“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 to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XIII
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 to-morrow; 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!”
CHAPTER XIV
IT WAS LATE, ten o’clock, when I got t
o 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.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 103