Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (381 page)

“I see and I understand.”

Lizaveta Prokofyevna looked penetratingly at Myshkin. Perhaps she keenly desired to find out what impression this news about “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch made upon him.

“Do you know nothing about Gavril Ivolgin?”

“You mean ... I know a great deal.”

“Did you know or didn’t you that he was in correspondence with Aglaia.”

“I didn’t know at all,” said Myshkin, surprised and even startled. “What! you say Gavril Ardalionovitch is in correspondence with Aglaia Ivanovna? Impossible!”

“Quite lately. His sister has been paving the way for him here all the winter. She’s been working like a rat.”

“I don’t believe it,” Myshkin repeated firmly, after some reflection and uneasiness. “If it had been so I should certainly have known it.”

“I daresay he’d have come of himself and made a tearful confession on your bosom! Ach, you’re a simpleton, a simpleton! Everyone deceives you like a ... like a .. . And aren’t vou ashamed to trust him?

Surely you must see that he’s cheating you all round?”

“I know very well he does deceive me sometimes,” Myshkin brought out reluctantly in a low voice, “and he knows that I know it. . ,” and he broke off.

“Knows it and goes on trusting him! That’s the last straw! It’s just what one would expect of you, though, and there’s no need for me to be surprised at it. Good Lord! Was there ever such a man! Tfoo! And do you know that this Ganya or this Varya has put her into correspondence with Nastasya Filippovna?”

“Put whom?”

“Aglaia.”

“I don’t believe it! It’s impossible! With what object?” He leapt up from his chair.

“I don’t believe it either, though there are proofs. She is a wilful girl, a whimsical girl, a mad girl! She’s a wicked girl, wicked, wicked! I’m ready to repeat it for a thousand years — she’s a wicked girl. They are all like that now, even that wet hen, Alexandra, but this one’s out of all bounds. Yet I don’t believe it either! — perhaps because I don’t want to believe it,”

she added, as though to herself. “Why haven’t you been to see us?” She turned again suddenly to Myshkin. “Why haven’t you been for the last three days?” she cried impatiently once more.

Myshkin began telling her his reasons, but she interrupted him again.

“They all look upon you as a fool and deceive you! “Vbu went to town yesterday; I’ll bet you’ve been on your knees, begging that scoundrel to take your money, your ten thousand!”

“Not at all; I never thought of it indeed. I haven’t seen him; and besides, he’s not a scoundrel. I’ve had a letter from him.”

“Show me the letter!”

Myshkin took a note out of his portfolio and handed it to Lizayeta Prokofyevna. The note ran:

“Dear Sir, — I have, of course, in other people’s eyes not the faintest right to have any pride. In people’s opinion I’m too insignificant for that. But that’s in other people’s eyes and not in yours. I am quite persuaded, my dear sir, that you are perhaps better than other men. I don I

agree with Doktorenko, and differ from him in this conviction. I shall never take a farthing from you, but you have helped my mother, and for that I am bound to be grateful to you, even though it be weakness. In any case, I look upon you differently and think it only right to tell you so. And thereafter I suppose there can be no more relations of any sort between us. — Antip Burdovsky.

“P.S. The missing two hundred roubles will be repaid you correctly in course of time.”

“What stuff and nonsense!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna commented, flinging back the note. “It’s not worth reading. What are you grinning at?”

“You must admit that you were glad to read it, too.”

“What! that pack of nonsense, rotting with vanity! Why, don’t you see they’re all crazy with pride and vanity?”

“Yes, but yet he’s owned himself wrong, has broken with Doktorenko, and the vainer he is, the more it must have cost his vanity. Oh, what a child you are, Lizaveta Prokofyevna!”

“Do you want me to slap you at last?”

“No, not at all. But because you’re glad of the note and conceal it. Why are you ashamed of your feelings? You’re like that in everything.”

“Don’t dare to come a step to see me,” cried Lizaveta Prokofyevna, jumping up and turning pale with anger. “Never let me set eyes upon you again!”

