Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Complete Novels & Stories (Wisehouse Classics). Fyodor Dostoyevsky

bread I have eaten, and then I will go away. That’s what you have driven me to.’ And then they all began crying and almost falling on their knees before him; they took the spade away from him; but he would go on digging; he dug up all the turnips, that was all he did. They humoured him once, he may do it again. That would be just like him.”

      “And you... you tell that with such coolness!” I cried out, with intense indignation.

      She looked at me with flashing eyes.

      “Forgive me, I really don’t know what I am saying! Listen! do you know what I’ve come here for?”

      “N-no,” she answered, flushing crimson, and some painful feeling was reflected in her charming face.

      “You must excuse me,” I went on. “I am upset, I feel that this is not how I ought to have begun speaking of this... especially with you... But never mind! To my thinking, openness in such matters is best. I confess... that is, I meant to say... you know my uncle’s design? He has told me to ask for your hand....”

      “Oh, what nonsense! don’t speak of it, please,” she said, hurriedly interrupting me and flushing crimson.

      I was disconcerted.

      “How nonsense? But he wrote to me, you see.”

      “So he wrote to you?” she asked eagerly. “Oh, what a man! How he promised that he would not write! What nonsense! Good heavens, what nonsense!”

      “Forgive me,” I muttered, not knowing what to say. “Perhaps I have acted incautiously, crudely... but, you see, it’s such a moment! Only think, goodness knows what’s going on around us....”

      “Oh, for God’s sake don’t apologise! Believe me that it is painful for me to hear this apart from that, and yet, do you know, I wanted to speak to you myself, to find out something.... Oh, how vexatious! So he really wrote to you? That’s what I was most afraid of! My God, what a man he is! And you believed him and galloped here full speed? Well, that’s the last straw!”

      She did not conceal her annoyance. My position was not an attractive one.

      “I must confess I did not expect...” I blurted out in the utmost confusion, “such a turn... I expected, on the contrary...”

      “Ah, so that’s what you expected?...” she brought out with light irony, biting her lip. “And do you know, you must show me the letter he wrote.”

      “Very good.”

      “And please don’t be angry with me, don’t be offended; I have trouble enough without that!” she said in an imploring voice, though a mocking smile faintly gleamed on her pretty lips.

      “Oh, please don’t take me for a fool,” I cried hotly. “But perhaps you are prejudiced against me, perhaps someone has spoken against me? Perhaps you say this because I put my foot in it just now? But that is nothing, I assure you. I know what a fool I must look to you now. Don’t laugh at me, please! I don’t know what I am saying, and it is all because I am twenty-two, damn it.”

      “Oh, mercy on us, why?”

      “You ask why? Anyone who is twenty-two, you know, has it written in his face; as I had, for instance, when I bounced out just now in the middle of the room, or as when I stand before you now... It’s a damnable age!”

      “Oh, no, no!” answered Nastenka, hardly able to restrain her laughter. “I am sure that you are kind and nice and clever, and I say that sincerely, I do really! But... you are only very vain. You may get over that in time.”

      “I fancy I am only as vain as I ought to be.”

      “Oh, no. Think how embarrassed you were just now, and what for? Because you stumbled as you came in!... What right had you to turn into ridicule your good generous uncle who has done you so much kindness? Why did you try to turn the laugh against him when you were laughable yourself? That was horrid, shameful! It does not do you credit, and I must own I disliked you very much at that minute, so there!”

      “That’s true! I was a blockhead! more than that—I did a mean thing! You noticed it, and that is my punishment. Abuse me, laugh at me, but listen; perhaps you will change your opinion of me in the end,” I added, carried away by a strange feeling. “You know so little of me as yet; afterwards when you know more of me, then... perhaps...”

      “For God’s sake let us stop this conversation!” cried Nastenka, with visible impatience.

      “Very well, very well, let us stop! But... where can I see you?”

      “Where can you see me?”

      “Why, you know, this cannot be the last word we have to say to each other, Nastasya Yevgrafovna! For God’s sake, let me meet you again to-day, for instance. But it’s already getting dark. So if it is anyhow possible let it be tomorrow early, I will ask to be called earlier on purpose. You know there’s an arbour over there by the pond. You see, I remember it, I know the way. I used to stay here when I was little.”

      “Meet you! What for? Why, we are talking now.”

      “But I know nothing yet, Nastasya Yevgrafovna, I will first find out everything from my uncle. Why, he is bound to tell me everything now. And then, perhaps, I shall have something very important to tell you....”

      “No, no! You mustn’t, you mustn’t!” cried Nastenka. “Let us end it all at once now, so that we may never think of it again. And don’t go to that arbour for nothing; I assure you I shall not go. And please put all this nonsense out of your head—I beg you in earnest....”

      “So then uncle has behaved like a madman to me!” I cried in an excess of insufferable vexation. “Why did he send for me? But listen, what is that noise?”

      We were close to the house; from the open windows came the sounds of shrieking and extraordinary outcries.

      “My God!” she said, turning pale, “again! I foresaw it would be so!”

      “You foresaw it? Nastasya Yevgrafovna, one more question. Of course I have not the least right to do so, but I venture to put this last question to you for the good of us all. Tell me— and I will keep it secret to the grave—tell me frankly: is my uncle in love with you or not?”

      “Oh! Please, please put that nonsense out of your head once for all,” she cried, flushing crimson with anger. “And you, too! If he were in love with me, he wouldn’t have wanted to have married me to you,” she added with a bitter smile. “And what put that idea into your head? Don’t you know what the trouble’s about? Do you hear those shouts?”

      “But... It’s Foma Fomitch....”

      “Yes, of course it is Foma Fomitch; but now the trouble is over me because they are saying the same thing as you, the same senseless thing; they, too, suspect that he is in love with me. And as I am poor and of no consequence, and as it costs nothing to throw dirt on me and they want to marry him to someone else, they are insisting that he should send me home to my father to make things sure. And when they talk to him of that he flies into a rage at once; he’s ready to tear Foma Fomitch to pieces even. They are quarrelling about that now; I feel that it is about that.”

      “So that’s the truth! So he really is going to marry that Tatyana, then.”

      “That Tatyana?”

      “Yes, that silly fool!”

      “Not a silly fool at all! She is good; you have no right to talk like that! She has a noble heart, nobler than many other people. It’s not her fault that she is unfortunate.”

      “Forgive me. Supposing you are quite right about that, yet aren’t you mistaken about the chief point? Tell me, how is it, then, that they make your father welcome, as I noticed? Why, if they were so set against you as you say and were turning you out, they would be angry with him too, and would give him a cold welcome.”

      “Why, don’t you see what my father is doing for my sake? He is playing