But I had hardly stepped out on the muddy wet pavement of the Prospect when I ran against a passer-by, who was hastening somewhere with his head down, apparently lost in thought. To my intense amazement I recognized my old friend Ichmenyev. It was an evening of unexpected meetings for me. I knew that the old man had been taken seriously unwell three days before; and here I was meeting him in such wet weather in the street. Moreover it had never been his habit to go out in the evening, and since Natasha had gone away, that is, for the last six months, he had become a regular stay-at-home. He seemed to be exceptionally delighted to see me, like a man who has at last found a friend with whom he can talk over his ideas. He seized my hand, pressed it warmly, and without asking where I was going, drew me along with him. He was upset about something, jerky and hurried in his manner. “Where had he been going?” I wondered. It would have been tactless to question him. He had become terribly suspicious, and sometimes detected some offensive hint, some insult, in the simplest inquiry or remark.
I looked at him stealthily. His face showed signs of illness he had grown much thinner of late. His chin showed a week’s growth of beard. His hair, which had turned quite grey, hung down in disorder under his crushed hat, and lay in long straggling tails on the collar of his shabby old great-coat. I had noticed before that at some moments he seemed, as it were, forgetful, forgot for instance that he was not alone in the room, and would talk to himself, gesticulating with his hands. It was painful to look at him.
“Well, Vanya, well?” he began. “Where were you going? I’ve come out, my boy, you see; business. Are you quite well?”
“Are you quite well?” I answered. “You were ill only the other day, and here you are, out.”
The old man seemed not to hear what I said and made no answer.
“How is Anna Andreyevna?”
“She’s quite well, quite well . . . . Though she’s rather poorly, too. She’s rather depressed . . . she was speaking of you, wondering why you hadn’t been. Were you coming to see us now, Vanya, or not? Maybe I’m keeping you, hindering you from something,” he asked suddenly, looking at me distrustfully and suspiciously.
The sensitive old man had become so touchy and irritable that if I had answered him now that I wasn’t going to see them, he would certainly have been wounded, and have parted from me coldly. I hastened to say that I was on my way to look in on Anna Andreyevna, though I knew I was already late, and might not have time to see Natasha at all.
“That’s all right,” said the old man, completely pacified by my answer, “that’s all right.”
And he suddenly sank into silence and pondered, as though he had left something unsaid.
“Yes, that’s all right,” he repeated mechanically, five minutes later, as though coming to himself after a long reverie. “Hm! You know, Vanya, you’ve always been like a son to us. God has not blessed us . . . with a son, but He has sent us you. That’s what I’ve always thought. And my wife the same . . . yes! And you’ve always been tender and respectful to us, like a grateful son. God will bless you for it, Vanya, as we two old people bless and love you. . . . Yes!”
His voice quavered. He paused a moment.
“Well . . . well? You haven’t been ill, have you? Why have you not been to see us for so long?”
I told him the whole incident of Smith, apologizing for having let Smith’s affairs keep me, telling him that I had besides been almost ill, and that with all this on my hands it was a long way to go to Vassilyevsky Island (they lived there then). I was almost blurting out that I had nevertheless made time to see Natasha, but stopped myself in time.
My account of Smith interested my old friend very much. He listened more attentively. Hearing that my new lodging was damp, perhaps even worse than my old one, and that the rent was six roubles a month, he grew positively heated. He had become altogether excitable and impatient. No one but Anna Andreyevna could soothe him at such moments, and even she was not always successful.
“Hm! This is what comes of your literature, Vanya! It’s brought you to a garret, and it will bring you to the graveyard I said so at the time. I foretold it! . . . Is B. still writing reviews?”
“No, he died of consumption. I told you so before, I believe.”
“Dead, hm, dead! Yes, that’s just what one would expect. Has he left anything to his wife and children? You told me he had a wife, didn’t you? . . . What do such people marry for?”
“No, he’s left nothing,” I answered.
“Well, just as I thought! “ he cried, with as much warmth as though the matter closely and intimately concerned him, as though the deceased B. had been his brother. “Nothing! Nothing, you may be sure. And, do you know, Vanya, I had a presentiment he’d end like that, at the time when you used to be always singing his praises, do you remember? It’s easy to say left nothing! Hm! . . . He’s won fame. Even supposing it’s lasting fame, it doesn’t mean bread and butter. I always had a foreboding about you, too, Vanya, my boy. Though I praised you, I always had misgivings. So B.‘s dead? Yes, and he well might be! It’s a nice way we live here, and . . . a nice place! Look at it!”
And with a rapid, unconscious movement of his hand he pointed to the foggy vista of the street, lighted up by the street-lamps dimly twinkling in the damp mist, to the dirty houses, to the wet and shining flags of the pavement, to the cross, sullen, drenched figures that passed by, to all this picture, hemmed in by the dome of the Petersburg sky, black as though smudged with Indian ink. We had by now come out into the square; before us in the darkness stood the monument, lighted up below by jets of gas, and further away rose the huge dark mass of St. Isaac’s, hardly distinguishable against the gloomy sky.
You used to say, Vanya, that he was a nice man, good and generous, with feeling, with a heart. Well, you see, they’re all like that, your nice people, your men with heart! All they can do is to beget orphans! Hm! . . . and I should think he must have felt cheerful at dying like that! E-e-ech! Anything to get away from here! Even Siberia. . . . What is it, child?” he asked suddenly, seeing a little girl on the pavement begging alms.
It was a pale, thin child, not more than seven or eight, dressed in filthy rags; she had broken shoes on her little bare feet. She was trying to cover her shivering little body with a sort of aged semblance of a tiny dress, long outgrown. Her pale, sickly, wasted face was turned towards us. She looked timidly, mutely at us without speaking, and with a look of resigned dread of refusal held out her trembling little hand to us. My old friend started at seeing her, and turned to her so quickly that he frightened her. She was startled and stepped back.
“What is it? What is it, child?” he cried. “You’re begging, eh? Here, here’s something for you . . . take it!”
And, shaking with fuss and excitement, he began feeling in his pocket, and brought out two or three silver coins. But it seemed to him too little. He found his purse, and taking out a rouble note — all that was in it — put it in the little beggar’s hand.
“ Christ keep you, my little one . . . my child! God’s angel be with you!”
And with a trembling hand he made the sign of the cross over the child several times. But suddenly noticing that I was looking at him, he frowned, and walked on with rapid steps.
“That’s a thing I can’t bear to see, Vanya,” he began, after a rather prolonged, wrathful silence. “Little innocent creatures shivering with cold in the street . . . all through their cursed fathers and mothers. Though what mother would send a child to anything so awful if she were not in misery herself! . . . Most likely she has other helpless little ones in the corner at home, and this is the eldest of them; and the mother ill herself very likely; and . . . hm! They’re not prince’s children! There are lots in the world, Vanya . . . not prince’s children! Hm!”
He paused for a moment, as though at a loss for words.
“You see, Vanya, I promised Anna Andreyevna,” he began, faltering and hesitating a little, “I promised her . . . that is Anna Andreyevna and I agreed together to take some little orphan to bring up . . . some poor little girl, to have her in the house altogether, do you understand? For it’s dull for us old people alone. Only, you see, Anna Andreyevna has begun to set herself against it somehow. So you talk to her, you know, not from me, but as though it came from yourself . . . persuade her, do you understand? I’ve been meaning for a long time to ask you to persuade her to agree; you see, it’s rather awkward for me to press her. But why talk about trifles! What’s a child to me? I don’t want one; perhaps just as a comfort . . . so as to hear a child’s voice . . . but the fact is I’m doing this for my wife’s sake — it’ll be livelier for her than being alone with me. But all that’s nonsense. Vanya, we shall be a long time getting there like this, you know; let’s take a cab. It’s a long walk, and Anna Andreyevna will have been expecting us.”
It was half-past seven when we arrived.
THE Ichmenyevs were very fond of each other. They were closely united by love and years of habit. Yet Nikolay Sergeyitch was not only now, but had, even in former days, in their happiest times, always been rather reserved with his Anna Andreyevna, sometimes even surly, especially before other people. Some delicate and sensitive natures show a peculiar perversity, a sort of chaste dislike of expressing themselves, and expressing their tenderness even to the being dearest to them, not only before people but also in private — even more in private in fact; only at rare intervals their affection breaks out, and it breaks out more passionately and more impulsively the longer it has been restrained. This was rather how Ichmenyev had been with his Anna Andreyevna from their youth upwards. He loved and respected her beyond measure in spite of the fact that she was only a good-natured woman who was capable of nothing but loving him, and that he was sometimes positively vexed with her because in her simplicity she was often tactlessly open with him. But after Natasha had gone away they somehow became tenderer to one another; they were painfully conscious of being left all alone in the world. And though Nikolay Sergeyitch was sometimes extremely gloomy, they could not be apart for two hours at a time without distress and uneasiness. They had made a sort of tacit compact not to say a word about Natasha, as though she had passed out of existence. Anna Andreyevna did not dare to make any allusion to her in her husband’s presence, though this restraint was very hard for her. She had long ago in her heart forgiven Natasha. It had somehow become an established custom that every time I came I should bring her news of her beloved and never-forgotten child.
The mother was quite ill if she did not get news for some time, and when I came with tidings she was interested in the smallest details, and inquired with trembling curiosity. My accounts relieved her heart; she almost died of fright once when Natasha had fallen ill, and was on the point of going to her herself. But this was an extreme case. At first she was not able to bring herself to express even to me a desire to see her daughter; and almost always after our talk, when she had extracted everything from me, she thought it needful to draw herself up before me and to declare that though she was interested in her daughter’s fate, yet Natasha had behaved so wickedly that she could never be forgiven. But all this was put on. There were times when Anna Andreyevna grieved hopelessly, shed tears, called Natasha by the fondest names before me, bitterly complained against Nikolay Sergeyitch, and began in his presence to drop hints, though with great circumspection, about some people’s pride, about hard-heartedness, about our not being able to forgive injuries, and God’s not forgiving the unforgiving; but she never went further than this in his presence. At such times her husband immediately got cross and sullen and would sit silent and scowling, or begin suddenly talking of something else very loudly and awkwardly, or finally go off to his own room, leaving us alone, and so giving Anna Andreyevna a chance to pour out her sorrows to me in tears and lamentations. He always went off to his own room like this when I arrived, sometimes scarcely leaving time to greet me, so as to give me a chance to tell Anna Andreyevna all the latest news of Natasha. He did the same thing now.
“I’m wet through,” he said, as soon as he walked into the room. “I’ll go to my room. And you, Vanya, stay here. Such a business he’s been having with his lodgings. You tell her, I’ll be back directly.”
And he hurried away, trying not even to look at us, as though ashamed of having brought us together. On such occasions, and especially when he came back, he was always very curt and gloomy, both with me and Anna Andreyevna, even fault-finding, as though vexed and angry with himself for his own softness and consideration.
“You see how he is,” said Anna Andreyevna, who had of late laid aside all her stiffness with me, and all her mistrust of me; “that’s how he always is with me; and yet he knows we understand all his tricks. Why should he keep up a pretence with me? Am I a stranger to him? He’s just the same about his daughter. He might forgive her, you know, perhaps he even wants to forgive her. God knows! He cries at night, I’ve heard him. But he keeps up outwardly. He’s eaten up with pride. Ivan Petrovitch, my dear, tell me quick, where was he going?”
“Nikolay Sergeyitch? I don’t know. I was going to ask you.”
“I was dismayed when he went out. He’s ill, you know, and in such weather, and so late! I thought it must be for something important; and what can be more important than what you know of? I thought this to myself, but I didn’t dare to ask. Why, I daren’t question him about anything nowadays. My goodness! I was simply terror-stricken on his account and on hers. What, thought I, if he has gone to her? What if he’s made up his mind to forgive her? Why, he’s found out everything, he knows the latest news of her; I feel certain he knows it; but how the news gets to him I can’t imagine. He was terribly depressed yesterday, and today too. But why don’t you say something? Tell me, my dear, what has happened? I’ve been longing for you like an angel of God. I’ve been all eyes watching for you. Come, will the villain abandon Natasha?”
I told Anna Andreyevna at once all I knew. I was always completely open with her. I told her that things seemed drifting to a rupture between Natasha and Alyosha, and that this was more serious than their previous misunderstandings; that Natasha had sent me a note the day before, begging me to come this evening at nine o’clock, and so I had not intended to come and see them that evening. Nikolay Sergeyitch himself had brought me. I explained and told her minutely that the position was now altogether critical, that Alyosha’s father, who had been back for a fortnight after an absence, would hear nothing and was taking Alyosha sternly in hand; but, what was most important of all, Alyosha seemed himself not disinclined to the proposed match, and it was said he was positively in love with the young lady. I added that I could not help guessing that Natasha’s note was written in great agitation. She wrote that to-night everything would be decided, but what was to be decided I did not know. It was also strange that she had written yesterday but had only asked me to come this evening, and had fixed the hour-nine o’clock. And so I was bound to go, and as quickly as possible.
“Go, my dear boy, go by all means!” Anna Andreyevna urged me anxiously. “Have just a cup of tea as soon as he comes back. . . . Ach, they haven’t brought the samovar! Matryona Why are you so long with samovar? She’s a saucy baggage! . . . Then when you’ve drunk your tea, find some good excuse and get away. But be sure to come tomorrow and tell me everything. And run round early! Good heavens! Something dreadful may have happened already! Though how could things be worse than they are, when you come to think of it! Why, Nikolay Sergeyitch knows everything, my heart tells me he does. I hear a great deal through Matryona, and she through Agasha, and Agasha is the god-daughter of Marya Vassilyevna, who lives in the prince’s house . . . but there, you know all that. My Nikolay was terribly angry today. I tried to say one thing and another and he almost shouted at me. And then he seemed sorry, said he was short of money. Just as though he’d been making an outcry about money. You know our circumstances. After dinner he went to have a nap. I peeped at him through the chink (there’s a chink in the door he doesn’t know of). And he, poor dear, was on his knees, praying before the shrine. I felt my legs give way under me when I saw it. He didn’t sleep, and he had no tea; he took up his hat and went out. He went out at five o’clock. I didn’t dare question him: he’d have shouted at me. He’s taken to shouting — generally at Matryona, but sometimes at me. And when he starts it makes my legs go numb, and there’s a sinking at my heart. Of course it’s foolishness, I know it’s his foolishness, but still it frightens me. I prayed for a whole hour after he went out that God would send him some good thought. Where is her note? Show it me!”
I showed it. I knew that Anna Andreyevna cherished a secret dream that Alyosha, whom she called at one time a villain and at another a stupid heartless boy, would in the end marry Natasha, and that the prince, his father, would consent to it. She even let this out to me, though at other times she regretted it, and went back on her words. But nothing would have made her venture to betray her hopes before Nikolay Sergeyitch, though she knew her husband suspected them, and even indirectly reproached her for them more than once. I believe that he would have cursed Natasha and shut her out of his heart for ever if he had known of the possibility of such a marriage.
We all thought so at the time. He longed for his daughter with every fibre of his being, but he longed for her alone with every memory of Alyosha cast out of her heart. It was the one condition of forgiveness, and though it was not uttered in words it could be understood, and could not be doubted when one looked at him.
“He’s a silly boy with no backbone, no backbone, and he’s cruel, I always said so,” Anna Andreyevna began again. “And they didn’t know how to bring him up, so he’s turned out a regular weather-cock; he’s abandoning her after all her love. What will become of her, poor child? And what can he have found in this new girl, I should like to know.”
“I have heard, Anna Andreyevna,” I replied, “that his proposed fiancee is a delightful girl. Yes, and Natalya Nikolaevna says the same thing about her.”
“Don’t you believe it!” the mother interrupted. “Delightful, indeed! You scribblers think every one’s delightful if only she wears petticoats. As for Natasha’s speaking well of her, she does that in the generosity of her heart. She doesn’t know how to control him; she forgives him everything, but she suffers herself. How often he has deceived her already. The cruel-hearted villains! I’m simply terrified, Ivan Petrovitch! They’re all demented with pride. If my good man would only humble himself, if he would forgive my poor darling and fetch her home! If only I could hug her, if I could look at her! Has she got thinner?”
“She has got thin, Anna Andreyevna.”
