Page:Chernyshevsky.whatistobedone.djvu/66

46 "Without asking your mother's consent?"

"I intended to ask your consent after I had obtained hers."

"I presume that you were surer of her consent than of mine!"

"Maman, it is the fashion nowadays to get the girl's consent first, and to speak to relations afterwards."

"Is that your fashion? Maybe it is also your fashion for the sons of good families to marry God knows whom, and for the mothers to consent to it?"

"But, maman, she is not 'a God-knows-whom'; when you come to know her you will approve of my choice."

"When I know her! I shall never know her! 'I approve of your choice'! I forbid any thought of this choice! Do you hear? I forbid it!"

"Maman, this is not the fashion nowadays; I am not a little boy to be lead around by the hand by you. I know myself where I am going."

"Akh!" Anna Petrovna shut her eyes.

Mikhaïl Ivanuitch had to yield before Marya Alekséyevna, to Julie, to Viérotchka, because they were women of sense and strong character; but here, as far as sense was concerned, the battle was drawn, and if the mother was stronger by reason of her character, still the son felt solid ground under his feet; he had stood in awe of his mother hitherto through habit, but they both remembered very well that in reality the khozyáïka was not the khozyáïka, but only the mother of the khozyáïn; and again that the khozyáïka's son is in reality not the khozyáïka's son, but the khozyáïn. And therefore the khozyáïka hesitated to use the decided word "forbid"; she prolonged the conversation, hoping to defeat her son and get him tired out before a genuine battle was fought. But the son had gone to such lengths that it was impossible to withdraw, and he was compelled by the necessity of the case to fight it out.

"Maman, I assure you that a better daughter you could not have."

"You torment! your mother's murderer!"

"Maman, let us reason about it coolly. Sooner or later I shall have to get married, and a married man must have greater expenses than a bachelor. I could, of course, marry such a woman that all the income of the estate would have to be spent on my establishment. But she will be a dutiful daughter, and we could live with you just as I always have."