Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (607 page)

“It turns out though,” I thought to myself as I got into bed, “that he gave his word ‘as a nobleman’ to marry mother if she were left a widow.  He said nothing of that when he told me about Makar Ivanovitch before.”

Liza was out the whole of the following day, and when she came back, rather late, she went straight to Makar Ivanovitch.  I thought I would not go in that I might not be in their way, but soon, noticing that mother and Versilov were already there, I went in.  Liza was sitting by the old man crying on his shoulder, and he with a sorrowful face was stroking her head.

Versilov told me in my room afterwards that Prince Sergay insisted on having his way, and proposed marrying Liza at the first opportunity before his trial was over.  It was hard for Liza to make up her mind to it, though she scarcely had the right to refuse.  And indeed Makar Ivanovitch “commanded” her to be married.  Of course all this would have come about of itself, and she would certainly have been married of her own accord and without hesitation, but at the moment she had been so insulted by the man she loved, and she was so humiliated by this love even in her own eyes that it was difficult for her to decide.  But apart from her mortification there was another circumstance deterring her of which I could have no suspicion.

“Did you hear that all those young people on the Petersburg Side were arrested?” Versilov added suddenly.

“What?  Dergatchev?” I cried.

“Yes, and Vassin, too.”

I was amazed, especially to hear about Vassin.

“Why, was he mixed up in anything?  Good heavens, what will happen to them now!  And just when Liza was being so severe upon him! . . . What do you think?  What may happen to them?  It’s Stebelkov, I swear it’s Stebelkov’s doing.”

“We won’t go into it,” said Versilov, looking at me strangely (as people look at a man who has no knowledge or suspicion of something). “Who can tell what is going on among them, and who can tell what may happen to them?  I didn’t come to speak of that.  I hear you meant to go out to-morrow.  Won’t you be going to see Prince Sergay?”

“The first thing; though I must own it’s very distasteful to me.  Why, have you some message to send him?”

“No, nothing.  I shall see him myself.  I’m sorry for Liza.  And what advice can Makar Ivanovitch give her?  He knows nothing about life or about people himself.  Another thing, my dear boy” (it was a long time since he had called me “my dear boy”), “there are here too . . . certain young men . . . among whom is your old schoolfellow, Lambert . . . I fancy they are all great rascals. . . . I speak simply to warn you. . . . But, of course, it’s your business, and I have no right . . .”

“Andrey Petrovitch!” I clutched his hand, speaking without a moment’s thought and almost by inspiration as I sometimes do (the room was almost in darkness).  “Andrey Petrovitch, I have said nothing; you have seen that of course, I have been silent till now, do you know why?  To avoid knowing your secrets.  I’ve simply resolved not to know them, ever.  I’m a coward.  I’m afraid your secrets may tear you out of my heart altogether, and I don’t want that to happen.  Since it’s so, why should you know my secrets?  It doesn’t matter to you where I go.  Does it?”

“You are right; but not a word more, I beseech you!” he said, and went away.  So, by accident, we had the merest scrap of an explanation.  But he only added to my excitement on the eve of my new step in life next day, and I kept waking up all night in consequence.  But I felt quite happy.

3

Next day I went out of the house at ten o’clock in the morning, doing my utmost to steal out quietly without taking leave or saying anything.  I, so to speak, slipped out.  Why I did so I don’t know; but if even mother had seen that I was going out and spoken to me I should have answered with something spiteful.  When I found myself in the street and breathed the cold outdoor air I shuddered from an intense feeling — almost animal — which I might call “carnivorous.”  What was I going for, where was I going?  The feeling was utterly undefined and at the same time I felt frightened and delighted, both at once.

“Shall I disgrace myself to-day or not?” I thought to myself with a swagger, though I knew that the step once taken that day would be decisive, and could not be retrieved all my life.  But it’s no use talking in riddles.

I went straight to the prison to Prince Sergay.  I had received a letter for the superintendent from Tatyana Pavlovna two days before, and I met with an excellent reception.  I don’t know whether he was a good man, and it’s beside the point; but he permitted my interview with the prince and arranged that it should take place in his room, courteously giving it up for our use.  The room was the typical room of a government official of a certain standing, living in a government building — I think to describe it is unnecessary.

So it turned out that Prince Sergay and I were left alone.

He came in dressed in some sort of half-military attire, but wearing very clean linen and a dandified tie; he was washed and combed, at the same time he looked terribly thin and very yellow.  I noticed the same yellowness even in his eyes.  In fact he was so changed in appearance that I stood still in amazement.

