THE COMPLETE WORKS OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY. Федор Достоевский
I resolved to wait and watch her. Ten minutes passed. She was still standing, watching the passersby. At last a well-dressed old gentleman passed and Nellie went up to him. Without stopping he took something out of his pocket and gave it to her. She curtsied to him. I cannot describe what I felt at that instant. It sent an agonizing pang to my heart, as if something precious, something I loved, had fondled and cherished, was disgraced and spat upon at that minute before my very eyes. At the same time I felt tears dropping.
Yes, tears for poor Nellie, though at the same time I felt great indignation; she was not begging through need; she was not forsaken, not abandoned by someone to the caprice of destiny. She was not escaping from cruel oppressors, but from friends who loved and cherished her. It was as though she wanted to shock or alarm someone by her exploits, as though she were showing off before someone. But there was something secret maturing in her heart…. Yes, my old friend was right; she had been ill-treated; her hurt could not be healed, and she seemed purposely trying to aggravate her wound by this mysterious behaviour, this mistrustfulness of us all; as though she enjoyed her own pain by this egoism of suffering, if I may so express it. This aggravation of suffering and this rebelling in it I could understand; it is the enjoyment of man, of the insulted and injured, oppressed by destiny, and smarting under the sense of its injustice. But of what injustice in us could Nellie complain? She seemed trying to astonish and alarm us by her exploits, her caprices and wild pranks, as though she really were asserting herself against us…. But no! Now she was alone. None of us could see that she was begging. Could she possibly have found enjoyment in it on her own account? Why did she want charity? What need had she of money? After receiving the gift she left the bridge and walked to the brightly lighted window of a shop. There she proceeded to count her gains. I was standing a dozen paces from her. She had a fair amount of money in her hand already. She had evidently been begging since the morning. Closing her hand over it she crossed the road and went into a small fancy shop. I went up at once to the door of the shop, which stood wide open, and looked to see what she was doing there.
I saw that she laid the money on the counter and was handed a cup, a plain tea-cup, very much like the one she had broken that morning, to show Ichmenyev and me how wicked she was. The cup was worth about fourpence, perhaps even less. The shopman wrapped it in paper, tied it up and gave it to Nellie, who walked hurriedly out of the shop, looking satisfied.
“Nellie!” I cried when she was close to me, “Nellie!” She started, glanced at me, the cup slipped from her hands, fell on the pavement and was broken. Nellie was pale; but looking at me and realizing that I had seen and understood everything she suddenly blushed. In that blush could be detected an intolerable, agonizing shame. I took her hand and led her home. We had not far to go. We did not utter one word on the way. On reaching home I sat down. Nellie stood before me, brooding and confused, as pale as before, with her eyes fixed on the floor. She could not look at me.
“Nellie, you were begging?”
“Yes,” she whispered and her head drooped lower than ever. “You wanted to get money to buy a cup for the one broken this morning?
“Yes….”
“But did I blame you, did I scold you, about that cup? Surely, Nellie, you must see what naughtiness there is in your behaviour? Is it right? Aren’t you ashamed? Surely….”
“Yes,” she whispered, in a voice hardly audible, and a tear trickled down her cheek.
“Yes…,” I repeated after her. “Nellie, darling, if I’ve not been good to you, forgive me and let us make friends.”
She looked at me, tears gushed from her eyes, and she flung herself on my breast.
At that instant Alexandra Semyonovna darted in.
“What? She’s home? Again? Ach, Nellie, Nellie, what is the matter with you? Well, it’s a good thing you’re at home, anyway. Where did you find her, Ivan Petrovitch?”
I signed to Alexandra Semyonovna not to ask questions and she understood me. I parted tenderly from Nellie, who was still weeping bitterly, and asking kindhearted Alexandra Semyonovna to stay with her till I returned home, I ran off to Natasha’s. I was late and in a hurry.
That evening our fate was being decided. There was a great deal for Natasha and me to talk over. Yet I managed to slip in a word about Nellie and told her all that had happened in full detail. My story greatly interested Natasha and made a great impression on her, in fact.
“Do you know what, Vanya,” she said to me after a moment’s thought. “I believe she’s in love with you.”
“What … how can that be?” I asked, wondering.
“Yes, it’s the beginning of love, real grown-up love.”
“How can you, Natasha! Nonsense! Why, she’s a child!”
“A child who will soon be fourteen. This exasperation is at your not understanding her love; and probably she doesn’t understand it herself. It’s an exasperation in which there’s a great deal that’s childish, but it’s in earnest, agonizing. Above all she’s jealous of me. You love me so that probably even when you’re at home you’re always worrying, thinking and talking about me, and so don’t take much notice of her. She has seen that and it has stung her. She wants perhaps to talk to you, longs to open her heart to you, doesn’t know how to do it, is ashamed, and doesn’t understand herself; she is waiting for an opportunity, and instead of giving her such an opportunity you keep away from her, run off to me, and even when she was ill left her alone for whole days together. She cries about it; she misses you, and what hurts her most of all is that you don’t notice it. Now, at a moment like this, you have left her alone for my sake. Yes, she’ll be ill tomorrow because of it. And how could you leave her? Go back to her at once….”
“I should not have left her, but….”
“Yes, I know. I begged you to come, myself. But now go.”
“I will, but of course I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Because it’s all so different from other people. Remember her story, think it all over and you will believe, it. She has not grown up as you and I did.”
I got home late, however. Alexandra Semyonovna told me that again Nellie had, as on the previous evening, been crying a great deal and “had fallen asleep in tears,” as before.
“And now I’m going, Ivan Petrovitch, as Filip Filippovitch told me. He’s expecting me, poor fellow.”
I thanked her and sat down by Nellie’s pillow. It seemed dreadful to me myself that I could have left her at such a moment. For a long time, right into the night, I sat beside her, lost in thought…. It was a momentous time for us all.
But I must describe what had been happening during that fortnight.
CHAPTER V
AFTER THE MEMORABLE EVENING I had spent with Prince Valkovsky at the restaurant, I was for some days in continual apprehension on Natasha’s account. With what evil was that cursed prince threatening her, and in what way did he mean to revenge himself on her, I asked myself every minute, and I was distracted by suppositions of all sorts. I came at last to the conclusion that his menaces were not empty talk, not mere bluster, and that as long as she was living with Alyosha, the prince might really bring about much unpleasantness for her. He was petty, vindictive, malicious, and calculating, I reflected. It would be difficult for him to forget an insult and to let pass any chance of avenging it. He had in any case brought out one point, and had expressed himself pretty clearly on that point: he insisted absolutely on Alyosha’s breaking off his connexion with Natasha, and was expecting me to prepare her for the approaching separation, and so to prepare her that there should be “no scenes, no idyllic nonsense, no Schillerism.” Of course, what he was most solicitous for was that Alyosha should remain on good terms with him, and should still consider him an affectionate father. This