Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (614 page)

This exclamation broke from her unconsciously; I understood it at once, and did not want to catch it up, but I trembled all over.

“He knows I’ve forgiven him!” she exclaimed suddenly again, as though to herself.

“Could you really forgive him that letter?  And how could he tell that you forgave him?” I could not help exclaiming.

“How could he tell?  Oh, he knows,” she went on answering me, yet she looked as though she had forgotten my existence and were talking to herself.  “He has come to his senses now.  And how could he not know that I forgave him, when he knows every secret of my soul by heart?  Why, he knows that I am a little after his kind myself.”

“You?”

“Why, yes, he knows that.  Oh, I’m not passionate, I’m calm: but like him I should like all men to be fine. . . .  Of course there was something made him love me.”

“How could he say that you had all the vices.”

“He only said that; he has another secret in his heart.  And didn’t he write an awfully funny letter?”

“Funny?”  (I was listening to her with strained attention.  I imagined that she really was hysterical, and . . . was speaking, perhaps, not for my benefit; but I could not resist the question.)

“Oh yes, funny, and how I should have laughed, if . . . if I hadn’t been frightened.  Though I’m not such a coward, don’t think it; but I didn’t sleep all night after that letter, it seemed written in blood and frenzy . . . and after such a letter what was left to come.  I love life, I’m horribly afraid for my life, I’m horribly cowardly in that. . . .  Ah, listen,” she cried, suddenly darting at me, “go to him, he’s alone now, he can’t be there still, most likely he’s gone off somewhere alone; make haste and find him, you must make haste, run to him, show him that you are his son and love him, prove that you are the dear kind boy, my student whom I . . . Oh, God give you happiness, I love nobody, and it is better so, but I want every one to be happy, every one, and him above all, and let him know that . . . at once . . . I should be very glad.”

She got up and suddenly disappeared behind the curtain.  At that instant tears were shining on her face (hysterical after her laughter).  I remained alone, agitated and confused.  I was completely at a loss to what to ascribe such emotion in her, an emotion which I never should have suspected.  Something seemed to be clutching at my heart.

I waited five minutes, ten; the profound silence suddenly struck me, and I ventured to peep out of the door, and to call.  In answer to my call Marya appeared and informed me in the most stolid tone, that the lady had put on her things long, long ago and gone out by the back way.

CHAPTER VII

1

This was enough for me.  I snatched up my fur coat and, throwing it on as I went, rushed off with the thought:  “She bade me go to him, but where shall I find him?”

But together with everything else I was struck by the question, “Why does she suppose that something has happened, and that now HE will leave her in peace?  Of course, because he will marry mother, but what is she feeling?  Is she glad that he will marry mother, or is she unhappy about it?  And was that why she was hysterical?  Why is it I can’t get to the bottom of it?

I note this second thought that flashed upon me, literally in order to record it: it is important.  That evening was a momentous one.  And really one is forced to believe in predestination: I had not gone a hundred steps in the direction of mother’s lodging when I came across the man I was looking for.  He clutched me by the shoulder and stopped me.

“It’s you!” he cried joyfully, and at the same time with the greatest astonishment.  “Only fancy, I’ve been at your lodgings,” he began quickly, “I have been looking for you, I’ve been asking for you, you are the one person I want in the whole universe!  Your landlord told me some extraordinary tale; but you weren’t there, and I came away and even forgot to tell him to ask you to run round to me at once, and, would you believe it, I set off, nevertheless, with the positive conviction that fate could not fail to send you to me now when most I need you, and here you are the first person to meet me!  Come home with me: you’ve never been to my rooms.”

In fact we had been looking for each other, and something of the same sort had happened to each of us.  We walked very rapidly.

