Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (166 page)

Natasha jumped up as though she had been stung. Now, at last, she understood him.

“Leave me, leave me at once!” she cried.

“But, my dear, you forget, the count may be of use to you father too….”

“My father will take nothing from you. Leave me!” Natasha cried again.

“Oh, how unjust and mistrustful you are! How have I deserved this!” exclaimed the prince, looking about him with some uneasiness. “You will allow me in any case,” he went on taking a large roll out of his pocket, “you will allow me in any case to leave with you this proof of my sympathy, and especially the sympathy of Count Nainsky, on whose suggestion I am acting. This roll contains ten thousand roubles. Wait a moment, my dear,” he said hurriedly, seeing that Natasha had jumped up from her seat angrily. “Listen patiently to everything. You know your father lost a lawsuit against me. This ten thousand will serve as a compensation which….”

“Go away!” cried Natasha, “take your money away! I see through you! Oh, base, base, base, man!”

Prince Valkovsky got up from his chair, pale with anger.

Probably he had come to feel his way, to survey the position, and no doubt was building a great deal on the effect of the ten thousand roubles on Natasha, destitute, and abandoned by everyone. The vile and brutal man had often been of service to Count Nainsky, a licentious old reprobate, in enterprises of this kind. But he hated Natasha, and realizing that things were not going smoothly he promptly changed his tone, and with spiteful joy hastened to insult her, that he might anyway not have come for nothing.

“That’s not the right thing at all, my dear, for you to lose you temper,” he brought out in a voice quivering with impatience to enjoy the effect of his insult, “that’s not the right thing at all You are offered protection and you turn up your little nose… Don’t you realize that you ought to be grateful to me? I might have put you in a penitentiary long ago, as the father of the young man you have led astray, but I haven’t done it, he-he-he!

But by now we had come in. Hearing the voices while still in the kitchen, I stopped the doctor for a second and overheard the prince’s last sentence. It was followed by his loathsome chuckle and a despairing cry from Natasha. “Oh, my God!” At that moment I opened the door and rushed at the prince.

I spat in his face, and slapped him on the cheek with all my might. He would have flung himself upon me, but seeing that there were two of us he took to his heels snatching up the roll of notes from the table. Yes, he did that. I saw it myself. I threw after him the rolling-pin, which I snatched from the kitchen table…. When I ran back into the room I saw the doctor was supporting Natasha, who was writhing and struggling out of his arms as though in convulsions. For a long time we could not soothe her; at last we succeeded in getting her to bed; she seemed to be in the delirium of brain-fever.

“Doctor, what’s the matter with her? I asked with a sinking heart.

“Wait a little,” he answered, “I must watch the attack more closely and then form my conclusions… but speaking generally things are very bad. It may even end in brain-fever…. But we will take measures however….”

A new idea had dawned upon me. I begged the doctor to remain with Natasha for another two or three hours, and made him promise not to leave her for one minute. He promised me and I ran home.

Nellie was sitting in a corner, depressed and uneasy, and she looked at me strangely. I must have looked strange myself.

I took her hand, sat down on the sofa, took her on my knee, and kissed her warmly. She flushed.

“Nellie, my angel!” I said to her, “would you like to be our salvation? Would you like to save us all?”

She looked at me in amazement.

“Nellie, you are my one hope now! There is a father, you’ve seen him and know him. He has cursed his daughter, and he came yesterday to ask you to take his daughter’s place. Now she, Natasha (and you said you loved her), has been abandoned by the man she loved, for whose sake she left her father. He’s the son of that prince who came, do you remember one evening, to see me, and found you alone, and you ran away from him and were ill afterwards…you know him, don’t you? He’s a wicked man!”

“I know,” said Nellie, trembling and turning pale.

“Yes, he’s a wicked man. He hates Natasha because his son Alyosha wanted to marry her. Alyosha went away to-day, and an hour later his father went to Natasha and insulted her, and threatened to put her in a penitentiary, and laughed at her. Do you understand me, Nellie?”

Her black eyes flashed, but she dropped them at once.

“I understand,” she whispered, hardly audibly.

“Now Natasha is alone, ill. I’ve left her with our doctor while I ran to you myself. Listen, Nellie, let us go to Natasha’s father. You don’t like him, you didn’t want to go to him. But now let us go together. We’ll go in and I’ll tell them that you want to stay with them now and to take the place of their daughter Natasha. Her father is ill now, because he has cursed Natasha, and because Alyosha’s father sent him a deadly insult the other day. He won’t hear of his daughter now, but he loves her, he loves her, Nellie, and wants to make peace with her. I know that. I know all that! That is so. Do you hear, Nellie?”

