“In my opinion, you ought to think twice before you reject Essen’s advice. If you don’t fancy Orenburg, the boy can enlist here just as well. You and I are old friends, and I always speak my mind to you. You will do no good to the young man himself and no service to the country by sending him to the University and on to the Civil Service. He is clearly in a false position, and nothing but the Army can put that right and open up a career for him from the first. Any dangerous notions will settle down before he gets the command of a regiment. Discipline works wonders, and his future will depend on himself. You say that he’s clever; but you don’t suppose that all officers in the Army are fools? Think of yourself and me and our lot generally. There is only one possible objection—that he may have to serve some time before he gets his commission; but that’s the very point in which we can help you.”
This conversation was as valuable to me as the casual remarks of my nurses. I was now thirteen; and these lessons, which I turned over and over and pondered in my heart for weeks and months in complete solitude, bore their fruit. I had formerly dreamt, as boys always do, of military service and fine uniforms, and had nearly wept because my father wished to make a civilian of me; but this conversation at once cooled my enthusiasm, and by degrees—for it took time—I rooted out of my mind every atom of my passion for stripes and epaulettes and aiguillettes. There was, it is true, one relapse, when a cousin, who was at school in Moscow and sometimes came to our house on holidays, got a commission in a cavalry regiment. After joining his regiment, he paid a visit to Moscow and stayed some days with us. My heart beat fast, when I saw him in all his finery, carrying his sabre and wearing the shako held at a becoming angle by the chin-strap. He was sixteen but not tall for his age; and next morning I put on his uniform, sabre, shako, and all, and looked at myself in the glass. How magnificent I seemed to myself, in the blue jacket with scarlet facings! What a contrast between this gorgeous finery and the plain cloth jacket and duck trousers which I wore at home!
My cousin’s visit weakened for a time the effect of what the generals had said; but, before long, circumstances gave me a fresh and final distaste for a soldier’s uniform.
By pondering over my “false position,” I was brought to much the same conclusions as by the talk of the two nurses. I felt less dependence on society (of which, however, I knew nothing), and I believed that I must rely mainly on my own efforts. I said to myself with childish arrogance that General Bakhmétyev and his brother-officers should hear of me some day.
In view of all this, it may be imagined what a weary and monotonous existence I led in the strange monastic seclusion of my home. There was no encouragement for me, and no variety; my father, who showed no fondness for me after I was ten, was almost always displeased with me; I had no companions. My teachers came and went; I saw them to the door, and then stole off to play with the servants’ children, which was strictly forbidden. At other times I wandered about the large gloomy rooms, where the windows were shut all day and the lights burnt dim in the evening; I either did nothing or read any books I could lay hands on.
My only other occupation I found in the servants’ hall and the maids’ room; they gave me real live pleasure. There I found perfect freedom; I took a side in disputes; together with my friends downstairs, I discussed their doings and gave my advice; and though I knew all their secrets, I never once betrayed them by a slip of the tongue in the drawing-room.
§3
This is a subject on which I must dwell for a little. I should say that I do not in general mean to avoid digressions and disquisitions; every conversation is full of them, and so is life itself.
As a rule, children are attached to servants. Parents, especially Russian parents, forbid this intimacy, but the children do not obey orders, because they are bored in the drawing-room and happy in the pantry. In this case, as in a thousand others, parents don’t know what they are doing. I find it impossible to imagine that our servants’ hall was a worse place for children than our morning-room or smoking-room. It is true that children pick up coarse expressions and bad manners in the company of servants; but in the drawing-room they learn coarse ideas and bad feelings.
The mere order to keep at a distance from people with whom the children are in constant relations, is in itself revolting.