II
“No, no! It cannot be, it cannot! … Let me go!” Svetlogoúb’s mother shouted piercingly, struggling to free herself from the grasp of the schoolmaster—her son’s friend—and of the doctor, who were trying to keep her back.
Svetlogoúb’s mother was a nice-looking middle-aged woman, with grey curls and a star of wrinkles near each eye.
The schoolmaster, when he heard that the death-warrant was signed, wanted to prepare her gently for the terrible news; but he had hardly begun to speak about her son when, by the tone of his voice and his timid look, she guessed that what she dreaded had really happened. This took place in a small room in the best hotel in the town.
“Oh dear! Why do you hold me? Let go!” she shouted, freeing herself from the doctor—an old friend of the family, who with one hand held her by her thin elbow, and with the other put a bottle of medicine on the table which stood before the sofa. She was glad they held her, because she felt that she ought to do something, but did not know what to do, and was afraid of herself.
“Don’t be so agitated. … Here, take these valerian drops,” said the doctor, handing her a glass of turbid liquid.
She suddenly grew quiet, and, bent almost double, her head drooping on to her hollow chest, she closed her eyes and sank on to the sofa.
She remembered how, three months ago, her son had taken leave of her with a look of mystery and sorrow on his face. Then she recalled him as an eight-year-old boy, dressed in a velvet jacket, with bare legs and long fair ringlets.
“And him … him, that very boy … they are going to destroy! …”
She jumped up, pushing away the table, and tore herself from the doctor; but on reaching the door she again sank on to a chair.
“And they say there is a God! … What God is He, if He allows it? … May the devil take Him, that God!” she screamed, now sobbing, now breaking into hysterical laughter. “To hang him … who gave up all—his whole career, all his property—to others … gave it all to the people! …” She, who had formerly reproached her son for this, was now speaking of his self-abnegation as a merit. “And him—him … they will do it to him! … And you say there is a God!” she cried.
“But I do not say anything: I only ask you to take these drops.”
“I want nothing. … Ha, ha, ha!” she laughed and sobbed, beside herself with despair.
Towards night she was so exhausted with suffering that she could neither speak nor weep, but only stared in front of her with a fixed, insane gaze. The doctor injected morphia, and she fell asleep.
It was a dreamless sleep, but the awakening was worse than what had gone before. What appeared most terrible was that people could be so cruel: not only those dreadful Generals with their shaved cheeks, and the gendarmes, but everybody, everybody: the maid who came to do the room, with her quiet face, and the people in the next room, who greeted one another cheerfully, and laughed as if nothing had happened.