Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (172 page)

“Don’t be angry.”

“I’m not a bit angry; but every sort of affair ought to be looked at reasonably, and not exaggerated … that’s what I say.”

He paused a little, as though he were still feeling vexed with me. I did not interrupt him.

“You see, Vanya,” he began again, “I’ve come upon a clue. That’s to say, I’ve not really come upon it, and it’s not really a clue. But that’s how it struck me … that is, from certain considerations I gather that Nellie … perhaps … well, in fact, is the prince’s legitimate daughter.”

“What are you saying?”

“There you go roaring again, ‘what are you saying?’ So that one really can’t say anything to people like this!” he shouted, waving his hand frantically. Have I told you anything positive, you featherhead? Did I tell you she’s been proved to be the prince’s legitimate daughter? Did I, or did I not?”

“Listen, my dear fellow,” I said to him in great excitement. For God’s sake don’t shout, but explain things clearly and precisely.

I swear I shall understand you. You must realize how important the matter is, and what consequences….”

“Consequences, indeed, of what? Where are the proofs? Things aren’t done like that, and I’m telling you a secret now. And why I’m telling you I’ll explain later. You may be sure there’s a reason for it. Listen and hold your tongue and understand that all this is a secret…. This is how it was, you see. As soon as the prince came back from Warsaw in the winter, before Smith died, he began to go into this business. That is, he had begun it much earlier, during the previous year. But at that time he was on the look-out for one thing, and later he was on the look-out for something else. What mattered was that he’d lost the thread. It was thirteen years since he parted from Nellie’s mother in Paris and abandoned her, but all that time he had kept an incessant watch on her; he knew that she was living with Heinrich, whom Nellie was talking about to-day; he knew she had Nellie, he knew she was ill; he knew everything, in fact, but then he suddenly lost the thread. And this seems to have happened soon after the death of Heinrich, when she came to Petersburg. In Petersburg, of course, he would very soon have found her, whatever name she went by in Russia; but the thing was that his agents abroad misled him with false information, informing him that she was living in an out-of-the-way little town in South Germany. They deceived him through carelessness. They mistook another woman for her. So it went on for a year or more. But during the previous year the prince had begun to have doubts; certain facts had led him even earlier to suspect that it was not the right woman. Then the question arose: where was the real lady? And it occurred to him (though he’d nothing to go upon) to wonder whether she were not in Petersburg. Inquiries were being made meanwhile abroad, and he set other inquiries on foot here; but apparently he did not care to make use of the official channels, and he became acquainted with me. He was recommended to me: he was told this and that about me, that I took up detective work as an amateur, and so on, and so on… Well, so he explained the business to me; only vaguely, damn the fellow; he explained it vaguely and ambiguously. He made a lot of mistakes, repeated himself several times; he represented facts in different lights at the same time…. Well, as we all know, if you’re ever so cunning you can’t hide every track. Well, of course, I began, all obsequiousness and simplicity of heart, slavishly devoted, in fact. But I acted on a principle I’ve adopted once for all, and a law of nature, too (for it is a law of nature), and considered in the first place whether he had told me what he really wanted, and secondly whether, under what he had told me, there lay concealed something else he hadn’t told me. For in the latter case, as probably even you, dear son, with your poetical brain, can grasp, he was cheating me: for while one job is worth a rouble, say, another may be worth four times as much; so I should be a fool if I gave him for a rouble what was worth four. I began to look into it and make my conjectures, and bit by bit I began to come upon traces, one thing I’d get out of him, another out of some outsider, and I’d get at a third by my own wits. If you ask me what was my idea in so doing, I’ll answer, well, for one thing that the prince seemed somewhat too keen about it; he seemed in a great panic about something. For after all, what had he to be frightened of? He’d carried a girl off from her father, and when she was with child he had abandoned her. What was there remarkable in that? A charming, pleasant bit of mischief, and nothing more. That was nothing for a man like the prince to be afraid of! Yet he was afraid… And that made me suspicious. I came on some very interesting traces, my boy, through Heinrich, among other things. He was dead, of course, but from one of his cousins (now married to a baker here, in Petersburg) who had been passionately in love with him in old days, and had gone on loving him for fifteen years, regardless of the stout papa baker to whom she had incidentally borne eight children — from this cousin, I say, I managed by means of many and various manoeuvres to learn an important fact, that Heinrich, after the German habit, used to write her letters and diaries, and before his death he sent her some of his papers. She was a fool. She didn’t understand what was important in the letters, and only understood the parts where he talked of the moon, of ‘mein lieber Augustin,’ and of Wieland, too, I believe. But I got hold of the necessary facts, and through those letters I hit on a new clue. I found out, too, about Mr. Smith, about the money filched from him by his daughter, and about the prince’s getting hold of that money; at last, in the midst of exclamations, rigmaroles, and allegories of all sorts, I got a glimpse of the essential truth; that is, Vanya, you understand, nothing positive. Silly Heinrich purposely concealed that, and only hinted at it; well, and these hints, all this taken together, began to blend into a heavenly harmony in my mind. The prince was legally married to the young lady. Where they were married, how, when precisely, whether abroad or here, the whereabouts of the documents is all unknown. In fact, friend Vanya, I’ve torn my hair out in despair, searching for them in vain; in fact, I’ve hunted day and night. I unearthed Smith at last, but he went and died. I hadn’t even time to get a look at him. Then, through chance, I suddenly learned that a woman I had suspicions of had died in Vassilyevsky Island. I made inquiries and got on the track. I rushed off to Vassilyevsky, and there it was, do, you remember, we met. I made a big haul that time. In short, Nellie was a great help to me at that point….”

