Youth

Chapter 9

HOW I PREPARED MYSELF FOR THE EXAMINATIONS

On the Thursday in Easter week Papa, my sister, Katenka, and Mimi

went away into the country, and no one remained in my

grandmother's great house but Woloda, St. Jerome, and myself. The

frame of mind which I had experienced on the day of my confession

and during my subsequent expedition to the monastery had now

completely passed away, and left behind it only a dim, though

pleasing, memory which daily became more and more submerged by

the impressions of this emancipated existence.

The folio endorsed "Rules of My Life" lay concealed beneath a

pile of school-books. Although the idea of the possibility of

framing rules, for every occasion in my life and always letting

myself be guided by them still pleased me (since it appeared an

idea at once simple and magnificent, and I was determined to make

practical application of it), I seemed somehow to have forgotten

to put it into practice at once, and kept deferring doing so

until such and such a moment. At the same time, I took pleasure

in the thought that every idea which now entered my head could be

allotted precisely to one or other of my three sections of tasks

and duties--those for or to God, those for or to my neighbour, and

those for or to myself. "I can always refer everything to them,"

I said to myself, "as well as the many, many other ideas which

occur to me on one subject or another." Yet at this period I

often asked myself, "Was I better and more truthful when I only

believed in the power of the human intellect, or am I more so

now, when I am losing the faculty of developing that power, and

am in doubt both as to its potency and as to its importance?" To

this I could return no positive answer.

The sense of freedom, combined with the spring-like feeling of

vague expectation to which I have referred already, so unsettled

me that I could not keep myself in hand--could make none but the

sorriest of preparations for my University ordeal. Thus I was

busy in the schoolroom one morning, and fully aware that I must

work hard, seeing that to-morrow was the day of my examination in

a subject of which I had the two whole questions still to read

up; yet no sooner had a breath of spring come wafted through the

window than I felt as though there were something quite different

that I wished to recall to my memory. My hands laid down my book,

my feet began to move of themselves, and to set me walking up and

down the room, and my head felt as though some one had suddenly

touched in it a little spring and set some machine in motion--so

easily and swiftly and naturally did all sorts of pleasing

fancies of which I could catch no more than the radiancy begin

coursing through it. Thus one hour, two hours, elapsed

unperceived. Even if I sat down determinedly to my book, and

managed to concentrate my whole attention upon what I was

reading, suddenly there would sound in the corridor the footsteps

of a woman and the rustle of her dress. Instantly everything

would escape my mind, and I would find it impossible to remain

still any longer, however much I knew that the woman could only

be either Gasha or my grandmother's old sewing-maid moving about

in the corridor. "Yet suppose it should be SHE all at once?" I

would say to myself. "Suppose IT is beginning now, and I were to

lose it?" and, darting out into the corridor, I would find, each

time, that it was only Gasha. Yet for long enough afterwards I

could not recall my attention to my studies. A little spring had

been touched in my head, and a strange mental ferment started

afresh. Again, that evening I was sitting alone beside a tallow

candle in my room. Suddenly I looked up for a moment--to snuff

the candle, or to straighten myself in my chair--and at once

became aware of nothing but the darkness in the corners and the

blank of the open doorway. Then, I also became conscious how still

the house was, and felt as though I could do nothing else than go

on listening to that stillness, and gazing into the black square

of that open doorway, and gradually sinking into a brown study as

I sat there without moving. At intervals, however, I would get

up, and go downstairs, and begin wandering through the empty

rooms. Once I sat a long while in the small drawing-room as I

listened to Gasha playing "The Nightingale" (with two fingers) on

the piano in the large drawing-room, where a solitary candle

burned. Later, when the moon was bright, I felt obliged to get

out of bed and to lean out of the window, so that I might gaze

into the garden, and at the lighted roof of the Shaposnikoff

mansion, the straight tower of our parish church, and the dark

shadows of the fence and the lilac-bush where they lay black upon

the path. So long did I remain there that, when I at length

returned to bed, it was ten o'clock in the morning before I could

open my eyes again.

In short, had it not been for the tutors who came to give me

lessons, as well as for St. Jerome (who at intervals, and very

grudgingly, applied a spur to my self-conceit) and, most of all,

for the desire to figure as "clever" in the eyes of my friend

Nechludoff (who looked upon distinctions in University

examinations as a matter of first-rate importance)--had it not

been for all these things, I say, the spring and my new freedom

would have combined to make me forget everything I had ever

learnt, and so to go through the examinations to no purpose

whatsoever.