When the authorities pardoned Passek, they never thought of restoring to him any part of his property. On his arrival, worn out by exertions and privations, he fell ill; and the family did not know where they were to get to-morrow’s dinner.
The father could bear no more; he died. The widow and children got on as best they could from day to day. The greater the need, the harder the sons worked; three of them took their degree at the University with brilliant success. The two eldest, both excellent mathematicians, went to Petersburg; one served in the Navy and the other in the Engineers, and both contrived to give lessons in mathematics as well. They practised strict self-denial and sent home all the money they earned.
I have a vivid recollection of their old mother in her dark jacket and white cap. Her thin pale face was covered with wrinkles, and she looked much older than she was; the eyes alone still lived and revealed such a fund of gentleness and love, and such a past of anxiety and tears. She was in love with her children; they were wealth and distinction and youth to her; she used to read us their letters, and spoke of them with a sacred depth of feeling, while her feeble voice sometimes broke and trembled with unshed tears.
Sometimes there was a family gathering of them all at Moscow, and then the mother’s joy was beyond description. When they sat down to their modest meal, she would move round the table and arrange things, looking with such joy and pride at her young ones, and sometimes mutely appealing to me for sympathy and admiration. They were really, in point of good looks also, an exceptional family. At such times I longed to kiss her hand and fall upon her neck.
She was happy then; it would have been well if she had died at one of those meetings.
In the space of two years she lost her three eldest sons. Diomid died gloriously, honoured by the foe, in the arms of victory, though he laid down his life in a quarrel that was not his. As a young general, he was killed in action against Circassians. But laurels cannot mend a mother’s broken heart. The other two were less fortunate: the weight of Russian life lay heavy upon them and crushed them at last.
Alas! poor mother!
§24
Vadim died in February of 1843. I was present at his death; it was the first time I had witnessed the death of one dear to me, and I realised the unrelieved horror, the senseless irrationality, and the stupid injustice of the tragedy.
Ten years earlier Vadim had married my cousin Tatyana, and I was best man at the wedding. Family life and change of conditions parted us to some extent. He was happy in his quiet life, but outward circumstances were unfavourable and his enterprises were unsuccessful. Shortly before I and my friends were arrested, he went to Khárkov, where he had been promised a professor’s chair in the University. This trip saved him from prison; but his name had come to the ears of the police, and the University refused to appoint him. An official admitted to him that a document had been received forbidding his appointment, because the Government knew that he was connected with disaffected persons.