Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (613 page)

“There is only one serious objection,” I mused, as I went on again.  “Oh, of course, the trivial difference in our ages is no real obstacle, but she is such an aristocrat and I am simply Dolgoruky!  It’s awfully horrid!  H’m!  Couldn’t Versilov marry mother and petition the government for me to be legitimatized as a reward for his services, so to say. . . .  He’s been in the service, so must have rendered services; he was a mediator at the emancipation. . . . Oh, damn it all, how loathsome.”

I suddenly uttered this exclamation and stood still for the third time, but this time I felt as though I had been crushed to the earth.  The agonizing feeling of humiliation from the consciousness that I could desire anything so shameful as the change of my surname by being legitimized, this treachery to my whole childhood, all this in one flash shattered my previous mood, and all my joyfulness was dissipated like smoke.  “No, I’ll never tell that to anyone,” I thought, turning crimson:  “I’ve sunk so low because I’m in love and stupid. . . .  No, if Lambert is right in anything, it is that nowadays, in our age, the man is what matters, and afterwards his money.  Or rather not his money, but rather his property.  With a capital like that I would throw myself into the ‘idea,’ and all Russia would ring with my fame in ten years, and I would revenge myself on them all.  And there’s no need to stand on ceremony with her.  Lambert’s right there.  She’ll be frightened and simply marry me.  She’ll consent in the simplest and most abject way, and marry me.”  “You don’t know, you don’t know in what little back room that happened!”  I remembered Lambert’s words.  “That’s true,” I went on musing:  “Lambert’s right in everything, a thousand times more right than Versilov and I and all the idealists!  He is a realist.  She shall see that I have strength of will, and she will say:  ‘He has will!’   Lambert’s a scoundrel, and all he wants is to get thirty thousand out of me, and yet he is the only friend I have.  There is no other sort of friendship and there can be no other, that’s all been invented by unpractical people.  And I shan’t be even degrading her; shall I be degrading her?  Not in the least: all women are like that!  Are there any women who are not abject?  That’s why she must have a man over her; that’s why she’s created a subordinate creature.  Woman is vice and temptation, and man is honour and generosity.  So it will be to the end of time.  And what if I do mean to use that ‘document’!  That does not matter.  That does not prevent honour or generosity.  Pure, unadulterated Schillers don’t exist, they are invented.  It does not matter if one has to pass through filth to get there, as long as the goal is magnificent.  It will all be washed off, it will all be smoothed away afterwards.  And now it’s only ‘breadth,’ it’s only life, it’s only vital truth — that’s what it is called nowadays.”

Oh, I repeat again: I must be forgiven for recording all my drunken ravings at the time.  Of course this is only the essence of what I thought then, but I fancy I used those very words.  I was bound to record them because I have sat down to write in order to condemn myself.  And what is to be condemned, if not that?  Can there be anything graver in my life?  Wine is no justification.  In vino veritas.

Entirely absorbed in such dreams I did not notice that I had reached home, that is, mother’s lodgings.  I did not even notice going in, but as soon as I slipped into our tiny entrance, I realized at once that something unusual was happening.

There were loud voices and outcries in the room, and I could hear that mother was crying.  In the doorway I almost fell over Lukerya, who was running from Makar Ivanovitch’s room to the kitchen.  I flung down my fur coat and went in to Makar Ivanovitch, for they were all gathered together in his room.

There I found mother and Versilov.  Mother was supported in his arms, and he was pressing her to his heart.  Makar Ivanovitch was sitting as usual on his little bench, but he seemed overcome with weakness, and Liza had her arms round his shoulders and with an effort was holding him up; and it was evident that he was on the point of falling.  I took a rapid step towards him and realized with a shudder that the old man was dead.

He had only just died, one minute before I arrived.  Only ten minutes before he had felt just as usual.  No one was with him then but Liza; she had been sitting with him, telling her grief, and he had been stroking her head just as he had done the day before.  Suddenly he began to tremble (Liza told us), tried to stand up, tried to cry out, and began falling on his left side, and was silent.  “Rupture of the heart!” said Versilov.  Liza uttered a scream that could be heard all over the house, and they had all run in at once, and all that only the minute before I came in.