On the way he uttered only a few brief phrases, telling me he had left mother with Tatyana Pavlovna and so on.  He walked holding my arm.  His lodging was not far off and we soon arrived.  I had, in fact, never been in these rooms of his.  It was a small flat of three rooms, which he had taken or rather Tatyana Pavlovna had taken simply for that “tiny baby.”  The flat had always been under Tatyana Pavlovna’s supervision, and in it had been installed a nurse with the baby (and now Darya Onisimovna, too), but there had always been a room there for Versilov, the outermost of the three, a fairly good and spacious room, snugly furnished, like a study for literary pursuits.  On the table, on the shelves, and on a whatnot there were numbers of books (while at mother’s there were none at all); there were manuscripts and bundles of letters — in fact, it all looked snug and as though it had been long inhabited, and I know that in the past Versilov had sometimes, though not very often, moved into this flat altogether, and had stayed there even for weeks at a time.  The first thing that caught my attention was a portrait of mother that hung over the writing table; a photograph in a magnificent carved frame of rare wood, obviously taken abroad and judging from its size a very expensive one.  I had never heard of this portrait and knew nothing of it before, and what struck me most of all was the likeness which was remarkable in a photograph, the spiritual truth of it, so to say; in fact it looked more like a real portrait by the hand of an artist than a mere mechanical print.  When I went in I could not help stopping before it at once.

“Isn’t it, isn’t it?” Versilov repeated behind me, meaning, “Isn’t it like?”  I glanced at him and was struck by the expression of his face.  He was rather pale, but there was a glowing and intense look in his eyes which seemed shining with happiness and strength.  I had never seen such an expression on his face.

“I did not know that you loved mother so much!” I blurted out, suddenly delighted.

He smiled blissfully, though in his smile there was a suggestion of something like a martyr’s anguish, or rather something humane and lofty . . . I don’t know how to express it; but highly developed people, I fancy, can never have triumphantly and complacently happy faces.  He did not answer, but taking the portrait from the rings with both hands brought it close to him, kissed it, and gently hung it back on the wall.

“Observe,” he said; “photographs very rarely turn out good likenesses, and that one can easily understand: the originals, that is all of us, are very rarely like ourselves.  Only on rare occasions does a man’s face express his leading quality, his most characteristic thought.  The artist studies the face and divines its characteristic meaning, though at the actual moment when he’s painting, it may not be in the face at all.  Photography takes a man as he is, and it is extremely possible that at moments Napoleon would have turned out stupid, and Bismarck tender.  Here, in this portrait, by good luck the sun caught Sonia in her characteristic moment of modest gentle love and rather wild shrinking chastity.  And how happy she was when at last she was convinced that I was so eager to have her portrait.  Though that photograph was taken not so long ago, still she was younger then and handsomer; yet even then she had those hollow cheeks, those lines on her forehead, that shrinking timidity in her eyes, which seems to gain upon her with the years, and increase as time goes on.  Would you believe it, dear boy?  I can scarcely picture her now with a different face, and yet you know she was once young and charming.  Russian women go off quickly, their beauty is only a passing gleam, and this is not only due to racial peculiarity, but is because they are capable of unlimited love.  The Russian woman gives everything at once when she loves — the moment and her whole destiny and the present and the future: she does not know how to be thrifty, she keeps nothing hidden in reserve; and their beauty is quickly consumed upon him whom they love.  Those hollow cheeks, they too were once a beauty that has been consumed on me, on my brief amusement.  You are glad that I love your mother, and perhaps you didn’t believe that I did love her?  Yes, my dear, I did love her very much, but I’ve done her nothing but harm. . . .  Here is another portrait — look at that, too.”

He took it from the table and handed it me.  It, too, was a photograph, a great deal smaller, in a thin oval wooden frame — it was the face of a young girl, thin and consumptive, and at the same time very good-looking; dreamy and yet strangely lacking in thought.  The features were regular, of the type suggesting the pampering of generations, but it left a painful impression: it looked as though some fixed idea had taken possession of this creature and was torturing her, just because it was too much for her strength.

“That . . . that is the girl you meant to marry and who died of consumption . . . HER step-daughter?” I said rather timidly.

“Yes, I meant to marry her, she died of consumption, HER step- daughter.  I knew that you knew . . . all that gossip.  Though you could have known nothing about it but the gossip.  Put the portrait down, my boy, that was a poor, mad girl and nothing more.”

