basses droned in the stove again, and it suddenly became frightening. Nadya jumped out of bed and went quickly to her mother. Nina Ivanovna, her face tear-stained, lay in bed with a blue blanket over her, holding a book.
“Mama, listen to me!” said Nadya. “I implore you to perceive and understand! Simply understand how shallow and humiliating our life is. My eyes have been opened and I see it all now. And what is your Andrei Andreich? He’s not intelligent, mama! Lord God! Understand, mama, he’s stupid!”
Nina Ivanovna sat up abruptly.
“You and your grandmother torment me!” she said with a sob. “I want to live! To live!” she repeated and beat her breast twice with her little fist. “Give me freedom! I’m still young, I want to live, and you’ve made an old woman out of me! …”
She wept bitterly, lay down, and curled up under her blanket, and looked so small, pitiful, silly. Nadya went to her room, got dressed, and, sitting by the window, waited for morning. She sat all night thinking, and someone outside kept rapping on the blinds and whistling away.
In the morning the grandmother complained that during the night the wind had blown down all the apples in the orchard and broken an old plum tree. It was a gray, dull, joyless day, fit for lighting the lamps; everyone complained about the cold, and rain rapped on the windows. After tea Nadya went to Sasha’s room and, without saying a word, knelt by the armchair in the corner and covered her face with her hands.
“What is it?” asked Sasha.
“I can’t …” she said. “How could I have lived here before, I can’t understand, I can’t perceive! I despise my fiance, I despise myself, I despise all this idle, meaningless life …”
“Well, well …” said Sasha, not yet understanding what was the matter. “It’s nothing … It’s all right.”
“This life is hateful to me,” Nadya went on, “I can’t stand it here one more day. Tomorrow I’ll go away. Take me with you, for God’s sake!”
For a moment Sasha looked at her in amazement; finally he understood and was happy as a child. He waved his arms and began shuffling in his slippers, as if dancing for joy
“Splendid!” he said, rubbing his hands. “God, how good!”
And she looked at him without blinking, with big, enamoured eyes, as if spellbound, expecting him to say something significant at once, something of boundless importance; he had not said anything yet, but it seemed to her that something vast and new was opening out before her, something she had not known before, and she now looked at him, filled with expectations, ready for anything, even death.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said, after some thought, “and you will come to the station to see me off… I’ll bring your luggage in my trunk and buy you a ticket; at the third bell you’ll get on the train, and—off we’ll go. You’ll keep me company as far as Moscow and then go on by yourself to Petersburg. You have a passport?”5
“Yes.”
“I swear you won’t regret it and won’t repent of it,” Sasha said with enthusiasm. “You’ll go, you’ll study, and then let your destiny carry you on. Once you’ve turned your life around, the rest will change. The main thing is to turn your life around, and the rest doesn’t matter. So, then, tomorrow we go?”
“Oh, yes! For God’s sake!”
It seemed to Nadya that she was very agitated, that her soul was heavy as never before, that now, right up to their departure, she would have to suffer and have tormenting thoughts; but as soon as she went to her room upstairs and lay down on the bed, she fell asleep and slept soundly, her face tear-stained and smiling, till evening.
V
They sent for a cab. Nadya, already in her hat and coat, went upstairs to look once more at her mother and at all that had been hers; she stood in her room by the still-warm bed, looked around, then went quietly to her mother. Nina Ivanovna was asleep, it was quiet in the room. Nadya kissed her mother and straightened her hair, stood there for a minute or two … Then she unhurriedly went downstairs.
Outside it was raining hard. A cab with its top up, all wet, was standing by the porch.
“There won’t be room enough for you, Nadya,” said the grandmother, as a servant began putting in the trunks. “Who wants to go and see him off in such weather! Stay home! Look how it’s raining!”
Nadya wanted to say something and could not. Sasha helped her into the cab, and covered her legs with a plaid. Then he got in beside her.
“Have a good trip! God bless you!” the grandmother called from the porch. “And you, Sasha, write to us from Moscow!”
“All right. Good-bye, granny!”
“May the Queen of Heaven keep you!”
“Well, some weather!” said Sasha.
Only now did Nadya begin to cry. Now it was clear to her that she was bound to leave, something she had not yet believed when she was saying good-bye to her grandmother, when she was looking at her mother. Farewell, town! And suddenly she remembered everything: Andrei, and his father, and the new apartment, and the naked lady with the vase; and now it was all not frightening, not oppressive, but naive, petty, and dropping further and further behind her. And when they got in the carriage and the train started, this whole past, so big and serious, shrank into a little lump, and a vast, expansive future, which until now had been so little noticeable, began to unfold. Rain rapped on the carriage windows, only green fields could be seen, telegraph poles with birds on the wires flashed by, and joy suddenly took her breath away: she remembered that she was on the way to freedom, on the way to study, and it was the same as what very long ago was called going to the Cossacks.6She laughed, and wept, and prayed.
“It’s all ri-i-ight!” said Sasha, grinning. “It’s all ri-i-ight!”
VI
Autumn passed, then winter passed. Nadya was already very homesick, and thought every day of her mother, her grandmother, thought of Sasha. The letters that came from home were quiet, kind, and everything seemed to have been forgiven and forgotten. In May after examinations she went home, healthy and cheerful, and stopped in