“Listen,” I interrupted, “surely you don’t suppose that Nellie knows?”

“What?”

“That she is Prince Valkovsky’s daughter?

“Why, you know yourself that she’s the prince’s daughter,” he answered, looking at me with a sort of angry reproach. “Why ask such idle questions, you foolish fellow? What matters is not simply that she’s the prince’s daughter, but that she’s his legitimate daughter — do you understand that?”

“Impossible!” I cried.

“I told myself it was ‘impossible’ at first. But it turns out that it is possible and in all probability is true,”

“No, Masloboev, that’s not so, your fancy is running away with you!” I cried. “She doesn’t know anything about it, and what’s more she’s his illegitimate daughter. If the mother had had any sort of documentary evidence to produce, would she have put up with the awful life she led here in Petersburg, and what’s more, have left her child to such an utterly forlorn fate Nonsense! It’s impossible!”

“I’ve thought the same myself; in fact, it’s a puzzle to me this day. But then, again, the thing is that Nellie’s mother was the craziest and most senseless woman in the world. She was extraordinary woman; consider all the circumstances, her romanticism, all that star-gazing nonsense in it’s wildest and craziest form. Take one point: from the very beginning she dreamed of something like a heaven upon earth, of angels; her love was boundless, her faith was limitless, and I’m convinced that she went mad afterwards, not because he got tired of her and cast her off, but because she was deceived in him, because he was capable of deceiving her and abandoning her, because her idol was turned into clay, had spat on her, and humiliated her Her romantic and irrational soul could not endure this transformation, and the insult besides. Do you realize what an insult it was? In her horror and, above all, her pride, she drew back from him with infinite contempt. She broke all ties, tore up her papers, spat upon his money, forgetting that it was not her money, but her father’s, refused it as so much dirt in order to crush her seducer by her spiritual grandeur, to look upon him having robbed her, and to have the right to despise him all her life. And very likely she said that she considered it a dishonour to call herself his wife. We have no divorce in Russia, but de facto they were separated, and how could she ask him for her after that! Remember that the mad creature said to Nellie on her death-bed, ‘Don’t go to him; work, perish, but don’t go to him, whoever may try to take you.’ So that even then she was dreaming that she would be sought out, and so would be able once more to avenge herself by crushing the seeker with her contempt. In short, she fed on evil dreams instead of bread. I’ve got a great deal out of Nellie, brother; in fact, I get a good deal still. Her mother was ill, of course, in consumption;, the disease specially develops bitterness and every sort of irritability yet I know for certain, through a crony of the woman Bubnov’s that she did write to the prince, yes, to the prince, actually to the prince….”

