Natasha stood still in the middle of the room and looked at me sternly. Her whole face was transformed; her lips twitched a little.
“But how could he in a case like this begin deceiving and ... lying?”
“Of course not, of course not!” I assented hurriedly.
“Of course he wasn’t lying. It seems to me there’s no need to think of that. There’s no excuse to be found for such deception. And, indeed, am I so abject in his eyes that he could jeer at me like that? Could any man be capable of such an insult?”
“Of course not, of course not,” I agreed, thinking to myself, “you’re thinking of nothing else as you pace up and down, my poor girl, and very likely you’re more doubtful about it than I am.”
“Ah, how I could wish he were coming back sooner!” she said. “He wanted to spend the whole evening with me, and then.... It must have been important business, since he’s given it all up and gone away. You don’t know what it was, Vanya? You haven’t heard anything?”
“The Lord only knows. You know he’s always making money. I’ve heard he’s taking up a share in some contract in Petersburg. We know nothing about business, Natasha.”
“Of course we don’t. Alyosha talked of some letter yesterday.”
“News of some sort. Has Alyosha been here?
“Yes.”
“Early?”
“At twelve o’clock; he sleeps late, you know. He stayed a little while. I sent him off to Katerina Fyodorovna. Shouldn’t I have, Vanya?”
“Why, didn’t he mean to go himself?”
“Yes, he did.”
She was about to say more, but checked herself. I looked at her and waited. Her face was sad. I would have questioned her, but she sometimes particularly disliked questions.
“He’s a strange boy.” she said at last, with a slight twist of her mouth, trying not to look at me.
“Why? I suppose something’s happened?”
“No, nothing; I just thought so.... He was sweet, though. . . . But already . . .”
“All his cares and anxieties are over now,” said I.
Natasha looked intently and searchingly at me. She felt inclined perhaps to answer, “he hadn’t many cares or anxieties before,” but she fancied that my words covered the same thought. She pouted.
But she became friendly and cordial again at once. This time she was extraordinarily gentle. I spent more than an hour with her. She was very uneasy. The prince had frightened her. I noticed from some of her questions that she was very anxious to know what sort of impression she had made on him. Had she behaved properly? Hadn’t she betrayed her joy too openly? Had she been too ready to take offence? Or on the contrary too conciliatory? He mustn’t imagine anything. He mustn’t laugh at her! He mustn’t feel contempt for her! . . . Her cheeks glowed like fire at the thought!
How can you be so upset simply at a bad man’s imagining something? Let him imagine anything!” said I.
“Why is he bad?” she asked.
Natasha was suspicious but pure-hearted and straightforward. Her doubts came from no impure source. She was proud and with a fine pride, and would not endure what she looked upon as higher than anything to be turned into a laughing-stock before her. She would, of course, have met with contempt the contempt of a base man, but at the same time her heart would have ached at mockery of what she thought sacred, whoever had been the mocker. This was not due to any lack of firmness. It arose partly from too limited a knowledge of the world, from being unaccustomed to people from having been shut up in her own little groove. She had spent all her life in her own little corner and had hardly left it. And finally that characteristic of good-natured people, inherited perhaps from her father — the habit of thinking highly of people, of persistently thinking them better that they really are, warmly exaggerating everything good in them — was highly developed in her. It is hard for such people to be disillusioned afterwards; and it is hardest of all when one feels one is oneself to blame. Why did one expect more than could be given? And such a disappointment is always in store for such people. It is best for them to stay quietly in their corners and not to go out into the world; I have noticed, in fact, that they really love their corners so much that they grow shy and unsociable in them. Natasha, however, had suffered many misfortunes, many mortifications, She was already a wounded creature, and she cannot be blamed, if indeed there be any blame in what I have said.
But I was in a hurry and got up to go. She was surprised and almost cried at my going, though she had shown no particular affection for me all the while I was with her; on the contrary, she seemed rather colder to me than usual. She kissed me warmly and looked for a long time into my face.
“Listen,” she said. “Alyosha was very absurd this morning and quite surprised me. He was very sweet, very happy apparently. but flew in, such a butterfly — such a dandy, and kept prinking before the looking-glass. He’s a little too unceremonious now.... Yes, and he didn’t stay long. Fancy, he brought me some sweets.”
“Sweets? Why, that’s very charming and simple-hearted, Ah, what a pair you are. Now you’ve begun watching and spying on one another, studying each other’s faces, and reading hidden thoughts in them (and understanding nothing about it). He’s not different. He’s merry and schoolboyish as he always was. But you, you!”
And whenever Natasha changed her tone and came to me with some complaint against Alyosha, or to ask for a solution of some ticklish question, or to tell me some secret, expecting me to understand her at half a word, she always, I remember, looked at me with a smile, as it were imploring me to answer somehow so that she should feel happy at heart at once. And I remember, too, I always in such cases assumed a severe and harsh tone as though scolding someone, and this happened quite unconsciously with me, but it was always successful. My severity and gravity were what was wanted; they seemed more authoritative, and people sometimes feel an irresistible craving to be scolded. Natasha was sometimes left quite consoled.
“No, Vanya, you see,” she went on, keeping one of her little hands on my shoulder, while her other pressed my hand and her eyes looked into mine, “I fancied that he was somehow too little affected ... he seemed already such a man — you know, as though he’d been married ten years but was still polite to his wife. Isn’t that very premature? ... He laughed, and prinked, but just as though all that didn’t matter, as though it only partly concerned me, not as it used to be ... he was in a great hurry to see Katerina Fyodorovna. . . . If I spoke to him he didn’t listen to me, or began talking of something else, you know, that horrid, aristocratic habit we’ve both been getting him out of. In fact, he was too . . . even indifferent it seemed ... but what am I saying! Here I’m doing it, here I’ve begun! Ah, what exacting, capricious despots we all are, Vanya! Only now I see it! We can’t forgive a man for a trifling change in his face, and God knows what has made his face change! You were right, Vanya, in reproaching me just now! It’s all my fault! We make our own troubles and then we complain of them. . . . Thanks, Vanya, you have quite comforted me. Ah, if he would only come today! But there perhaps he’ll be angry for what happened this morning.”
“Surely you haven’t quarrelled already!” I cried with surprise.
“I made no sign! But I was a little sad, and though he came in so cheerful he suddenly became thoughtful, and I fancied he said good-bye coldly. Yes, I’ll send for him. . . . You come, too, today, Vanya.”
“Yes, I’ll be sure to, unless I’m detained by one thing.”
“Why, what thing is it?”
“I’ve brought it on myself! But I think I’m sure to come all the same. ”
Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:26:21 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.
The Insulted and the Injured, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Chapter VII
AT seven o’clock precisely I was at Masloboev’s. He lived in lodge, a little house, in Shestilavotchny Street. He had three rather grubby but not badly furnished rooms. There was even the appearance of some prosperity, at the same time an extreme slovenliness. The door was opened by a very pretty girl of nineteen, plainly but charmingly dressed, clean, and with very good-natured, merry eyes. I guessed at once that this was the Alexandra Semyonovna to whom he had made passing allusion that morning, holding out an introduction to her as an allurement to me. She asked who I was, and hearing my name said that Masloboev was expecting me, but that he was asleep now in his room, to which she took me. Masloboev was asleep on a very good soft sofa with his dirty