“My darling! I’m in terrible trouble, Ivan Petrovitch! All last night and all today I’ve been crying . . . but there! . . . I’ll tell you about it afterwards. How many times I began hinting to him to forgive her; I daren’t say it right out, so I begin to hint at it, in a tactful way. And my heart’s in a flutter all the time: I keep expecting him to get angry and curse her once for all. I haven’t heard a curse from him yet . . . well, that’s what I’m afraid of, that he’ll put his curse upon her. And what will happen then? God’s punishment falls on the child the father has cursed. So I’m trembling with terror every day. And you ought to be ashamed, too, Ivan Petrovitch, to think you’ve grown up in our family, and been treated like a son by both of us, and yet you can speak of her being delightful too. But their Marya Vassilyevna knows better. I may have done wrong, but I asked her in to coffee one day when my good man had gone out for the whole morning. She told me all the ins and outs of it. The prince, Alyosha’s father, is in shocking relations with this countess. They say the countess keeps reproaching him with not marrying her, but he keeps putting it off. This fine countess was talked about for her shameless behaviour while her husband was living. When her husband died she went abroad: she used to have all sorts of Italians and Frenchmen about her, and barons of some sort — it was there she caught Prince Pyotr Alexandrovitch. And meantime her stepdaughter, the child of her first husband, the spirit contractor, has been growing up. This countess, the stepmother, has spent all she had, but the stepdaughter has been growing up, and the two millions her father had left invested for her have been growing too. Now, they say, she has three millions. The prince has got wind of it, so he’s keen on the match for Alyosha. (He’s a sharp fellow! He won’t let a chance slip!) The count, their relative, who’s a great gentleman at court you remember, has given his approval too: a fortune of three millions is worth considering. ‘Excellent’, he said, ‘talk it over with the countess.’ So the prince told the countess of his wishes. She opposed it tooth and nail. She’s an unprincipled woman, a regular termagant, they say! They say some people won’t receive her here; it’s very different from abroad. ‘No,’ she says, ‘you marry me, prince, instead of my stepdaughter’s marrying Alyosha.’ And the girl, they say, gives way to her stepmother in everything; she almost worships her and always obeys her. She’s a gentle creature, they say, a perfect angel! The prince sees how it is and tells the countess not to worry herself. ‘You’ve spent all your money,’ says he, ‘and your debts you can never pay. But as soon as your stepdaughter marries Alyosha there’ll be a pair of them; your innocent and my little fool. We’ll take them under our wing and be their guardians together. Then you’ll have plenty of money, What’s the good of you’re marrying me?’ He’s a sharp fellow, a regular mason! Six months ago the countess wouldn’t make up her mind to it, but since then they say they’ve been staying at Warsaw, and there they’ve come to an agreement. That’s what I’ve heard. All this Marya Vassilyevna told me from beginning to end. She heard it all on good authority. So you see it’s all a question of money and millions, and not her being delightful!”
Anna Andreyevna’s story impressed me. It fitted in exactly with all I had heard myself from Alyosha. When he talked of it he had stoutly declared that he would never marry for money. But he had been struck and attracted by Katerina Fyodorovna. I had heard from Alyosha, too, that his father was contemplating marriage, though he denied all rumour of it to avoid irritating the countess prematurely. I have mentioned already that Alyosha was very fond of his father, admired him and praised him; and believed in him as though he were an oracle.
“She’s not of a count’s family, you know, the girl you call delightful!” Anna Andreyevna went on, deeply resenting my praise of the young prince’s future fiancee. “Why, Natasha would be a better match for him. She’s a spirit-dealer’s daughter, while Natasha is a well-born girl of a good old family. Yesterday (I forgot to tell you) my old man opened his box-you know, the wrought-iron one; he sat opposite me the whole evening, sorting out our old family papers. And he sat so solemnly over it. I was knitting a stocking, and I didn’t look at him; I was afraid to. When he saw I didn’t say a word he got cross, and called me himself, and he spent the whole evening telling me about our pedigree. And do you know, it seems that the Ichmenyevs were noblemen in the days of Ivan the Terrible, and that my family, the Shumilovs, were well-known even in the days of Tsar Alexey Mihalovitch; we’ve the documents to prove it, and it’s mentioned in Karamzin’s history too, so you see, my dear boy, we’re as good as other people on that side. As soon as my old man began talking to me I saw what was in his mind. It was clear he felt bitterly Natasha’s being slighted. It’s only through their wealth they’re set above us. That robber, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, may well make a fuss about money; everyone knows he’s a cold-hearted, greedy soul. They say he joined the Jesuits in secret when he was in Warsaw. Is it true?”
“It’s a stupid rumour,” I answered, though I could not help being struck by the persistence of this rumour.
But what she had told me of her husband’s going over his family records was interesting. He had never boasted of his pedigree before.
“It’s all the cruel-hearted villains!” Anna Andreyevna went on. “Well, tell me about my darling. Is she grieving and crying? Ach, it’s time you went to her! (Matryona! She’s a saucy baggage.) Have they insulted her? Tell me, Vanya?”
What could I answer her? The poor lady was in tears. I asked her what was the fresh trouble of which she had been about to tell me just now.
“Ach, my dear boy! As though we hadn’t trouble enough! It seems our cup was not full enough! You remember, my dear, or perhaps you don’t remember, I had a little locket set in gold — a keepsake, and in it a portrait of Natasha as a child. She was eight years old then, my little angel. We ordered it from a travelling artist at the time. But I see you’ve forgotten! He was a good artist. He painted her as a cupid. She’d such fair hair in those days, all fluffy. He painted her in a little muslin smock, so that her little body shows through, and she looked so pretty in it you couldn’t take your eves off her. I begged the artist to put little wings on her, but he wouldn’t agree. Well after all our dreadful troubles, I took it out of its case and hung it on a string round my neck; so I’ve been wearing it beside my cross, though I was afraid he might see it. You know he told me at the time to get rid of all her things out of the house, or burn them, so that nothing might remind us of her. But I must have her portrait to look at, anyway; sometimes I cry, looking at it, and it does me good. And another time when I’m alone I keep kissing it as though I were kissing her, herself. I call her fond names, and make the sign of the cross over it every night. I talk aloud to her when I’m alone, ask her a question and fancy she has answered, and ask her another. Och, Vanya, dear, it makes me sad to talk about it! Well, so I was glad he knew nothing of the locket and hadn’t noticed it. But yesterday morning the locket was gone. The string hung loose. It must have worn through and I’d dropped it. I was aghast. I hunted and hunted high and low-it wasn’t to be found. Not a sign of it anywhere, it was lost! And where could it have dropped? I made sure I must have lost it in bed, and rummaged through everything. Nowhere! If it had come off and dropped, some one might have picked it up, and who could have found it except him or Matryona? One can’t think of it’s being Matryona, she’s devoted to me heart and soul (Matryona, are you going to bring that samovar?). I keep thinking what will happen if he’s found it! I sit so sad and keep crying and crying and can’t keep back my tears. And Nikolay Sergeyitch is kinder and kinder to me as though he knows what I am grieving about, and is sorry for me. ‘Well I’ve been wondering, how could he tell? Hasn’t he perhaps really found the locket and thrown it out of the window? In anger he’s capable of it, you know. He’s thrown it out and now he’s sad about it himself and sorry he threw it out. I’ve been already with Matryona to look under the window — I found nothing. Every trace has vanished. I’ve been crying all night. It’s the first night I haven’t made the sign of the cross over her. Och, it’s a bad sign, Ivan Petrovitch, it’s a bad sign, it’s an omen of evil; for two days I’ve been crying without stopping. I’ve been expecting you, my dear, as an angel of God, if only to relieve my heart . . .” and the poor lady wept bitterly.
“Oh yes, I forgot to tell you,” she began suddenly, pleased at remembering. “Have you heard anything from him about an orphan girl?”
“Yes, Anna Andreyevna. He told me you had both thought of it, and agreed to take a poor girl, an orphan, to bring up. Is that true?”
“I’ve never thought of it, my dear boy, I’ve never thought of it; I don’t want any orphan girl. She’ll remind me of our bitter lot, our misfortune! I want no one but Natasha. She was my only child, and she shall remain the only one. But what does it mean that he should have thought of an orphan? What do you think, Ivan Petrovitch? Is it to comfort me, do you suppose, looking at my tears, or to drive his own daughter out of his mind altogether, and attach himself to another child? What did he say about me as you came along? How did he seem to you — morose, angry? Tss! Here he is! Afterwards, my dear, tell me afterwards. . . . Don’t forget to come tomorrow.”
THE old man came in. He looked at us with curiosity and as though ashamed of something, frowned and went up to the table.
“Where’s the samovar?” he asked. “Do you mean to say she couldn’t bring it till now?”
“It’s coming, my dear, it’s coming. Here, she’s brought it!” said Anna Andreyevna fussily.
Matryona appeared with the samovar as soon as she saw Nikolay Serge, as though she had been waiting to bring it till he came in. She was an old, tried and devoted servant, but the most self-willed and grumbling creature in the world, with an obstinate and stubborn character. She was afraid of Nikolay Sergeyitch and always curbed her tongue in his presence. But she made-up for it with Anna Andreyevna, was rude to her at every turn, and openly attempted to govern her mistress, though at the same time she had a warm and genuine affection for her and for Natasha. I had known Matryona in the old days at Ichmenyevka.
“Hm! . . . It’s not pleasant when one’s wet through and they won’t even get one tea,” the old man muttered.
Anna Andreyevna at once made a sign to me. He could not endure these mysterious signals; and though at the minute he tried not to look at us, one could see from his face that Anna Andreyevna had just signalled to me about him, and that he was fully aware of it.
“I have been to see about my case, Vanya,” he began suddenly. “It’s a wretched business. Did I tell you? It’s going against me altogether. It appears I’ve no proofs; none of the papers I ought to have. My facts cannot be authenticated it seems. Hm! . . . ”
He was speaking of his lawsuit with the prince, which was still dragging on, but had taken a very bad turn for Nikolay Sergevitch. I was silent, not knowing what to answer. He looked suspiciously at me.
“Well!” he brought out suddenly, as though irritated by our silence, “the quicker the better! They won’t make a scoundrel of me, even if they do decide I must pay. I have my conscience, so let them decide. Anyway, the case will be over; it will be settled. I shall be ruined . . . I’ll give up everything and go to Siberia.”
“Good heavens! What a place to go to! And why so far?” Anna Andreyevna could not resist saying.
“And here what are we near?” he asked gruffly, as though glad of the objection.
“Why, near people . . . anyway,” began Anna Andreyevna, and she glanced at me in distress.
“What sort of people?” he cried, turning his feverish eyes from me to her and back again. “What people? Robbers, slanderers, traitors? There are plenty such everywhere; don’t be uneasy, we shall find them in Siberia too. If you don’t want to come with me you can stay here. I won’t take you against your will.”
“Nikolay Sergeyitch, my dear! With whom should I stay without you? Why, I’ve no one but you in the whole . . . ”
She faltered, broke off, and turned to me with a look of alarm, as though begging for help and support. The old man was irritated and was ready to take offence at anything; it was impossible to contradict him.
“Come now, Anna Andreyevna,” said I. “It’s not half as bad in Siberia as you think. If the worst comes to the worst and you have to sell Ichmenyevka, Nikolay Sergeyitch’s plan is very good in fact. In Siberia you might get a good private job, and then . . . ”
“Well, you’re talking sense, Ivan, anyway. That’s just what I thought. I’ll give up everything and go away.”
“Well, that I never did expect,” cried Anna Andreyevna, flinging up her hands. “And you too, Vanya! I didn’t expect it of you! . . . Why, you’ve never known anything but kindness from us and now . . . ”
“Ha, ha, ha! What else did you expect? Why, what are we to live upon, consider that! Our money spent, we’ve come to our last farthing. Perhaps you’d like me to go to Prince Pyotr Alexandrovitch and beg his pardon, eh?”
Hearing the prince’s name, Anna Andreyevna trembled with alarm. The teaspoon in her hand tinkled against the saucer.
“Yes, speaking seriously,” the old man went on, working himself up with malicious, obstinate pleasure, “what do you think, Vanya? Shouldn’t I really go to him? Why go to Siberia? I’d much better comb my hair, put on my best clothes, and brush myself tomorrow; Anna Andreyevna will get me a new shirt-front (one can’t go to see a person like that without!), buy me gloves, to be the correct thing; and then I’ll go to his excellency: ‘Your excellency, little father, benefactor! Forgive me and have pity on me! Give me a crust of bread! I’ve a wife and little children! . . .‘Is that right, Anna Andreyevna? Is that what you want?”
“My dear; I want nothing! I spoke without thinking. Forgive me if I vexed you, only don’t shout,” she brought out, trembling more and more violently in her terror.
I am convinced that everything was topsy-turvy and aching in his heart at that moment, as he looked at his poor wife’s tears and alarm. I am sure that he was suffering far more than she was, but he could not control himself. So it is sometimes with the most good-natured people of weak nerves, who in spite of their kindliness are carried away till they find enjoyment in their own grief and anger, and try to express themselves at any cost, even that of wounding some other innocent creature, always by preference the one nearest and dearest. A woman sometimes has a craving to feel unhappy and aggrieved, though she has no misfortune or grievance. There are many men like women in this respect, and men, indeed, by no means feeble, and who have very little that is feminine about them. The old man had a compelling impulse to quarrel, though he was made miserable by it himself.
I remember that the thought dawned on me at the time: hadn’t he perhaps really before this gone out on some project such as Anna Andreyevna suspected? What if God had softened his heart, and he had really been going to Natasha, and had changed his mind on the way, or something had gone wrong and made him give up his intentions, as was sure to happen; and so he had returned home angry and humiliated, ashamed of his recent feelings and wishes, looking out for someone on whom to vent his anger for his weakness, and pitching on the very ones whom he suspected of sharing the same feeling and wishes. Perhaps when he wanted to forgive his daughter, he pictured the joy and rapture of his poor Anna Andreyevna, and when it came to nothing she was of course the first to suffer for it.
But her look of hopelessness, as she trembled with fear before him, touched him. He seemed ashamed of his wrath, and for a minute controlled himself. We were all silent. I was trying not to look at him. But the good moment did not last long. At all costs he must express himself by some outburst, or a curse if need be.
“You see, Vanya,” he said suddenly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to speak, but the time has come when I must speak out openly without evasion, as every straightforward man ought . . . do you understand, Vanya? I’m glad you have come, and so I want to say aloud in your presence so that others may hear that I am sick of all this nonsense, all these tears, and sighs, an misery. What I have torn out of my heart, which bleeds and aches perhaps, will never be back in my heart again. Yes! I’ve said so and I’ll act on it. I’m speaking of what happened six months ago — you understand, Vanya? And I speak of this so openly, so directly, that you may make no mistake about my words,” he added, looking at me with blazing eyes and obviously avoiding his wife’s frightened glances. “I repeat: this is nonsense; I won’t have it! . . . It simply maddens me that everyone looks upon me as capable of having such a low, weak feeling, as though I were a fool, as though I were the most abject scoundrel . . . they imagine I am going mad with grief . . . Nonsense! I have castaway, I have forgotten my old feelings! I have no memory of it! No! no! no! and no! . . . ”
He jumped up from his chair, and struck the table so that the cups tinkled.
“Nicholay Sergeyitch! Have you no feeling for Anna Andreyevna! Look what you are doing to her!” I said, unable to restrain myself and looking at him almost with indignation. But it was only pouring oil on the flames.
“No, I haven’t!” he shouted, trembling and turning white. “I haven’t, for no one feels for me! For in my own house they’re all plotting against me in my dishonour and on the side of my depraved daughter, who deserves my curse, and an punishment! . . .”
“Nikolay Sergeyitch, don’t curse her! . . . Anything you like only don’t curse our daughter!” screamed Anna Andreyevna.
“I will curse her!” shouted the old man, twice as loud as before; “because, insulted and dishonoured as I am, I am expected to go to the accursed girl and ask her forgiveness. Yes, yes, that’s it! I’m tormented in this way in my own house day and night, day and night, with tears and sighs and stupid hints! They try to soften me. . . . Look, Vanya, look,” he added, with trembling hands hastily taking papers out of his side-pocket, “here are the notes of our case. It’s made out that I’m a thief, that I’m a cheat, that I have robbed my benefactor! . . . I am discredited, disgraced, because of her! There, there, look, look! . . .”
And he began polling out of the side-pocket of his coat various papers, and throwing them on the table one after another, hunting impatiently amongst them for the one he wanted to show me; but, as luck would have it, the one he sought was not forthcoming. Impatiently he pulled out of his pocket all he had clutched in his hand, and suddenly something fell heavily on the table with a clink. Anna Andreyevna uttered a shriek. It was the lost locket.
I could scarcely believe my eyes. The blood rushed to the old man’s head and flooded his cheeks; he started. Anna Andreyevna stood with clasped hands looking at him imploringly. Her face beamed with joyful hope. The old man’s flush, his shame before us. . . . Yes, she was not mistaken, she knew now how her locket had been lost!
She saw that he had picked it up, had been delighted at his find, and, perhaps, quivering with joy, had jealously hidden it from all eyes; that in solitude, unseen by all, he had gazed at the face of his adored child with infinite love, had gazed and could not gaze enough; that perhaps like the poor mother he had shut himself away from everyone to talk to his precious Natasha, imagining her replies and answering them himself; and at night with agonizing grief, with suppressed sobs, he had caressed and kissed the dear image, and instead of curses invoked forgiveness and blessings on her whom he would not see and cursed before others.
“My dear, so you love her still!” cried Anna Andreyevna, unable to restrain herself further in the presence of the stern father who had just cursed her Natasha.
But no sooner had he heard her exclamation than an insane fury flashed in his eyes. He snatched up the locket, threw it violently on the ground, and began furiously stamping on it.
“I curse you, I curse you, for ever and ever!” he shouted hoarsely, gasping for breath. “For ever! For ever!”
“Good God!” cried the mother. “Her! My Natasha! Her little face! . . . trampling on it! Trampling on it! Tyrant cruel, unfeeling, proud man!”
Hearing his wife’s wail the frantic old man stopped short, horrified at what he was doing. All at once he snatched up the locket from the floor and rushed towards the door, but he had not taken two steps when he fell on his knees, and dropping his arms on the sofa before him let his head fall helplessly.
