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
