That evening our fate was being decided. There was a great deal for Natasha and me to talk over. Yet I managed to slip in a word about Nellie and told her all that had happened in full detail. My story greatly interested Natasha and made a great impression on her, in fact.
“Do you know what, Vanya,” she said to me after a moment’s thought. “I believe she’s in love with you.”
“What . . . how can that be?” I asked, wondering. “Yes, it’s the beginning of love, real grown-up love.”
“How can you, Natasha! Nonsense! Why, she’s a child!”
“A child who will soon be fourteen. This exasperation is at your not understanding her love; and probably she doesn’t understand it herself. It’s an exasperation in which there’s a great deal that’s childish, but it’s in earnest, agonizing. Above all she’s jealous of me. You love me so that probably even when you’re at home you’re always worrying, thinking and talking about me, and so don’t take much notice of her. She has seen that and it has stung her. She wants perhaps to talk to you, longs to open her heart to you, doesn’t know how to do it, is ashamed, and doesn’t understand herself; she is waiting for an opportunity, and instead of giving her such an opportunity you keep away from her, run off to me, and even when she was ill left her alone for whole days together. She cries about it; she misses you, and what hurts her most of all is that you don’t notice it. Now, at a moment like this, you have left her alone for my sake. Yes, she’ll be ill tomorrow because of it. And how could you leave her? Go back to her at once. . .”
“I should not have left her, but . . .”
“Yes, I know. I begged you to come, myself. But now go.” “I will, but of course I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Because it’s all so different from other people. Remember her story, think it all over and you will believe, it. She has not grown up as you and I did.”
I got home late, however. Alexandra Semyonovna told me that again Nellie had, as on the previous evening, been crying a great deal and “had fallen asleep in tears,” as before.
“And now I’m going, Ivan Petrovitch, as Filip Filippovitch told me. He’s expecting me, poor fellow.”
I thanked her and sat down by Nellie’s pillow. It seemed dreadful to me myself that I could have left her at such a moment. For a long time, right into the night, I sat beside her, lost in thought. . . . It was a momentous time for us all.
But I must describe what had been happening during that fortnight.
CHAPTER V
AFTER the memorable evening I had spent with Prince Valkovsky at the restaurant, I was for some days in continual apprehension on Natasha’s account. With what evil was that cursed prince threatening her, and in what way did he mean to revenge himself on her, I asked myself every minute, and I was distracted by suppositions of all sorts. I came at last to the conclusion that his menaces were not empty talk, not mere bluster, and that as long as she was living with Alyosha, the prince might really bring about much unpleasantness for her. He was petty, vindictive, malicious, and calculating, I reflected. It would be difficult for him to forget an insult and to let pass any chance of avenging it. He had in any case brought out one point, and had expressed himself pretty clearly on that point: he insisted absolutely on Alyosha’s breaking off his connexion with Natasha, and was expecting me to prepare her for the approaching separation, and so to prepare her that there should be “no scenes, no idyllic nonsense, no Schillerism.” Of course, what he was most solicitous for was that Alyosha should remain on good terms with him, and should still consider him an affectionate father. This was very necessary to enable him the more conveniently to get control of Katya’s money. And so it was my task to prepare Natasha for the approaching separation. But I noticed a great change in Natasha; there was not a trace now of her old frankness with me; in fact, she seemed to have become actually mistrustful of me. My efforts to console her only worried her; my questions annoyed her more and more, and even vexed her. I would sit beside her sometimes, watching her. She would pace from one corner of the room to the other with her arms folded, pale and gloomy, as though oblivious of everything, even forgetting that I was there beside her. When she Happened to look at me (and she even avoided my eves), there was a gleam of impatient vexation in her face, and she turned away quickly. I realized that she was perhaps herself revolving some plan of her own for the approaching separation, and how could she think of it without pain and bitterness? And I was convinced that she had already made up her mind to the separation. Yet I was worried and alarmed by her gloomy despair. Moreover sometimes I did not dare to talk to her or try to comfort her, and so waited with terror for the end.
As for her harsh and forbidding manner with me, though that worried me and made me uneasy, yet I had faith in my Natasha’s heart. I saw that she was terribly wretched and that she was terribly overwrought. Any outside interference only excited vexation and
annoyance. In such cases, especially, the intervention of friends who know one’s secrets is more annoying than anything. But I very well knew, too, that at the last minute Natasha would come back to me, and would seek comfort in my affection.
Of my conversation with the prince I said nothing, of course; my story would only have excited and upset her more. I only mentioned casually that I had been with the prince at the countess’s and was convinced that he was an awful scoundrel. She did not even question me about him, of which I was very glad; but she listened eagerly to what I told her of my interview with Katya. When she heard my account of it she said nothing about her either, but her pale face flushed, and on that day she seemed especially agitated. I concealed nothing about Katya, and openly confessed that even upon me she had made an excellent impression. Yes, and what was the use of hiding it? Natasha would have guessed, of course, that I was hiding something, and would only have been angry with me. And so I purposely told her everything as fully as possible, trying to anticipate her questions, for in her position I should have felt it hard to ask them; it could scarcely be an easy task to inquire with an air of unconcern into the perfections of one’s rival.
I fancied that she did not know yet that the prince was insisting on Alyosha’s accompanying the countess and Katya into the country, and took great pains to break this to her so as to soften the blow. But what was my amazement when Natasha stopped me at the first word and said that there was no need to comfort her and that she had known of this for the last five days.
“Good heavens!” I cried, “why, who told you?” “Alyosha!”
“What? He has told you so already?”
“Yes, and I have made up my mind about everything, Vanya,” she added, with a look which clearly, and, as it were, impatiently warned me not to continue the conversation.
Alyosha came pretty often to Natasha’s, but always only for a minute; only on one occasion he stayed with her for several hours at a time, but that was when I was not there. He usually came in melancholy and looked at her with timid tenderness; but Natasha met him so warmly and affectionately that he always forgot it instantly and brightened up. He had taken to coming to see me very frequently too, almost every day. He was indeed terribly harassed and he could not remain a single moment alone with his distress, and kept running to me every minute for consolation.
What could I say to him? He accused me of coldness, of indifference, even of ill-feeling towards him; he grieved, he shed tears, went off to Katya’s, and there was comforted.
On the day that Natasha told me that she knew that Alyosha was going away (it was a week after my conversation with the prince) he ran in to me in despair, embraced me, fell on my neck, and sobbed like a child. I was silent, and waited to see what he would say.
“I’m a low, abject creature, Vanya,” he began. “Save me from myself. I’m not crying because I’m low and abject, but because through me Natasha will be miserable. I am leaving her to misery . . . Vanya, my dear, tell me, decide for me, which of them do I love most, Natasha or Katya?”
“That I can’t decide, Alyosha,” I answered. “You ought to know better than I . . .”
“No, Vanya, that’s not it; I’m not so stupid as to ask such a question; but the worst of it is that I can’t tell myself. I ask myself and I can’t answer. But you look on from outside and may see more clearly than I do. . . . Well,