“I hear,” she said in the same whisper.

I spoke to her with my tears flowing. She looked timidly at me.

“Do you believe it?”

“Yes.”

“So I’ll go in with you, I’ll take you in and they’ll receive you, make much of you and begin to question you. Then I’ll turn the conversation so that they will question you about your past life; about your mother and your grandfather. Tell them, Nellie, everything, just as you told it to me. Tell them simply, and don’t keep anything back. Tell them how your mother was abandoned by a wicked man, how she died in a cellar at Mme. Bubnov’s, how your mother and you used to go about the streets begging, what she said, and what she asked you to do when she was dying… Tell them at the same time about your grandfather, how he wouldn’t forgive your mother, and how she sent you to him just before her death how she died. Tell them everything, everything! And when you tell them all that, the old man will feel it all, in his heart, too. You see, he knows Alyosha has left her to-day and she is left insulted and injured, alone and helpless, with no one to protect her from the insults of her enemy. He knows all that … Nellie, save Natasha! Will you go?”

“Yes,” she answered, drawing a painful breath, and she looked at me with a strange, prolonged gaze. There was something like reproach in that gaze, and I felt it in my heart.

But I could not give up my idea. I had too much faith in it. I took Nellie by the arm and we went out. It was past two o’clock in the afternoon. A storm was coming on. For some time past the weather had been hot and stifling, but now we heard in the distance the first rumble of early spring thunder. The wind swept through the dusty streets.

We got into a droshky. Nellie did not utter a word all the way, she only looked at me from time to time with the same strange and enigmatic eyes. Her bosom was heaving, and, holding her on the droshky, I felt against my hand the thumping of her little heart, which seemed as though it would leap out of her body.

CHAPTER VII

THE WAY SEEMED endless to me. At last we arrived and I went in to my old friends with a sinking at my heart. I did not know what my leave-taking would be like, but I knew that at all costs I must not leave their house without having won forgiveness and reconciliation.

It was by now past three. My old friends were, as usual, sitting alone. Nikolay Sergeyitch was unnerved and ill, and lay pale and exhausted, half reclining in his comfortable easy-chair, with his head tied up in a kerchief. Anna Andreyevna was sitting beside him, from time to time moistening his forehead with vinegar, and continually peeping into his face with a questioning and commiserating expression, which seemed to worry and even annoy the old man. He was obstinately silent, and she dared not be the first to speak. Our sudden arrival surprised them both. Anna Andreyevna, for some reason, took fright at once on seeing me with Nellie, and for the first minute looked at us as though she suddenly felt guilty.

“You see, I’ve brought you my Nellie,” I said, going in.

She has made up her mind, and now she has come to you of her own accord. Receive her and love her….”

The old man looked at me suspiciously, and from his eyes alone one could divine that he knew all, that is that Natasha was now alone, deserted, abandoned, and by now perhaps insulted. He was very anxious to learn the meaning of our arrival, and he looked inquiringly at both of us. Nellie was trembling, and tightly squeezing my hand in hers she kept her eyes on the ground and only from time to time stole frightened glances about her like a little wild creature in a snare. But Anna Andreyevna soon recovered herself and grasped the situation. She positively pounced on Nellie, kissed her, petted her, even cried over her, and tenderly made her sit beside her, keeping the child’s hand in hers. Nellie looked at her askance with curiosity and a sort of wonder. But after fondling Nellie and making her sit beside her, the old lady did not know what to do next and began looking at me with naive expectation. The old man frowned, almost suspecting why I had brought Nellie. Seeing that I was noticing his fretful expression and frowning brows, he put his hand to his head and said:

“My head aches, Vanya.”

All this time we sat without speaking. I was considering how to begin. It was twilight in the room, a black storm-cloud was coming over the sky, and there came again a rumble of thunder in the distance.

“We’re getting thunder early this spring,” said the old man. But I remember in ‘37 there were thunderstorms even earlier.”

Anna Andreyevna sighed.

“Shall we have the samovar?” she asked timidly, but no one answered, and she turned to Nellie again.

“What is your name, my darling?” she asked.

Nellie uttered her name in a faint voice, and her head drooped lower than ever. The old man looked at her intently.

“The same as Elena, isn’t it?” Anna Andreyevna went on with more animation.

“Yes,” answered Nellie.

And again a moment of silence followed.

