A letter sent by Sarudine to Lida on the day following their interview
fell by chance into Maria Ivanovna's hands. It contained a request for
the permission to see her, and awkwardly suggested that sundry matters
might be satisfactorily arranged. Its pages cast, so Maria Ivanovna
thought, an ugly, shameful shadow upon the pure image of her daughter.
In her first perplexity and distress, she remembered her own youth with
its love, its deceptions, and the grievous episodes of her married
life. A long chain of suffering forged by a life based on rigid laws of
morality dragged its slow length along, even to the confines of old
age. It was like a grey band, marred in places by monotonous days of
care and disappointment.
Yet the thought that her daughter had broken through the solid wall
surrounding this grey, dusty life, and had plunged into the lurid
whirlpool where joy and sorrow and death were mingled, filled the old
woman with horror and rage.
"Vile, wicked girl!" she thought, as despairingly she let her hands
fall into her lap. Suddenly it consoled her to imagine that possibly
things had not gone too far, and her face assumed a dull, almost a
cunning expression. She read and re-read the letter, yet could gather
nothing from its frigid, affected style.
Feeling how helpless she was, the old woman wept bitterly; and then,
having set her cap straight, she asked the maid-servant: "Dounika, is Vladimir Petrovitch at home?"
"What?" shouted Dounika.
"Fool! I asked if the young gentleman was at home."
"He's just gone into the study. He's writing a letter!" replied
Dounika, looking radiant, as if this letter were the reason for unusual
rejoicing.
Maria Ivanovna looked hard at the girl, and an evil light flashed from
her faded eyes.
"Toad! if you dare to fetch and carry letters again, I'll give you a
lesson that you'll never forget."
Sanine was seated at the table, writing. His mother was so little used
to seeing him write, that, in spite of her grief, she was interested.
"What's that you're writing?"
"A letter," replied Sanine, looking up, gaily.
"To whom?"
"Oh! to a journalist I know. I think of joining the staff of his
paper."
"So you write for the papers?"
Sanine smiled. "I do everything."
"But why do you want to go there?"
"Because I'm tired of living here with you, mother," said Sanine
frankly.
Maria Ivanovna felt somewhat hurt.
"Thank you," she said.