“How you have changed!” I cried.

“That’s nothing.  Sit down, dear boy,” half-fatuously he motioned me to the armchair and sat down opposite, facing me.  “Let’s get to the point.  You see, my dear Alexey Makarovitch . . .”

“Arkady,” I corrected him.

“What?  Oh yes!  No matter!  Oh yes!”  He suddenly collected himself.  “Excuse me, my dear fellow, we’ll return to the point.”

He was, in fact, in a fearful hurry to turn to something.  He was entirely from head to foot absorbed by something; some vital idea which he wanted to formulate and expound to me.  He talked a great deal and fearfully fast, gesticulating and explaining with strained and painful effort, but for the first minute I really could make nothing of it.

“To put it briefly” (he had used this expression “To put it briefly” ten times already), “to put it briefly,” he concluded, “I troubled you yesterday, Arkady Makarovitch, and so urgently through Liza begged you to come to me, as though the place were on fire, but seeing that the essential part of the decision is bound to be momentous and conclusive for me . . .”

“Excuse me, prince,” I interrupted, “did you send me a message yesterday?  Liza said nothing to me about it.”

“What?” he cried, suddenly stopping short in extreme astonishment, almost in alarm.

“She gave me no message at all.  She came home last night so upset that she couldn’t say a word to me.”

Prince Sergay leapt up from his seat.

“Are you telling me the truth, Arkady Makarovitch?  If so this . . . this . . .”

“Why, what is there so serious about it?  Why are you so uneasy?  She simply forgot or something.”

He sat down and seemed overcome by a kind of stupor.  It seemed as though the news that Liza had given me no message had simply crushed him.  He suddenly began talking rapidly and waving his hands, and again it was fearfully difficult to follow him.

“Stay” he exclaimed suddenly, pausing and holding up his finger.  “Stay, this . . . this . . . if I’m not mistaken this is a trick! . . ,” he muttered with the grin of a maniac, “and it means that . . .”

“It means absolutely nothing,” I interposed, “and I can’t understand how such a trivial circumstance can worry you so much. . . .  Ach, prince, since that time — since that night, do you remember . . .”

“Since what night, and what of it?” he cried pettishly, evidently annoyed at my interrupting him.

“At Zerstchikov’s, where we saw each other last.  Why, before your letter. . . .  Don’t you remember you were terribly excited then, but the difference between then and now is so great that I am positively horrified when I look at you.”

“Oh yes,” he pronounced in the tone of a man of polite society, seeming suddenly to remember.  “Oh yes; that evening . . . I heard. . . .  Well, and are you better?  How are you after all that, Arkady Makarovitch? . . .  But let us return to the point. I am pursuing three aims precisely, you see; there are three problems before me, and I . . .”

He began rapidly talking again of his “chief point.”  I realized at last that I was listening to a man who ought at once to have at least a vinegar compress applied to his head, if not perhaps to be bled.  All his incoherent talk turned, of course, around his trial, and the possible issue of it, and the fact that the colonel of his regiment had visited him and given him a lengthy piece of advice about something which he had not taken, and the notes he had just lately sent to some one, and the prosecutor, and the certainty that they would deprive him of his rights as a nobleman and send him to the Northern Region of Russia, and the possibility of settling as a colonist and regaining his position, in Tashkent, and his plans for training his son (which Liza would bear him) and handing something down to him “in the wilds of Archangel, in the Holmogory.”  “I wanted your opinion, Arkady Makarovitch, believe me I so feel and value. . . .  If only you knew, if only you knew, Arkady Makarovitch, my dear fellow, my brother, what Liza means to me, what she has meant to me here, now, all this time!” he shouted, suddenly clutching at his head with both hands.

“Sergay Petrovitch, surely you won’t sacrifice her by taking her away with you!  To the Holmogory!” I could not refrain from exclaiming.  Liza’s fate, bound to this maniac for life, suddenly, and as it were for the first time, rose clearly before my imagination.  He looked at me, got up again, took one step, turned and sat down again, still holding his head in his hands.

“I’m always dreaming of spiders!” he said suddenly.

“You are terribly agitated.  I should advise you to go to bed, prince, and to ask for a doctor at once.”

“No, excuse me — of that afterwards.  I asked you to come and see me chiefly to discuss our marriage.  The marriage, as you know, is to take place here, at the church.  I’ve said so already.  Permission has been given for all this, and, in fact, they encourage it. . . .  As for Liza . . .”