“In another three days you’ll come of your own accord and invite me. . . . Come, aren’t you ashamed? These are your best feelings; why are you ashamed of them? You only torment yourself, you know.”

“I’ll never invite you if I die for it! I’ll forget your name! I have forgotten it!!”

She rushed away from Myshkin.

“I’ve been forbidden to come already, apart from you!” Myshkin called after her.

“Wha-at? Who’s forbidden you?” She turned in a flash, as though pricked with a needle. Myshkin hesitated to answer; he felt he had made a serious slip.

“Who has forbidden you?” Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried violently.

“Aglaia Ivanovna forbids ...”

“When? Do spe-eak!!!”

“She sent word this morning that I must never dare come and see you again.”

Lizaveta Prokofyevna stood as though petrified, but she was reflecting.

“What did she send? Whom did she send? By the urchin? A verbal message?” she exclaimed suddenly again.

“I had a note,” said Myshkin.

“Where? Give it here! At once!”

Myshkin thought a minute, yet he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket an untidy scrap of paper on which was written:

“Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch/ — //; after all that’s happened you propose to astonish me by a visit to our villa, you wont, let me tell you, find me among those pleased to see you.

“AglaiaEpanchin.”

Lizaveta Prokofyevna reflected for a minute; then she rushed at Myshkin, seized him by the hand, and drew him after her.

“Come along! At once! It must be at once, this minute!” she cried in an access of extraordinary excitement and impatience.

“But you’re exposing me to ...”

“To what? You innocent ninny! You’re not like a man! Well, now I shall see it all for myself, with my own eyes.”

“But you might let me take my hat, anyway....”

“Here’s your horrid hat! Come along! Can’t even choose his clothes with taste! . . . She wrote that. . . hm! after what had happened ... in a fever,” muttered Lizaveta Prokofyevna, dragging Myshkin along and not for one minute releasing his hand. “I stood up for you just now — said aloud you were a fool not to come. . . . But for that, she wouldn’t have written such a senseless note! An improper note! Improper, for a well-bred, well-brought-up, clever girl! Hm!” she went on, “Or ... or perhaps . . . perhaps she was vexed herself at your not coming, only she didn’t consider that it wouldn’t do to write like that to an idiot, because he’d take it literally, as he has done. Why are you listening?” she cried, flaring up, realising that she had said too much. “She wants some one to laugh at like you. It’s long since she’s seen such a one, that’s why she’s asking you! And I’m glad, very glad, that she’ll make fun of you now — very glad; it’s just what you deserve. And she knows how to do it. Oh, she knows how! ...”

PART THREE

CHAPTER 1

We ARE constantly hearing complaints that there are no practical people in Russia; that there are plenty of politicians, plenty of generals, that any number of business men of all sorts can be found at a moment’s notice, but that there are no practical men — at least, everyone is complaining of the lack of them. There are not even efficient railway servants, we hear, on some of the lines; it’s not even possible to get a steamship company decently managed. You hear of a railway collision or of a bridge that breaks under a train on a newly opened railway-line. Or you hear of a train’s wintering in a snowdrift; the journey should have lasted a few hours and the train was snowed up for five days. One hears of hundreds of tons of goods lying rotting for two or three months at a time before they are dispatched. And I am told (though it is hardly credible) that a merchant’s clerk who persisted in worrying for the dispatch of his goods got a box on the ear from the superintendent, who justified this display of efficiency on his part on the ground that he lost his patience. There are so many government offices that it staggers one to think of them; every one has been in the service, is in the service, or intends to be in the service — so that one wonders how, with such an abundance of material, a decent board of management cannot be made up to run a railway or a line of steamers.

