Page:Chernyshevsky - What's to be done? A romance.djvu/29

Rh call and inquire after her health.)" Without becoming any the less angry, Maria Alexevna took into consideration the words she had just heard.

"What did he say on leaving you?" she asked, as soon as the carriage had started.

"He told me that tomorrow morning he would come to our house to ask after my health."

"You are not lying? He really said tomorrow?"

Vérotchka said nothing.

"You have escaped finely," resumed her mother, who could not refrain from pulling her hair; "but once only and narrowly enough. I will not beat you, she continued, "but be gay tomorrow! Sleep tonight, stupid, and above all do not take it into your head to weep; for if tomorrow morning you are pale, if your eyes are red, beware! I shall be pitiless; your pretty face will be gone; but I shall have asserted myself!"

"I long since ceased to weep, as you well know."

"That's right! But talk with him a little more."

"I will try tomorrow."

"That's right! It is time to become reasonable. Fear God and have a little pity for your mother, boldface that you are!"

After a silence of ten minutes:

"Vérotchka, do not be angry with me; it is through love for you and for your good that I torment you. Children are so dear to their mothers. I carried you for nine months in my womb. I ask of you only gratitude and obedience. Do as I tell you, and tomorrow he will propose."

"You are mistaken, mamma; he does not dream of it. If you knew of what they talked!"

"I know it. If he does not think of marriage, I know of what he thinks. But he does not know the people with whom he has to deal. We will reduce him to servile obedience, and, if necessary, I will carry him to the altar in a sack, or I will drag him there by the hair, and still he will be content. But a truce to babbling! I have already said too much to you; young girls should not know so much. It is the business of their mothers. The daughters have only to obey. Tomorrow you will speak to him."

"Yes."

"And you, Pavel Konstantinytch, of what are you thinking with your chilly air? You tell her also, in the name of your paternal authority, that you order her to obey her mother in everything."

"Maria Alexevna, you are a wise woman; but the affair is difficult, and even dangerous. Can you carry it through?"

"Imbecile! That is very appropriate now! And before Vérotchka, too! The