The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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      CHAPTER II

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       HE LITERALLY FLEW in with a beaming face, gay and joyous. It was evident that he had spent those four days gaily and happily. One could see from his face that he had something he was longing to tell us.

      “Here I am!” he cried out, addressing us all, “I, who ought to have been here before anyone. But I’ll tell you everything directly, everything, everything! I hadn’t time to say two words to you this morning, daddy, and I had so much to say to you. It’s only in his sweet moments he lets me speak to him like that,” he interrupted himself, addressing me. “I assure you at other times he forbids it! And I’ll tell you what he does. He begins to use my full name. But from this day I want him always to have good minutes, and I shall manage it! I’ve become quite a different person in these last four days, utterly, utterly different, and I’ll tell you all about it. But that will be presently. The great thing now is that she’s here. Her she is! Again! Natasha, darling, how are you, my angel!” he said, sitting down beside her and greedily kissing her hand. How I’ve been missing you all this time! But there it is! I couldn’t help it! I wasn’t able to manage it, my darling! You look a little thinner, you’ve grown so pale….”

      He rapturously covered her hands with kisses, and looked eagerly at her with his beautiful eyes, as though he could never look enough. I glanced at Natasha, and from her face I guessed that our thoughts were the same: he was absolutely innocent. And indeed when and how could this innocent be to blame? A bright flush suddenly overspread Natasha’s pale cheeks, as though all the blood had suddenly rushed from her heart to her head. Her eyes flashed and she looked proudly at Prince Valkovsky.

      “But where … have you been so many days?” she said in a suppressed and breaking voice. She was breathing in hard uneven gasps. My God, how she loved him!”

      “To be sure I must have seemed to blame, and it’s not only seeming, indeed! Of course I’ve been to blame, and I know it myself, and I’ve come knowing it. Katya told me yesterday to-day that no woman could forgive such negligence (she knows all that happened here on Tuesday; I told her next day): I argued with her, I maintained that there is such a woman and her name is Natasha, and that perhaps there was only one other woman equal to her in the world and that was Katya; and I came here of course knowing I’d won the day. Could an angel like you refuse to forgive? ‘He’s not come, so something must have kept him. It’s not that he doesn’t love me!’ — that’s what my Natasha will think! As though one could leave off loving you! As though it were possible! My whole heart has been aching for you. I’m to blame all the same. But when you know all about it you’ll be the first to stand up for me. I’ll tell you all about it directly; I want to open my heart to you all; that’s what I’ve come for. I wanted to fly to you to-day (I was free for half a minute) to give you a flying kiss, but I didn’t succeed even in that. Katya sent for me on important business. That was before you saw me in the carriage, father. That was the second time I was driving to Katya after a second note. Messengers are running all day long with notes between the two houses. Ivan Petrovitch, I only had time to read your note last night and you are quite right in all you say in it. But what could I do? It was a physical impossibility! And so I thought ‘tomorrow evening I’ll set it all straight,’ for it was impossible for me not to come to you this evening, Natasha.”

      “What note?” asked Natasha.

      “He went to my rooms and didn’t find me. Of course he pitched into me roundly in the letter he left for me for not having been to see you. And he’s quite right. It was yesterday.”

      Natasha glanced at me.

      “But if you had time to be with Katerina Fyodorovna from morning till night….” Prince Valkovsky began.

      “I know, I know what you’ll say,” Alyosha interrupted. “If I could be at Katya’s I ought to have had twice as much reason to be here. I quite agree with you and will add for myself not twice as much reason but a million times as much. But, to begin with, there are strange unexpected events in life which upset everything and turn it topsy-turvy, and it’s just things of that sort that have been happening to me. I tell you I’ve become an utterly different person during the last days. New all over to the tips of my fingers. So they must have been important events!”

      “Oh, dear me, but what has happened to you? Don’t keep us in suspense, please!” cried Natasha, smiling at Alyosha’s heat.

      He really was rather absurd, he talked very fast, his words rushed out pell-mell in a quick, continual patter. He was longing to tell us everything, to speak, to talk. But as he talked he still held Natasha’s hand and continually raised it to his lips as though he could never kiss it enough.

      “That’s the whole point — what has happened to me,” Alyosha went on. “Ah, my friends, the things I’ve been seeing and doing, the people I’ve got to know! To begin with Katya! Such a perfect creature! I didn’t know her a bit, not a bit till now. Even the other day, that Tuesday when I СКАЧАТЬ