Poor Folk: Chapter 21

Chapter 21

July 27th.

MY DEAREST MAKAR ALEXIEVITCH,--Your latest conduct and letters
had frightened me, and left me thunderstruck and plunged in
doubt, until what you have said about Thedor explained the
situation. Why despair and go into such frenzies, Makar
Alexievitch? Your explanations only partially satisfy me. Perhaps
I did wrong to insist upon accepting a good situation when it was
offered me, seeing that from my last experience in that way I
derived a shock which was anything but a matter for jesting. You
say also that your love for me has compelled you to hide yourself
in retirement. Now, how much I am indebted to you I realised when
you told me that you were spending for my benefit the sum which
you are always reported to have laid by at your bankers; but, now
that I have learnED that you never possessed such a fund, but
that, on hearing of my destitute plight, and being moved by it,
you decided to spend upon me the whole of your salary--even to
forestall it--and when I had fallen ill, actually to sell your
clothes--when I learnED all this I found myself placed in the
harassing position of not knowing how to accept it all, nor what
to think of it. Ah, Makar Alexievitch! You ought to have stopped
at your first acts of charity--acts inspired by sympathy and the
love of kinsfolk, rather than have continued to squander your
means upon what was unnecessary. Yes, you have betrayed our
friendship, Makar Alexievitch, in that you have not been open
with me; and, now that I see that your last coin has been spent
upon dresses and bon-bons and excursions and books and visits to
the theatre for me, I weep bitter tears for my unpardonable
improvidence in having accepted these things without giving so
much as a thought to your welfare. Yes, all that you have done to
give me pleasure has become converted into a source of grief, and
left behind it only useless regret. Of late I have remarked that
you were looking depressed; and though I felt fearful that
something unfortunate was impending, what has happened would
otherwise never have entered my head. To think that your better
sense should so play you false, Makar Alexievitch! What will
people think of you, and say of you? Who will want to know you?
You whom, like everyone else, I have valued for your goodness of
heart and modesty and good sense--YOU, I say, have now given way
to an unpleasant vice of which you seem never before to have been
guilty. What were my feelings when Thedora informed me that you
had been discovered drunk in the street, and taken home by the
police? Why, I felt petrified with astonishment--although, in
view of the fact that you had failed me for four days, I had been
expecting some such extraordinary occurrence. Also, have you
thought what your superiors will say of you when they come to
learn the true reason of your absence? You say that everyone is
laughing at you, that every one has learnED of the bond which
exists between us, and that your neighbours habitually refer to
me with a sneer. Pay no attention to this, Makar Alexievitch; for
the love of God, be comforted. Also, the incident between you and
the officers has much alarmed me, although I had heard certain
rumours concerning it. Pray explain to me what it means. You
write, too, that you have been afraid to be open with me, for the
reason that your confessions might lose you my friendship. Also,
you say that you are in despair at the thought of being unable to
help me in my illness, owing to the fact that you have sold
everything which might have maintained me, and preserved me in
sickness, as well as that you have borrowed as much as it is
possible for you to borrow, and are daily experiencing
unpleasantness with your landlady. Well, in failing to reveal all
this to me you chose the worse course. Now, however, I know all.
You have forced me to recognise that I have been the cause of
your unhappy plight, as well as that my own conduct has brought
upon myself a twofold measure of sorrow. The fact leaves me
thunderstruck, Makar Alexievitch. Ah, friend, an infectious
disease is indeed a misfortune, for now we poor and miserable
folk must perforce keep apart from one another, lest the
infection be increased. Yes, I have brought upon you calamities
which never before in your humble, solitary life you had
experienced. This tortures and exhausts me more than I can tell
to think of.

Write to me quite frankly. Tell me how you came to embark upon
such a course of conduct. Comfort, oh, comfort me if you can. It
is not self-love that prompts me to speak of my own comforting,
but my friendship and love for you, which will never fade from my
heart. Goodbye. I await your answer with impatience. You have
thought but poorly of me, Makar Alexievitch.--Your friend and
lover,

BARBARA DOBROSELOVA.

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