“What is she blushing at? Why is she always blushing?” he asked, addressing Alexandra Mihalovna and rudely pointing towards me.
I could hardly breathe for indignation. I flung an imploring glance at Alexandra Mihalovna. She understood me. Her pale cheeks flushed.
“Anneta,” she said to me in a firm voice, such as I should never have expected from her, “go to your own room, I’ll come to you in a minute; we will spend the evening together....”
“I asked you a question, did you hear me or not?” Pyotr Alexandrovitch interrupted, raising his voice still higher, and seeming not to hear what his wife had said. “Why do you blush when you meet me? Answer!”
“Because you make her blush and me too,” answered Alexandra Mihalovna in a breaking voice.
I looked with surprise at Alexandra Mihalovna. The heat of her retort was quite incomprehensible to me for the first moment.
“I make you blush — I?” answered Pyotr Alexandrovitch, emphasising the word I, and apparently roused to fury too. “You have blushed for me? Do you mean to tell me I can make you blush for me? It’s for you to blush, not for me, don’t you think?”
This phrase, uttered with such callous biting sarcasm, was so intelligible to me that I gave a cry of horror and rushed to Alexandra Mihalovna. Surprise, pain, reproach and horror were all depicted on her face, which began to turn deathly pale. Clasping my hands with a look of entreaty, I glanced at Pyotr Alexandrovitch. It seemed as though he himself thought he had gone too far; but the fury that had wrung that phrase out of him had not passed. Noticing my mute prayer, he was confused, however. My gesture betrayed clearly that I knew a great deal of what had hitherto been a secret between them, and that I quite understood his words.
“Anneta, go to your room,” Alexandra Mihalovna repeated in a weak but firm voice, getting up from her chair. “I want to speak to Pyotr Alexandrovitch...”
She was calm on the surface; but that calm made me more frightened than any excitement would have done. I behaved as though I did not hear what she said, and remained stock-still. I strained every nerve to read in her face what was passing in her soul at that instant. It seemed to me that she had understood neither my gesture nor my exclamation.
“See what you have done, miss!” said Pyotr Alexandrovitch, taking my hand and pointing to his wife.
My God! I have never seen such despair as I read now on that crushed, deathly-looking face. He took me by the hand and led me out of the room. I took one last look at them. Alexandra Mihalovna was standing with her elbows on the mantelpiece, holding her head tight in both hands. Her whole attitude was expressive of unbearable torture. I seized Pyotr Alexandrovitch’s hand and squeezed it warmly.
“For God’s sake, for God’s sake,” I brought out in a breaking voice, “spare her!”
“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,” he said, looking at me strangely; “it’s nothing, it’s nerves. Go along, go along.”
Going into my room, I threw myself on the sofa and hid my face in my hands. For three whole hours I remained in that attitude, and I passed through a perfect hell during those hours. At last I could bear it no longer, and sent to inquire whether I could go to Alexandra Mihalovna. Madame Leotard came with an answer. Pyotr Alexandrovitch sent to say that the attack was over, that there was no need for anxiety, but that Alexandra Mihalovna must have rest. I did not go to bed till three o’clock in the morning, but walked up and down the room thinking. My position was more perplexing than ever, but I somehow felt calmer, perhaps because I felt myself more to blame than anyone. I went to bed looking forward impatiently to the next day.
But next day, to my grievous surprise, I found an unaccountable coldness in Alexandra Mihalovna. At first I fancied that it was painful to her pure and noble heart to be with me after the scene of the day before with her husband, of which I had been the involuntary witness. I knew that the childlike creature was capable of blushing at the sight of me, and begging my forgiveness for the unlucky scene’s having wounded me the day before. But I soon noticed in her another anxiety and an annoyance, which showed itself very awkwardly; at one time she would answer me coldly and dryly, then a peculiar significance could be detected in her words, then she would suddenly become very tender with me as though repenting the harshness which she could not feel in her heart, and there was a note of reproach in her affectionate and gentle words. At last I asked her directly what was the matter, and whether she had anything to say to me. She was a little taken aback at my rapid question, but at once raising her large clear eyes and looking at me with a tender smile, she said —
“It’s nothing, Nyetochka; only do you know, when you asked me so quickly I was rather taken aback. That was because you asked me so quickly.... I assure you. But listen — tell me the truth, my child — have you got anything on your mind which would have made you as confused if you had been asked about it so quickly and unexpectedly?”
