If only his mother had exercised some leniency! But she did not even exempt him from the stipulated asparagus in spring, nor even from the loan of the carriage for drives during harvest-time when the horses were so badly wanted in the fields.
"He that will not hearken to advice must suffer," she was wont to say, and he would not hearken; no, indeed not! With one short, simple "yes" he might have put a stop to all his misery, might have lived in the lap of luxury to the end of his days; and because he would not do it, out of sheer, inconceivable stubbornness, because all her wife-hunting had been to no purpose--that was why his mother could not forgive him.
Thus two years passed away. Then he began to feel that such a life must sooner or later make a wreck of him. This anxiety and worry was exhausting him more and more; he decided to put an end to it all and to demand of fate that modest share of happiness which was pledged and promised to him by a pair of faithful blue eyes, and a pale, gentle mouth. Then came a day when he brought home, as wife to his hearth, the love of his youth, who had shortly become orphaned and homeless.
It was a dreary, sad November day, and dark clouds sped like birds of ill omen across the sky. Trembling and pale, in her black mourning dress, the frail, delicate creature hung on his arm and quaked beneath every half-compassionate, half-contemptuous glance with which the strange people examined her.
As for his mother, she had received her with reproaches and maledictions, and a year had elapsed before tolerable relations were established between the two.
Martha had kept up bravely, and in spite of her delicate health, had worked from morn to night in order to set to rights what had all gone topsy-turvy during the master's long bachelorhood.
And when, after three years of quiet, cheering companionship. Heaven was about to bless their union, she had--even when her condition already required the greatest care--always been up and doing, working and ordering in kitchen, attic, and cellar.
It almost seemed as if thus by labour she wanted to give an equivalent for her missing dowry.
Then--two days after the birth of a child--Olga had suddenly arrived in Gromowo. He had not seen her since his marriage. At first sight of her he was almost startled. She came towards him with an expression of such proud reserve and bitterness; she had blossomed forth to such regal beauty.
And this woman he was to-day to call his own! Yet what a world of suffering, how many days of gloomiest brooding and despair, how many nights full of horrible visions lay between now and then!