Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings

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 goodhumoured slyness, and at the same time flushing shamefacedly 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 uncontrollable 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 I loosened her arms, lifted her up and carried her to the sofa. For a long time she went on sobbing, hiding her face in the pillow as though ashamed to look at me. But she held my hand tight, and kept it pressed to her heart.

By degrees she grew calmer, but still did not raise her face to me. Twice her eyes flitted over my face, and there was a great softness and a sort of timorous and shrinking emotion in them.

At last she flushed and smiled.

“Are you better?” I asked, “my sensitive little Lenotchka, my sick little child!”

“Not Lenotchka, no…” she whispered, still hiding her face from me.

“Not Lenotchka? What then?”

“Nellie.”

“Nellie? Why must it be Nellie? If you like; it’s a very pretty name. I’ll call you so if that’s what you wish.”

“That’s what mother called me. And no one else ever called me that, no one but she…. And I would not have anyone call me so but mother. But you call me so. I want you to. I will always love you, always.”

“A loving and proud little heart,” I thought. “And how long it has taken me to win the right to call you Nellie!”

But now I knew her heart was gained for ever.

“Nellie, listen,” I said, as soon as she was calmer. “You say that no one has ever loved you but your mother. Is it true your grandfather didn’t love you?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Yet you cried for him; do you remember, here, on the stairs?”