“She wrote! And did he get the letter?” I cried.

“That’s just it. I don’t know whether he did or not. On one occasion Nellie’s mother approached that crony. (Do you remember that painted wench? Now she’s in the penitentiary.) Well, she’d written the letter and she gave it to her to take, but didn’t send it after all and took it back. That was three weeks before her death… a significant fact; if once she brought herself to send it, even though she did take it back, she might have sent it again — I don’t know; but there is one reason for believing that she really did not send it, for the prince, I fancy, only found out for certain that she had been in Petersburg, and where she’d been living, after her death. He must have been relieved!”

“Yes, I remember Alyosha mentioned some letter that his father was very much pleased about, but that was quite lately, not more than two months ago. Well, go on, go on. What of your dealings with the prince?

  “My dealings with the prince? Understand, I had a complete moral conviction, but not a single positive proof, not a single one, in spite of all my efforts. A critical position! I should have had to make inquiries abroad. But where? — I didn’t know. I realized, of course, that there I should have a hard fight for it, that I could only scare him by hints, pretend I knew more than I really did….”

“Well, what then?”

“He wasn’t taken in, though he was scared; so scared that he’s in a funk even now. We had several meetings. What a leper he made himself out! Once in a moment of effusion he fell to telling me the whole story. That was when he thought I knew all about it. He told it well, frankly, with feeling — of course he was lying shamelessly. It was then I took the measure of his fear for me. I played the simpleton one time to him, and let him see I was shamming. I played the part awkwardly — that is, awkwardly on purpose. I purposely treated him to a little rudeness, began to threaten him, all that he might take me for a simpleton and somehow let things out. He saw through it, the scoundrel! Another time I pretended to be drunk. That didn’t answer either — he’s cunning. You can understand that, Vanya. I had to find out how far he was afraid of me; and at the same time to make him believe I knew more than I did.”

“Well, and what was the end of it?”

“Nothing came of it. I needed proofs and I hadn’t got them. He only realized one thing, that I might make a scandal. And, of course, a scandal was the one thing he was afraid of, and he was the more afraid of it because he had began to form ties here. You know he’s going to be married, of course?”

“No.”

“Next year. He looked out for his bride when he was here last year; she was only fourteen then. She’s fifteen by now, still in pinafores, poor thing! Her parents were delighted. You can imagine how anxious he must have been for his wife to die. She’s a general’s daughter, a girl with money — heaps of money! You and I will never make a marriage like that, friend Vanya…Only there’s something I shall never forgive myself for as long as I live!” cried Masloboev, bringing his fist down on the table. That he got the better of me a fortnight ago … the scoundrel!”

“How so?”

“It was like this. I saw he knew I’d nothing positive to go upon; and I felt at last that the longer the thing dragged on the more he’d realize my helplessness. Well, so I consented to take two thousand from him.”

“You took two thousand!”

“In silver, Vanya; it was against the grain, but I took it. As though such a job were worth no more than two thousand! It was humiliating to take it. I felt as though he’d spat upon me. He said to me: ‘I haven’t paid you yet, Masloboev, for the work you did before.’ (But he had paid long ago the hundred and fifty roubles we’d agreed upon.) ‘Well, now I’m going away; here’s two thousand, and so I hope everything’s settled between us.’ So I answered, ‘Finally settled, prince,’ and I didn’t dare to look into his ugly face. I thought it was plainly written upon it, ‘Well, he’s got enough. I’m simply giving it to the fool out of good-nature.’ I don’t remember how I got away from him!”

“But that was disgraceful, Masloboev,” I cried. “What about Nellie!”

“It wasn’t simply disgraceful … it was criminal … it was loathsome. It was … it was … there’s no word to describe it!”

“Good heavens! He ought at least to provide for Nellie!”

“Of course he ought! But how’s one to force him to? Frighten him? Not a bit of it, he won’t be frightened; you see, I’ve taken the money. I admitted to him myself that all he had to fear from me was only worth two thousand roubles. I fixed that price on myself! How’s one going to frighten him now?”

“And can it be that everything’s lost for Nellie?” I cried, almost in despair.