“No, he didn’t love me.... He was wicked.”
A look of pain came into her face.
“But we mustn’t judge him too harshly, Nellie, I think he had grown quite childish with age.
He seemed out of his mind when he died.
I told you how he died.”
“Yes. But he had only begun to be quite forgetful in the last month.
He would sit here all day long, and if I didn’t come to him he would sit on for two or three days without eating or drinking.
He used to be much better before.”
“What do you mean by ‘before’?”
“Before mother died.”
“Then it was you brought him food and drink, Nellie?”
“Yes, I used to.”
“Where did you get it? From Mme. Bubnov?”
“No, I never took anything from Bubnov,” she said emphatically, with a shaking voice.
“Where did you get it? You had nothing, had you?”
Nellie turned fearfully pale and said nothing; she bent a long, long look upon me.
“I used to beg in the streets.... When I had five kopecks I used to buy him bread and snuff. . . .”
“And he let you!
Nellie!
Nellie!”
“At first I did it without telling him, But when he found out he used to send me out himself.
I used to stand on the bridge and beg of passersby, and he used to walk up and down near the bridge, and when he saw me given anything he used to rush at me and take the money, as though I wanted to hide it from him, and were not getting it for him.”
As she said this she smiled a sarcastic, bitter smile.
“That was all when mother was dead,” she added.
“Then he seemed to have gone quite out of his mind.”
“So he must have loved your mother very much.
How was it he didn’t live with her?
“No, he didn’t love her.... He was wicked and didn’t forgive her ... like that wicked old man yesterday,” she said quietly, almost in a whisper, and grew paler and paler.
I started.
The plot of a whole drama seemed to flash before my eyes.
That poor woman dying in a cellar at the coffinmaker’s, her orphan child who visited from time to time the old grandfather who had cursed her mother, the queer crazy old fellow who had been dying in the confectioner’s shop after his dog’s death.
“And Azorka used to be mother’s dog,” said Nellie suddenly, smiling at some reminiscence.
“Grandfather used to be very fond of mother once, and when mother went away from him she left Azorka behind.
And that’s why he was so fond of Azorka. He didn’t forgive mother, but when the dog died he died too,” Nellie added harshly, and the smile vanished from her face.
“What was he in old days, Nellie?” I asked her after a brief pause.
“He used to be rich. . . . I don’t know what he was,” she answered.
“He had some sort of factory. So mother told me.
At first she used to think I was too little and didn’t tell me everything.
She used to kiss me and say, ‘You’ll know everything, the time will come when you’ll know everything, poor, unhappy child!’
She was always calling me poor and unhappy.
And sometimes at night when she thought I was asleep (though I was only pretending to be asleep on purpose) she used to be always crying over me, she would kiss me and say ‘poor, unhappy child’!”
“What did your mother die of?”
“Of consumption; it’s six weeks ago.”
“And you do remember the time when your grandfather was rich?”
“But I wasn’t born then.
Mother went away from grandfather before I was born.”
“With whom did she go?
“I don’t know,” said Nellie softly, as though hesitating.
“She went abroad and I was born there.”
“Abroad?