“Arkady,” Versilov cried, “run instantly to Tatyana Pavlovna.  She’s sure to be at home.  Ask her to come at once.  Take a sledge.  Make haste, I entreat you!”

His eyes were shining.  I remember that clearly.  I did not notice in his face anything like simple pity, anything like tears.  The others, mother, Liza, and Lukerya, were crying.  I was struck, on the contrary — and I remember this very well — by a look of unusual excitement almost of elation in his face.  I ran for Tatyana Pavlovna.

It was not far to go, as the reader knows already.  I did not take a sledge, but ran all the way without stopping.  My mind was in confusion, and yet there was something almost like elation in my heart, too.  I realized something momentous was happening.  Every trace of drunkenness had disappeared completely, and with it every ignoble thought, by the time I was ringing at Tatyana Pavlovna’s door.

The Finnish cook opened the door:  “Not at home!” she said and would have shut it at once.

“Not at home?” I cried, and rushed headlong into the passage.  “Impossible!  Makar Ivanovitch is dead!”

“Wha — at!” I heard Tatyana Pavlovna cry out in her drawing-room, through the closed door.

“He is dead!  Makar Ivanovitch is dead!  Andrey Petrovitch begs you to go this minute!”

“What nonsense you’re talking.”

The bolt clicked, but the door only opened an inch.  “What has happened, tell me! . . .”

“I don’t know, he was dead when I arrived.  Andrey Petrovitch says it’s rupture of the heart!”

“I’ll come at once, this minute.  Run and tell them I’m coming, run along! run along! run along!  What are you stopping for?”

But through the half-opened door I had distinctly seen some one come suddenly out from behind the curtain that screened Tatyana Pavlovna’s bed, and that some one was standing at the back of the room behind Tatyana Pavlovna.  Mechanically and instinctively I clutched at the look and would not let the door be shut.

“Arkady Makarovitch, is it really true that he’s dead?” I heard a soft, smooth, ringing voice, a well-known voice that thrilled everything in my heart at once.  In the question was a note of some emotion that deeply stirred HER heart.

“Oh, if that’s how it is,” cried Tatyana Pavlovna, abandoning the door, “if that’s how it is — you may settle it to please yourself.  It’s your own doing!”

She ran full speed out of the flat, flinging on her kerchief and her fur coat as she went downstairs.  We were left alone.  I threw off my fur coat, took a step forward, and shut the door.  She stood before me as she had done that time before, with a bright face, and just as she had done then, she held out both hands to me.  As though I had been struck down I literally fell at her feet.

3

I was beginning to cry, I don’t know why; I don’t remember how she made me sit down beside her, I only remember, as one of my most precious memories, that we sat side by side, hand in hand, and talked eagerly: she was questioning me about the old man and his death, and I was telling her about him — so that it might have been supposed that I had been crying over Makar Ivanovitch, though that would have been the acme of absurdity; and I know that she could not possibly have suspected me of such childish banality.  All at once I pulled myself together and felt ashamed.  I imagine now that I cried simply from joy, and I believe she knew that perfectly well, so that my heart is quite at rest when I remember it.

It suddenly struck me as very strange that she should go on questioning me about Makar Ivanovitch.

“Why, did you know him?” I asked in surprise.

“Yes.  I have never seen him, but he has played a part in my life, too.  I was told a great deal about him at one time, by that man whom I fear.  You know what man I mean.”

“All I know is that ‘that man’ has been in the past much nearer to your heart than you told me before,” I said.  I don’t know what I meant to express by this, but I spoke as it were reproachfully and with a frown.

“You say he was kissing your mother just now?  Holding her in his arms?  You saw that yourself?” she did not hear what I said, but went on cross-examining me.

“Yes, I saw it; and, believe me,” I hastened to assure her, seeing her joy, “it was with true and generous feeling.”

“God grant it,” she said, crossing herself.  “Now he is set free.  That admirable old man simply held his life in bondage.  His death will mean for him a renewal of duty . . . and dignity, as they were renewed once before.  Oh, he is before all things generous, he will give peace of heart to your mother, whom he loves more than anything on earth, and will at last be at peace himself, and thank God — it’s high time.”

“He is dear to you?”

