"Don't squander your money too freely. See that your father does not get angry. I love you anyway, without all this."She had already told him that she would go with him only as far as Kazan, where she had a married sister. Foma could not believe that she would leave him, and when, on the eve of their arrival at Kazan, she repeated her words, he became gloomy and began to implore her not to forsake him.
"Do not feel sorry in advance," she said. "We have a whole night before us. You will have time to feel sorry when I bid you good-bye, if you will feel sorry at all."
But he still tried to persuade her not to forsake him, and, finally--which was to be expected--announced his desire to marry her.
"So, so!" and she began to laugh. "Shall I marry you while my husband is still alive? My darling, my queer fellow! You have a desire to marry, eh? But do they marry such women as I am? You will have many, many mistresses. Marry then, when you have overflowed, when you have had your fill of all sweets and feel like having rye bread. Then you may marry! I have noticed that a healthy man, for his own peace, must not marry early. One woman will not be enough to satisfy him, and he'll go to other women.
And for your own happiness, you should take a wife only when you know that she alone will suffice for you."But the more she spoke, the more persistent Foma became in his desire not to part with her.
"Just listen to what I'll tell you," said the woman, calmly. "Asplinter of wood is burning in your hand, and you can see well even without its light--you had better dip it into water, so that there will be no smell of smoke and your hand will not be burned.""I do not understand your words."
"Do understand. You have done me no wrong, and I do not wish to do you any. And, therefore, I am going away."It is hard to say what might have been the result of this dispute if an accident had not interfered with it. In Kazan Foma received a telegram from Mayakin, who wrote to his godson briefly: "Come immediately on the passenger steamer." Foma's heart contracted nervously, and a few hours later, gloomy and pale, his teeth set together, he stood on the deck of the steamer, which was leaving the harbour, and clinging to the rail with his hands, he stared motionlessly into the face of his love, who was floating far away from him together with the harbour and the shore. Pelageya waved her handkerchief and smiled, but he knew that she was crying, shedding many painful tears.
From her tears the entire front of Foma's shirt was wet, and from her tears, his heart, full of gloomy alarm, was sad and cold. The figure of the woman was growing smaller and smaller, as though melting away, and Foma, without lifting his eyes, stared at her and felt that aside from fear for his father and sorrow for the woman, some new, powerful and caustic sensation was awakening in his soul.
He could not name it, but it seemed to him as something like a grudge against someone.
The crowd in the harbour blended into a close, dark and dead spot, faceless, formless, motionless. Foma went away from the rail and began to pace the deck gloomily.
The passengers, conversing aloud, seated themselves to drink tea;the porters bustled about on the gallery, setting the tables;somewhere below, on the stern, in the third class, a child was crying, a harmonica was wailing, the cook was chopping something with knives, the dishes were jarring-- producing a rather harsh noise. Cutting the waves and making foam, shuddering under the strain and sighing heavily, the enormous steamer moved rapidly against the current. Foma looked at the wide strip of broken, struggling, and enraged waves at the stern of the steamer, and began to feel a wild desire to break or tear something; also to go, breast foremost, against the current and to mass its pressure against himself, against his breast and his shoulders.
"Fate!" said someone beside him in a hoarse and weary voice.
This word was familiar to him: his Aunt Anfisa had often used it as an answer to his questions, and he had invested in this brief word a conception of a power, similar to the power of God. He glanced at the speakers: one of them was a gray little old man, with a kind face; the other was younger, with big, weary eyes and with a little black wedge-shaped beard. His big gristly nose and his yellow, sunken cheeks reminded Foma of his godfather.
"Fate!" The old man repeated the exclamation of his interlocutor with confidence, and began to smile. "Fate in life is like a fisherman on the river: it throws a baited hook toward us into the tumult of our life and we dart at it with greedy mouths. Then fate pulls up the rod--and the man is struggling, flopping on the ground, and then you see his heart is broken. That's how it is, my dear man."Foma closed his eyes, as if a ray of the sun had fallen full on them, and shaking his head, he said aloud:
"True! That is true!"
The companions looked at him fixedly: the old man, with a fine, wise smile; the large-eyed man, unfriendly, askance. This confused Foma; he blushed and walked away, thinking of Fate and wondering why it had first treated him kindly by giving him a woman, and then took back the gift from him, so simply and abusively? And he now understood that the vague, caustic feeling which he carried within him was a grudge against Fate for thus sporting with him. He had been too much spoiled by life, to regard more plainly the first drop of poison from the cup which was just started, and he passed all the time of the journey without sleep, pondering over the old man's words and fondling his grudge. This grudge, however, did not awaken in him despondency and sorrow, but rather a feeling of anger and revenge.
Foma was met by his godfather, and to his hasty and agitated question, Mayakin, his greenish little eyes flashing excitedly, said when he seated himself in the carriage beside his godson:
"Your father has grown childish."
"Drinking?"
"Worse--he has lost his mind completely."
"Really? 0h Lord! Tell me."
