The mother began to speak again, telling Sofya and Nikolay of herself, her poor life, her wrongs, and patient sufferings. Suddenly she stopped in her narrative. It seemed to her that she was turning aside, away from herself, and speaking about somebody else. In simple words, without malice, with a sad smile on her lips, she drew the monotonous, gray sketch of sorrowful days. She enumerated the beatings she had received from her husband; and herself marveled at the trifling causes that led to them and her own inability to avert them.
The brother and sister listened to her in attentive silence, impressed by the deep significance of the unadorned story of a human being, who was regarded as cattle are regarded, and who, without a murmur, for a long time felt herself to be that which she was held to be. It seemed to them as if thousands, nay millions, of lives spoke through her mouth. Her existence had been commonplace and simple; but such is the simple, ordinary existence of multitudes, and her story, assuming ever larger proportions in their eyes, took on the significance of a symbol. Nikolay, his elbows on the table, and his head leaning on his hands, looked at her through his glasses without moving, his eyes screwed up intently. Sofya flung herself back on her chair. Sometimes she trembled, and at times muttered to herself, shaking her head in disapproval. Her face grew paler. Her eyes deepened.
"Once I thought myself unhappy. My life seemed a fever," said Sofya, inclining her head. "That was when I was in exile. It was in a small district town. There was nothing to do, nothing to think about except myself. I swept all my misfortunes together into one heap, and weighed them, from lack of anything better to do. Then I quarreled with my father, whom I loved. I was expelled from the gymnasium, and insulted—the prison, the treachery of a comrade near to me, the arrest of my husband, again prison and exile, the death of my husband. But all my misfortunes, and ten times their number, are not worth a month of your life, Pelagueya Nilovna. Your torture continued daily through years. From where do the people draw their power to suffer?"
"They get used to it," responded the mother with a sigh.
"I thought I knew that life," said Nikolay softly. "But when I hear it spoken of—not when my books, not when my incomplete impressions speak about it, but she herself with a living tongue—it is horrible. And the details are horrible, the inanities, the seconds of which the years are made."
The conversation sped along, thoughtfully and quietly. It branched out and embraced the whole of common life on all sides. The mother became absorbed in her recollections. From her dim past she drew to light each daily wrong, and gave a massive picture of the huge, dumb horror in which her youth had been sunk. Finally she said:
"Oh! How I've been chattering to you! It's time for you to rest. I'll never be able to tell you all."
The brother and sister took leave of her in silence. Nikolay seemed to the mother to bow lower to her than ever before and to press her hand more firmly. Sofya accompanied her to her room, and stopping at the door said softly: "Now rest. I hope you have a good night."
Her voice blew a warm breath on the mother, and her gray eyes embraced the mother's face in a caress. She took Sofya's hand and pressing it in hers, answered: "Thank you! You are good people."