“Yes, very dear, though not in the way he would have liked to be and you mean by your question.”

“And is it for yourself or for him that you are afraid now?” I asked suddenly.

“Oh, these are deep questions, let us leave them.”

“Let us leave them, of course; but I knew nothing of this, nor of too much else perhaps; but may you be right, now everything will begin anew, and if anyone is to be renewed, it’s I first of all. I have been base in my thoughts in regard to you, Katerina Nikolaevna, and not more than an hour ago, perhaps, I was guilty of a low action in regard to you, but do you know I am sitting beside you and feel no pang of conscience.  For everything now is over, and everything is beginning anew, and the man who was plotting vileness against you an hour ago I don’t know, and don’t want to know!”

“Come, calm yourself,” she smiled; “one would think you were a little delirious.”

“And how can one condemn oneself beside you, whether one is good or vile — you are as far beyond one as the sun. . . .  Tell me, how could you come out to me after all that’s happened?  Oh, if only you knew what happened only an hour ago!  And what a dream has come true.”

“I expect I know all that,” she smiled softly: “you have just been wanting to punish me in some way, you swore to ruin me, and would certainly have killed, or at least have beaten, anyone who had dared to say one word against me.”

Oh, she smiled and jested: but this was only from her excessive kindness, for her heart at that moment, as I realized later, was full of such an immense anxiety of her own, such a violent over- mastering emotion, that she can only have talked to me and have answered my foolish irritating questions, she can only have done that as one sometimes answers the persistent prattle of a little child, simply to get rid of it.  I understood that dully and felt ashamed, but I could not help persisting.

“No,” I cried, unable to control myself.  “No, I did not kill the man who spoke ill of you, I encouraged him instead!”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, please don’t; there’s no need to tell me anything,” she said, suddenly putting out her hand to stop me, with a look of compassion in her face; but I leapt up from my seat and was standing before her, to tell her everything, and if I had told her, nothing of what happened afterwards would have happened, for it would certainly have ended in my confessing everything and returning the document to her.  But she suddenly laughed.

“There’s no need, there’s no need of anything, no facts at all!  I know all your misdoings; I’m ready to bet that you meant to marry me or something of that sort, and you have only just been plotting about it with some one, with some accomplice, some old school friend. . . .  Why I believe I’ve guessed right!” she cried, looking gravely at my face.

“What . . . how could you guess!” I faltered like a fool, tremendously impressed.

“Well, what next!  But that’s enough, that’s enough!  I forgive you, but no more about it,” she waved her hand again, with unmistakable impatience.  “I am given to dreaming myself, and if you only knew what shifts I have recourse to in my dreams when I let myself go!  That’s enough, you make me forget what I was going to say.  I am very glad that Tatyana Pavlovna has gone away; I have been very anxious to see you, and we could not have talked as we are doing before her.  I believe I was to blame for what happened.  I was!  Of course I was!”

“You to blame?  But I had betrayed you to HIM, and — what can you have thought of me!  I have been thinking of that all this time, all these days, I’ve been thinking and feeling about it every minute.”  (It was not a lie.)

“There was no need for you to distress yourself so much, I quite understood at the time how it had all happened; you simply spoke too freely in your joy, and told him that you were in love with me and that I . . . well, that I listened to you.  Just what you would do at twenty.  You love him more than anyone in the world, don’t you, and look to him to be your friend, your ideal?  I quite understood that, but it was too late.  Oh yes, I was to blame: I ought to have sent for you at the time, and have set your mind at rest, but I felt annoyed; and I told them not to admit you; that’s what led to the scene at the entrance, and then that night.  And do you know, like you, I’ve been dreaming all this time of meeting you secretly, only I did not know how to arrange it?  And what do you suppose I dreaded more than anything?  That you would believe what he said against me.”

“Never!” I cried.

“The memory of our meetings in the past is dear to me; the boy in you is very dear to me, and perhaps, too, that very sincerity . . . you know, I’m a very serious person, I am one of the most serious and gloomy characters among modern women, let me tell you . . . ha — ha — ha!  We’ll have another talk some time, but now I’m not quite myself, I am upset and . . . I believe I’m a little hysterical.  But, at last, at last, HE will let me, too, live in peace.”