He sobbed like a child, like a woman. Sobs wrung his breast as though they would rend it. The threatening old man became all in a minute weaker than a child. Oh, now he could not have cursed her; now he felt no shame before either of us, and in a sudden rush of love covered with kisses the portrait he had just been trampling underfoot. It seemed as though all his tenderness, all his love for his daughter so long restrained, burst out now with irresistible force and shattered his whole being.
“Forgive, forgive her!” Anna Andreyevna exclaimed, sobbing, bending over him and embracing him, “Bring her back to her home, my dear, and at the dread day of judgement God will reward you for your mercy and humility! . . . ”
“No, no! Not for anything! Never!” he exclaimed in a husky choking voice, “never! never!”
IT was late, ten o’clock, when I got to Natasha’s. She was living at that time in Fontanka, near the Semyonov bridge, on the fourth floor, in the dirty block of buildings belonging to the merchant Kolotushkin. When first she left home she had lived for a time with Alyosha in a very nice flat, small, but pretty and convenient, on the third storey of a house in Liteyny. But the young prince’s resources were soon exhausted. He did not become a music teacher, but borrowed money and was soon very heavily in debt. He spent his money on decorating the flat and on making presents to Natasha, who tried to check his extravagance, scolded him, and sometimes even cried about it. Alyosha, with his emotional and impressionable nature, revelled sometimes for a whole week in dreams of how he would make her a present and how she would receive it, making of this a real treat for himself, and rapturously telling me beforehand of his dreams and anticipations. Then he was so downcast at her tears and reproofs that one felt sorry for him, and as time went on these presents became the occasion of reproaches, bitterness, and quarrels. Moreover, Alyosha spent a great deal of money without telling Natasha, was led away by his companions and was unfaithful to her. He visited all sorts of Josephines and Minnas; though at the same time he loved her dearly. His love for her was a torment to him. He often came to see me depressed and melancholy, declaring that he was not worth Natasha’s little finger, that he was coarse and wicked, incapable of understanding her and unworthy of her love. He was to some extent right. There was no sort of equality between them; he felt like a child compared with her, and she always looked upon him as a child. He repented with tears of his relations with Josephine, while he besought me not to speak of them to Natasha. And when, timid and trembling after these open confessions, he went back to her with me (insisting on my coming, declaring that he was afraid to look at her after what he had done, and that I was the one person who could help him through), Natasha knew from the first glance at him what was the matter. She was terribly jealous, and I don’t know how it was she always forgave him all his lapses. This was how it usually happened: Alyosha would go in with me, timidly address her, and look with timid tenderness into her eyes. She guessed at once that he had been doing wrong, but showed no sign of it, was never the first to begin on the subject, on the contrary, always redoubled her caresses and became tenderer and more lively — and this was not acting or premeditated strategy on her part. No; for her fine nature there was a sort of infinite bliss in forgiving and being merciful; as though in the very process of forgiving Alyosha she found a peculiar, subtle charm. It is true that so far it was only the question of Josephines. Seeing her kind and forgiving, Alyosha could not restrain himself and at once confessed the whole story without being asked any questions — to relieve his heart and “to be the same as before,” as she said. When he had received her forgiveness he grew ecstatic at once, sometimes even cried with joy and emotion kissed and embraced her. Then at once his spirits rose, and he would begin with childlike openness giving her a full account of his adventures with Josephine; he smiled and laughed, blessed Natasha, and praised her to the skies, and the evening ended happily and merrily. When all his money was spent he began selling things. As Natasha insisted upon it, a cheap little flat in Fontanka was found for her. Their things went on being sold; Natasha now even sold her clothes and began looking for work. When Alyosha heard of it his despair knew no bounds, he cursed himself, cried out that he despised himself, but meantime did nothing to improve the position. By now this last resource was exhausted; nothing was left for Natasha but work, and that was very poorly paid!
At first when they lived together, there had been a violent quarrel between Alyosha and his father. Prince Valkovsky’s designs at the time to marry his son to Katerina Fyodorovna Filimonov, the countess’s stepdaughter, were so far only a project. But the project was a cherished one. He took Alyosha to see the young lady, coaxed him to try and please her, and attempted to persuade him by arguments and severity. But the plan fell through owing to the countess. Then Alyosha’s father began to shut his eyes to his son’s affair with Natasha, leaving it to time. Knowing Alyosha’s fickleness and frivolity he hoped that the love affair would soon be over. As for the possibility of his marrying Natasha, the prince had till lately ceased to trouble his mind about it. As for the lovers they put off the question till a formal reconciliation with his father was possible, or vaguely till some change of circumstances. And Natasha was evidently unwilling to discuss the subject. Alyosha told me in secret that his father was in a way rather pleased at the whole business. He was pleased at the humiliation of Ichmenyev. For form’s sake, he kept up a show of displeasure with his son, decreased his by no means liberal allowance (he was exceedingly stingy with him), and threatened to stop even that. But he soon went away to Poland in pursuit of the countess, who had business there. He was still as actively set on his project of the match. For though Alyosha was, it is true, rather young to be married, the girl was very wealthy, and it was too good a chance to let slip. The prince at last attained his object. The rumour reached us that the match was at last agreed upon. At the time I am describing, the prince had only just returned to Petersburg. He met his son affectionately, but the persistence of Alyosha’s connexion with Natasha was an unpleasant surprise to him. He began to have doubts, to feel nervous. He sternly and emphatically insisted on his son’s breaking it off, but soon hit upon a much more effectual mode of attack, and carried off Alyosha to the countess. Her step-daughter, though she was scarcely more than a child, was almost a beauty, gay, clever, and sweet, with a heart of rare goodness and a candid, uncorrupted soul. The prince calculated that the lapse of six months must have had some effect, that Natasha could no longer have the charm of novelty, and that his son would not now look at his proposed fiancee with the same eyes as he had six months before. He was only partly right in his reckoning . . . Alyosha certainly was attracted. I must add that the father became all at once extraordinarily affectionate to him (though he still refused to give him money). Alyosha felt that his father’s greater warmth covered an unchanged, inflexible determination, and he was unhappy-but not so unhappy as he would have been if he had not seen Katerina Fyodorovna every day. I knew that he had not shown himself to Natasha for five days. On my way to her from the Ichmenyevs I guessed uneasily what she wanted to discuss with me. I could see a light in her window a long way off. It had long been arranged between us that she should put a candle in the window if she were in great and urgent need of me, so that if I happened to pass by (and this did happen nearly every evening) I might guess from the light in the window that I was expected and she needed me. Of late she had often put the candle in the window. . .
I FOUND Natasha alone. She was slowly walking up and down the room, with her hands clasped on her bosom, lost in thought. A samovar stood on the table almost burnt out. It had been got ready for me long before. With a smile she held out her hand to me without speaking. Her face was pale and had an expression of suffering. There was a look of martyrdom, tenderness, patience, in her smile. Her clear blue eyes seemed to have grown bigger, her hair looked thicker from the wanness and thinness of her face.
“I began to think you weren’t coming,” she said, giving me her hand. “I was meaning to send Mavra to inquire; I was afraid you might be ill again.”
“No, I’m not ill. I was detained. I’ll tell you directly. But what’s the matter, Natasha, what’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened,” she answered, surprised. “Why?”
“Why, you wrote . . . you wrote yesterday for me to come, and fixed the hour that I might not come before or after; and that’s not what you usually do.”
“Oh, yes! I was expecting him yesterday.”
“Why, hasn’t be been here yet?”
“No. I thought if he didn’t come I must talk things over with you,” she added, after a pause
“And this evening, did you expect him?”
“No, this evening he’s there.”
“What do you think, Natasha, won’t he come back at all?”
“Of course he’ll come,” she answered, looking at me with peculiar earnestness. She did not like the abruptness of my question. We lapsed into silence, walking up and down the room.
“I’ve been expecting you all this time, Vanya”, she began again with a smile. “And do you know what I was doing? I’ve been walking up and down, reciting poetry. Do you remember the bells, the winter road, ‘My samovar boils on the table of oak’ . . .? We read it together:
“The snowstorm is spent; there’s a glimmer of light
From the millions of dim watching eyes of the night.
“And then:
“There’s the ring of a passionate voice in my ears
In the song of the bell taking part;
Oh, when will my loved one return from afar
To rest on my suppliant heart?
My life is no life! Rosy beams of the dawn
Are at play on the pane’s icy screen;
My samovar boils on my table of oak,
With the bright crackling fire the dark corner awoke,
And my bed with chintz curtains is seen.
“How fine that is. How tormenting those verses are, Vanya. And what a vivid, fantastic picture! It’s just a canvas with a mere pattern chalked on it. You can embroider what you like! Two sensations: the earliest, and the latest. That samovar, that chintz curtain — how homelike it all is. It’s like some little cottage in our little town at home; I feel as though I could see that cottage: a new one made of logs not yet weather-boarded . . . And then another picture:
“Of a sudden I hear the same voice ringing out
With the bell; its sad accents I trace;
Oh, where’s my old friend? And I fear he’ll come in
With eager caress and embrace.
What a life, I endure! But my tears are in vain.
Oh, how dreary my room! Through the chinks the wind blows
And outside the house but one cherry-tree grows,
Perhaps that has perished by now though — who knows?
It’s hid by the frost on the pane.
The flowers on the curtain have lost their gay tone,
And I wander sick; all my kinsfolk I shun,
There’s no one to scold me or love me, not one,
The old woman grumbles alone. . . .
‘I wander sick.’ That sick is so well put in. ‘There’s no one to scold me.’ That tenderness, what softness in that line; and what agonies of memory, agonies one has caused oneself, and one broods over them. Heavens, how fine it is! How true it is! . . . ”
She ceased speaking, as though struggling with a rising spasm in her throat.
“Dear Vanya!” she said a minute later, and she paused again, as though she had forgotten what she meant to say, or had spoken without thinking, from a sudden feeling.
Meanwhile we still walked up and down the room. A lamp burned before the ikon. Of late Natasha had become more and more devout, and did not like one to speak of it to her.
“Is tomorrow a holiday?” I asked. “Your lamp is lighted.”
“No, it’s not a holiday . . . but, Vanya, sit down. You must be tired. Will you have tea? I suppose you’ve not had it yet?”
“Let’s sit down, Natasha. I’ve had tea already.”
“Where have you come from?”
“From them.”
That’s how we always referred to her old home.
“From them? How did you get time? Did you go of your own accord? Or did they ask you?”
She besieged me with questions. Her face grew still paler with emotion. I told her in detail of my meeting with her father, my conversation with her mother, and the scene with the locket. I told her in detail, describing every shade of feeling. I never concealed anything from her, She listened eagerly, catching every word I uttered, the tears glittered in her eyes. The scene with the locket affected her deeply.
“Stay, stay, Vanya,” she said, often interrupting my story. “Tell me more exactly everything, everything as exactly as possible; you don’t tell me exactly enough . . . . ..”
I repeated it again and again, replying every moment to her continual questions about the details.
“And you really think he was coming to see me?”
“I don’t know, Natasha, and in fact I can’t make up my mind; that he grieves for you and loves you is clear; but that he was coming to you is . . . is . . .”
“And he kissed the locket?” she interrupted. “What did he say when he kissed it?”
“It was incoherent. Nothing but exclamations; he called you by the tenderest names; he called for you.”
“Called for me?”
“Yes.”
She wept quietly.
“Poor things!” she said. “And if he knows everything,” she added after a brief silence, “it’s no wonder.. He hears a great deal about Alyosha’s father, too.”
“Natasha,” I said timidly, “let us go to them.”
“When?” she asked, turning pale and almost getting up from her chair.
She thought I was urging her to go at once.
“No, Vanya,” she added, putting her two hands on my shoulders, and smiling sadly; “no, dear, that’s what you’re always saying, but . . . we’d better not talk about it.”
“Will this horrible estrangement never be ended?” I cried mournfully. “Can you be so proud that you won’t take the first step? It’s for you to do it; you must make the first advance. Perhaps your father’s only waiting for that to forgive you. . . . He’s your father; he has been injured by you! Respect his pride — it’s justifiable, it’s natural! You ought to do it. Only try, and he will forgive you unconditionally.”
“Unconditionally! That’s impossible. And don’t reproach me, Vanya, for nothing. I’m thinking of it day and night, and I think of it now. There’s not been a day perhaps since I left them that I haven’t thought of it. And how often we have talked about it! You know yourself it’s impossible.”
“Try!”
“No, my dear, it’s impossible. If I were to try I should only make him more bitter against me. There’s no bringing back what’s beyond recall. And you know what it is one can never bring back? One can never bring back those happy, childish days I spent with them. If my father forgave me he would hardly know me now. He loved me as a little girl; a grown-up child. He admired my childish simplicity. He used to pat me on the head just as when I was a child of seven and used to sit upon his knee and sing him my little childish songs. From my earliest childhood up to the last day he used to come to my bed and bless me for the night. A month before our troubles he bought me some ear-rings as a secret (but I knew all about it), and was as pleased as a child, imagining how delighted I should be with the present, and was awfully angry with everyone, and with me especially, when he found out that I had known all about him buying the ear-rings for a long time. Three days before I went away he noticed that I was depressed, and he became so depressed himself that it made him ill, and — would you believe it — to divert my mind he proposed taking tickets for the theatre! . . . Yes, indeed, he thought that would set me right. I tell you he knew and loved me as a little girl, and refused even to think that I should one day be a woman . . . It’s never entered his head. If I were to go home now he would not know me. Even if he did forgive me he’d meet quite a different person now. I’m not the same; I’m not a child now. I have gone through a great deal Even if he were satisfied with me he still would sigh for his past happiness, and grieve that I am not the same as I used to be when he loved me as a child. The past always seems best! It’s remembered with anguish! Oh, how good the past was, Vanya!” she cried, carried away by her own words, and interrupting herself with this exclamation which broke painfully from her heart.
“That’s all true that you say, Natasha,” I said. “So he will have to learn to know and love you afresh. To know you especially. He will love you, of course. Surely you can’t think that he’s incapable of knowing and understanding you, he, with his heart?”
“Oh, Vanya, don’t be unfair! What is there to understand in me? I didn’t mean that. You see, there’s something else: father’s love is jealous, too; he’s hurt that all began and was settled with Alyosha without his knowledge, that he didn’t know it and failed to see it. He knows that he did not foresee it, and he puts down the unhappy consequences of our love and my flight to my ‘ungrateful’ secretiveness. I did not come to him at the beginning. I did not afterwards confess every impulse of my heart to him; on the contrary I hid it in myself. I concealed it from him and I assure you, Vanya, this is secretly a worse injury, a worse insult to him than the facts themselves — that I left them and have abandoned myself to my lover. Supposing he did meet me now like a father, warmly and affectionately, yet the seed of discord would remain. The next day, or the day after, there would be disappointments, misunderstandings, reproaches. What’s more, he won’t forgive without conditions, even if I say — and say it truly from the bottom of my heart — that I understand how I have wounded him and how badly I’ve behaved to him. And though it will hurt me if he won’t understand how much all this happiness with Alyosha has cost me myself, what miseries I have been through, I will stifle my feelings, I will put up with anything — but that won’t be enough for him. He will insist on an impossible atonement; he will insist on my cursing my past, cursing Alyosha and repenting of my love for him. He wants what’s impossible, to bring back the past and to erase the last six months from our life. But I won’t curse anyone, and I can’t repent. It’s no one’s doing; it just happened so. . . . No, Vanya, it can’t be now. The time has not come.”
“When will the time come?”
“I don’t know. . . . We shall have to work out our future happiness by suffering; pay for it somehow by fresh miseries. Everything is purified by suffering . . . Oh, Vanya, how much pain there is in the world!”
I was silent and looked at her thoughtfully.
“Why do you look at me like that, Alyosha — I mean Vanya!” she said, smiling at her own mistake.
“I am looking at your smile, Natasha. Where did you get it? You used not to smile like that.”
“Why, what is there in my smile?
“The old childish simplicity is still there, it’s true. . . . But when you smile it seems as though your heart were aching dreadfully. You’ve grown thinner, Natasha, and your hair seems thicker. . . . What dress have you got on? You used to wear that at home, didn’t you?”
“How you love me, Vanya,” she said, looking at me affectionately. “And what about you? What are you doing? How are things going with you?”
“Just the same, I’m still writing my novel. But it’s difficult, I can’t get on. The inspiration’s dried up. I dare say I could knock it off somehow, and it might turn out interesting. But it’s a pity to spoil a good idea. It’s a favourite idea of mine. But it must be ready in time for the magazine. I’ve even thought of throwing up the novel, and knocking off a short story, something light and graceful, and without a trace of pessimism. Quite without a trace. . . . Everyone ought to be cheerful and happy.”
“You’re such a hard worker, you poor boy! And how about Smith?”
“But Smith’s dead.”
“And he hasn’t haunted you? I tell you seriously, Vanya, you’re ill and your nerves are out of order; you’re always lost in such dreams. When you told me about taking that room I noticed it in you. So the room’s damp, not nice?”
“Yes, I had an adventure there this evening. . . . But I’ll tell you about it afterwards.”
She had left off listening and was sitting plunged in deep thought.
“I don’t know how I could have left them then. I was in a fever,” she added at last, looking at me with an expression that did not seem to expect an answer.
If I had spoken to her at that moment she would not have heard me.
“Vanya,” she said in a voice hardly audible, “I asked you to come for a reason.”
“What is it?”
“I am parting from him.”
