For many weeks the boy, while sedulously concealing the facts of his school life, had nevertheless wondered that, during his Sundays with her, his mother divined none of his unhappiness. But he himself failed to perceive the burden which that same mother, hitherto as near to him as he to her, was herself bearing. How should he guess that she was at last obliged to concentrate her every faculty upon herself in order to keep from him any betrayal of her condition? Ivan had, certainly, more than once remarked the haggard pallor of her face; or caught her in an involuntary movement of pain. There were nights at school when he thought long and anxiously of her. Yet he was thoroughly unprepared when, on the morning of the third of April, he received from her a brief, strained, unnatural note, containing the astounding information that she was starting at once, with his aunt, for the Riviera, where she might remain for some weeks.
He had the day to ponder over this news: reserving the greater pain of it for the night: when, happily, he should be unmolested. But he never came to this; for, at the end of the evening study-period, he was called from the assembly-hall by no less a person than Colonel Becker himself, at the door of whose dreaded room stood Piotr, white-faced and red-eyed. At his appearance Ivan halted for one, heart-stilling instant. Then he muttered, in a hoarse, dry voice:
"My mother!—She is dead?"
Piotr slowly shook his head, replying: "Not yet.—They have sent for you."
CHAPTER V
DEATH JOY
During that long winter when the mental eyes of Ivan were first opening to the meaning of life and the individual struggles of each to find his place in a world apparently unassailable, Ivan's mother, Princess Sophia, slowly, in great anguish of body, was learning a last lesson of the master by whom she had never been spared. Through that dark period, though mother and son met weekly, their intercourse, hitherto so full, so unreserved, became inevitably hesitant and broken. Each was bearing a burden which neither was willing to reveal to the other. Ivan, concealing from the tender woman every sign of his persecution at the hands of his companions in the Corps, felt himself constantly tongue-tied before her. And though ordinarily the mother-sense would speedily have penetrated that awkward reserve, Sophia, herself all unaccustomed to deceit, was so fully occupied in hiding every sign of her own secret, that Ivan's reticence appeared to her only the reflection of her own. It was as natural, then, as it was unfortunate, that these visits, looked forward to by each of them as bright oases in an otherwise treeless desert, should also have brought with them their quota of discomfort and vain regret. Throughout each week, woman and boy alike hungered for each other. Yet on Sunday night both usually parted with hearts overflowing with secret remorse at the thought that there was actual relief in the knowledge that the day was over. Moreover, as the weeks passed, the Sunday evenings together became shorter and more short. Madame Gregoriev, smiling through the agony that yet found place in every line of her face, would confess to fatigue and would resign herself to the hands of the maid whose duties were daily becoming more those of a nurse, leaving Ivan to the care of the serfs, who, by their unfeigned delight in his appearance, generally sent him away from their quarters about midnight in a very cheerful mood. Later, however, through the dark hours that followed, Ivan's thoughts instinctively reverted to his mother, and the strange expression in her face would take a significance filling his heart with a pain which the morrow's light could not banish.
Months slid by. The Russian New Year came and went. And now, when Ivan reached home on Saturday evening, his mother frequently greeted him from her bed; and on Sunday would sit up only for an hour or two, in her chaise-longue, before the open fire always kept burning in her up-stairs sitting-room, her frail form clad in the loosest of negligées. Still, to all the boy's sad and anxious queries, the reply would be: "Just fatigue, and perhaps a little cold. In a few weeks, you shall see me quite strong again. Smile for me, Ivan!" And Ivan seemed to accept the words. But weekly he went back to his work with something added to the weight now constantly dragging at his heart.