I went down to the gate with him. I had to ask the porter to go out to get some food for me. Elena had had no dinner.
CHAPTER XI
BUT as soon as I came in again I felt my head going round and fell down in the middle of the room. I remember nothing but Elena’s shriek. She clasped her hands and flew to support me. That is the last moment that remains in my memory. . . .
When I regained consciousness I found myself in bed. Elena told me later on that, with the help of the porter who came in with some eatables, she had carried me to the sofa.
I woke up several times, and always saw Elena’s compassionate and anxious little face leaning over me. But I remember all that as in a dream, as through a mist, and the sweet face of the poor child came to me in glimpses, through my stupor, like a vision, like a picture. She brought me something to drink, arranged my bedclothes, or sat looking at me with a distressed and frightened face, and smoothing my hair with her fingers. Once I remember her gentle kiss on my face. Another time, suddenly waking up in the night, by the light of the smouldering candle that had been set on a little table by my bedside I saw Elena lying with her face on my pillow with her warm cheek resting on her hand, and her pale lips half parted in an uneasy sleep. But it was only early next morning that I fully regained consciousness. The candle had completely burnt out. The vivid rosy beams of early sunrise were already playing on the wall. Elena was sitting at the table, asleep, with her tired little head pillowed on her left arm, and I remember I gazed a long time at her childish face, full, even in sleep, of an unchildlike sadness and a sort of strange, sickly beauty. It was pale, with long arrowy eyelashes lying on the thin cheeks, and pitch-black hair that fell thick and heavy in a careless knot on one side. Her other arm lay on my pillow. Very softly I kissed that thin little arm. But the poor child did not wake, though there was a faint glimmer of a smile on her pale lips. I went on gazing at her, and so quietly fell into a sound healing sleep. This time I slept almost till midday. When I woke up I felt almost well again. A feeling of weakness and heaviness in my limbs was the only trace left of my illness, I had had such sudden nervous attacks before; I knew them very well. The attack generally passed off within twenty-four hours, though the symptoms were acute and violent for that time.
It was nearly midday. The first thing I saw was the curtain I had bought the day before, which was hanging on a string across the corner. Elena had arranged it, screening off the corner as a separate room for herself. She was sitting before the stove boiling the
kettle. Noticing that I was awake she smiled cheerfully and at once came up to me.
“My dear,” I said, taking her hand, “you’ve been looking after me all night. I didn’t know you were so kind.”
“And how do you know I’ve been looking after you? Perhaps I’ve been asleep all night,” she said, looking at me with shy and good-humoured slyness, and at the same time flushing shame-facedly at her own words.
“I woke up and saw you. You only fell asleep at day break.”
“Would you like some tea?” she interrupted, as though feeling it difficult to continue the conversation, as all delicately modest and sternly truthful people are apt to when they are praised.
“I should,” I answered, “but did you have any dinner yesterday?”
“I had no dinner but I had some supper. The porter brought it. But don’t you talk. Lie still. You’re not quite well yet,” she added, bringing me some tea and sitting down on my bed.
“Lie still, indeed! I will lie still, though, till it gets dark, and then I’m going out. I really must, Lenotchka.”
“Oh, you must, must you! Who is it you’re going to see? Not the gentleman who was here yesterday?”
“No, I’m not going to him.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re not. It was he upset you yesterday. To his daughter then?” “What do you know about his daughter?
“I heard all you said yesterday,” she answered, looking down. Her face clouded over. She frowned.
“He’s a horrid old man,” she added.
“You know nothing about him. On the contrary, he’s a very kind man.” “No, no, he’s wicked. I heard,” she said with conviction.
“Why, what did you hear?”
“He won’t forgive his daughter . . . ”
“But he loves her. She has behaved badly to him; and he is anxious and worried about her.”
“Why doesn’t he forgive her? If he does forgive her now she shouldn’t go back to him.”
“How so? Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t deserve that she should love him,” she answered hotly. “Let her leave him for ever and let her go begging, and let him see his daughter begging, and be miserable.”
Her eyes flashed and her cheeks glowed. “There must be something behind her words,” I thought.
“Was it to his home you meant to send me?” she added after a pause. “Yes, Elena.”
“No. I’d better get a place as a servant.”
“Ah, how wrong is all that you’re saying, Lenotchka! And what nonsense! Who would take you as a servant?”
“Any peasant,” she answered impatiently, looking more and more downcast. She was evidently hot-tempered.
“A peasant doesn’t want a girl like you to work for him,” I said, laughing. “Well, a gentleman’s family, then.”
“You live in a gentleman’s family, with your temper?” “Yes.”
The more irritated she became, the more abrupt were her answers “But you’d never stand it.”
“Yes I would. They’d scold me, but I’d say nothing on purpose. They’d beat me, but I wouldn’t speak, I wouldn’t speak. Let them beat me — I wouldn’t cry for anything. That would annoy them even more if I didn’t cry.”
“Really, Elena! What bitterness, and how proud you are! You must have seen a lot of trouble . . . .”
I got up and went to my big table. Elena remained on the sofa, looking dreamily at the floor and picking at the edge of the sofa. She did not speak. I wondered whether she were angry at what I had said.
Standing by the table I mechanically opened the books I had brought the day before, for the compilation, and by degrees I became absorbed in them. It often happens to me that I go and open a book to look up something, and go on reading so that I forget everything.
“What are you always writing?” Elena asked with a timid smile, coming quietly to the
table.
“All sorts of things, Lenotchka. They give me money for it.” “Petitions?”
“No, not petitions.”
And I explained to her as far as I could that I wrote all sorts of stories about different people, and that out of them were made books that are called novels. She listened with great curiosity.
“Is it all true — what you write?” “No, I make it up.”
“Why do you write what isn’t true?”
“Why, here, read it. You see this book; you’ve looked at it already. You can read, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’ll see then. I wrote this book.” “You? I’ll read it . . . . ”
She was evidently longing to say something, but found it difficult, and was in great excitement. Something lay hidden under her questions.
“And are you paid much for this?” she asked at last.
“It’s as it happens. Sometimes a lot, sometimes nothing, because the work doesn’t come off. It’s difficult work, Lenotchka.”
“Then you’re not rich?” “No, not rich.”
“Then I shall work and help you.”
She glanced at me quickly, flushed, dropped her eyes, and taking two steps towards me suddenly threw her arms round me, and pressed her face tightly against my breast; I looked at her with amazement.
“I love you . . . I’m not proud,” she said. “You said I was proud yesterday. No, no, I’m not like that. I love you. You are the only person who cares for me . . . .”
But her tears choked her. A minute later they burst out with as much violence as the day before. She fell on her knees before me, kissed my hands, my feet. . . .
“You care for me!” she repeated. “You’re the only one, the only one.”
She embraced my knees convulsively. All the feeling which she had repressed for so long broke out at once, in an uncon-. trollable outburst, and I understood the strange stubbornness of a heart that for a while shrinkingly masked its feeling, the more harshly, the more stubbornly as the need for expression and utterance grew stronger, till the inevitable outburst came, when the whole being forgot itself and gave itself up to the craving for love, to gratitude, to affection and to tears. She sobbed till she became hysterical. With an effort