“You have parted, or you’re going to part?”
“I must put an end to this life. I asked you to come that I might tell you everything, all, all that has been accumulating, and that I’ve hidden from you till now.”
This was always how she began, confiding to me her secret intentions, and it almost always turned out that I had learnt the whole secret from her long before.
“Ach, Natasha, I’ve heard that from you a thousand times, Of course it’s impossible for you to go on living together. Your relation is such a strange one. You have nothing in common. But will you have the strength? ”
“It’s only been an idea before, Vanya, but now I have quite made up my mind. I love him beyond everything, and yet it seems I am his worst enemy. I shall ruin his future. I must set him free. He can’t marry me; he hasn’t the strength to go against his father. I don’t want to bind him either. And so I’m really glad he has fallen in love with the girl they are betrothing him to. It will make the parting easier for him. I ought to do it! It’s my duty . . . If I love him I ought to sacrifice everything for him. I ought to prove my love for him; it’s my duty! Isn’t it?”
“But you won’t persuade him, you know”
“I’m not going to persuade him. I shall be just the same with him if he comes in this minute. But I must find some means to make it easier for him to leave me without a conscience-prick. That’s what worries me, Vanya. Help me. Can’t you advise something?”
“There is only one way,” I said: “to leave off loving him altogether and fall in love with someone else. But I doubt whether even that will do it; surely you know his character. Here he’s not been to see you for five days. Suppose he had left you altogether. You’ve only to write that you are leaving him, and he’d run to you at once.”
“Why do you dislike him, Vanya?”
“I?”
“Yes, you, you! You’re his enemy, secret and open. You can’t speak of him without vindictiveness. I’ve noticed a thousand times that it’s your greatest pleasure to humiliate him and blacken him! Yes, blacken him, it’s the truth!”
“And you’ve told me so a thousand times already. Enough, Natasha, let’s drop this conversation.”
“I’ve been wanting to move into another lodging,” she began again after a silence. “Don’t be angry, Vanya.”
“Why, he’d come to another lodging, and I assure you I’m not angry.”
“Love, a new strong love, might hold him back. If he came back to me it would only be for a moment, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know, Natasha. Everything with him is so inconsistent. He wants to marry that girl, and to love you, too. He’s somehow able to do all that at once.”
“If I knew for certain that he loved her I would make up my mind . . . Vanya! Don’t hide anything from me! Do you know something you don’t want to tell me?”
She looked at me with an uneasy, searching gaze.
“I know nothing, my dear. I give you my word of honour; I’ve always been open with you. But I’ll tell you what I do think: very likely he’s not nearly so much in love with the countess’s stepdaughter as we suppose. It’s nothing but attraction . . . . ”
“You think so, Vanya? My God, if I were sure of that! Oh, how I should like to see him at this moment, simply to look at him! I should find out everything from his face! But he doesn’t come! He doesn’t come!”
“Surely you don’t expect him, Natasha?”
“No, he’s with her; I know. I sent to find out. How I should like to have a look at her, too. . . . Listen, Vanya, I’m talking nonsense, but is it really impossible for me to see her, is it impossible to meet her anywhere? What do you think?”
She waited anxiously to hear what I should say.
“You might see her. But simply to see her wouldn’t amount to much.”
“It would be enough for me only to see her; I should be able to tell then, for myself. Listen, I have become so stupid, you know. I walk up and down, up and down, here, always alone, always alone, always thinking; thoughts come rushing like a whirlwind! It’s so horrible! One thing I’ve thought of, Vanya; couldn’t you get to know her? You know the countess admired your novel (you said so yourself at the time). You sometimes go to Prince R—‘s evenings; she’s sometimes there. Manage to be presented to her. Or perhaps Alyosha could introduce you. Then you could tell me all about her.”
“Natasha, dear, we’ll talk of that later. Tell me, do you seriously think you have the strength to face a separation? Look at yourself now; you’re not calm.”
“I . . . shall . . . have!” she answered, hardly audibly. “Anything for him. My whole life for his sake. But you know, Vanya, I can’t bear his being with her now, and having forgotten me; he is sitting by her, talking, laughing, as he used to sit here, do you remember? He’s looking into her eyes; he always does look at people like that — and it never occurs to him that I am here . . . with you.”
She broke off without finishing and looked at me in despair.
“Why, Natasha, only just now you were saying . . .”
“Let’s separate both at once, of our own accord,” she interrupted with flashing eyes. “I will give him my blessing for that . . . but it’s hard, Vanya, that he should forget me first! Ah, Vanya, what agony it is! I don’t understand myself. One thinks one thing, but it’s different when it comes to doing it. What will become of me!”
“Hush, hush, Natasha, calm yourself.”
“And now it’s five days. Every hour, every minute. . . . If I sleep I dream of nothing but him, nothing but him! I tell you what, Vanya, let’s go there. You take me!”
“Hush, Natasha!
“Yes, we will go! I’ve only been waiting for you! I’ve been thinking about it for the last three days. That was what I meant in my letter to you. . . . You must take me, you mustn’t refuse me this . . . I’ve been expecting you . . . for three days. . . . There’s a party there this evening. . . . He’s there . . . let us go!”
She seemed almost delirious. There was a noise in the passage Mavra seemed to be wrangling with some one.
“Stay, Natasha, who’s that?” I asked. “Listen.”
She listened with an incredulous smile, and suddenly turned fearfully white.
“My God! Who’s there?” she said, almost inaudibly.
She tried to detain me, but I went into the passage to Mavra. Yes! It actually was Alyosha. He was questioning Mavra about something. She refused at first to admit him.
“Where have you turned up from?” she asked, with an air of authority. “Well, what have you been up to? All right, then, go in, go in! You won’t come it over me with your butter! Go in! I wonder what you’ve to say for yourself!”
“I’m not afraid of anyone! I’m going in!” said Alyosha, somewhat disconcerted, however.
“Well, go in then! You’re a sauce-box!”
“Well, I’m going in! Ah! you’re here, too!” he said, catching sight of me. “How nice it is that you’re here Well, here I am, you see. . . . What had I better do?”
“Simply go in,” I answered. “What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of anything, I assure you, for upon my word I’m not to blame. You think I’m to blame? You’ll see; I’ll explain it directly. Natasha, can I come in?” he cried with a sort of assumed boldness, standing before the closed door. No one answered.
“What’s the matter?” he asked uneasily.
“Nothing; she was in there just now,” I answered. “Can anything . . . ”
Alyosha opened the door cautiously and looked timidly about the room. There was no one to be seen.
Suddenly he caught sight of her in the corner, between the cupboard and the window. She stood as though in hiding, more dead than alive. As I recall it now I can’t help smiling. Alyosha went up to her slowly and warily.
“Natasha, what is it? How are you, Natasha?” he brought out timidly, looking at her with a sort of dismay.
“Oh, it’s all right!” she answered in terrible confusion, as though she were in fault. “You . . . will you have some tea?”
“Natasha, listen.” Alyosha began, utterly overwhelmed.
“You’re convinced perhaps that I’m to blame. But I’m not, not a bit. You’ll see; I’ll tell you directly.”
“What for?” Natasha whispered. “No, no, you needn’t. . . . Come, give me your hand and . . . it’s over . . . the same as before . . . .”
And she came out of the corner. A flush began to come into her cheeks. She looked down as though she were afraid to glance at Alyosha.
“Good God!” he cried ecstatically. “If I really were to blame I shouldn’t dare look at her after that. Look, look!” he exclaimed, turning to me, “she thinks I am to blame; everything’s against me; all appearances are against me! I haven’t been here for five days! There are rumours that I’m with my betrothed — and what? She has forgiven me already! Already she says, ‘Give me your hand and it’s over’! Natasha, my darling, my angel! It’s not my fault, and you must know that! Not the least little bit! Quite the contrary! Quite the contrary
“But . . . but you were to be there now. . . . You were invited there now . . . . How is it you’re here? Wh-what time is it?”
“Half-past ten! I have been there . . . but I said I wasn’t well and came away — and — and it’s the first time, the first time I’ve been free these five days. It’s the first time I’ve been able to tear myself away and come to you, Natasha. That is, I could have come before, but I didn’t on purpose. And why? You shall know directly. I’ll explain; that’s just what I’ve come for, to explain. Only this time I’m really not a bit to blame, not a bit, not a bit!”
Natasha raised her head and looked at him. . . . But the eyes that met her were so truthful, his face was so full of joy, sincerity and good-humour, that it was impossible to disbelieve him. I expected that they would cry out and rush into each other’s arms, as had often happened before at such reconciliations. But Natasha seemed overcome by her happiness; she let her head sink on her breast and . . . began crying softly. . . . Then Alyosha couldn’t restrain himself. He threw himself at her feet. He kissed her hands, her feet. He seemed frantic. I pushed an easy-chair towards her. She sank into it. Her legs were giving way beneath her.
A MINUTE later we were all laughing as though we were crazy.
“Let me explain; let me explain!” cried Alyosha, his ringing voice rising above our laughter. “They think it’s just as usual . . . that I’ve come with some nonsense. . . . I say, I’ve something most interesting to tell you. But will you ever be quiet?”
He was extremely anxious to tell his story. One could see from his face that he had important news. But the dignified air he assumed in his naive pride at the possession of such news tickled Natasha at once. I could not help laughing too. And the angrier he was with us the more we laughed. Alyosha’s vexation and then childish despair reduced us at last to the condition of Gogol’s midshipman who roared with laughter if one held up one’s finger. Mavra, coming out of the kitchen, stood in the doorway and looked at us with grave indignation, vexed that Alyosha had not come in for a good “wigging” from Natasha, as she had been eagerly anticipating for the last five days, and that we were all so merry instead.
At last Natasha, seeing that our laughter was hurting Alyosha’s feelings, left off laughing.
“What do you want to tell us?” she asked.
“Well, am I to set the samovar?” asked Mavra, interrupting Alyosha without the slightest ceremony.
“Be off, Mavra, be off!” he cried, waving his hands at her, in a hurry to get rid of her. “I’m going to tell you everything that has happened, is happening, and is going to happen, because I know all about it. I see, my friends, you want to know where I’ve been for the last five days — that’s what I want to tell you, but you won’t let me. To begin with, I’ve been deceiving you all this time, Natasha, I’ve been deceiving you for ever so long, and that’s the chief thing.”
“Deceiving me?”
“Yes, deceiving you for the last month; I had begun it before my father came back. Now the time has come for complete openness. A month ago, before father came back, I got an immense letter from him, and I said nothing to either of you about it. In his letter he told me, plainly and simply — and, I assure you, in such a serious tone that I was really alarmed — that my engagement was a settled thing, that my fiancee was simply perfection; that of course I wasn’t good enough for her, but that I must marry her all the same, and so I must be prepared to put all this nonsense out of my head, and so on, and so on — we know, of course, what he means by nonsense. Well, that letter I concealed from you.”
“You didn’t!” Natasha interposed. “See how he flatters himself! As a matter of fact he told us all about it at once. I remember how obedient and tender you were all at once, and wouldn’t leave my side, as though you were feeling guilty about something, and you told us the whole letter in fragments.”
“Impossible; the chief point I’m sure I didn’t tell you. Perhaps you both guessed something, but that’s your affair. I didn’t tell you. I kept it secret and was fearfully unhappy about it.”
“I remember, Alyosha, you were continually asking my advice and told me all about it, a bit at a time, of course, as though it were an imaginary case,” I added, looking at Natasha.
“You told us everything! Don’t brag, please,” she chimed in.
“As though you could keep anything secret! Deception is not your strong point. Even Mavra knew all about it. Didn’t you, Mavra?”
“How could I help it?” retorted Mavra, popping her head in at the door. “ You’d told us all about it before three days were over. You couldn’t deceive a child.”
“Foo! How annoying it is to talk to you! You’re doing all this for spite, Natasha! And you’re mistaken too, Mavra. I remember, I was like a madman then. Do you remember, Mavra?”
“To be sure I do, you’re like a madman now.”
“No, no, I don’t mean that. Do you remember, we’d no money then and you went to pawn my silver cigar-case. And what’s more, Mavra, let me tell you you’re forgetting yourself and being horribly rude to me. It’s Natasha has let you get into such ways. Well, suppose I did tell you all about it at the time, bit by bit (I do remember it now), but you don’t know the tone of the letter, the tone of it. And the tone was what mattered most in the letter, let me tell you. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Why, what was the tone?” asked Natasha.
“Listen, Natasha, you keep asking questions as though you were in fun. Don’t joke about it. I assure you that it’s very important. It was in such a tone that I was in despair. My father had never spoken to me like that. It was as though he would sooner expect an earthquake of Lisbon than that he should fail to get his own way; that was the tone of it.”
“Well. well, tell us. Why did you want to conceal it from me?”
“Ach, my goodness! Why, for fear of frightening you! I hoped to arrange it all myself. Well, after that letter, as soon as my father came my troubles began. I prepared myself to answer him firmly, distinctly and earnestly, but somehow it never came off, He never asked me about it, he’s cunning! On the contrary he behaved as though the whole thing were settled and as though any difference or misunderstanding between us were impossible. Do you hear, impossible, such confidence! And he was so affectionate, so sweet to me. I was simply amazed. How clever he is, Ivan Petrovitch, if only you knew! He has read everything; he knows everything; you’ve only to look at him once and he knows all your thoughts as though they were his own. That’s no doubt why he has been called a Jesuit. Natasha doesn’t like me to praise him. Don’t be cross, Natasha. Well, so that’s how it is . . . oh, by the way! At first he wouldn’t give me any money, but now he has. He gave me some yesterday. Natasha, my angel! Our poverty is over now! Here, look! All he took off my allowance these last six months, to punish me, he paid yesterday. See how much there is; I haven’t counted it yet. Mavra, look what a lot of money; now we needn’t pawn our spoons and studs!”
He brought out of his pocket rather a thick bundle of notes, fifteen hundred roubles, and laid it on the table. Mavra looked at Alyosha with surprise and approval. Natasha eagerly urged him on.
“Well, so I wondered what I was to do,” Alyosha went on. “How was I to oppose him? If he’d been nasty to me I assure you I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. I’d have told him plainly I wouldn’t, that I was grown up now, and a man, and that that was the end of it. And believe me, I’d have stuck to it. But as it is, what could I say to him? But don’t blame me. I see you seem displeased, Natasha. Why do you look at one another? No doubt you’re thinking: here they’ve caught him at once and he hasn’t a grain of will. I have will, I have more than you think. And the proof of it is that in spite of my position I told myself at once, ‘it is my duty; I must tell my father everything, everything,’ and I began speaking and told him everything, and he listened.”
“But what? What did you tell him exactly?” Natasha asked anxiously.
“Why, that I don’t want any other fiancee, and that I have one already — you. That is, I didn’t tell him that straight out, but I prepared him for it, and I shall tell him tomorrow. I’ve made up my mind. To begin with I said that to marry for money was shameful and ignoble, and that for us to consider ourselves aristocrats was simply stupid (I talk perfectly openly to him as though he were my brother). Then I explained to him that I belonged to the tiers etat, and that the tiers etat c’est l’essentiel, that I am proud of being just like everybody else, and that I don’t want to be distinguished in any way; in fact, I laid all those sound ideas before him. . . . I talked warmly, convincingly. I was surprised at myself. I proved it to him, even from his own point of view. . . . I said to him straight out — how can we call ourselves princes? It’s simply a matter of birth; for what is there princely about us? We’re not particularly wealthy, and wealth’s the chief point. The greatest prince nowadays is Rothschild. And secondly, it’s a long time since anything has been heard of us in real society. The last was Uncle Semyon Valkovsky, and he was only known in Moscow, and he was only famous for squandering his last three hundred serfs, and if father hadn’t made money for himself, his grandsons might have been ploughing the land themselves. There are princes like that. We’ve nothing to be stuck-up over. In short, I told him everything that I was brimming over with — everything, warmly and openly; in fact, I said something more. He did not even answer me, but simply began blaming me for having given up going to Count Nainsky’s, and then told me I must try and keep in the good graces of Princess K., my godmother, and that if Princess K. welcomes me then I shall be received everywhere, and my career is assured, and he went on and on about that! It was all hinting at my having given up everyone since I’ve been with you, Natasha, and that’s being all your influence. But he hasn’t spoken about you directly so far. In fact he evidently avoids it. We’re both fencing, waiting, catching one another, and you may be sure that our side will come off best.”
“Well, that’s all right. But how did it end, what has he decided? That’s what matters. And what a chatterbox you are, Alyosha!”
“Goodness only knows. There’s no telling what he’s decided. But I’m not a chatterbox at all; I’m talking sense. He didn’t settle anything, but only smiled at all my arguments; and such a smile, as though he were sorry for me. I know it’s humiliating, but I’m not ashamed of it. ‘I quite agree with you,’ he said, ‘but let’s go to Count Nainsky’s, and mind you don’t say anything there. I understand you, but they won’t.’ I believe he’s not very well received everywhere himself; people are angry with him about something. He seems to be disliked in society now. The count at first received me very majestically, quite superciliously, as though he had quite forgotten I grew up in his house; he began trying to remember, he did, really. He’s simply angry with me for ingratitude, though really there was no sort of ingratitude on my part. It was horribly dull in his house, so I simply gave up going. He gave my father a very casual reception, too; so casual that I can’t understand why he goes there. It all revolted me. Poor father almost has to eat humble pie before him. I understand that it’s all for my sake, but I don’t want anything. I wanted to tell my father what I felt about it, afterwards, but I restrained myself. And, indeed, what would be the good? I shan’t change his convictions, I shall only make him angry, and he is having a bad time as it is. Well, I thought, I’ll take to cunning and I’ll outdo them all — I’ll make the count respect me — and what do you think? I at once gained my object, everything was changed in a single day, Count Nainsky can’t make enough of me now, and that was all my doing, only mine, it was all through my cunning, so that my father was quite astonished!”