“Prince, have pity on Liza, my dear fellow!” I cried.  “Don’t torture her, now, at least, don’t be jealous!”

“What!” he cried, staring at me intently with eyes almost starting out of his head, and his whole face distorted into a sort of broad grin of senseless inquiry.  It was evident that the words “don’t be jealous” had for some reason made a fearful impression on him.

“Forgive me, prince, I spoke without thinking.  Oh prince, I have lately come to know an old man, my nominal father. . . .  Oh, if you could see him you would be calmer. . . .  Liza thinks so much of him, too.”

“Ah, yes, Liza . . . ah, yes, is that your father?  Or pardon, mon cher, something of the sort . . . I remember . . . she told me . . . an old man. . . .  I’m sure of it, I’m sure of it.  I knew an old man, too . . . mais passons. . . .  The chief point is to make clear what’s essential at the moment, we must . . .”

I got up to go away.  It was painful to me to look at him.

“I don’t understand!” he pronounced sternly and with dignity, seeing that I had got up to go.

“It hurts me to look at you,” I said.

“Arkady Makarovitch, one word, one word more!”  He clutched me by the shoulder with quite a different expression and gesture, and sat me down in the armchair.  “You’ve heard about those . . . you understand?” he bent down to me.

“Oh yes, Dergatchev.  No doubt it’s Stebelkov’s doing!” I cried impulsively.

“Yes, Stebelkov.  And . . . you don’t know?”

He broke off and again he stared at me with the same wide eyes and the same spasmodic, senselessly questioning grin, which grew broader and broader.  His face gradually grew paler.  I felt a sudden shudder.  I remembered Versilov’s expression when he had told me of Vassin’s arrest the day before.

“Oh, is it possible?” I cried, panic-stricken.

“You see, Arkady Makarovitch, that’s why I sent to you to explain . . . I wanted . . ,” he began whispering rapidly.

“It was you who informed against Vassin!” I cried.

“No; you see, there was a manuscript.  Vassin gave it only a few days ago to Liza . . . to take care of.  And she left it here for me to look at, and then it happened that they quarrelled next day . . .”

“You gave the manuscript to the authorities!”

“Arkady Makarovitch, Arkady Makarovitch!”

“And so you,” I screamed, leaping up, emphasizing every word, “without any other motive, without any other object, simply because poor Vassin was YOUR RIVAL, simply out of jealousy, you gave up the MANUSCRIPT ENTRUSTED TO LIZA . . . gave it up to whom?  To whom?  To the Public Prosecutor?”

But he did not answer, and he hardly could have answered, for he stood before me like a statue, still with the same sickly smile and the same fixed look.  But suddenly the door opened and Liza came in.  She almost swooned when she saw us together.

“You’re here?  So you’re here?” she cried, her face suddenly distorted, seizing my hand.  “So you . . . KNOW?”

But she could read in my face already that I “knew.”  With a swift irresistible impulse I threw my arms round her and held her close!  And at that minute for the first time I grasped in all its intensity the hopeless, endless misery which shrouded in unbroken darkness the whole life of this . . . wilful seeker after suffering.

“Is it possible to talk to him now,” she said, tearing herself away from me.  “Is it possible to be with him?  Why are you here?  Look at him! look at him!  And can one, can one judge him?”

Her face was full of infinite suffering and infinite compassion as exclaiming this she motioned towards the unhappy wretch.

He was sitting in the armchair with his face hidden in his hands.  And she was right.  He was a man in a raging fever and not responsible.  They put him in the hospital that morning, and by the evening he had brain fever.

4

Leaving Prince Sergay with Liza I went off about one o’clock to my old lodging.  I forgot to say that it was a dull, damp day, with a thaw beginning, and a warm wind that would upset the nerves of an elephant.  The master of the house met me with a great display of delight, and a great deal of fuss and bustle, which I particularly dislike, especially at such moments.  I received this drily, and went straight to my room, but he followed me, and though he did not venture to question me, yet his face was beaming with curiosity, and at the same time he looked as though he had a right to be curious.  I had to behave politely for my own sake; but though it was so essential to me to find out something (and I knew I should learn it), I yet felt it revolting to begin cross-examining him.  I inquired after the health of his wife, and we went in to see her.  The latter met me deferentially indeed, but with a businesslike and taciturn manner; this to some extent softened my heart.  To be brief, I learned on this occasion some very wonderful things.