Chapter Chapter 5 · MORNING

. MORNING

My night ended with the morning. It was a wet day. The rain was falling

and beating disconsolately upon my window pane; it was dark in the room

and grey outside. My head ached and I was giddy; fever was stealing over

my limbs.

"There's a letter for you, sir; the postman brought it," Matrona said

stooping over me.

"A letter? From whom?" I cried jumping up from my chair.

"I don't know, sir, better look--maybe it is written there whom it is

from."

I broke the seal. It was from her!

* * * * *

"Oh, forgive me, forgive me! I beg you on my knees to forgive me! I

deceived you and myself. It was a dream, a mirage.... My heart aches for

you to-day; forgive me, forgive me!

"Don't blame me, for I have not changed to you in the least. I told you

that I would love you, I love you now, I more than love you. Oh, my God!

If only I could love you both at once! Oh, if only you were he!"

["Oh, if only he were you," echoed in my mind. I remembered your words,

Nastenka!]

"God knows what I would do for you now! I know that you are sad and

dreary. I have wounded you, but you know when one loves a wrong is soon

forgotten. And you love me.

"Thank you, yes, thank you for that love! For it will live in my memory

like a sweet dream which lingers long after awakening; for I shall

remember for ever that instant when you opened your heart to me like a

brother and so generously accepted the gift of my shattered heart to

care for it, nurse it, and heal it.... If you forgive me, the memory of

you will be exalted by a feeling of everlasting gratitude which will

never be effaced from my soul.... I will treasure that memory: I will be

true to it, I will not betray it, I will not betray my heart: it is too

constant. It returned so quickly yesterday to him to whom it has always

belonged.

"We shall meet, you will come to us, you will not leave us, you will be

for ever a friend, a brother to me. And when you see me you will give me

your hand ... yes? You will give it to me, you have forgiven me, haven't

you? You love me _as before_?

"Oh, love me, do not forsake me, because I love you so at this moment,

because I am worthy of your love, because I will deserve it ... my dear!

Next week I am to be married to him. He has come back in love, he has

never forgotten me. You will not be angry at my writing about him. But I

want to come and see you with him; you will like him, won't you?

"Forgive me, remember and love your

"NASTENKA."

* * * * *

I read that letter over and over again for a long time; tears gushed to

my eyes. At last it fell from my hands and I hid my face.

"Dearie! I say, dearie----" Matrona began.

"What is it, Matrona?"

"I have taken all the cobwebs off the ceiling; you can have a wedding or

give a party."

I looked at Matrona. She was still a hearty, _youngish_ old woman, but I

don't know why all at once I suddenly pictured her with lustreless eyes,

a wrinkled face, bent, decrepit.... I don't know why I suddenly pictured

my room grown old like Matrona. The walls and the floors looked

discoloured, everything seemed dingy; the spiders' webs were thicker

than ever. I don't know why, but when I looked out of the window it

seemed to me that the house opposite had grown old and dingy too, that

the stucco on the columns was peeling off and crumbling, that the

cornices were cracked and blackened, and that the walls, of a vivid deep

yellow, were patchy.

Either the sunbeams suddenly peeping out from the clouds for a moment

were hidden again behind a veil of rain, and everything had grown dingy

again before my eyes; or perhaps the whole vista of my future flashed

before me so sad and forbidding, and I saw myself just as I was now,

fifteen years hence, older, in the same room, just as solitary, with the

same Matrona grown no cleverer for those fifteen years.

But to imagine that I should bear you a grudge, Nastenka! That I should

cast a dark cloud over your serene, untroubled happiness; that by my

bitter reproaches I should cause distress to your heart, should poison

it with secret remorse and should force it to throb with anguish at the

moment of bliss; that I should crush a single one of those tender

blossoms which you have twined in your dark tresses when you go with him

to the altar.... Oh never, never! May your sky be clear, may your sweet

smile be bright and untroubled, and may you be blessed for that moment

of blissful happiness which you gave to another, lonely and grateful

heart!

My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of

a man's life?