“Listen, Alyosha, you’d better keep to the point!” Natasha cried impatiently. “I thought you would tell me something about us, and you only want to tell us how you distinguished yourself at Count Nainsky’s. Your count is no concern of mine!”
“No concern! Do you hear, Ivan Petrovitch, she says it’s no concern of hers! Why, it’s the greatest concern! You’ll see it is yourself, it will all be explained in the end. Only let me tell you about it. And in fact (why not be open about it?) I’ll. tell you what, Natasha, and you, too, Ivan Petrovitch, perhaps I really am sometimes very, very injudicious, granted even I’m sometimes stupid (for I know it is so at times). But in this case, I assure you, I showed a great deal of cunning . . . in fact . . . of cleverness, so that I thought you’d be quite pleased that I’m not always so . . . stupid.”
“What are you saying, Alyosha? Nonsense, dear!”
Natasha couldn’t bear Alyosha to be considered stupid. How often she pouted at me, though she said nothing when I proved to Alyosha without ceremony that he had done something stupid it was a sore spot in her heart. She could not bear to see Alyosha humiliated, and probably felt it the more, the more she recognized his limitations. But she didn’t give him a hint of her opinion for fear of wounding his vanity. He was particularly sensitive on this point, and always knew exactly what she was secretly thinking. Natasha saw this and was very sorry, and she at once tried to flatter and soothe him. That is why his words now raised painful echoes in her heart.
“Nonsense, Alyosha, you’re only thoughtless. You’re not at all like that,” she added. “Why do you run yourself down?”
“Well, that’s all right. So let me prove it to you. Father was quite angry with me after the reception at the count’s. I thought, ‘wait a bit.’ We were driving then to the princess’s. I heard long ago that she was so old that she was almost doting, and deaf besides, and awfully fond of little dogs. She has a perfect pack of them, and adores them. In spite of all that, she has an immense influence in society, so that even Count Nainsky, le superbe, does l’antichambre to her. So I hatched a complete plan of future action on the way. And what do you think I built it all on? Why, on the fact that dogs always like me. Yes, really; I have noticed it. Either there’s some magnetism in me, or else it’s because I’m fond of all animals, I don’t know. Dogs do like me, anyway. And, by the way, talking of magnetism, I haven’t told you, Natasha, we called up spirits the other day; I was at a spiritualist’s. It’s awfully curious, Ivan Petrovitch; it really, impressed me. I called up Julius Caesar.”
“My goodness! What did you want with Julius Caesar?” cried Natasha, going off into a peal of laughter. “That’s the last straw!”
“Why not . . . as though I were such a . . . why shouldn’t I call up Julius Caesar? What does it matter to him? Now she’s laughing!”
“Of course it wouldn’t matter to him at all . . . oh, you dear! Well, what did Julius Caesar say to you?”
“Oh, he didn’t say anything. I simply held the pencil and the pencil moved over the paper and wrote of itself. They said it was Julius Caesar writing. I don’t believe in it.”
“But what did he write, then?”
“Why, he wrote something like the ‘dip it in’ in Gogol. Do leave oft laughing!”
“Oh, tell me about the princess, then.”
“Well, you keep interrupting me. We arrived at the princess’s and I began by making love to Mimi. Mimi is a most disgusting, horrid old dog, obstinate, too, and fond of biting. The princess dotes on her, she simply worships her, I believe they are the same age. I began by feeding Mimi with sweetmeats, and in about ten minutes I had taught her to shake hands, which they had never been able to teach her before. The princess was in a perfect ecstasy, she almost cried with joy.
“‘Mimi! Mimi! Mimi is shaking hands’
“Someone came in.
“‘Mimi shakes hands, my godson here has taught her.’
“Count Nainsky arrived.
“‘Mimi shakes hands!’
“She looked at me almost with tears of tenderness. She’s an awfully nice old lady; I feel quite sorry for her. I was on the spot then, I flattered her again. On her snuff-box she has her own portrait, painted when she was a bride, sixty years ago. Well, she dropped her snuffbox. I picked up the snuff-box and exclaimed:
“‘Quelle charmante peinture!’ just as if I didn’t know. ‘It’s an ideal beauty!’
“Well, that melted her completely. She talked to me of this and that; asked me where I had been studying, and whom I visit, and what splendid hair I had, and all that sort of thing. I made her laugh too. I told her a shocking story. She likes that sort of thing, She shook her finger at me, but she laughed a great deal. When she let me go, she kissed me and blessed me, and insisted I should go in every day to amuse her. The count pressed my hand; his eyes began to look oily. And as for father, though he’s the kindest, and sincerest, and most honourable man in the world, if you’ll believe me, he almost cried with joy on the way home. He hugged me, and became confidential, mysteriously confidential about a career, connexions, marriages, money; I couldn’t understand a lot of it. It was then he gave me the money. That was all yesterday. To-morrow I’m to go to the princess’s again. But still, my father’s a very honourable man — don’t you imagine anything — and although he keeps me away from you, Natasha, it’s simply because he’s dazzled by Katya’s millions, and wants to get hold of them, and you haven’t any; and he wants them simply for my sake, and it’s merely through ignorance he is unjust to you. And what father doesn’t want his son’s happiness? It’s not his fault that he has been accustomed to think that happiness is to be found in millions. They’re all like that. One must look at him from that standpoint, you know, and no other, and then one can see at once that he’s right. I’ve hurried to come to you, Natasha, to assure you of that, for I know you’re prejudiced against him, and of course that’s not your fault. I don’t blame you for it . . . . ..”
“Then all that’s happened is that you’ve made yourself a position at the princess’s. Is that all your cunning amounts to?” asked Natasha.
“Not at all. What do you mean? That’s only the beginning.
I only told you about the princess — because, you understand, through her I shall get a hold over my father; but my story hasn’t begun yet.”
“Well, tell it then!”
“I’ve had another adventure this morning, and a very strange one too. I haven’t got over it yet,” Alyosha went on. “You must observe that, although it’s all settled about our engagement between my father and the countess, there’s been no formal announcement so far, so we can break it off at any moment without a scandal. Count Nainsky’s the only person who knows it, but he’s looked upon as a relation and a benefactor. What’s more, though I’ve got to know Katya very well this last fortnight, till this very evening I’ve never said a word to her about the future, that is about marriage or . . . love. Besides, it’s been settled to begin by asking the consent of Princess K., from whom is expected all sorts of patronage and showers of gold. The world will say what she says. She has such connexions. . . . And what they want more than anything is to push me forward in society. But it’s the countess, Katya’s stepmother, who insists most strongly on this arrangement. The point is that perhaps the princess so far won’t receive her because of her doings abroad, and if the princess won’t receive her, most likely nobody else will. So my engagement to Katya is a good chance for her. So the countess, who used to be against the engagement, was highly delighted at my success with the princess; but that’s beside the point. What matters is this. I saw something of Katerina Fyodorvna last year, but I was a boy then, and I didn’t understand things, and so I saw nothing in her then . . .”
“Simply you loved me more then,” Natasha broke in,” that’s why you saw nothing in her; and now. . .”
“Not, a word, Natasha!” cried Alyosha, hotly. “You are quite mistaken, and insulting me. . . . I won’t even answer you; listen, and you’ll see . . . Ah, if only you knew Katya! If only you knew what a tender, clear, dove-like soul she is! But you will know. Only let me finish. A fortnight ago, when my father took me to see Katya as soon as they had arrived, I began to watch her intently. I noticed she watched me too. That roused my curiosity, to say nothing of my having a special intention of getting to know her, an intention I had had ever since I got that letter from my father that impressed me so much. I’m not going to say anything about her. I’m not going to praise her. I’ll only say one thing. She’s a striking contrast to all her circle. She has such an original nature, such a strong and truthful soul, so strong in its purity and truthfulness, that I’m simply a boy beside her, like a younger brother, though she is only seventeen. Another thing I noticed, there’s a great deal of sadness about her, as though she had some secret: she is not talkative; at home she’s almost always silent as though afraid to speak. . . . She seems to be brooding over something. She seems to be afraid of my father. She doesn’t like her stepmother — I could see that; it’s the countess spreads the story that her stepdaughter is so fond of her, for some object of her own. That’s all false. Katya simply obeys her without question, and it seems as though there’s some agreement between them about it. Four days ago, after all my observations, I made up my mind to carry out my intention, and this evening I did. My plan was to tell Katya everything, to confess everything, get her on our side, and so put a stop to it all . . . .”
“What! Tell her what, confess what?” Natasha asked uneasily.
“Everything, absolutely everything,” answered Alyosha, “and thank God for inspiring me with the thought; but listen, listen! Four days ago I made up my mind to keep away from you both and stop it all myself. If I had been with you I should have been hesitating all the time. I should have been listening to you, and unable to decide on anything. By remaining alone, and putting myself in the position in which I was bound to repeat to myself every minute that I ought to stop it, that I must stop it, I screwed up my courage and — have stopped it! I meant to come back to you with the matter settled, and I’ve come with it settled!”
“What then? What? What has happened? Tell me quickly.”
It’s very simple! I went straight to her, boldly and honestly. But I must first tell you one thing that happened just before, and struck me very much. just before we set off, father received a letter. I was just going into his study and was standing in the doorway. He did not see us. He was so much overcome by the letter that he talked to himself, uttered some exclamations, walked about the room quite beside himself, and suddenly burst out laughing, holding the letter in his hand. I was quite afraid to go in, and waited for a minute. Father was so delighted about something, so delighted; he spoke to me rather queerly; then suddenly broke off and told me to get ready at once, though it was not time for us to go. They had no one there today, only us two, and you were mistaken, Natasha, in thinking it was a party. You were told wrong.”
“Oh, do keep to the point, Alyosha, please; tell me, how you told Katya.”
“Luckily I was left for two hours alone with her. I simply told her that though they wanted to make a match between us, our marriage was impossible, that I had a great affection for her in my heart, and that she alone could save me. Then I told her everything. Only fancy, she knew nothing at all about our story, about you and me, Natasha. If only you could have seen how touched she was; at first she was quite scared. She turned quite white. I told her our whole story; how for my sake you’d abandoned your home; how we’d been living together, how harassed we were now, how afraid of everything, and that now we were appealing to her (I spoke in your name too, Natasha), that she would take our side, and tell her stepmother straight out that she wouldn’t marry me; that that would be our one salvation, and that we had nothing to hope for from anyone else. She listened — with such interest, such sympathy. What eyes she had at that moment! Her whole soul was in them. Her eyes are perfectly blue. She thanked me for not doubting her, and promised to do all she could to help us. Then she began asking about you; said she wanted very much to know you, asked me to tell you that she loved you already like a sister, and that she hoped you would love her like a sister. And as soon as she heard I had not seen you for five days she began at once urging me to go to you.”
Natasha was touched.
“And you could tell us first of your triumphs with some deaf princess! Ach, Alyosha!” she exclaimed, looking at him reproachfully. “Well tell me about Katya; was she happy, cheerful, when she said good-bye to you?”
“Yes, she was glad that she was able to do something generous, but she was crying. For she loves me too, Natasha! She confessed that she had begun to love me; that she sees hardly anyone, and that she was attracted by me long ago. She noticed me particularly because she sees cunning and deception all round her, and I seemed to her a sincere and honest person. She stood up and said: ‘Well, God be with you, Alexey Petrovitch. And I was expecting . . .’ She burst out crying and went away without saying what. We decided that tomorrow she should tell her stepmother that she won’t have me, and that tomorrow I should tell my father everything and speak out boldly and firmly. She reproached me for not having told him before, saying that an honourable man ought not to be afraid of anything. She is such a noble-hearted girl. She doesn’t like my father either. She says he’s cunning and mercenary. I defended him; she didn’t believe me. If I don’t succeed tomorrow with my father (and she feels convinced I shan’t) then she advises me to get Princess K. to support me. Then no one would dare to oppose it. We promised to be like brother and sister to each other. Oh, if only you knew her story too, how unhappy she is, with what aversion she looks on her life with her stepmother, all her surroundings. She didn’t tell me directly, as though she were afraid even of me, but I guessed it from some words, Natasha, darling! How delighted she would be with you if she could see you! And what a kind heart she has! One is so at home with her! You are created to be sisters and to love one another. I’ve been thinking so all along. And really I should like to bring you two together, and stand by admiring you. Don’t imagine anything, Natasha, little one, and let me talk about her. I want to talk to you about her and to her about you. You know I love you more than anyone, more than her . . . .You’re everything to me!”
Natasha looked at him caressingly, and as it were mournfully, and did not speak. His words seemed like a caress, and yet a torment to her.
“And I saw how fine Katya was a long time ago, at least a fortnight,” he went on. “ I’ve been going to them every evening, you see. As I went home I kept thinking of you both, kept comparing you.”
“Which of us came off best?” asked Natasha, smiling.
“Sometimes you and sometimes she. But you were always the best in the long run. When I talk to her I always feel I become somehow better, cleverer, and somehow finer. But tomorrow, tomorrow will settle everything!”
“And aren’t you sorry for her? She loves you, you know. You say you’ve noticed it yourself.”
“Yes, I am, Natasha. But we’ll all three love one another, and then . . .”
“And then ‘good-bye’” Natasha brought out quietly, as though to herself.
Alyosha looked at her in amazement.
But our conversation was suddenly interrupted in the most unexpected way. In the kitchen, which was at the same time the entry, we heard a slight noise as though someone had come in. A minute later Mavra opened the door and began nodding to Alyosha on the sly, beckoning to him. We all turned to her.
“Someone’s asking for you. Come along,” she said in a mysterious voice.
“Who can be asking for me now?” said Alyosha, looking at us in bewilderment. “I’m coming!”
In the kitchen stood his father’s servant in livery. It appeared that the prince had stopped his carriage at Natasha’s lodging on his way home, and had sent to inquire whether Alyosha were there. Explaining this, the footman went away at once.
“Strange! This has never happened before,” said Alyosha, looking at us in confusion. “What does it mean?”
Natasha looked at him uneasily. Suddenly Mavra opened the door again.
“Here’s the prince himself!” she said in a hurried whisper, and at once withdrew.
Natasha turned pale and got up from her seat. Suddenly her eyes kindled. She stood leaning a little on the table, and looked in agitation towards the door, by which the uninvited visitor would enter.
“Natasha, don’t be afraid! You’re with me. I won’t let you be insulted,” whispered Alyosha, disconcerted but not overwhelmed. The door opened, and Prince Valkovsky in his own person appeared on the threshold.
HE took us all in in a rapid attentive glance. It was impossible to guess from this glance whether he had come as a friend or as an enemy. But I will describe his appearance minutely. He struck me particularly that evening.
I had seen him before. He was a man of forty-five, not more, with regular and strikingly handsome features, the expression of which varied according to circumstances; but it changed abruptly, completely, with extraordinary rapidity, passing from the most agreeable to the most surly or displeased expression, as though some spring were suddenly touched. The regular oval of his rather swarthy face, his superb teeth, his small, rather thin, beautifully chiselled lips, his rather long straight nose, his high forehead, on which no wrinkle could be discerned, his rather large grey eyes, made him handsome, and yet his face did not make a pleasant impression. The face repelled because its expression was not spontaneous, but always, as it were, artificial, deliberate, borrowed, and a blind conviction grew upon one that one would never read his real expression. Looking more carefully one began to suspect behind the invariable mask something spiteful, cunning, and intensely egoistic. One’s attention was particularly caught by his fine eyes, which were grey and frank-looking. They were not completely under the control of his will, like his other features. He might want to look mild and friendly, but the light in his eyes was as it were twofold, and together with the mild friendly radiance there were flashes that were cruel, mistrustful, searching and spiteful. . . . He was rather tall, elegantly, rather slimly built, and looked strikingly young for his age. His soft dark brown hair had scarcely yet begun to turn grey. His ears, his hands, his feet were remarkably fine. It was pre-eminently the beauty of race. He was dressed with refined elegance and freshness but with some affectation of youth, which suited him, however. He looked like Alyosha’s elder brother. At any rate no one would have taken him for the father of so grown-up a son.
He went straight up to Natasha and said, looking at her firmly:
“My calling upon you at such an hour, and unannounced, is strange, and against all accepted rules. But I trust that you will believe I can at least recognize the eccentricity of my behaviour. I know, too, with whom I have to deal; I know that you are penetrating and magnanimous. Only give me ten minutes, and I trust that you will understand me and justify it.”
He said all this courteously but with force, and, as it were, emphasis.
“Sit down,” said Natasha, still unable to shake off her confusion and some alarm.
He made a slight bow and sat down.
