‘My friend!’ she said in a voice faltering with agitation. ‘You mustn’t give way to grief. Your grief is great, but you must find comfort.’
‘I’m broken, I’m destroyed, I’m no longer a human being!’ Alexei Alexandrovich said, letting go of her hand, but continuing to look into her tear-filled eyes. ‘My position is the more terrible in that I can find no foothold in myself or anywhere.’
‘You will find a foothold. Seek it not in me, though I beg you to believe in my friendship,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Our foothold is love, the love that He left us. His burden is light,’31 she said with that rapturous look that Alexei Alexandrovich knew so well. ‘He will support you and help you.’
Though there was in these words that tenderness before her own lofty feelings, and that new, rapturous, mystical mood which had recently spread in Petersburg,32 and which Alexei Alexandrovich had considered superfluous, he now found it pleasant to hear.
‘I’m weak. I’m annihilated. I foresaw nothing and now I understand nothing.’
‘My friend,’ Lydia Ivanovna repeated.
‘It’s not the loss of what isn’t there now, it’s not that,’ Alexei Alexandrovich went on. ‘I don’t regret it. But I can’t help feeling ashamed before people for the position I find myself in. It’s wrong, but I can’t help it, I can’t help it.’
‘It was not you who accomplished that lofty act of forgiveness, which I admire along with everyone, but He, dwelling in your heart,’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna said, raising her eyes rapturously, ‘and therefore you cannot be ashamed of your action.’
Alexei Alexandrovich frowned and, bending his hands, began cracking his fingers.
‘One must know all the details,’ he said in a high voice. ‘There are limits to a man’s strength, Countess, and I’ve found the limits of mine. I had to spend the whole day today making arrangements, arrangements about the house, resulting’ (he emphasized the word ‘resulting’) ‘from my new solitary situation. The servants, the governess, the accounts ... These petty flames have burned me up, I couldn’t endure it. Over dinner ... yesterday I almost left the dinner table. I couldn’t stand the way my son looked at me. He didn’t ask me what it all meant, but he wanted to ask, and I couldn’t endure that look. He was afraid to look at me, but that’s not all ... ’
Alexei Alexandrovich wanted to mention the bill that had been brought to him, but his voice trembled and he stopped. He could not recall that bill, on blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, without pitying himself.
‘I understand, my friend,’said Countess Lydia Ivanovna. ‘I understand everything. Help and comfort you will not find in me, but all the same I’ve come only so as to help you if I can. If I could take from you these petty, humiliating cares... I understand that you need a woman’s word, a woman’s order. Will you entrust me with it?’
Alexei Alexandrovich pressed her hand silently and gratefully.
‘We’ll look after Seryozha together. I’m not strong in practical matters. But I’ll take it up, I’ll be your housekeeper. Don’t thank me. It is not I who am doing it ...’
‘I cannot help thanking you.’
‘But, my friend, don’t give in to that feeling you spoke of - of being ashamed of what is the true loftiness of a Christian: “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted”.33 And you cannot thank me. You must thank Him and ask Him for help. In Him alone shall we find peace, comfort, salvation and love,’ she said and, raising her eyes to heaven, began to pray, as Alexei Alexandrovich understood from her silence.
Alexei Alexandrovich listened to her now, and these expressions that had once seemed not exactly unpleasant but unnecessary, now seemed natural and comforting. He had not liked the new rapturous spirit. He was a believer who was interested in religion mostly in a political sense, and the new teaching that allowed itself some new interpretations was disagreeable to him on principle, precisely because it opened the door to debate and analysis. His former attitude to this new teaching had been cold and even inimical, and he had never argued with Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who was enthusiastic about it, but had carefully passed over her challenges in silence. But now for the first time he listened to her words with pleasure and did not inwardly object to them.
‘I’m very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds and for your words,’ he said, when she had finished praying.
Countess Lydia Ivanovna once more pressed both her friend’s hands. ‘Now I shall get down to work,’ she said with a smile, after a pause, wiping the remaining tears from her face. ‘I am going to Seryozha. I shall turn to you only in extreme cases.’ And she got up and went out.
Countess Lydia Ivanovna went to Seryozha’s rooms and there, drenching the frightened boy’s cheeks with tears, told him that his father was a saint and his mother was dead.
*
