“It’s a stupid rumour,” I answered, though I could not help being struck by the persistence of this rumour.
But what she had told me of her husband’s going over his family records was interesting.
He had never boasted of his pedigree before.
“It’s all the cruelhearted villains!” Anna Andreyevna went on. “Well, tell me about my darling. Is she grieving and crying?
Ach, it’s time you went to her! (Matryona!
She’s a saucy baggage.) Have they insulted her?
Tell me, Vanya?”
What could I answer her?
The poor lady was in tears.
I asked her what was the fresh trouble of which she had been about to tell me just now.
“Ach, my dear boy! As though we hadn’t trouble enough! It seems our cup was not full enough!
You remember, my dear, or perhaps you don’t remember, I had a little locket set in gold – a keepsake, and in it a portrait of Natasha as a child. She was eight years old then, my little angel.
We ordered it from a travelling artist at the time. But I see you’ve forgotten!
He was a good artist. He painted her as a cupid. She’d such fair hair in those days, all fluffy. He painted her in a little muslin smock, so that her little body shows through, and she looked so pretty in it you couldn’t take your eves off her.
I begged the artist to put little wings on her, but he wouldn’t agree.
Well after all our dreadful troubles, I took it out of its case and hung it on a string round my neck; so I’ve been wearing it beside my cross, though I was afraid he might see it.
You know he told me at the time to get rid of all her things out of the house, or burn them, so that nothing might remind us of her.
But I must have her portrait to look at, anyway; sometimes I cry, looking at it, and it does me good. And another time when I’m alone I keep kissing it as though I were kissing her, herself. I call her fond names, and make the sign of the cross over it every night.
I talk aloud to her when I’m alone, ask her a question and fancy she has answered, and ask her another.
Och, Vanya, dear, it makes me sad to talk about it!
Well, so I was glad he knew nothing of the locket and hadn’t noticed it. But yesterday morning the locket was gone. The string hung loose. It must have worn through and I’d dropped it.
I was aghast.
I hunted and hunted high and lowit wasn’t to be found.
Not a sign of it anywhere, it was lost!
And where could it have dropped?
I made sure I must have lost it in bed, and rummaged through everything. Nowhere!
If it had come off and dropped, some one might have picked it up, and who could have found it except him or Matryona?
One can’t think of it’s being Matryona, she’s devoted to me heart and soul (Matryona, are you going to bring that samovar?).
I keep thinking what will happen if he’s found it!
I sit so sad and keep crying and crying and can’t keep back my tears.
And Nikolay Sergeyitch is kinder and kinder to me as though he knows what I am grieving about, and is sorry for me.
‘Well I’ve been wondering, how could he tell?
Hasn’t he perhaps really found the locket and thrown it out of the window?
In anger he’s capable of it, you know. He’s thrown it out and now he’s sad about it himself and sorry he threw it out.
I’ve been already with Matryona to look under the window – I found nothing.
Every trace has vanished.
I’ve been crying all night.
It’s the first night I haven’t made the sign of the cross over her.
Och, it’s a bad sign, Ivan Petrovitch, it’s a bad sign, it’s an omen of evil; for two days I’ve been crying without stopping.
I’ve been expecting you, my dear, as an angel of God, if only to relieve my heart . . .” and the poor lady wept bitterly.
“Oh yes, I forgot to tell you,” she began suddenly, pleased at remembering. “Have you heard anything from him about an orphan girl?”
“Yes, Anna Andreyevna. He told me you had both thought of it, and agreed to take a poor girl, an orphan, to bring up.
Is that true?”
“I’ve never thought of it, my dear boy, I’ve never thought of it; I don’t want any orphan girl.
She’ll remind me of our bitter lot, our misfortune!
I want no one but Natasha.
She was my only child, and she shall remain the only one.
But what does it mean that he should have thought of an orphan?
What do you think, Ivan Petrovitch?
Is it to comfort me, do you suppose, looking at my tears, or to drive his own daughter out of his mind altogether, and attach himself to another child?