“First of all allow me to say a couple of words to him,” he said, indicating his son. “As soon as you had gone away, Alyosha, without waiting for me or even taking leave of us, the countess was informed that Katerina Fyodorovna was ill. She was hastening to her, but Katerina Fyodorovna herself suddenly came in distressed and violently agitated. She told us, forthwith, that she could not marry you. She said, too, that she was going into a nunnery, that you had asked for her help, and had told her that you loved Natalya Nikolaevna. This extraordinary declaration on the part of Katerina Fyodorovna, especially at such a moment, was of course provoked by the extreme strangeness of your explanation with her. She was almost beside herself; you can understand hole shocked and alarmed I was. As I drove past just now I noticed a light in your window,” he went on, addressing Natasha, “then an idea which had been haunting me for a long time gained such possession of me that I could not resist my first impulse, and came in to see you. With what object? I will tell you directly, but I beg you beforehand not to be surprised at a certain abruptness in my explanation, It is all so sudden. . .”
“I hope I shall understand and appreciate what you are going to say, as I ought,” answered Natasha, faltering.
The prince scrutinized her intently as though he were in a hurry to understand her through and through in one minute. “I am relying on your penetration too,” he went on, “and I have ventured to come to you now just because I knew with whom I should have to deal. I have known you for a long time now, although I was at one time so unfair to you and did you injustice. Listen. You know that between me and your father there are disagreements of long standing. I don’t justify myself; perhaps I have been more to blame in my treatment of him than I had supposed till now. But if so I was myself deceived. I am suspicious, and I recognize it. I am disposed to suspect evil rather than good: an unhappy trait, characteristic of a cold heart. But it is not my habit to conceal my failings. I believed in the past all that was said against you, and when you left your parents I was terror-stricken for Alyosha. But then I did not know you. The information I have gathered little by little has completely reassured me. I have watched you, studied you, and am at last convinced that my suspicions were groundless. I have learnt that you are cut off from your family. I know, too, that your father is utterly opposed to your marriage with my son, and the mere fact that, having such an influence, such power, one may say, over Alyosha, you have not hitherto taken advantage of that power to force him to marry you — that alone says much for you. And yet I confess it openly, I was firmly resolved at that time to hinder any possibility of your marriage with my son. I know I am expressing myself too straight forwardly, but, at this moment straightforwardness on my part is what is most needed. You will admit that yourself when you have heard me to the end. Soon after you left your home I went away from Petersburg, but by then I had no further fears for Alyosha. I relied on your generous pride. I knew that you did not yourself want a marriage before the family dissensions were over, that you were unwilling to destroy the good understanding between Alyosha and me — for I should never have forgiven his marriage with you — that you were unwilling, too, to have it said of you that you were trying to catch a prince for a husband, and to be connected with our family. On the contrary, you showed a positive neglect of us, and were perhaps waiting for the moment when I should come to beg you to do us the honour to give my son your hand. Yet I obstinately remained your ill-wisher. I am not going to justify myself, but I will not conceal my reasons. Here they are. You have neither wealth nor position. Though I have property, we need more; our family is going downhill. We need money and connexions. Though Countess Zinaida Fyodorovna’s stepdaughter has no connexions, she is very wealthy. If we delayed, suitors would turn up and carry her off. And such a chance was not to be lost. So, though Alyosha is still so young, I decided to make a match for him. You see I am concealing nothing. You may look with scorn on a father who admits himself that from prejudice and mercenary motives he urged his son to an evil action; for to desert a generous hearted girl who has sacrificed everyone to him, and whom he has treated so badly, is an evil action. But I do not defend myself. My second reason for my son’s proposed marriage was that the girl is highly deserving of love and respect. She is handsome, well-educated, has a charming disposition, and is very intelligent, though in many ways still a child. Alyosha has no character, he is thoughtless, extremely injudicious, and at two-and-twenty is a perfect child. He has at most one virtue, a good heart, positively a dangerous possession with his other failings. I have noticed for a long time that my influence over him was beginning to grow less; the impulsiveness and enthusiasm of youth are getting the upper hand, and even get the upper hand of some positive duties. I perhaps love him too fondly; but I am convinced that I am not a sufficient guide for him. And yet he must always be under some good influence. He has a submissive nature, weak and loving, liking better to love and to obey than to command. So he will be all his life. You can imagine how delighted I was at finding in Katerina Fyodorovna the ideal girl I should have desired for my son’s wife. But my joy came too late. He was already under the sway of another influence that nothing could shake — yours. I have kept a sharp watch on him since I returned to Petersburg a month ago, and I notice with surprise a distinct change for the better in him. His irresponsibility and childishness are scarcely altered; but certain generous feelings are stronger in him. He begins to be interested not only in playthings, but in what is lofty, noble, and more genuine. His ideas are queer, unstable, sometimes absurd; but the desire, the impulse, the feeling is finer, and that is the foundation of everything; and all this improvement in him is undoubtedly your work. You have remodelled him. I will confess the idea did occur to me, then, that you rather than anyone might secure his happiness. But I dismissed that idea, I did not wish to entertain it. I wanted to draw him away from you at any cost. I began to act, and thought I had gained my object. Only an hour ago I thought that the victory was mine. But what has just happened at the countess’s has upset all my calculations at once, and what struck me most of all was something unexpected: the earnestness and constancy of Alyosha’s devotion to you, the persistence and vitality of that devotion — which seemed strange in him. I repeat, you have remodelled him completely. I saw all at once that the change in him had gone further than I had supposed. He displayed today before my eyes a sudden proof of an intelligence of which I had not the slightest suspicion, and at the same time an extraordinary insight and subtlety of feeling. He chose the surest way of extricating himself from what he felt to be a difficult position. He touched and stirred the noblest chords in the human heart — the power of forgiving and repaying good for evil. He surrendered himself into the hands of the being he was injuring, and appealed to her for sympathy and help. He roused all the pride of the woman who already loved him by openly telling her she had a rival, and aroused at the same time her sympathy for her rival, and forgiveness and the promise of disinterested, sisterly affection for himself. To go into such explanations without rousing resentment and mortification — to do that is sometimes beyond the capacity of the subtlest and cleverest; only pure young hearts under good guidance can do this. I am sure, Natalya Nikolaevna, that you took no part by word or suggestion in what he did today. You have perhaps only just heard of it from him. I am not mistaken. Am I?”
“You are not mistaken,” Natasha assented. Her face was glowing, and her eyes shone with a strange light as though of inspiration. Prince Valkovsky’s eloquence was beginning to produce its effect. “I haven’t seen Alyosha for five days,” she, added. He thought of all this himself and carried it all out himself.
“Exactly so,” said Prince Valkovsky, “but, in spite of that, all this surprising insight, all this decision and recognition of duty, this creditable manliness, in fact, is all the result of your influence on him. I had thought all this out and was reflecting on it on my way home, and suddenly felt able to reach a decision. The proposed match with the countess’s stepdaughter is broken off, and cannot be renewed; but if it were possible it could never come to pass. What if I have come to believe that you are the only woman that can make him happy, that you are his true guide, that you have already laid the foundations of his future happiness! I have concealed nothing from you and I am concealing nothing now; I think a great deal of a career, of money, of position, and even of rank in the service. With my intellect I recognize that a great deal of this is conventional, but I like these conventions, and am absolutely disinclined to run counter, to them. But there are circumstances when other considerations have to come in, when everything cannot be judged by the same standard . . . . Besides, I love my son dearly. In short, I have come to the conclusion that Alyosha must not be parted from you, because without you he will be lost. And must I confess it? I have perhaps been coming to this conclusion for the last month, and only now realize that the conclusion is a right one. Of course, I might have called on you tomorrow to tell you all this, instead of disturbing you at midnight. But my haste will show you, perhaps, how warmly, and still more how sincerely, I feel in the matter. I am not a boy, and I could not at my age make up my mind to any step without thinking it over. Everything had been thought over and decided before I came here. But I feel that I may have to wait some time before you will be convinced of my sincerity. . . . But to come to the point Shall I explain now why I came here? I came to do my duty to you, and solemnly, with the deepest respect, I beg you to make my son happy and to give him your hand. Oh, do not imagine that I have come like an angry father, who has been brought at last to forgive his children and graciously to consent to their happiness. No! No! You do me an injustice if you suppose I have any such ideas. Do not imagine either that I reckon on your consent, relying on the sacrifices you have made for my son; no again! I am the first to declare aloud that he does not deserve you, and (he is candid and good) he will say the same himself. But that is not enough. It is not only this that has brought me here at such an hour . . . I have come here, (and he rose from his seat respectfully and with a certain solemnity), “I have come here to become your friend! I know I have no right whatever to this, quite the contrary! But — allow me to earn the right! Let me hope . . .”
Making a respectful bow to Natasha he awaited her reply. I was watching him intently all the time he was speaking. He noticed it.
He made his speech coldly, with some display of eloquence, and in parts with in certain nonchalance. The tone of the whole speech was incongruous indeed with the impulse that had brought him to us at an hour so inappropriate for a first visit, especially under such circumstances. Some of his expressions were evidently premeditated, and in some parts of his long speech — which was strange from its very length — he seemed to be artificially assuming the air of an eccentric man struggling to conceal an overwhelming feeling under a show of humour, carelessness and jest. But I only made all these reflections afterwards; at the time the effect was different. He uttered the last words so sincerely, with so much feeling, with such an air of genuine respect for Natasha, that it conquered us all. There was actually the glimmer of a tear on his eyelashes. Natasha’s generous heart was completely won. She, too, got up, and, deeply moved, held out her hand to him without a word. He took it and kissed it with tenderness and emotion. Alyosha was beside himself with rapture.
“What did I tell you, Natasha?” he cried. “You wouldn’t believe me. You wouldn’t believe in his being the noblest man in the world! You see, you see for yourself! . . .”
He rushed to his father and hugged him warmly. The latter responded as warmly, but hastened to cut short the touching scene, as though ashamed to show his emotion.
“Enough,” he said, and took his hat. “I must go. I asked you to give me ten minutes and I have been here a whole hour,” he added, laughing. “But I leave you with impatient eagerness to see you again as soon as possible. Will you allow me to visit you as often as I can?”
“Yes, yes,” answered Natasha, “as often as you can . . . I want to make haste . . . to be fond of you . . .” she added in embarrassment.
“How sincere you are, how truthful,” said Prince Valkovsky, smiling at her words. “You won’t be insincere even to be polite. But your sincerity is more precious than all artificial politeness. Yes! I recognize that it will take me a long, long time to deserve your love.”
“Hush, don’t praise me . . . . Enough,” Natasha whispered in confusion. How delightful she was at that moment!
“So be it,” Prince Valkovsky concluded. “I’ll say only a couple of words of something practical. You cannot imagine how unhappy I am! Do you know I can’t be with you tomorrow — neither tomorrow nor the day after. I received a letter this evening of such importance to me (requiring my presence on business at once) that I cannot possibly neglect it. I am leaving Petersburg tomorrow morning. Please do not imagine that I came to you to-night because I should have no time tomorrow or the day after. Of course you don’t think so, but that is just an instance of my suspicious nature. Why should I fancy that you must think so? Yes, my suspicious nature has often been a drawback to me in my life, and my whole misunderstanding with your family has perhaps been due to my unfortunate character! . . . To-day is Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I shall not be in Petersburg. I hope to return on Saturday for certain; and I will be with you the same day. Tell me, may I come to you for the whole evening?”
“Of course, of course!” cried Natasha. “On Saturday evening I shall expect you . . . I shall expect you impatiently!”
“Ah, how happy I am! I shall get to know you better and better! But . . . I must go! I cannot go without shaking hands with you, though,” he added, turning to me. “I beg your pardon! We are all talking so disconnectedly. I have several times had the pleasure of meeting you, and once, indeed, we were introduced. I cannot take my leave without telling you how glad I should be to renew our acquaintance . . . .”
“We have met, it’s true,” I answered, taking his hand. “But I don’t remember that we became acquainted.”
“At Prince M.‘s, last year.”
“I beg your pardon, I’ve forgotten. But I assure you this time I shall not forget. This evening will always remain in my memory.”
“Yes, you are right. I feel the same. I have long known that you have been a good and true friend to Natalya Nikolaevna and my son. I hope you three will admit me as a fourth. May I?” he added, addressing Natasha.
“Yes, he is a true friend to us, and we must all hold together,” Natasha answered with deep feeling.
Poor girl! She was positively beaming with delight that the prince had not overlooked me. How she loved me!
“I have met many worshippers of your talent,” Prince Valkovsky went on. “And I know two of your most sincere admirers — the countess, my dearest friend, and her stepdaughter Katerina Fyodorovna Filimonov. They would so like to know you personally. Allow me to hope that you will let me have the pleasure of presenting you to those ladies.”
“You are very flattering, though now I see so few people . . .”
“But give me your address! Where do you live? I shall do myself the pleasure . . .”
“I do not receive visitors, prince. At least not at present.”
“But, though I have not deserved to be an exception . . . I . . . ”
“Certainly, since you insist I shall be delighted. I live at — Street, in Klugen’s Buildings.”
“Klugen’s Buildings!” he cried, as though surprised something. “What! Have you . . . lived there long?”
“No, not long,” I answered, instinctively watching him. “I live at No. 44.”
“Forty-four? You are living . . . alone?”
“Quite alone.”
“0-oh! I ask you because I think I know the house. So much the better. . . . I will certainly come and see you, certainly! I shall have much to talk over with you and I look for great things from you. You can oblige me in many ways. You see I am beginning straight off by asking you a favour. But good-bye! Shake hands again!”
He shook my hand and Alyosha’s, kissed Natasha’s hand again and went out without suggesting that Alyosha should follow him.
We three remained overwhelmed. It had all happened so unexpectedly, so casually. We all felt that in one instant everything had changed, and that something new and unknown was beginning. Alyosha without a word sat down beside Natasha and softly kissed her hand. From time to time he peeped into her face as though to see what she would say.
“Alyosha, darling, go and see Katerina Fyodorovna tomorrow,” she brought out at last.
“I was thinking of that myself,” he said, “I shall certainly go.”
“But perhaps it will be painful for her to see you. What’s to be done?”
“I don’t know, dear. I thought of that too. I’ll look round. I shall see . . . then I’ll decide. Well, Natasha, everything is changed for us now,” Alyosha said, unable to contain himself.
She smiled and gave him a long, tender look.
“And what delicacy he has. He saw how poor your lodging is and not a word . . . ”
“Of what?”
“Why . . . of your moving . . . or anything,” he added reddening.
“Nonsense, Alyosha, why ever should he?”
“That’s just what I say. He has such delicacy. And how he praised you! I told you so . . . I told you. Yes, he’s capable of understanding and feeling anything! But he talked of me as though I were a baby; they all treat me like that. But I suppose I really am.”
“You’re a child, but you see further than any of us. You’re good, Alyosha!”
“He said that my good heart would do me harm. How’s that? I don’t understand. But I say, Natasha, oughtn’t I to make haste and go to him? I’ll be with you as soon as it’s light tomorrow.”
“Yes, go, darling, go. You were right to think of it. And be sure to show yourself to him, do you hear? And come tomorrow as. early as you can. You won’t run away from me for five days now?” she added slyly, with a caressing glance.
We were all in a state of quiet, unruffled joy.
“Are you coming with me, Vanya?” cried Alyosha as he went out.
“No, he’ll stay a little. I’ve something more to say to you, Vanya. Mind, quite early tomorrow.”
“Quite early. Good-night, Mavra.”
Mavra was in great excitement. She had listened to all the prince said, she had overheard it all, but there was much she had not understood. She was Longing to ask questions, and make
surmises. But meantime she looked serious, and even proud. She, too, realized that much was changed.
We remained alone. Natasha took my hand, and for some time was silent, as though seeking for something to say.
“I’m tired,” she said at last in a weak voice. “ Listen, are you going to them tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
“Tell mamma, but don’t speak to him.”
“I never speak of you to him, anyway.”
“Of course; he’ll find out without that. But notice what he says. How he takes it. Good heavens, Vanya, will he really curse me for this marriage? No, impossible.”
“The prince will have to make everything right,” I put in hurriedly. “They must be reconciled and then everything will go smoothly.”
“My God! If that could only be! If that could only be!” she cried imploringly.
“Don’t worry yourself, Natasha, everything will come right. Everything points to it.”
She looked at me intently.
“Vanya, what do you think of the prince?”
“If he was sincere in what he said, then to my thinking he’s a really generous man.”
“Sincere in what he said? What does that mean? Surely he couldn’t have been speaking insincerely?”
“I agree with you,” I answered. “Then some idea did occur to her,” I thought. “That’s strange!”
“You kept looking at him . . . so intently.”
“Yes, I thought him rather strange.”
“I thought so too. He kept on talking so . . . my dear, I’m tired. You know, you’d better be going home. And come to me tomorrow as early as you can after seeing them. And one other thing: it wasn’t rude of me to say that I wanted to get fond of him, was it?”
“No, why rude?”
“And not . . . stupid? You see it was as much as to say that so far I didn’t like him.”
“On the contrary, it was very good, simple, spontaneous. You looked so beautiful at that moment! He’s stupid if he doesn’t understand that, with his aristocratic breeding!”
“You seem as though you were angry with him, Vanya. But how horrid I am, how suspicious, and vain! Don’t laugh at me; I hide nothing from you, you know. Ah, Vanya, my dear! If I am unhappy again, if more trouble comes, you’ll be here beside me, I know; perhaps you’ll be the only one! How can I repay you for everything! Don’t curse me ever, Vanya!”
