THE COMPLETE WORKS OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY. Федор Достоевский
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away from your grandfather?”
“No, not with him. Mother went away with someone else, and he left her….”
“Who was he, Nellie?”
Nellie glanced at me and said nothing. She evidently knew the name of the man with whom her mother had gone away and who was probably her father. It was painful to her to speak that name even to me.
I did not want to worry her with questions. Hers was a strange character, nervous and fiery, though she suppressed her impulses, lovable, though she entrenched herself behind a barrier of pride and reserve. Although she loved me with her whole heart, with the most candid and ingenuous love, almost as she had loved the dead mother of whom she could not speak without pain, yet all the while I knew her she was rarely open with me, and except on that day she rarely felt moved to speak to me of her past; on the contrary, she was, as it were, austerely reserved with me, but on that day through convulsive sobs of misery that interrupted her story, she told me in the course of several hours all that most distressed and tortured her in her memories, and I shall never forget that terrible story, but the greater part of it will be told later….
It was a fearful story. It was the story of a woman abandoned and living on after the wreck of her happiness, sick, worn out and forsaken by everyone, rejected by the last creature to whom she could look — her father, once wronged by her and crazed by intolerable sufferings and humiliations. It was the story of a woman driven to despair, wandering through the cold, filthy streets of Petersburg, begging alms with the little girl whom she regarded as a baby; of a woman who lay dying for months in a damp cellar, while her father, refusing to forgive her to the last moment of her life, and only at the last moment relenting, hastened to forgive her only to find a cold corpse instead of the woman he loved above everything on earth.
It was a strange story of the mysterious, hardly comprehensible relations of the crazy old man with the little grandchild who already understood him, who already, child as she was, understood many things that some men do not attain to in long years of their smooth and carefully guarded lives. It was a gloomy story, one of those gloomy and distressing dramas which are so often played out unseen, almost mysterious, under the heavy sky of Petersburg, in the dark secret corners of the vast town, in the midst of the giddy ferment of life, of dull egoism, of clashing interests, of gloomy vice and secret crimes, in that lowest hell of senseless and abnormal life….
But that story will be told later….
PART III
CHAPTER I
TWILIGHT HAD FALLEN, the evening had come on before I roused myself from the gloomy nightmare and came back to the present.
“Nellie,” I said, “you’re ill and upset, and I must leave you alone, in tears and distress. My dear! Forgive me, and let me tell you that there’s someone else who has been loved and not forgiven, who is unhappy, insulted and forsaken. She is expecting me. And I feel drawn to her now after your story, so that I can’t bear not to see her at once, this very minute.”
I don’t know whether she understood all that I said. I was upset both by her story and by my illness, but I rushed to Natasha’s. It was late, nine o’clock, when I arrived.
In the street I noticed a carriage at the gate of the house where Natasha lodged, and I fancied that it was the prince’s carriage. The entry was across the courtyard. As soon as I began to mount the stairs I heard, a flight above me, someone carefully feeling his way, evidently unfamiliar with the place. I imagined this must be the prince, but I soon began to doubt it. The stranger kept grumbling and cursing the stairs as he climbed up, his language growing stronger and more violent as he proceeded. Of course the staircase was narrow, filthy, steep, and never lighted; but the language I heard on the third floor was such that I could not believe it to be the prince: the ascending gentleman was swearing like a cabman. But there was a glimmer of light on the third floor; a little lamp was burning at Natasha’s door. I overtook the stranger at the door, and what was my astonishment when I recognized him as Prince Valkovsky! I fancied he was extremely annoyed at running up against me so unexpectedly. At the first moment he did not recognize me, but suddenly his whole face changed. His first glance of anger and hatred relaxed into an affable, goodhumoured expression, and he held out both hands to me with extraordinary delight.
“Ach, that’s you! And I was just about to kneel down to thank God my life was safe! Did you hear me swearing?”
And he laughed in the most goodnatured way. But suddenly his face assumed an earnest and anxious expression.
“How could Alyosha let Natalya Nikolaevna live in such a place!” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just these so-called trifles that show what a man’s made of. I’m anxious about him. He is goodnatured, he has a generous heart, but here you have an example: he’s frantically in love, yet he puts the girl he loves in a hole like this. I’ve even heard she has sometimes been short of food,” he added in a whisper, feeling for the bell-handle. “My head aches when I think about his future and still more of the future of Anna Nikolaevna when she is his wife….
He used the wrong name, and did not notice it in his evident vexation at not finding the bell-handle. But there was no bell.
I tugged at the doorhandle and Mavra at once opened the door to us, and met us fussily. In the kitchen, which was divided off from the tiny entry by a wooden screen, through an open door some preparations could be seen; everything seemed somehow different from usual, cleaned and polished; there was a fire in the stove, and some new crockery on the table. It was evident that we were expected. Mavra flew to help us off with our coats.
“Is Alyosha here?” I asked her.
“He has not been,” she whispered mysteriously. We went in to Natasha. There was no sign of special preparation in her room. Everything was as usual. But everything in her room was always so neat and charming that there was no need to arrange it. Natasha met us, facing the door. I was struck by the wasted look in her face, and its extreme pallor, though there was a flush of colour for a moment on her wan cheeks. Her eyes were feverish. Hastily she held out her hand to the prince without speaking, visibly confused and agitated. She did not even glance at me. I stood and waited in silence.
“Here I am!” said the prince with friendly gaiety. “I’ve only been back a few hours. You’ve never been out of my mind all these days” (he kissed her hand tenderly) “and how much, how much I have thought about you. How much I have thought of to say to you…. Well, we can talk to our hearts’ content! In the first place my featherheaded youngster who is not here yet….”
“Excuse me, prince,” Natasha interrupted, flushing and embarrassed, “I have to say a word to Ivan Petrovitch. Vanya, come along…two words….”
She seized my hand and drew me behind the screen.
“Vanya,” she said in a whisper, leading me to the furthest corner, “will you forgive me?”
“Hush, Natasha, what do you mean?”
“No, no, Vanya, you have forgiven me too much, and too often. But there’s an end to all patience. You will never leave off caring for me, I know. But you’ll call me ungrateful. And I was ungrateful to you yesterday and the day before yesterday, selfish, cruel …”
She suddenly burst into tears and pressed her face on my shoulder.
“Hush, Natasha,” I hastened to reassure her. “I’ve been very ill all night, and I can hardly stand now; that’s why I didn’t come yesterday or to-day, and you’ve been thinking I was angry. Dearest, do you suppose I don’t understand what’s going on in your heart now?”
“Well,