Weary and exhausted I went back to the Masloboevs’. The same answer, no one had come, and they had not returned home themselves.
My note lay on the table.
What was I to do?
In deadly dejection I returned home late in the evening.
I ought to have been at Natasha’s that evening; she had asked me in the morning.
But I had not even tasted food that day. The thought of Nellie set my whole soul in a turmoil.
“What does it mean?” I wondered.
“Could it be some strange consequence of her illness?
Wasn’t she mad, or going out of her mind?
But, good God, where was she now? Where should I look for her?”
I had hardly said this to myself when I caught sight of Nellie a few steps from me on the Vm Bridge.
She was standing under a street lamp and she did not see me.
I was on the point of running to her but I checked myself.
“What can she be doing here now?” I wondered in perplexity, and convinced that now I should not lose her, I resolved to wait and watch her.
Ten minutes passed. She was still standing, watching the passersby.
At last a welldressed old gentleman passed and Nellie went up to him. Without stopping he took something out of his pocket and gave it to her.
She curtsied to him.
I cannot describe what I felt at that instant.
It sent an agonizing pang to my heart, as if something precious, something I loved, had fondled and cherished, was disgraced and spat upon at that minute before my very eyes. At the same time I felt tears dropping.
Yes, tears for poor Nellie, though at the same time I felt great indignation; she was not begging through need; she was not forsaken, not abandoned by someone to the caprice of destiny. She was not escaping from cruel oppressors, but from friends who loved and cherished her.
It was as though she wanted to shock or alarm someone by her exploits, as though she were showing off before someone.
But there was something secret maturing in her heart.... Yes, my old friend was right; she had been illtreated; her hurt could not be healed, and she seemed purposely trying to aggravate her wound by this mysterious behaviour, this mistrustfulness of us all; as though she enjoyed her own pain by this egoism of suffering, if I may so express it.
This aggravation of suffering and this rebelling in it I could understand; it is the enjoyment of man, of the insulted and injured, oppressed by destiny, and smarting under the sense of its injustice.
But of what injustice in us could Nellie complain?
She seemed trying to astonish and alarm us by her exploits, her caprices and wild pranks, as though she really were asserting herself against us ... But no!
Now she was alone. None of us could see that she was begging.
Could she possibly have found enjoyment in it on her own account?
Why did she want charity? What need had she of money?
After receiving the gift she left the bridge and walked to the brightly lighted window of a shop.
There she proceeded to count her gains. I was standing a dozen paces from her.
She had a fair amount of money in her hand already. She had evidently been begging since the morning.
Closing her hand over it she crossed the road and went into a small fancy shop.
I went up at once to the door of the shop, which stood wide open, and looked to see what she was doing there.
I saw that she laid the money on the counter and was handed a cup, a plain teacup, very much like the one she had broken that morning, to show Ichmenyev and me how wicked she was.
The cup was worth about fourpence, perhaps even less.
The shopman wrapped it in paper, tied it up and gave it to Nellie, who walked hurriedly out of the shop, looking satisfied.
“Nellie!” I cried when she was close to me, “Nellie!”
She started, glanced at me, the cup slipped from her hands, fell on the pavement and was broken.
Nellie was pale; but looking at me and realizing that I had seen and understood everything she suddenly blushed. In that blush could be detected an intolerable, agonizing shame.
I took her hand and led her home. We had not far to go.
We did not utter one word on the way.
On reaching home I sat down. Nellie stood before me, brooding and confused, as pale as before, with her eyes fixed on the floor.
She could not look at me.
“Nellie, you were begging?”
“Yes,” she whispered and her head drooped lower than ever.
“You wanted to get money to buy a cup for the one broken this morning?
“Yes . . .”
“But did I blame you, did I scold you, about that cup?
Surely, Nellie, you must see what naughtiness there is in your behaviour?
Is it right?