“Really mad?”

“Or imbecile; I think she was mad though.  She had a child by Prince Sergay.  It came about through madness not through love; it was one of Prince Sergay’s most scoundrelly actions.  The child is here now in the next room, and I’ve long wanted to show it to you.  Prince Sergay has never dared come here to look at the child; that was the compact I made with him abroad.  I took the child to bring up with your mother’s permission.  With your mother’s permission I meant at the time to marry that unhappy creature . . .”

“Could such permission have been possible?” I protested warmly.

“Oh yes, she allowed it: jealousy could only have been felt of a woman, and that was not a woman.”

“Not a woman to anyone but mother!  I shall never in my life believe that mother was not jealous!” I cried.

“And you’re right.  I guessed it was so when everything was over, that is when she had given her permission.  But enough of that.  It all came to nothing through Lidya’s death, and perhaps it wouldn’t have come off if she had lived, and even now I don’t let mother come to see the child.  It was only an episode.  My dear boy, I’ve been looking forward to having you here for ever so long.  I’ve been dreaming of how we should get to know each other here.  Do you know how long? — for the last two years.”

He looked at me sincerely and truthfully, and with a warmth of heart in which there was no reserve.  I gripped his hand:

“Why have you put it off, why did you not invite me long ago?  If only you knew all that has been . . . which would not have been if only you had sent for me earlier! . . .”

At that instant the samovar was brought in, and Darya Onisimovna suddenly brought in the baby asleep.

“Look at it,” said Versilov; “I am fond of it, and I told them to bring it in now that you might look at it.  Well, take it away again, Darya Onisimovna.  Sit down to the samovar.  I shall imagine that we have always lived together like this, and that we’ve been meeting every evening with no parting before us.  Let me look at you: there, sit like this, that I can see your face.  How I love your face.  How I used to imagine your face when I was expecting you from Moscow.  You ask why I did not send for you long ago?  Wait a little, perhaps you will understand that now.”

“Can it be that it’s only that old man’s death that has set your tongue free?  That’s strange . . .”

But though I said that, I looked at him with love.  We talked like two friends in the highest and fullest sense of the word.  He had asked me to come here to make something clear to me, to tell me something, to justify himself; and yet everything was explained and justified before a word was said.  Whatever I might hear from him now, the result was already attained, and we both knew that and were happy, and looked at each other knowing it.

“It’s not the death of that old man,” he answered: “it’s not his death alone, there is something else too, which has happened at the same time. . . .  God bless this moment and our future for a long time to come!  Let us talk, my dear boy.  I keep wandering from the point and letting myself be drawn off.  I want to speak about one thing, but I launch into a thousand side issues.  It’s always like that when the heart is full. . . .  But let us talk; the time has come and I’ve been in love with you, boy, for ever so long . . .”

He sank back in the armchair and looked at me once more.

“How strange it is to hear that, how strange it is,” I repeated in an ecstasy of delight.  And then I remember there suddenly came into his face that habitual line, as it were, of sadness and mockery together, which I knew so well.  He controlled himself and with a certain stiffness began.

2

“You see, Arkady, if I had asked you to come earlier what should I have said to you?  That question is my whole answer.”

“You mean that now you are mother’s husband, and my father, while then. . . .  You did not know what to say to me before about the social position?  Is that it?”

“Not only about that, dear boy.  I should not have known what to say to you: there was so much I should have had to be silent about.  Much that was absurd, indeed, and humiliating, because it was like a mountebank performance — yes, a regular show at a fair.  Come, how could we have understood each other before, when I’ve only understood myself to-day at five o’clock this afternoon, just two hours before Makar Ivanovitch’s death?  You look at me with unpleasant perplexity.  Don’t be uneasy: I will explain the facts, but what I have just said is absolutely true; my whole life has been lost in mazes and perplexity, and suddenly they are all solved on such a day, at five o’clock this afternoon!  It’s quite mortifying, isn’t it?  A little while ago I should really have felt mortified.”