“But why SHOULDN’T we?” she asked, looking gravely at the corner of her pocket-handkerchief, and gliding her fingers over a latticed screen which we were passing. “Every Tuesday and Friday I go with Mamma to the Iverskoi Prospect. I suppose you go for walks too sometimes?”
“Well, certainly I shall ask to go for one next Tuesday, and. if they won’t take me I shall go by myself–even without my hat, if necessary. I know the way all right. “
“Do you know what I have just thought of?” she went on. “You know, I call some of the boys who come to see us THOU. Shall you and I call each other THOU too? Wilt THOU?” she added, bending her head towards me and looking me straight in the eyes.
At this moment a more lively section of the Grosvater dance began.
“Give me your hand,” I said, under the impression that the music and din would drown my exact words, but she smilingly replied, “THY hand, not YOUR hand.” Yet the dance was over before I had succeeded in saying THOU, even though I kept conning over phrases in which the pronoun could be employed–and employed more than once. All that I wanted was the courage to say it.
“Wilt THOU?” and “THY hand” sounded continually in my ears, and caused in me a kind of intoxication I could hear and see nothing but Sonetchka. I watched her mother take her curls, lay them flat behind her ears (thus disclosing portions of her forehead and temples which I had not yet seen), and wrap her up so completely in the green shawl that nothing was left visible but the tip of her nose. Indeed, I could see that, if her little rosy fingers had not made a small, opening near her mouth, she would have been unable to breathe. Finally I saw her leave her mother’s arm for an instant on the staircase, and turn and nod to us quickly before she disappeared through the doorway.
Woloda, the Iwins, the young Prince Etienne, and myself were all of us in love with Sonetchka and all of us standing on the staircase to follow her with our eyes. To whom in particular she had nodded I do not know, but at the moment I firmly believed it to be myself. In taking leave of the Iwins, I spoke quite unconcernedly, and even coldly, to Seriosha before I finally shook hands with him. Though he tried to appear absolutely indifferent, I think that he understood that from that day forth he had lost both my affection and his power over me, as well as that he regretted it.
XXIV
IN BED
“How could I have managed to be so long and so passionately devoted to Seriosha?” I asked myself as I lay in bed that night. “He never either understood, appreciated, or deserved my love. But Sonetchka! What a darling SHE is! ‘Wilt THOU?’–‘THY hand’!”
I crept closer to the pillows, imagined to myself her lovely face, covered my head over with the bedclothes, tucked the counterpane in on all sides, and, thus snugly covered, lay quiet and enjoying the warmth until I became wholly absorbed in pleasant fancies and reminiscences.
If I stared fixedly at the inside of the sheet above me I found that I could see her as clearly as I had done an hour ago could talk to her in my thoughts, and, though it was a conversation of irrational tenor, I derived the greatest delight from it, seeing that “THOU” and “THINE” and “for THEE” and “to THEE” occurred in it incessantly. These fancies were so vivid that I could not sleep for the sweetness of my emotion, and felt as though I must communicate my superabundant happiness to some one.
“The darling!” I said, half-aloud, as I turned over; then, “Woloda, are you asleep?”
“No,” he replied in a sleepy voice. “What’s the matter?”
“I am in love, Woloda–terribly in love with Sonetchka”
“Well? Anything else?” he replied, stretching himself.
“Oh, but you cannot imagine what I feel just now, as I lay covered over with the counterpane, I could see her and talk to her so clearly that it was marvellous! And, do you know, while I was lying thinking about her–I don’t know why it was, but all at once I felt so sad that I could have cried.”
Woloda made a movement of some sort.
“One thing only I wish for,” I continued; “and that is that I could always be with her and always be seeing her. Just that. You are in love too, I believe. Confess that you are.”
It was strange, but somehow I wanted every one to be in love with Sonetchka, and every one to tell me that they were so.
“So that’s how it is with you? ” said Woloda, turning round to me. “Well, I can understand it.”
“I can see that you cannot sleep,” I remarked, observing by his bright eyes that he was anything but drowsy. “Well, cover yourself over SO” (and I pulled the bedclothes over him), “and then let us talk about her. Isn’t she splendid? If she were to say to me, ‘Nicolinka, jump out of the window,’ or ‘jump into the fire,’ I should say, ‘Yes, I will do it at once and rejoice in doing it.’ Oh, how glorious she is!”
I went on picturing her again and again to my imagination, and, to enjoy the vision the better, turned over on my side and buried my head in the pillows, murmuring, “Oh, I want to cry, Woloda.”
“What a fool you are!” he said with a slight laugh. Then, after a moment’s silence he added: “I am not like you. I think I would rather sit and talk with her.”
“Ah! Then you ARE in love with her!” I interrupted.
“And then,” went on Woloda, smiling tenderly, “kiss her fingers and eyes and lips and nose and feet–kiss all of her.”
“How absurd!” I exclaimed from beneath the pillows.
“Ah, you don’t understand things,” said Woloda with contempt.
“I DO understand. It’s you who don’t understand things, and you talk rubbish, too,” I replied, half-crying.
“Well, there is nothing to cry about,” he concluded. “She is only a girl.”
XXV
THE LETTER
ON the 16th of April, nearly six months after the day just described, Papa entered our schoolroom and told us that that night we must start with him for our country house. I felt a pang at my heart when I heard the news, and my thoughts at once turned to Mamma, The cause of our unexpected departure was the following letter:
“PETROVSKOE, 12th April.
“Only this moment (i.e. at ten o’clock in the evening) have I received your dear letter of the 3rd of April, but as usual, I answer it at once. Fedor brought it yesterday from town, but, as it was late, he did not give it to Mimi till this morning, and Mimi (since I was unwell) kept it from me all day. I have been a little feverish. In fact, to tell the truth, this is the fourth day that I have been in bed.
“Yet do not be uneasy. I feel almost myself again now, and if Ivan Vassilitch should allow me, I think of getting up to-morrow.
“On Friday last I took the girls for a drive, and, close to the little bridge by the turning on to the high road (the place which always makes me nervous), the horses and carriage stuck fast in the mud. Well, the day being fine, I thought that we would walk a little up the road until the carriage should be extricated, but no sooner had we reached the chapel than I felt obliged to sit down, I was so tired, and in this way half-an-hour passed while help was being sent for to get the carriage dug out. I felt cold, for I had only thin boots on, and they had been wet through. After luncheon too, I had alternate cold and hot fits, yet still continued to follow our ordinary routine
“When tea was over I sat down to the piano to play a duct with Lubotshka. (you would be astonished to hear what progress she has made!), but imagine my surprise when I found that I could not count the beats! Several times I began to do so, yet always felt confused in my head, and kept hearing strange noises in my ears. I would begin ‘One-two-three–‘ and then suddenly go on ‘-eight- fifteen,’ and so on, as though I were talking nonsense and could not help it. At last Mimi came to my assistance and forced me to retire to bed. That was how my illness began, and it was all through my own fault. The next day I had a good deal of fever, and our good Ivan Vassilitch came. He has not left us since, but promises soon to restore me to the world.”
“What a wonderful old man he is! While I was feverish and delirious he sat the whole night by my bedside without once closing his eyes; and at this moment (since he knows I am busy writing) he is with the girls in the divannaia, and I can hear him telling them German stories, and them laughing as they listen to him.
“‘La Belle Flamande,’ as you call her, is now spending her second week here as my guest (her mother having gone to pay a visit somewhere), and she is most attentive and attached to me, She even tells
