... and I will always love you.... I shall love you so ... love you so ...”
“Did he speak to you of our marriage in June?” asked Natasha.
“Yes. He said you’d consented. That’s all just...to comfort him, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“That’s how I understood it. I will love him truly, Natasha, and write to you about everything. It seems as though he will soon be my husband; it’s coming to that; and they all say so. Darling Natasha, surely you will go ... home now?”
Natasha did not answer, but kissed her warmly in silence.
“Be happy!” she said.
“And ... and you ... and you too!” said Katya.
At that moment the door opened and Alyosha came in. He had been unable to wait the whole half-hour, and seeing them in each other’s arms and both crying, he fell on his knees before Natasha and Katya in impotent anguish.
“Why are you crying?” Natasha said to him. “Because you’re parting from me? But it’s not for long. Won’t you be back in June?”
“And then your marriage,” Katya hastened to add through her tears, also to comfort Alyosha.
“But I can’t leave you, I can’t leave you for one day, Natasha. I shall die without you ... You don’t know how precious you are to me now! especially now!”
“Well, then, this is what you must do,” said Natasha, suddenly reviving, “the countess will stay for a little while in Moscow, won’t she?”
“Yes, almost a week,” put in Katya.
“A week! Then what could be better: you’ll escort her to Moscow tomorrow; that will only take one day and then you can come back here at once. When they have to leave Moscow, we will part finally for a month and you will go back to Moscow to accompany them.”
“Yes, that’s it, that’s it ... and you will have an extra four days to be together, anyway,” said Katya, enchanted, exchanging a significant glance with Natasha.
I cannot describe Alyosha’s rapture at this new project. He was at once completely comforted. His face was radiant with delight, he embraced Natasha, kissed Katya’s hands, embraced me. Natasha looked at him with a mournful smile, but Katya could not endure it. She looked at me with feverish and glittering eyes, embraced Natasha, and got up to go. At that moment the Frenchwoman appropriately sent a servant to request her to cut the interview short and to tell her that the half-hour agreed upon was over.
Natasha got up. The two stood facing one another, holding hands, and seemed trying to convey with their eyes all that was stored up in their souls.
“We shall never see each other again, I suppose,” said Katya.
“Never, Katya,” answered Natasha.
“Well, then, let us say good-bye!
They embraced each other.
“Do not curse me,” Katya whispered hurriedly, I’ll . . . always ... you may trust me ... he shall be happy . . . Come, Alyosha, take me down!” she articulated rapidly, taking his arm.
“Vanya,” Natasha said to me in agitation and distress when they had gone, “you follow them . . . and don’t come back. Alyosha will be with me till the evening, till eight o’clock. But he can’t stay after. He’s going away. I shall be left alone come at nine o’clock, please!”
When at nine o’clock, leaving Nellie with Alexandra Semyonovna (after the incident with the broken cup), I reached Natasha’s, she was alone and impatiently expecting me. Mavra set the samovar for us. Natasha poured me out tea, sat down on the sofa, and motioned me to come near her. “So everything is over,” she said, looking intently at me. Never shall I forget that look.
“Now our love, too, is over. Half a year of life! And it’s my whole life,” she added, gripping my hands.
Her hand was burning. I began persuading her to wrap herself up and go to bed.
“Presently, Vanya, presently, dear friend. Let me talk and recall things a little. I feel as though I were broken to pieces now ... tomorrow I shall see him for the last time at ten o’clock, for the last time!”
“Natasha, you’re in a fever. You’ll be shivering directly. ... Do think of yourself.”
“Well, I’ve been waiting for you now, Vanya, for this half-hour, since he went away. And what do you think I’ve been thinking about? What do you think I’ve been wondering? I’ve been wondering, did I love him? Or didn’t I? And what sort of thing our love was? What, do you think it’s absurd, Vanya, that I should only ask myself that now?”
“Don’t agitate yourself, Natasha.”
“You see, Vanya, I decided that I didn’t love him as an equal, as a woman usually loves a man. I loved him like . . . almost like a mother.... I even fancy that there’s no love in the world in which two love each other like equals. What do you think?”
I looked at her with anxiety, and was afraid that it might be the beginning of brain-fever. Something seemed to carry her away. She seemed to be impelled to speech. Some of her words were quite incoherent, and at times she even pronounced them indistinctly. I was very much alarmed.
“He was mine,” she went on. “Almost from the first time I met him I had an overwhelming desire that he should be mine, mine at once, and that he should not look at anyone, should not know anyone but me. . . . Katya expressed it very well this morning. I loved him, too, as though I were always sorry for him . . . I always had an intense longing, a perfect agony of longing when I was alone that he should be always happy, awfully happy. His face (you know the expression of his face, Vanya), I can’t look at it without being moved; no one else has such an expression, and when he laughs it makes me turn cold and shudder... Really!...”
“Natasha, listen...”
“People say about him . . . and you’ve said it, that he has no will and that he’s ... not very clever, like a child. And that’s what I loved in him more than anything.... would you believe it? I don’t know, though, whether I loved that one thing; I just simply loved him altogether, and if he’d been different in some way, if he’d had will or been cleverer, perhaps I shouldn’t have loved him so. Do you know, Vanya, I’ll confess one thing to you. Do you remember we had a quarrel three months ago when he’d been to see that — what’s her name — that Minna ... I knew of it, I found it out, and would you believe it, it hurt me horribly, and yet at the same time I was somehow pleased at it.... I don’t know why ... the very thought that he was amusing himself — or no, it’s not that — that, like a grown-up man together with other men he was running after pretty girls, that he too went to Minnas! I ... what bliss I got out of that quarrel; and then forgiving him . . . oh, my dear one!”
She looked into my face and laughed strangely. Then she sank into thought as though recalling everything. And for a long time she sat like that with a smile on her face, dreaming of the past.
“I loved forgiving him, Vanya,” she went on. Do you know when he left me alone I used to walk about the room, fretting and crying, and then I would think that the worse he treated me the better ... yes! And do you know, I always picture him as a little boy. I sit and he lays his head on my knees and falls asleep, and I stroke his head softly and caress him ... I always imagined him like that when he was not with me ... Listen, Vanya,” she added suddenly, “what a charming creature Katya is!”
It seemed to me that she was lacerating her own wounds on purpose, impelled to this by a sort of yearning, the yearning of despair and suffering.... and how often that is so with a heart that has suffered great loss.
“Katya, I believe, can make him happy,” she went on.
She has character and speaks as though she had such conviction, and with him she’s so grave and serious — and always talks to him about such clever things, as though she were grown up. And all the while she’s a perfect child herself! The little dear, the little dear! Oh, I hope they’ll be happy! I hope so, I hope so!”
And her tears and sobs burst out in a perfect torrent. It was quite half an hour before she came to herself and recovered some degree of self-control.
My sweet angel, Natasha! Even that evening in spite of her own grief she could sympathize with my anxieties, when, seeing that she was a little calmer, or, rather, wearied out, thinking to distract her mind I told her about Nellie. We parted that evening late. I stayed till she fell asleep, and as I went out I begged Mavra not to leave her suffering mistress all night.
“Oh ... for the end of this misery,” I cried as I walked home. “To have it over quickly, quickly! Any end, anyhow, if only it can be quick!”