“Praskovya Andreyevna’s sister had a niece whose name was Elena; and she used to be called Nellie, too, I remember,” observed Nikolay Sergeyitch.

“And have you no relations, my darling, neither father nor mother?” Anna Andreyevna asked again.

“No,” Nellie jerked out in a timid whisper.

“I’d heard so, I’d heard so. Is it long since your mother died?”

“No, not long.”

“Poor darling, poor little orphan,” Anna Andreyevna went on, looking at her compassionately.

The old man was impatiently drumming on the table with his fingers.

“Your mother was a foreigner, wasn’t she? You told me so, didn’t you, Ivan Petrovitch?” the old lady persisted timidly.  Nellie stole a glance at me out of her black eyes, as though begging me to help her. She was breathing in hard, irregular gasps.

“Her mother was the daughter of an Englishman and a Russian woman; so she was more a Russian, Anna Andreyevna. Nellie was born abroad.”

“Why, did her mother go to live abroad when she was married?”

Nellie suddenly flushed crimson. My old friend guessed at once, that she had blundered, and trembled under a wrathful glance from her husband. He looked at her severely and turned away to the window.

“Her mother was deceived by a base, bad man,” he brought out suddenly, addressing Anna Andreyevna. “She left her father on his account, and gave her father’s money into her lover’s keeping; and he got it from her by a trick, took her abroad, robbed and deserted her. A good friend remained true to her and helped her up to the time of his death. And when he died she came, two years ago, back to Russia, to her father. Wasn’t that what you told us, Vanya?” he asked me abruptly.

Nellie got up in great agitation, and tried to move towards the door.

“Come here, Nellie,” said the old man, holding out his hand to her at last. “Sit here, sit beside me, here, sit down.”

He bent down, kissed her and began softly stroking her head. Nellie was quivering all over, but she controlled herself. Anna Andreyevna with emotion and joyful hope saw how her Nikolay Sergeyitch was at last beginning to take to the orphan.

“I know, Nellie, that a wicked man, a wicked, unprincipled man ruined your mother, but I know, too, that she loved and honoured her father,” the old man, still stroking Nellie’s head, brought out with some excitement, unable to resist throwing down this challenge to us.

A faint flush suffused his pale cheeks, but he tried not to look at us.

“Mother loved grandfather better than he loved her,” Nellie asserted timidly but firmly. She, too, tried to avoid looking at anyone.

“How do you know?” the old man asked sharply, as impulsive as a child, though he seemed ashamed of his impatience.

“I know,” Nellie answered jerkily. “He would not receive mother, and … turned her away….”

I saw that Nikolay Sergeyitch was on the point of saying something, making some reply such as that the father had good reason not to receive her, but he glanced at us and was silent.

“Why, where were you living when your grandfather wouldn’t receive you?” asked Anna Andreyevna, who showed a sudden obstinacy and desire to continue the conversation on that subject.

“When we arrived we were a long while looking for grandfather,” answered Nellie; “but we couldn’t find him anyhow. Mother told me then that grandfather had once been very rich, and meant to build a factory, but that now he was very poor because the man that mother went away with had taken all grandfather’s money from her and wouldn’t give it back. She told me that herself.”

“Hm!” responded the old man.

“And she told me, too,” Nellie went on, growing more and more earnest, and seeming anxious to answer Nikolay Sergeyitch, though she addressed Anna Andreyevna, “she told me that grandfather was very angry with her, and that she had behaved very wrongly to him; and that she had no one in the whole world but grandfather. And when she told me this she cried. ‘He will never forgive me,’ she said when first we arrived, but perhaps he will see you and love you, and for your sake he will forgive me,’ Mother was very fond of me, and she always used to kiss me when she said this, and she was very much afraid of going to grandfather. She taught me to pray for grandfather, she used to pray herself, and she told me a great deal of how she used to live in old days with grandfather, and how grandfather used to love her above everything. She used to play the piano to him and read to him in the evening, and grandfather used to kiss her and give her lots of presents. He used to give her everything; so that one day they had a quarrel on mother’s nameday, because grandfather thought mother didn’t know what present he was going to give her, and mother had found out long before. Mother wanted ear-rings, and grandfather tried to deceive her and told her it was going to be a brooch, not ear-rings; and when he gave her the earrings and saw that mother knew that it was going to be ear-rings and not a brooch, he was angry that mother had found out and wouldn’t speak to her for half the day, but afterwards he came of his own accord to kiss her and ask her forgiveness.”