“No,” I answered, looking at her with clear eyes.
“Well, that is good to hear! If you only knew, my dear, how grateful I am to you for that good answer. Not that I could suspect you of anything bad — never. I could not forgive myself the thought of such a thing. But listen; I took you as a child, and now you are seventeen. You see for yourself: I am ill, I am like a child myself, I have to be looked after. I cannot fully take the place of a mother to you, although there was more than enough love in my heart for that. If I am troubled by anxiety now it is, of course, not your fault, but mine. Forgive me for the question, and for my having perhaps involuntarily failed in keeping the promises I made to you and my father when I took you into my house. This worries me very much, and has often worried me, my dear.”
I embraced her and shed tears.
“Oh, I thank you; I thank you for everything,” I said, bathing her hands with my tears. “Don’t talk to me like that, don’t break my heart. You have been more than a mother to me, yes; may God bless you and the prince for all you have both done for a poor, desolate child!”
“Hush, Nyetochka, hush! Hug me instead; that’s right, hold me tight! Do you know, I believe, I don’t know why, that it is the last time you will embrace me.”
“No, no,” I said, sobbing like a child; “no, that cannot be. You will be happy.... You have many days before you. Believe me, we shall be happy.”
“Thank you, thank you for loving me so much. I have not many friends about me now; they have all abandoned me!”
“Who have abandoned you? Who are they?”
“There used to be other people round me; yon don’t know, Nyetochka. They have all left me. They have all faded away as though they were ghosts. And I have been waiting for them, waiting for them all my life. God be with them. Look, Nyetochka, you see it is late autumn, soon the snow will be here; with the first snow I shall die — but I do not regret it.
Farewell.”
Her face was pale and thin, an ominous patch of red glowed on each cheek, her lips quivered and were parched by fever.
She went up to the piano and struck a few chords; at that instant a string snapped with a clang and died away in a long jarring sound...
“Do you hear, Nyetochka, do you hear?” she said all at once in a sort of inspired voice, pointing to the piano. “That string was strained too much, to the breaking point, it could bear no more and has perished. Do you hear how plaintively the sound is dying away?”
She spoke with difficulty. Mute spiritual pain was reflected in her face, her eyes filled with tears.
“Come, Nyetochka, enough of that, my dear. Fetch the children.”
I brought them in. She seemed to find repose as she looked at them, and sent them away an hour later.
“You will not forsake them when I am dead, Nyetochka? Will you?” she said in a whisper, as though afraid someone might overhear us.
“Hush, you are killing me!” was all I could say to her in answer.
“I was joking,” she said with a smile, after a brief pause. “And you believed me. You know, I
talk all sorts of nonsense sometimes. I am like a child now, you must forgive me everything.”
Then she looked at me timidly, as though afraid to say something. I waited.
“Mind you don’t alarm him,” she said at last, dropping her eyes, with a faint flush in her cheeks, and in so low a voice that I could hardly catch her words.
“Whom?” I asked, with surprise.
“My husband. You might perhaps tell him what I have said.”
“What for, what for?” I repeated, more and more surprised.
“Well, perhaps you wouldn’t tell him, how can I say!” she answered, trying to glance shyly at me, though the same simple-hearted smile was shining on her lips, and the colour was mounting more and more into her face. “Enough of that; I am still joking, you know.”
My heart ached more and more.
