For a long time we could not soothe her; at last we succeeded in getting her to bed; she seemed to be in the delirium of brainfever.
“Doctor, what’s the matter with her? I asked with a sinking heart.
“Wait a little,” he answered, “I must watch the attack more closely and then form my conclusions... but speaking generally things are very bad.
It may even end in brainfever ... But we will take measures however ...”
A new idea had dawned upon me.
I begged the doctor to remain with Natasha for another two or three hours, and made him promise not to leave her for one minute.
He promised me and I ran home.
Nellie was sitting in a corner, depressed and uneasy, and she looked at me strangely.
I must have looked strange myself.
I took her hand, sat down on the sofa, took her on my knee, and kissed her warmly.
She flushed.
“Nellie, my angel!” I said to her, “would you like to be our salvation?
Would you like to save us all?”
She looked at me in amazement.
“Nellie, you are my one hope now!
There is a father, you’ve seen him and know him. He has cursed his daughter, and he came yesterday to ask you to take his daughter’s place.
Now she, Natasha (and you said you loved her), has been abandoned by the man she loved, for whose sake she left her father.
He’s the son of that prince who came, do you remember one evening, to see me, and found you alone, and you ran away from him and were ill afterwards ... you know him, don’t you?
He’s a wicked man!”
“I know,” said Nellie, trembling and turning pale.
“Yes, he’s a wicked man.
He hates Natasha because his son Alyosha wanted to marry her.
Alyosha went away today, and an hour later his father went to Natasha and insulted her, and threatened to put her in a penitentiary, and laughed at her.
Do you understand me, Nellie?”
Her black eyes flashed, but she dropped them at once.
“I understand,” she whispered, hardly audibly.
“Now Natasha is alone, ill. I’ve left her with our doctor while I ran to you myself.
Listen, Nellie, let us go to Natasha’s father. You don’t like him, you didn’t want to go to him. But now let us go together.
We’ll go in and I’ll tell them that you want to stay with them now and to take the place of their daughter Natasha.
Her father is ill now, because he has cursed Natasha, and because Alyosha’s father sent him a deadly insult the other day.
He won’t hear of his daughter now, but he loves her, he loves her, Nellie, and wants to make peace with her. I know that. I know all that!
That is so.
Do you hear, Nellie?
“I hear,” she said in the same whisper.
I spoke to her with my tears flowing.
She looked timidly at me.
“Do you believe it?”
“Yes.”
“So I’ll go in with you, I’ll take you in and they’ll receive you, make much of you and begin to question you.
Then I’ll turn the conversation so that they will question you about your past life; about your mother and your grandfather.
Tell them, Nellie, everything, just as you told it to me.
Tell them simply, and don’t keep anything back.
Tell them how your mother was abandoned by a wicked man, how she died in a cellar at Mme. Bubnov’s, how your mother and you used to go about the streets begging, what she said, and what she asked you to do when she was dying... Tell them at the same time about your grandfather, how he wouldn’t forgive your mother, and how she sent you to him just before her death how she died.
Tell them everything, everything!
And when you tell them all that, the old man will feel it all, in his heart, too.
You see, he knows Alyosha has left her today and she is left insulted and injured, alone and helpless, with no one to protect her from the insults of her enemy.
He knows all that . . . Nellie, save Natasha!
Will you go?”
“Yes.” she answered, drawing a painful breath, and she looked at me with a strange, prolonged gaze. There was something like reproach in that gaze, and I felt it in my heart.
But I could not give up my idea.