“Of course he ought!
But how’s one to force him to?
Frighten him?
Not a bit of it, he won’t be frightened; you see, I’ve taken the money.
I admitted to him myself that all he had to fear from me was only worth two thousand roubles. I fixed that price on myself!
How’s one going to frighten him now?”
“And can it be that everything’s lost for Nellie?” I cried, almost in despair.
“Not a bit of it! “ cried Masloboev hotly, starting up.
“No, I won’t let him off like that.
I shall begin all over again, Vanya. I’ve made up my mind to.
What if I have taken two thousand?
Hang it all!
I took it for the insult, because he cheated me, the rascal; he must have been laughing at me.
He cheated me and laughed at me, too!
No, I’m not going to let myself be laughed at.... Now, I shall start with Nellie, Vanya.
From things I’ve noticed I’m perfectly sure that she has the key to the whole situation.
She knows all – all about it! Her mother told her.
In delirium, in despondency, she might well have told her.
She had no one to complain to. Nellie was at hand, so she told Nellie.
And maybe we may come upon some documents,” he added gleefully, rubbing his hands.
“You understand now, Vanya, why I’m always hanging about here?
In the first place, because I’m so fond of you, of course; but chiefly to keep a watch on Nellie; and another thing, Vanya, whether you like it or not, you must help me, for you have an influence on Nellie!...”
“To be sure I will, I swear!” I cried. “And I hope, Masloboev, that you’ll do your best for Nellie’s sake, for the sake of the poor, injured orphan, and not only for your own advantage.”
“What difference does it make to you whose advantage I do my best for, you blessed innocent?
As long as it’s done, that’s what matters!
Of course it’s for the orphan’s sake, that’s only common humanity.
But don’t you judge me too finally, Vanya, if I do think of myself.
I’m a poor man, and he mustn’t dare to insult the poor.
He’s robbing me of my own, and he’s cheated me into the bargain, the scoundrel.
So am I to consider a swindler like that, to your thinking?
Morgen fruh!”
. . . But our flower festival did not come off next day.
Nellie was worse and could not leave her room.
And she never did leave that room again.
She died a fortnight later.
In that fortnight of her last agony she never quite came to herself, or escaped from her strange fantasies.
Her intellect was, as it were, clouded.
She was firmly convinced up to the day of her death that her grandfather was calling her and was angry with her for not coming, was rapping with his stick at her, and was telling her to go begging to get bread and snuff for him.
She often began crying in her sleep, and when she waked said that she had seen her mother.
Only at times she seemed fully to regain her faculties.
Once we were left alone together. She turned to me and clutched my hand with her thin, feverishly hot little hand.
“Vanya,” she said, “when I die, marry Natasha.”
I believe this idea had been constantly in her mind for a long time.
I smiled at her without speaking.
Seeing my smile, she smiled too; with a mischievous face she shook her little finger at me and at once began kissing me.
On an exquisite summer evening three days before her death she asked us to draw the blinds and open the windows in her bedroom.
The windows looked into the garden. She gazed a long while at the thick, green foliage, at the setting sun, and suddenly asked the others to leave us alone.
“Vanya,” she said in a voice hardly audible, for she was very weak by now,
“I shall die soon, very soon. I should like you to remember me.
I’ll leave you this as a keepsake.” (And she showed me a little bag which hung with a cross on her breast.)