Returning home, I undressed at once and went to bed. My room was as dark and damp as a cellar. Many strange thoughts and sensations were hovering in my mind, and it was long before I could get to sleep.
But how one man must have been laughing at us that moment as he fell asleep in his comfortable bed — that is, if he thought us worth laughing at! Probably he didn’t.
AT ten o’clock next morning as I was coming out of my lodgings hurrying off to the Ichmenyevs in Vassilyevsky Island, and meaning to go from them to Natasha, I suddenly came upon my yesterday’s visitor, Smith’s grandchild, at the door. She was coming to see me. I don’t know why, but I remember I was awfully pleased to see her. I had hardly had time to get a good look at her the day before, and by daylight she surprised me more than ever. And, indeed, it would have been difficult to have found a stranger or more original creature — in appearance, anyway. With her flashing black eyes, which looked somehow foreign, her thick, dishevelled, black hair, and her mute, fixed, enigmatic gaze, the little creature might well have attracted the notice of anyone who passed her in the street. The expression in her eyes was particularly striking. There was the light of intelligence in them, and at the same time an inquisitorial mistrust, even suspicion. Her dirty old frock looked even more hopelessly tattered by daylight. She seemed to me to be suffering from some wasting, chronic disease that was gradually and relentlessly destroying her. Her pale, thin face had an unnatural sallow, bilious tinge. But in spite of all the ugliness of poverty and illness, she was positively pretty. Her eyebrows were strongly marked, delicate and beautiful. Her broad, rather low brow was particularly beautiful, and her lips were exquisitely formed with a peculiar proud bold line, but they were pale and colourless.
“Ah, you again!” I cried. “Well, I thought you’d come! Come in!”
She came in, stepping through the doorway slowly just as before, and looking about her mistrustfully. She looked carefully round the room where her grandfather had lived, as though noting how far it had been changed by another inmate.
“Well, the grandchild is just such another as the grandfather,” I thought. “Is she mad, perhaps?”
She still remained mute; I waited.
“For the books!” she whispered at last, dropping her eves.
“Oh yes, your books; here they are, take them! I’ve been keeping them on purpose for you.”
She looked at me inquisitively, and her mouth worked strangely as though she would venture on a mistrustful smile. But the effort at a smile passed and was replaced by the same severe and enigmatic expression.
“Grandfather didn’t speak to you of me, did he?” she asked, scanning me ironically from head to foot.
“No, he didn’t speak of you, but . . . ”
“Then how did you know I should come? Who told you?” she asked, quickly interrupting me.
“I thought your grandfather couldn’t live alone, abandoned by everyone. He was so old and feeble; I thought someone must be looking after him . . . Here are your books, take them. Are they your lesson-books?”
“No.”
“What do you want with them, then?”
“Grandfather taught me when I used to see him.”
“Why did you leave off coming then?”
“Afterwards . . . I didn’t come. I was ill,” she added, as though defending herself.
“Tell me, have you a home, a father and mother?”
She frowned suddenly and looked at me, seeming almost scared. Then she looked down, turned in silence and walked softly out of the room without deigning to reply, just as she had done the day before. I looked after her in amazement. But she stood still in the doorway.
“What did he die of?” she asked me abruptly, turning slightly towards me with exactly the same movement and gesture as the day before, when she had asked after Azorka, stopping on her way out with her face to the door.
I went up to her and began rapidly telling her. She listened mutely and with curiosity, her head bowed and her back turned to me. I told her, too, how the old man had mentioned Sixth Street as he was dying.
“I imagine” I added, “that someone dear to him live there, and that’s why, I expected someone would come to inquire after him. He must have loved, you, since he thought of you at the last moment.”
“No,” she whispered, almost unconsciously it seemed; “he didn’t love me.”
She was strangely moved. As I told my story I bent down and looked into her face. I noticed that she was making great effort to suppress her emotion, as though too proud to let me see it. She turned paler and paler and bit her lower lip But what struck me especially was the strange thumping of her heart. It throbbed louder and louder, so that one could hear it two or three paces off, as in cases of aneurysm. I thought she would suddenly burst into tears as she had done the day before but she controlled herself.
“And where is the fence?”
“What fence?”
“That he died under.”
“I will show you . . . when we go out. But, tell me, what do they call you?”
“No need to.”
“No need to-what?”
“Never mind . . . it doesn’t matter. . . . They don’t call me anything,” she brought out jerkily, seeming annoyed, an she moved to go away. I stopped her.
“Wait a minute, you queer little girl! Why, I only want to help you. I felt so sorry for you when I saw you crying in the corner yesterday. I can’t bear to think of it. Besides, your grandfather died in my arms, and no doubt he was thinking of you when he mentioned Sixth Street, so it’s almost as if he left you in my care. I dream of him. . . . Here, I’ve kept those books for you, but you’re such a wild little thing, as though you were afraid of me. You must be very poor and an orphan perhaps living among strangers; isn’t that so?”
I did my utmost to conciliate her, and I don’t know how it was she attracted me so much. There was something beside pity in my feeling for her. Whether it was the mysteriousness of the whole position, the impression made on me by Smith, or my own fantastic mood — I can’t say; but something drew me irresistibly to her. My words seemed to touch her. She bent on me a strange look, not severe now, but soft and deliberate, then looked down again as though pondering.
“Elena,” she brought out unexpectedly, and in an extremely low voice.
“That’s your name, Elena?”
“Yes.”
“Well, will you come and see me?”
“I can’t. . . . I don’t know . . . . .I will,” she whispered, as though pondering and struggling with herself.
At that moment a clock somewhere struck.
She started, and with an indescribable look of heart-sick anguish she whispered:
“What time was that?”
“It must have been half-past ten.”
She gave a cry of alarm.
“Oh, dear!” she cried and was making away. But again I stopped her in the passage.
“I won’t let you go like that,” I said. “What are you afraid of? Are you late?”
“Yes, yes. I came out secretly. Let me go! She’ll beat me,” she cried out, evidently saying more than she meant to and breaking away from me.
“Listen, and don’t rush away; you’re going to Vassilyevsky Island, so am I, to Thirteenth Street. I’m late, too. I’m going to take a cab. Will you come with me? I’ll take you. You’ll get there quicker than on foot.
You can’t come back with me, you can’t!” she cried, even more panic-stricken. Her features positively worked with terror at the thought that I might come to the house where she was living.
“But I tell you I’m going to Thirteenth Street on business of my own. I’m not coming to your home! I won’t follow you. We shall get there sooner with a cab. Come along!”
We hurried downstairs. I hailed the first driver I met with a miserable droshky. It was evident Elena was in great haste, since she consented to get in with me. What was most baffling was that I positively did not dare to question her. She flung up her arms and almost leapt off the droshky when I asked her who it was at home she was so afraid of. “What is the mystery?” I thought.
It was very awkward for her to sit on the droshky. At every jolt to keep her balance she clutched at my coat with her left hand, a dirty, chapped little hand. In the other hand she held her books tightly. One could see that those books were very precious to her. As she recovered her balance she happened to show her leg, and to my immense astonishment I saw that she had no stockings, nothing but torn shoes. Though I had made up my mind not to question her, I could not restrain myself again.
“Have you really no stockings?” I asked. “How can you go about barefoot in such wet weather and when it’s so cold?”
“No,” she answered abruptly.
“Good heavens! But you must be living with someone! You ought to ask someone to lend you stockings when you go out.”
“I like it best . . . .”
“But you’ll get ill. You’ll die”
“Let me die.”
She evidently did not want to answer and was angry at my question.
“Look! this was where he died,” I said, pointing out the house where the old man had died.
She looked intently, and suddenly turning with an imploring look, said to me:
“For God’s sake don’t follow me. But I’ll come, I’ll come again! As soon as I’ve a chance I’ll come.”
“Very well. I’ve told you already I won’t follow you. But what are you afraid of? You must be unhappy in some way. It makes me sad to look at you.”
“I’m not afraid of anyone,” she replied, with a note of irritation in her voice.
“But you said just now ‘she’ll beat me’”
“Let her beat me!” she answered, and her eyes flashed. “Let her, let her!” she repeated bitterly, and her upper lip quivered and was lifted disdainfully.
At last we reached Vassilyevsky Island. She stopped the droshky at the beginning of Sixth Street, and jumped off, looking anxiously round.
“Drive away! I’ll come, I’ll come,” she repeated, terribly uneasy, imploring me not to follow her. “Get on, make haste, make haste!”
I drove on. But after driving a few yards further along the embankment I dismissed the cab, and going back to Sixth Street ran quickly across the road. I caught sight of her; she had not got far away yet, though she was walking quickly, and continually looking about her. She even stopped once or twice to look more carefully whether I were following her or not. But I hid in a handy gateway, and she did not see me. She walked on. I followed her, keeping on the other side of the street.
My curiosity was roused to the utmost. Though I did not intend to follow her in, I felt I must find which house she lived in, to be ready in case of emergency. I was overcome by a strange, oppressive sensation, not unlike the impression her grandfather had made on me when Azorka died in the restaurant.
WE walked a long way, as far as Little Avenue. She was almost running. At last she went into a little shop. I stood still and waited. “Surely she doesn’t live at the shop,” I thought.
She did in fact come out a minute later, but without the books. Instead of the books she had an earthenware cup in her hand. Going on a little further she went in at the gateway of an unattractive-looking house. It was an old stone house of two storeys, painted a dirty-yellow colour, and not large. In one of the three windows on the ground floor there was a miniature red coffin — as a sign that a working coffin-maker lived there. The windows of the upper storey were extremely small and perfectly square with dingy-green broken panes, through which I caught a glimpse of pink cotton curtains. I crossed the road, went up to the house, and read on an iron plate over the gate, “Mme. Bubnov.”
But I had hardly deciphered the inscription when suddenly I heard a piercing female scream, followed by shouts of abuse in Mme. Bubnov’s yard. I peeped through the gate. On the wooden steps of the house stood a stout woman, dressed like a working woman with a kerchief on her head, and a green shawl. Her face was of a revolting purplish colour. Her little, puffy, bloodshot eves were gleaming with spite. It was evident that she was not sober, though it was so early in the day. She was shrieking at poor Elena, who stood petrified. before her with the cup in her hand. A dishevelled female, painted and rouged, peeped from the stairs behind the purple-faced woman.
A little later a door opened on the area steps leading to the basement, and a poorly dressed, middle-aged woman of modest and decent appearance came out on the steps, probably attracted by the shouting. The other inhabitants of the basement, a decrepit-looking old man and a girl, looked out from the half-opened door. A big, hulking peasant, probably the porter, stood still in the middle of the yard with the broom in his hand, looking lazily at the scene.
“Ah, you damned slut, you bloodsucker, you louse!” squealed the woman, letting out at one breath all her store of abuse, for the most part without commas or stops, but with a sort of gasp.
So this is how you repay, me for my care of you, you ragged wench. She was just sent for some cucumbers and off she slipped. My heart told me she’d slip off when I sent her out! My heart ached it did! Only last night I all but pulled her hair out for it, and here she runs off again today. And where have you to go, you trollop? Where have you to go to? Who do you go to, you damned mummy, you staring viper, you poisonous vermin, who, who is it? Speak, you rotten scum, or I’ll choke you where you stand!”
And the infuriated woman flew at the poor girl, but, seeing the woman looking at her from the basement steps, she suddenly checked herself and, addressing her, squealed more shrilly than ever, waving her arms as though calling her to witness the monstrous crimes of her luckless victim.
“Her mother’s hopped the twig! You all know, good neighbours, she’s left alone in the world. I saw she was on your hands, poor folks as you are, though you’d nothing to eat for yourselves. There, thought I, for St. Nikolay’s sake I’ll put myself out and take the orphan. So I took her. and would you believe it, here I’ve been keeping her these two months, and upon my word she’s been sucking my blood and wearing me to a shadow, the leech, the rattlesnake, the obstinate limb of Satan. You may beat her, or you may let her alone, she won’t speak. She might have a mouth full of water, the way she holds her tongue! She breaks my heart holding her tongue! What do you take yourself for, you saucy slut, you green monkey? If it hadn’t been for me you’d have died of hunger in the street. You ought to be ready to wash my feet and drink the water, you monster, you black French poker! You’d have been done for but for me!”
“But why are you upsetting yourself so, Anna Trifonovna? How’s she vexed you again?” respectfully inquired the woman who had been addressed by the raving fury.
“You needn’t ask, my good soul, that you needn’t. I don’t like people going against me! I am one for having things my own way, right or wrong — I’m that sort! She’s almost sent me to my grave this morning! I sent her to the shop to get some cucumbers, and it was three hours before she was back. I’d a feeling in my heart when I sent her — it ached it did, didn’t it ache! Where’s she been? Where did she go? What protectors has she found for herself? As though I’d not been a good friend to her. Why, I forgave her slut of a mother a debt of fourteen roubles, buried her at my own expense, and took the little devil to bring up, you know that, my dear soul, you know it yourself! Why, have I no rights over her, after that? She should feel it, but instead of feeling it she goes against me! I wished for her good. I wanted to put her in a muslin frock, the dirty slut! I bought her boots at the Gostiny Dvor, and decked her out like a peacock, a sight for a holiday! And would you believe it, good friends, two days later she’d torn up the dress, torn it into rags, and that’s how she goes about, that’s how she goes about! And what do you think, she tore it on purpose — I wouldn’t tell a lie, I saw it myself; as much as to say she would go in rags, she wouldn’t wear muslin! Well, I paid, her out! I did give her a drubbing! Then I called in the doctor afterwards and had to pay him, too. If I throttled you, you vermin, I should be quit with not touching milk for a week; that would be penance enough for strangling you. I made her scrub the floor for a punishment; and what do you think, she scrubbed and scrubbed, the jade! It vexed me to see her scrubbing. Well, thought I, she’ll run away from me now. And I’d scarcely thought it when I looked round and off she’d gone, yesterday. You heard how I beat her for it yesterday, good friends. I made my arms ache. I took away her shoes and stockings — she won’t go off barefoot, thought I; yet she gave me the slip today, too! Where have you been? Speak! Who have you been complaining of me to, you nettle-seed? Who have you been telling tales to? Speak, you gipsy, you foreign mask! Speak!
And in her frenzy, she rushed at the little girl, who stood petrified with horror, clutched her by the hair, and flung her on the ground. The cup with the cucumbers in it was dashed aside and broken. This only increased the drunken fury’s rage. She beat her victim about the face and the head; but Elena remained obstinately mute; not a sound, not a cry, not a complaint escaped her, even under the blows.
I rushed into the yard, almost beside myself with indignation, and went straight to the drunken woman.
“What are you about? How dare you treat a poor orphan like that?” I cried, seizing the fury by her arm.
“What’s this? Why, who are you?” she screamed, leaving Elena, and putting her arms akimbo. “What do you want in my house?”
“To tell you you’re a heartless woman.” I cried. “How dare you bully a poor child like that? She’s not yours. I’ve just heard that she’s only adopted, a poor orphan.”
“Lord Jesus!” cried the fury. “But who are you, poking your nose in! Did you come with her, eh? I’ll go straight to the police-captain! Andrey Timofeyitch himself treats me like a lady. Why, is it to see you she goes, eh? Who is it? He’s come to make an upset in another person’s house. Police!”
And she flew at me, brandishing her fists. But at that instant we heard a piercing, inhuman shriek. I looked. Elena, who had been standing as though unconscious, uttering a strange, unnatural scream, fell with a thud on the ground, writhing in awful convulsions. Her face was working. She was in an epileptic fit. The dishevelled female and the woman from the basement ran, lifted her up, and hurriedly carried her up the steps.
“She may choke for me, the damned slut the woman shrieked after her. “That’s the third fit this month! . . . Get off, you pickpocket” and she rushed at me again. “Why are you standing there, porter? What do you get your wages for?”
“Get along, get along! Do you want a smack on the head?” the porter boomed out lazily, apparently only as a matter of form. “Two’s company and three’s none. Make your bow and take your hook!”
There was no help for it. I went out at the gate, feeling that my interference had been useless. But I was boiling with indignation. I stood on, the pavement facing the gateway, and looked through the gate. As soon as I had gone out the woman rushed up the steps, and the porter having done his duty vanished. Soon after, the woman who had helped to carry up Elena hurried down the steps on the way to the basement. Seeing me she stood still and looked at me with curiosity. Her quiet, good-natured face encouraged me. I went back into the yard and straight up to her.
“Allow me to ask,” I said, “who is that girl and what is that horrible woman doing with her? Please don’t imagine that I ask simply from curiosity. I’ve met the girl, and owing to special circumstances I am much interested in her.”
“If you’re interested in her you’d better take her home or find some place for her than let her come to ruin here,” said the woman with apparent reluctance, making a movement to get away from me.
“But if you don’t tell me, what can I do? I tell you I know nothing about her. I suppose that’s Mme. Bubnov herself, the woman of the house?”
“Yes”
“Then how did the girl fall into her hands? Did her mother die here?”
“Oh, I can’t say. It’s not our business.”
And again she would have moved away.
“But please do me a kindness. I tell you it’s very interesting to me. Perhaps I may be able to do something. Who is the girl? What was her mother? Do you know?”
“She looked like a foreigner of some sort; she lived down below with us; but she was ill; she died of consumption.”
“Then she must have been very poor if she shared a room in the basement?”