“Only you will love them when I am dead, won’t you?” she added gravely, and again, as it seemed, with a mysterious air. “You will love them as if they were your own. Won’t you? Remember, I always looked on you as my own, and made no difference between you and the children.”
“Yes, yes,” I answered, not knowing what I was saying, and breathless with tears and confusion.
A hot kiss scalded my hand before I had time to snatch it away. I was tongue-tied with amazement.
What is the matter with her? What is she thinking? What happened between them yesterday? was the thought that floated through my mind.
A minute later she began to complain of being tired.
“I have been ill a long time, but I did not want to frighten you two. You both love me — don’t you...? Good-bye for now, Nyetochka; leave me, but be sure to come in the evening. You will, won’t you?”
I promised to; but I was glad to get away, I could not have borne any more.
“Poor darling, poor darling! What suspicion are you taking with you to the grave?” I exclaimed to myself, sobbing. “What new trouble is poisoning and gnawing your heart, though you scarcely dare to breathe a word of it? My God! This long suffering which I understand now through and through, this life without a ray of sunshine, this timid love that asks for nothing! And even now, now, almost on her death-bed, when her heart is torn in two with pain, she is afraid, like a criminal, to utter the faintest murmur, the slightest complaint — and imagining, inventing a new sorrow, she has already submitted to it, is already resigned to it...”
Towards the evening, in the twilight, I took advantage of the absence of Ovrov (the man who had come from Moscow) to go into the library and, unlocking a bookcase, began rummaging among the bookshelves to choose something to read aloud to Alexandra Mihalovna. I wanted to distract her mind from gloomy thoughts, and to choose something gay and light... I was a long time, absent-mindedly choosing. It got darker, and my depression grew with the darkness. I found in my hands the same book again, with the page turned down on which even now I saw the imprint of the letter, which had never left my bosom since that day — the secret with which my existence seemed, as it were, to have been broken and to have begun anew, and with which so much that was cold, unknown, mysterious, forbidding and now so ominously menacing in the distance had come upon me... What will happen to me? I wondered: the corner in which I had been so snug and comfortable would be empty. The pure clean spirit which had guarded my youth would leave me. What was before me? I was standing in a reverie over my past, now so dear to my heart, as it were striving to gaze into the future, into the unknown that menaced me... I recall that minute as though I were living it again; it cut so sharply into my memory.
I was holding the letter and the open book in my hands, my face was wet with tears. All at once I started with dismay; I heard the sound of a familiar voice. At the same time I felt that the letter was torn out of my hands. I shrieked and looked round; Pyotr Alexandrovitch was standing before me. He seized me by the arm and held me firmly; with his right hand he raised the letter to the light and tried to decipher the first lines... I cried out, and would have faced death rather than leave the letter in his hands. From his triumphant smile I saw that he had succeeded in making out the first lines. I lost my head...
A moment later I had dashed at him, hardly knowing what I was doing, and snatched the letter from him. All this happened so quickly that I had not time to realise how I had got the letter again. But seeing that he meant to snatch it out of my hand again, I made haste to thrust it into my bosom and step back three or four paces.
For half a minute we stared at each other in silence. I was still trembling with terror, pale. With quivering lips that turned blue with rage, he broke the silence.
“That’s enough!” he said in a voice weak with excitement. “You surely don’t wish me to use force; give me back the letter of your own accord.”
Only now I realised what had happened and I was breathless with resentment, shame, and indignation at this coarse brutality. Hot tears rolled down my burning cheeks. I was shaking all over with excitement, and was for some time incapable of uttering a word.
“Did you hear?” he said, advancing two paces towards me.
“Leave me alone, leave me alone!” I cried, moving away from him. “Your behaviour is low, ungentlemanly. You are forgetting yourself! Let me go!...”
“What? What’s the meaning of this? And you dare to take up that tone to me... after what you’ve... Give it me, I tell you!”
He took another step towards me, but glancing at me saw such determination in my eyes that he stopped, as though hesitating.
