"Listen, Nastenka!" I cried. "Do you know how it has been with me all day."
"Why, how, how? Tell me quickly! Why have you said nothing all this time?"
"To begin with, Nastenka, when I had carried out all your commissions, given the letter, gone to see your good friends, then ... then I went home and went to bed."
"Is that all?" she interrupted, laughing.
"Yes, almost all," I answered restraining myself, for foolish tears were already starting into my eyes. "I woke an hour before our appointment, and yet, as it were, I had not been asleep. I don"t know what happened to me. I came to tell you all about it, feeling as though time were standing still, feeling as though one sensation, one feeling must remain with me from that time for ever; feeling as though one minute must go on for all eternity, and as though all life had come to a standstill for me.... When I woke up it seemed as though some musical motive long familiar, heard somewhere in the past, forgotten and voluptuously sweet, had come back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been clamouring at my heart all my life, and only now...."
"Oh my goodness, my goodness," Nastenka interrupted, "what does all that mean? I don"t understand a word."
"Ah, Nastenka, I wanted somehow to convey to you that strange impression...." I began in a plaintive voice, in which there still lay hid a hope, though a very faint one.
"Leave off. Hush!" she said, and in one instant the sly puss had guessed.
Suddenly she became extraordinarily talkative, gay, mischievous; she took my arm, laughed, wanted me to laugh too, and every confused word I uttered evoked from her prolonged ringing laughter.... I began to feel angry, she had suddenly begun flirting.
"Do you know," she began, "I feel a little vexed that you are not in love with me? There"s no understanding human nature! But all the same, Mr. Unapproachable, you cannot blame me for being so simple; I tell you everything, everything, whatever foolish thought comes into my head."
"Listen! That"s eleven, I believe," I said as the slow chime of a bell rang out from a distant tower. She suddenly stopped, left off laughing and began to count.
"Yes, it"s eleven," she said at last in a timid, uncertain voice.
I regretted at once that I had frightened her, making her count the strokes, and I cursed myself for my spiteful impulse; I felt sorry for her, and did not know how to atone for what I had done.
I began comforting her, seeking for reasons for his not coming, advancing various arguments, proofs. No one could have been easier to deceive than she was at that moment; and, indeed, any one at such a moment listens gladly to any consolation, whatever it may be, and is overjoyed if a shadow of excuse can be found.
"And indeed it"s an absurd thing," I began, warming to my task and admiring the extraordinary clearness of my argument, "why, he could not have come; you have muddled and confused me, Nastenka, so that I too, have lost count of the time.... Only think: he can scarcely have received the letter; suppose he is not able to come, suppose he is going to answer the letter, could not come before to-morrow. I will go for it as soon as it"s light to-morrow and let you know at once. Consider, there are thousands of possibilities; perhaps he was not at home when the letter came, and may not have read it even now! Anything may happen, you know."
"Yes, yes!" said Nastenka. "I did not think of that. Of course anything may happen?" she went on in a tone that offered no opposition, though some other far-away thought could be heard like a vexatious discord in it. "I tell you what you must do," she said, "you go as early as possible to-morrow morning, and if you get anything let me know at once.
You know where I live, don"t you?"
And she began repeating her address to me.
Then she suddenly became so tender, so solicitous with me. She seemed to listen attentively to what I told her; but when I asked her some question she was silent, was confused, and turned her head away. I looked into her eyes--yes, she was crying.
"How can you? How can you? Oh, what a baby you are! what childishness!... Come, come!"
She tried to smile, to calm herself, but her chin was quivering and her bosom was still heaving.
"I was thinking about you," she said after a minute"s silence. "You are so kind that I should be a stone if I did not feel it. Do you know what has occurred to me now? I was comparing you two. Why isn"t he you? Why isn"t he like you? He is not as good as you, though I love him more than you."
I made no answer. She seemed to expect me to say something.
"Of course, it may be that I don"t understand him fully yet. You know I was always as it were afraid of him; he was always so grave, as it were so proud. Of course I know it"s only that he seems like that, I know there is more tenderness in his heart than in mine.... I remember how he looked at me when I went in to him--do you remember?--with my bundle; but yet I respect him too much, and doesn"t that show that we are not equals?"