“Ough! she was poor! My heart was always aching for her. We simply live from hand to mouth, yet she owed us six roubles in the five months she lived with us. We buried her, too. My husband made the coffin.”
“How was it then that woman said she’d buried her?”
“As though she’d buried her!”
“And what was her surname?”
“I can’t pronounce it, sir. It’s difficult. It must have been German.”
“Smith?”
“No, not quite that. Well, Anna Trifonovna took charge of the orphan, to bring her up, she says. But it’s not the right thing at all.”
“I suppose she took her for some object?”
“She’s a woman who’s up to no good,” answered the woman, seeming to ponder and hesitate whether to speak or not. “What is it to us? We’re outsiders.”
“You’d better keep a check on your tongue,” I heard a man’s voice say behind us.
It was a middle-aged man in a dressing-gown, with a full-coat over the dressing-gown, who looked like an artisan, the woman’s husband.
“She’s no call to be talking to you, sir; it’s not our business,” he said, looking askance at me. “And you go in. Good-bye, sir; we’re coffin-makers. If you ever need anything in our way we shall be pleased . . . but apart from that we’ve nothing to say.
I went out, musing, and greatly excited. I could do nothing, but I felt that it was hard for me to leave it like this. Some words dropped by the coffin-maker’s wife revolted me particularly. There was something wrong here; I felt that.
I was walking away, looking down and meditating, when suddenly a sharp voice called me by my surname. I looked up. Before me stood a man who had been drinking and was almost staggering, dressed fairly neatly, though he had a shabby overcoat and a greasy cap. His face was very familiar. I looked more closely at it. He winked at me and smiled ironically.
“Don’t you know me?”
AH, why it’s you, Masloboev!” I cried, suddenly recognizing him as an old schoolfellow who had been at my provincial gymnasium. “Well, this is a meeting! ”
“Yes, a meeting indeed! We’ve not met for six years. Or rather, we have met, but your excellency hasn’t deigned to look at me. To be sure, you’re a general, a literary one that is, eh! . . . ”
He smiled ironically as he said it.
“Come, Masloboev,, old boy, you’re talking nonsense!” I interrupted. “Generals look very different from me even if they are literary ones, and besides, let me tell you, I certainly do remember having met you twice in the street. But you obviously. avoided me. And why should I go up to a man if I see he’s trying to avoid me? And do you know what I believe? If you weren’t drunk you wouldn’t have called to me even now. That’s true, isn’t it? Well, how are you? I’m very, very glad to have met you, my boy.”
“Really? And I’m not compromising you by my . . . ‘unconventional’ appearance? But there’s no need to ask that. It’s not a great matter; I always remember what a jolly chap you were, old Vanya. Do you remember you took a thrashing for me? You held your tongue and didn’t give me away, and, instead of being grateful, I jeered at you for a week afterwards. You’re a blessed innocent! Glad to see you, my dear soul!” (We kissed each other.) “How many years I’ve been pining in solitude — ‘From morn till night, from dark till light but I’ve not forgotten old times. They’re not easy to forget. But what have you been doing, what have you been doing?”
“I? Why, I’m pining in solitude, too.”
He gave me a long look, full of the deep feeling of a man slightly inebriated; though he was a very good-natured fellow at any time.
“No, Vanya, your case is not like mine,” he brought out at last in a tragic tone. “I’ve read it, Vanya, you know, I’ve read it, I’ve read it! . . . But I say, let us have a good talk! Are you in a hurry?”
“I am in a hurry, and I must confess I’m very much upset about something. I’ll tell you what’s better. Where do you live?”
“I’ll tell you. But that’s not better; shall I tell you what is better?”
“Why, what?”
“Why, this, do you see?” and he pointed out to me a sign a few yards from where we were standing. “You see, confectioner’s and restaurant; that is simply an eating-house, but it’s a good place. I tell you it’s a decent place, and the vodka — there’s no word for it! It’s come all the way from Kiev on foot. I’ve tasted it, many a time I’ve tasted it, I know; and they wouldn’t dare offer me poor stuff here. They know Filip Filippitch. I’m Filip Filippitch, you know. Eh? You make a face? No, let me have my say. Now it’s a quarter past eleven; I’ve just looked. Well, at twenty-five to twelve exactly I’ll let you go. And in the meantime we’ll drain the flowing bowl. Twenty minutes for an old friend. Is that right?”
“If it will really be twenty minutes, all right; because, my dear chap, I really am busy.”
“Well, that’s a bargain. But I tell you what. Two words to begin with: you don’t look cheerful . . . as though you were put out about something, is that so?”
“Yes.”
“I guessed it. I am going in for the study of physiognomy, you know; it’s an occupation, too. So, come along, we’ll have a talk. In twenty minutes I shall have time in the first place to sip the cup that cheers and to toss off a glass of birch wine, and another of orange bitters, then a Parfait amour, and anything else I can think of. I drink, old man! I’m good for nothing except on a holiday before service. But don’t you drink. I want you just as you are. Though if you did drink you’d betray a peculiar nobility of soul. Come along! We’ll have a little chat and then part for another ten years. I’m not fit company for you, friend Vanya!”
“Don’t chatter so much, but come along. You shall have twenty minutes and then let me go.”
To get to the eating-house we had to go tip a wooden staircase of two flights, leading from the street to the second storey. But on the stairs we suddenly came upon two gentlemen, very drunk. Seeing us they moved aside, staggering.
One of them was a very young and youthful-looking lad, with an exaggeratedly stupid expression of face, with only a faint trace of moustache and no beard. He was dressed like a dandy, but looked ridiculous, as though he were dressed up in someone else’s clothes. He had expensive-looking rings on his fingers, an expensive pin in his tie, and his hair was combed up into a crest which looked particularly absurd. He kept smiling and sniggering. His companion, a thick-set, corpulent, bald-headed man of fifty, with a puffy, drunken, pock-marked face and a nose like a button, was dressed rather carelessly, though he, too, had a big pin in his tie and wore spectacles. The expression of his face was malicious and sensual. His nasty, spiteful and suspicious-looking little eyes were lost in fat and seemed to be peeping through chinks. Evidently they both knew Masloboev, but the fat man made a momentary grimace of vexation on seeing us, while the young man subsided into a grin of obsequious sweetness. He even took off his cap. He was wearing a cap.
“Excuse us, Filip Filippitch,” he muttered, gazing tenderly at him.
“What’s up?”
“I beg your pardon — I’m . . . . “ (He flicked at his collar.).
Mitroshka’s in there. So it seems he’s a scoundrel, Filip Filippitch.
“Well, what’s the matter?”
“Why, it seems so. . . . Why, last week he” (here he nodded towards his companion) “got his mug smeared with sour cream in a shocking place, all through that chap Mitroshka . . . khe-e.”
His companion, looking annoyed, poked him with his elbow.
“You should come with us, Filip Filippitch. We’d empty a half-dozen. May we hope for your company?”
“No, my dear man, I can’t now,” answered Masloboev, “I’ve business.”
“Khe-e! And I’ve a little business, too concerning you. . . . ”
Again his companion nudged him with his elbow.
“Afterwards! Afterwards!”
Masloboev was unmistakably trying not to look at them. But no sooner had we entered the outer room, along the whole length of which ran a fairly clean counter, covered with eatables, pies, tarts, and decanters of different-coloured liqueurs, when Masloboev drew me into a corner and said:
“The young fellow’s Sizobryuhov, the son of the celebrated corn-dealer; he came in for half a million when his father died, and now he’s having a good time. He went to Paris, and there he got through no end of money. He’d have spent all there, perhaps, but he came in for another fortune when his uncle died, and he came back from Paris. So he’s getting through the rest of it here. In another year he’ll be sending the hat round. He’s as stupid as a goose. He goes about in the best restaurants and in cellars and taverns, and with actresses, and he’s trying to get into the hussars — he’s just applied for a commission. The other, the old fellow, Arhipov, is something in the way of a merchant, too, or an agent; he had something to do with government contracts, too. He’s a beast, a rogue, and now he’s a pal of Sizobryuhov’s. He’s a Judas and a Falstaff both at once; he’s twice been made bankrupt, and he’s a disgusting, sensual brute, up to all sorts of tricks. I know one criminal affair in that line that he was mixed up in; but he managed to get off. For one thing, I’m very glad I met him here; I was on the look-out for him. . . . He’s plucking Sizobryuhov now, of course. He knows all sorts of queer places, which is what makes him of use to young fellows like that. I’ve had a grudge against him for ever so long. Mitroshka’s got a bone to pick with him, too — that dashing-looking fellow with the gipsy face in the smart tunic, standing by the window. He deals in horses; he’s known to all the hussars about here. I tell you, he’s such a clever rogue that he’ll make a false bank-note before your very eyes, and pass it off upon you though you’ve seen it. He wears a tunic, though it’s a velvet one, and looks like a Slavophile (though I think it suits him); but put him into a fine dress-coat, or something like it, and take him to the English club and call him the great landowner, count Barabanov; he’ll pass for a count for two hours, play whist, and talk like a count, and they’ll never guess; he’ll take them in. He’ll come to a bad end. Well, Mitroshka’s got a great grudge against the fat man, for Mitroshka’s hard up just now. Sizobryuhov used to be very thick with him, but the fat man’s carried him off before Mitroshka had time to fleece him. If they met in the eating-house just now there must be something up. I know something about it, too, and can guess what it is, for Mitroshka and no one else told me that they’d be here, and be hanging about these parts after some mischief. I want to take advantage of Mitroshka’s hatred for Arhipov, for I have my own reasons, and indeed I came here chiefly on that account. I don’t want to let Mitroshka see, and don’t you keep looking at him, but when we go out he’s sure to come up of himself and tell me what I want to know . . . . Now come along, Vanya, into the other room, do you see? Now, Stepan,” he said, addressing the waiter, “you understand what I want.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’ll bring it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mind you do. Sit down, Vanya. Why do you keep looking at me like that? I see you’re looking at me. Are you surprised? Don’t be surprised. Anything may happen to a man, even what he’s never dreamed of . . . especially in the days when . . . well, in the days when we used to cram Cornelius Nepos together. And, Vanya, be sure of one thing: though Masloboev may have strayed from the true path his heart is still unchanged, it’s only circumstances that have altered. Though I may be in the soot I’m no dirtier than the rest. I set up for being a doctor, and I trained as a teacher of Russian literature, and I wrote an article on Gogol, and thought of going to the gold-diggings, and meant to get married. A living soul longs for something sweet in life, and she consented, though I was so poor I had nothing to tempt a cat with. I was on the point of borrowing a pair of good boots for the marriage ceremony, for mine had been in holes for eighteen months. . . . But I didn’t get married. She married a teacher and I went as a counting-house clerk, not a commercial counting-house, but just a counting-house. But then the tune changed. Years have rolled by, and though I’m not in the service, I make enough to jog along: I take bribes without ruth and yet stand firm for the truth. I hunt with the hounds and I run with the hare. I have principles. I know, for instance, that one can’t fight single-handed, and I mind my own business. My business is chiefly in the confidential line, you understand.”
“You’re not some sort of detective, are you?”
“No, not exactly a detective, but I do take up jobs, partly professionally, and partly on my own account, It’s this way Vanya: I drink vodka. But as I haven’t drunk my wits away, I know what lies before me. My time is past; there’s no washing a black nag white. One thing I will say: if the man in me were not echoing still I should not have come up to you today, Vanya. You’re right, I’d met you and seen you before, and many a time I longed to speak, but still I didn’t dare, and put it off. I’m not worthy of you. And you were right, Vanya, when you said that I spoke this time only because I was drunk and though this is all awful rot we’ll finish with me now. We’d better talk of you. Well, my dear soul, I’ve read it! I’ve read. it through. I’m talking of your first-born. When I read it, I almost became a respectable man, my friend. I was almost becoming one, but I thought better of it, and preferred to remain a disreputable man. So there it is . . . .”
And he said much more. He got more and more drunk, and became very maudlin, almost lachrymose. Masloboev had always been a capital fellow, but cunning, and as it were precocious; he had been a shrewd, crafty, artful dodger from his school-days upwards, but he really had a good heart; he was a lost man. Among Russians there are many such. They often have great abilities, but everything seems topsy-turvy in them, and what’s more they are quite capable of acting against their conscience in certain cases through weakness, and not only come to ruin, but know beforehand that they are on the road to ruin. Masloboev, for instance, was drowning in vodka.
“One more word now, friend,” he went on. “I heard what a noise your fame made at first; I read several criticisms on you afterwards. (I really did; you imagine I never read anything.) I met you afterwards in shabby boots, in the mud without goulashes, with a battered hat, and I drew my own conclusions. You’re going in for being a journalist now, eh?”
“Yes, Masloboev.”
“Joined the literary hacks, I suppose?”
“That’s about it.”
“Well, I tell you what then, my boy: drinking’s better. Here I drink; I lie on the sofa (and I have a capital sofa with springs), and I imagine myself Homer, or Dante, or some Frederick Barbarossa — one can fancy what one likes, you know, but you can’t fancy yourself a Dante, or a Frederick Barbarossa, in the first place because you want to be yourself, and secondly because all wishing is forbidden you; for you’re a literary hack. I have fancy, but you have reality. Listen, tell me openly straight-forwardly, speaking as a brother (if you won’t you’ll offend and humiliate me for ten years), don’t you want money? I’ve plenty. Oh, don’t make faces. Take some of it, pay off the entrepreneurs, throw off the yoke, then, when you’re secure of a year’s living, settle down to a cherished idea, write a great book. Eh? What do you say?”
“Listen, Masloboev! I appreciate your brotherly offer, but I can’t make any answer at present, and the reason why is a long story. There are circumstances. But I promise that I’ll tell you everything afterwards, like a brother. I thank you for your offer. I promise that I’ll come to you, and I’ll come often. But this is what I want to tell you. You have been open with me, and so I’ve made up my mind to ask your advice, especially as I believe you’re first-rate in such affairs.”
I told him the whole story of Smith and his granddaughter, beginning with the scene in the restaurant. Strange to say, as I told my tale it seemed to me from his eyes that he knew something about the story. I asked him.
“No, not exactly,” he answered, “though I had heard something about Smith, a story of some old man dying in a restaurant. But I really do know something about Mme. Bubnov. Only two months ago I got some money out of that lady. je prends mon bien ou je le trouve, and that’s the only respect in which I am like Moliere. Though I squeezed a hundred roubles out of her, I vowed at the time I’d wring another five hundred out of her before I’d done. She’s a nasty woman! She’s in an unmentionable line of business. That wouldn’t matter, but sometimes it goes too far. Don’t imagine I’m a Don Quixote, please. The point is that I may make a very good thing of it, and when I met Sizobryuhov half an hour ago I was awfully pleased. Sizobryuhov was evidently brought here, and the fat man brought him, and as I know what the fat man’s special trade is, I conclude . . . oh, well, I’ll show him up! I’m very glad I heard from you about that girl; it’s another clue for me. I undertake all sorts of private jobs, you know, and I know some queer people! I investigated a little affair for a prince not long ago, an affair, I tell you, one wouldn’t have expected from that prince. Or would you care to hear another story about a married woman? You come and see me, old man, and I shall have subjects ready for you that people will never believe in if you write about them . . . .”
“And what was the name of that prince?” I asked, with a foreboding of something.
“What do you want to know for? All right, it’s Valkovsky.”
“Pyotr?”
“Yes. Do you know him?
“Yes, but not very well. Well, Masloboev, I shall come to you to inquire about that gentleman more than once again,” I said, getting up. “You’ve interested me greatly.”
“Well, old boy, you can come as often as you like. I can tell you fine tales, though only within certain limits, do you understand? Or else one loses one’s credit and honour, in business, that is, and all the rest of it.”
“All right, as far as honour permits.”
I was really agitated. He noticed it.
“Well, what do you say about the story I told you? Have you thought of something?”
“Your story? Well, wait a couple of minutes. I will pay.”
He went up to the buffet, and there, as though by chance, stood close by the young man in the tunic, who was so unceremoniously called Mitroshka. It seemed to me that Masloboev knew him a good deal better than he had admitted to me. Anyway, it was evident that they were not meeting for the first time.
Mitroshka was a rather original-looking fellow. In his sleeveless tunic and red silk shirt, with his sharp but handsome features, with his young-looking, swarthy face, and his bold, sparkling eyes he made a curious and not unattractive impression. There was an assumption of jauntiness in his gestures, and yet at the moment he was evidently restraining himself, aiming rather at an air of businesslike gravity and sedateness.
“Look here, Vanya,” said Masloboev, when he rejoined me, “look me up this evening at seven o’clock, and I may have something to tell you. By myself, you see, I’m no use; in old days I was, but now I’m only a drunkard and have got out of the way of things. But I’ve still kept my old connexions; I may find out something. I sniff about among all sorts of sharp people; that’s how I get on. In my free time, that is when I’m sober, I do something myself, it’s true, through friends, too . . . mostly in the investigation line. . . . But that’s neither here nor there. Enough. Here’s my address, in Shestilavotchny Street. But now, my boy, I’m really too far gone. I’ll swallow another — and home. I’ll lie down a bit. If you come I’ll introduce you to Alexandra Semyonovna, and if there’s time we’ll discuss poetry.”
“Well, and that too?”
“All right; that, too, perhaps.”
“Perhaps I will come. I’ll certainly come.”