“I have something to tell you, mother. I told Mlle. Yavner I loved her and I want you to congratulate me.”
“Mlle. Yavner?” she asked, with a look of consternation.
“Yes, Mamma dear, I love her and she loves me and she is the dearest woman in the world and you are not going to look upon it in a manner unworthy of yourself, are you, dear little mamma mine?” He seized her fingers and fell to kissing them and murmuring: “My dear little mamma, my dear little mamma.” His endearments were too much for her.
“Pasha, Pasha! What are you doing with yourself,” she sobbed bitterly.
“Mamma darling! Mamma darling!” he shouted fiercely. “You are not going to give way to idiotic, brutal, Asiatic notions that are not really yours. Another year or two, perhaps less, and all Russia will be free from them and from all her chains, and then one won’t have to be shocked to hear that a man and a woman who love each other and belong to each other are going to marry. Mamma dear, my darling little mamma! You are the noblest woman to be found. You are not going to go back on your son because he is trying to live like a real human being and not like a hypocrite and a brute.”
She dared not cry any more.
When Clara came, the countess, turning pale, clasped her vehemently, as though pleading for mercy. Clara felt bewildered and terror-stricken, and after some perfunctory kisses she loosened her arms, but the Gentile woman detained her in an impetuous embrace, as she said: “Be good to me, both of you. He is all I have in the world.” As she saw an embarrassed smile on Clara’s beautifully coloured face, she bent forward with a sudden impulse and drew her to her bosom again, as though she had just made the discovery that the Jewish girl was not unlike other girls after all, that there was nothing preternatural about her person or speech. Whereupon Clara kissed her passionately and burst into tears.
The countess caressed her, poured out the innermost secrets of her heart to her. This Jewish girl whom she had only seen once before heard from her the story of her past life, of her childhood, of her two unhappy marriages, of her thirst for comradeship with her son, of her conversion. The two women became intimate friends, although Clara spoke comparatively little.
Nevertheless, that night Anna Nicolayevna vainly courted sleep. Her heart was in her mouth. She wished she could implore her son to break the engagement, to sever connection with the movement, to abandon all his perilous and unconventional pursuits. But she knew that she would never have the courage to do so.