and coughed incessantly. He struck Nadya at first as oddly colorless and provincial.
“Good heavens, Nadya is here!” he exclaimed with a burst of gay laughter. “My dear child …”