"No, Nastenka, no," I answered, "it shows that you love him more than anything in the world, and far more than yourself."
"Yes, supposing that is so," answered Nastenka navely. "But do you know what strikes me now? Only I am not talking about him now, but speaking generally; all this came into my mind some time ago. Tell me, how is it that we can"t all be like brothers together? Why is it that even the best of men always seem to hide something from other people and to keep something back? Why not say straight out what is in one"s heart, when one knows that one is not speaking idly? As it is every one seems harsher than he really is, as though all were afraid of doing injustice to their feelings, by being too quick to express them."
"Oh, Nastenka, what you say is true; but there are many reasons for that," I broke in suppressing my own feelings at that moment more than ever.
"No, no!" she answered with deep feeling. "Here you, for instance, are not like other people! I really don"t know how to tell you what I feel; but it seems to me that you, for instance ... at the present moment ...
it seems to me that you are sacrificing something for me," she added timidly, with a fleeting glance at me. "Forgive me for saying so, I am a simple girl you know. I have seen very little of life, and I really sometimes don"t know how to say things," she added in a voice that quivered with some hidden feeling, while she tried to smile; "but I only wanted to tell you that I am grateful, that I feel it all too.... Oh, may G.o.d give you happiness for it! What you told me about your dreamer is quite untrue now--that is, I mean, it"s not true of you. You are recovering, you are quite a different man from what you described. If you ever fall in love with some one, G.o.d give you happiness with her! I won"t wish anything for her, for she will be happy with you. I know, I am a woman myself, so you must believe me when I tell you so."
She ceased speaking, and pressed my hand warmly. I too could not speak without emotion. Some minutes pa.s.sed.
"Yes, it"s clear he won"t come to-night," she said at last raising her head. "It"s late."
"He will come to-morrow," I said in the most firm and convincing tone.
"Yes," she added with no sign of her former depression. "I see for myself now that he could not come till to-morrow. Well, good-bye, till to-morrow. If it rains perhaps I shall not come. But the day after to-morrow, I shall come. I shall come for certain, whatever happens; be sure to be here, I want to see you, I will tell you everything."
And then when we parted she gave me her hand and said, looking at me candidly: "We shall always be together, shan"t we?"
Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka! If only you knew how lonely I am now!
As soon as it struck nine o"clock I could not stay indoors, but put on my things, and went out in spite of the weather. I was there, sitting on our seat. I went to her street, but I felt ashamed, and turned back without looking at their windows, when I was two steps from her door. I went home more depressed than I had ever been before. What a damp, dreary day! If it had been fine I should have walked about all night....
But to-morrow, to-morrow! To-morrow she will tell me everything. The letter has not come to-day, however. But that was to be expected. They are together by now....
FOURTH NIGHT
My G.o.d, how it has all ended! What it has all ended in! I arrived at nine o"clock. She was already there. I noticed her a good way off; she was standing as she had been that first time, with her elbows on the railing, and she did not hear me coming up to her.
"Nastenka!" I called to her, suppressing my agitation with an effort.
She turned to me quickly.
"Well?" she said. "Well? Make haste!"
I looked at her in perplexity.
"Well, where is the letter? Have you brought the letter?" she repeated clutching at the railing.
"No, there is no letter," I said at last. "Hasn"t he been to you yet?"
She turned fearfully pale and looked at me for a long time without moving. I had shattered her last hope.
"Well, G.o.d be with him," she said at last in a breaking voice; "G.o.d be with him if he leaves me like that."
She dropped her eyes, then tried to look at me and could not. For several minutes she was struggling with her emotion. All at once she turned away, leaning her elbows against the railing and burst into tears.
"Oh don"t, don"t!" I began; but looking at her I had not the heart to go on, and what was I to say to her?
"Don"t try and comfort me," she said; "don"t talk about him; don"t tell me that he will come, that he has not cast me off so cruelly and so inhumanly as he has. What for--what for? Can there have been something in my letter, that unlucky letter?"
At that point sobs stifled her voice; my heart was torn as I looked at her.