“Very good!” he said dryly at last, as though he had reached a decision, though he could still scarcely control himself. “That will do later, but first...”
Here he looked round him.
“You... Who let you into the library? How is it that this bookcase is open? Where did you get the key?”
“I am not going to answer you,” I said. “I can’t talk to you. Let me go, let me go.”
I went towards the door.
“Excuse me,” he said, holding me by the arm. “You are not going away like that.”
I tore my arm away from him without a word, and again made a movement towards the door.
“Very well. But I really cannot allow you to receive letters from your lovers in my house....”
I cried out with horror, and looked at him frantically....
“And so...”
“Stop!” I cried. “How can you? How could you say it to me? My God! My God!...”
“What? What? Are you threatening me too?”
But as I gazed at him, I was pale and overwhelmed with despair. The scene between us had reached a degree of exasperation I could not understand. My eyes besought him not to prolong it. I was ready to forgive the outrage if only he would stop. He looked at me intently, and visibly hesitated.
“Don’t drive me to extremes,” I whispered in horror.
“No, I must get to the bottom of it,” he said at last, as though considering. “I must confess the look in your eyes almost made me hesitate,” he added with a strange smile. “But unluckily, the fact speaks for itself. I succeeded in reading the first words of your letter. It’s a love letter. You won’t persuade me it isn’t! No, dismiss that idea from your mind! And that I could doubt it for a moment only proves that I must add to your excellent qualities your abilities as an expert liar, and therefore I repeat...”
As he talked, his face was more and more distorted with anger. He turned white, his lips were drawn and twitching, so that he could hardly articulate the last words. It was getting dark. I stood defenceless, alone, facing a man who was capable of insulting a woman. All appearances were against me too; I was tortured with shame, distracted, and could not understand this man’s fury. Beside myself with terror, I rushed out of the room without answering him, and only came to myself as I stood on the threshold of Alexandra Mihalovna’s study. At that instant I heard his footsteps; I was just about to go in when I stopped short as though thunderstruck.
“What will happen to her?” was the thought t
hat flashed through my mind. “That letter!... No; better anything in the world than that last blow to her,” and I was rushing back. But it was too late; he was standing beside me.
“Let us go where you like, only not here, not here!” I whispered, clutching at his arm. “Spare her! I will go back to the library or... where you like! You will kill her!”
“It is you who are killing her,” he said, pushing me away.
Every hope vanished. I felt that to bring the whole scene before Alexandra Mihalovna was just what he wanted.
“For God’s sake,” I said, doing my utmost to hold him back. But at that instant the curtain was raised, and Alexandra Mihalovna stood facing us. She looked at us in surprise. Her face was paler than usual. She could hardly stand on her feet. It was evident that it had cost her a great effort to get as far as us when she heard our voices.
“Who is here? What are you talking about here?” she asked, looking at us in the utmost amazement.
There was a silence that lasted several moments, and she turned as white as a sheet. I flew to her, held her tight in my arms, and drew her back into her room. Pyotr Alexandrovitch walked in after me. I hid my face on her bosom and clasped her more and more tightly in my arms, half dead with suspense.
“What is it, Nyetochka, what’s happened to you both?” Alexandra Mihalovna asked a second time.
“Ask her, you defended her so warmly yesterday,” said Pyotr Alexandrovitch, sinking heavily into an arm-chair.
I held her more tightly in my embrace.
“But, my goodness, what is the meaning of it?” said Alexandra Milialovna in great alarm. “You are so irritated, and she is frightened and crying. Anneta, tell me all that has happened.”
“No, allow me first,” said Pyotr Alexandrovitch, coming up to us, taking me by the arm, and pulling me away from Alexandra Mihalovna. “Stand here,” he said, putting me in the middle of the room. “I wish to judge you before her who has been a mother to you. And don’t worry yourself, sit down,” he added, motioning Alexandra Mihalovna to an easy- chair. “It grieves me that I cannot spare you this unpleasant scene; but it must be so.”
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 52