This question is often met by a very simple answer — so simple, in fact, that the explanation seems hardly credible. It’s true, we are told, every one has been or is in government service in Russia, and this system has been going on for two hundred years on the most approved German pattern from grandfather to grandson — but officials are the most unpractical of people, and things have come to such a pass that a purely theoretical character and lack of practical knowledge were only lately regarded, even in official circles, as almost the highest qualification and recommendation. But there’s no need to discuss officials; we set out to talk about practical men. There’s no doubt that diffidence and complete lack of initiative have always been considered the chief sign of a practical man, and indeed are so regarded still. But why blame ourselves only — if this opinion is regarded as an accusation? From the beginning, all the world over, lack of originality has been reckoned the chief characteristic and best recommendation of an active, businesslike and practical man, and at least ninety-nine per cent, of mankind — and that’s a low estimate — have always held that opinion, and at most one per cent, looks at it differently.

Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also; this is the most hackneyed observation, familiar to every one. If, for instance, for scores of years, everybody had been putting their money into a bank and millions had been invested in it at 4 per cent. and then the bank ceased to exist and people were left to their own initiative, the greater part of those millions would infallibly be lost in wild speculation or in the hands of swindlers — and in fact this is only in accordance with the dictates of propriety and decorum. Yes, decorum; if a proper diffidence and decorous lack of originality have been universally accepted as the essential characteristics of a practical man and a gentleman, a sudden transformation would be quite ungentlemanly and almost indecent. What tender and devoted mother wouldn’t be dismayed and ill with terror at her son’s or daughter’s stepping one hair’s-breadth off the beaten track. “No, better let him be happy and live in comfort without originality,” is what every mother thinks as she rocks the cradle. And our nurses have from the earliest times sung as they dandle their babies, “He shall dress in gold, the pet — wear a general’s epaulette.” Thus even with our nurses the rank of general has been considered the highest pinnacle of Russian happiness, and so has been the most popular national ideal of peaceful and contented bliss. And, indeed, after passing an examination without distinction and serving thirty-five years, who can fail to become at last a general and to have invested a decent sum in the bank? So that a Russian attains the position of a practical and business man without the slightest effort. The only person among us who can fail to reach the general’s rank is the original man — in other words, the man who won’t be quiet. Possibly there is some mistake about this; but, speaking generally, this is true, and our society has been perfectly correct in its definition of a practical man.

But much of this is superfluous; I had intended simply to say a few words of explanation about our friends the Epanchins. That family, or at any rate the more reflective members of it, suffered continually from a common family characteristic, the very opposite of the virtues we’ve been discussing above. Though they did not clearly understand the fact (for it is difficult to understand it), they yet sometimes suspected that everything in their family was unlike what is found in all other families. In other families everything went smoothly, with them it was all ups and downs; other people seemed to follow routine — they always seemed to be doing something exceptional. Other people were always decorously timid, but they were not. Lizaveta Prokofyevna was, indeed, liable to alarms — too much so, in fact; but it was not the decorous, worldly timidity for which they longed. But perhaps it was only Lizaveta Prokofyevna who was worried about it; the girls were too young, though they were penetrating and ironical; and though the general penetrated (not without some strain, however), he never said anything more than “Hm” in perplexing circumstances and put all his trust in his wife. So the responsibility rested on her. It was not that this family was distinguished by marked initiative or was drawn out of the common rut by any conscious inclination towards originality, which would have been a complete breach of the proprieties. Oh no! There was really nothing of the sort, that is, there was no conscious purpose in it, and yet, in spite of all, the Epanchin family, though highly respectable, was not quite what every respectable family ought to be. Of late Lizaveta Prokofvevna had begun to blame herself alone and her “unfortunate” character for this state of affairs, which increased her distress. She was continually reproaching herself with being “a silly and eccentric old woman who didn’t know how to behave,” and she worried over imaginary troubles, was in a continual state of perplexity, was at a loss how to act in the most ordinary contingencies, and always magnified every misfortune.

At the beginning of our narrative we mentioned that the Epanchin family enjoyed the sincere esteem of all. Even General Epanchin, although a man of obscure origin, was received everywhere and treated with respect. He did, in fact, deserve respect — in the first place, as a man of wealth and of some standing, and secondly, as a very decent fellow, though by no means of great intellect. But a certain dullness of mind seems an almost necessary qualification, if not for every public man, at least for every one seriously engaged in making money. Finally, General Epanchin had good manners, was modest, knew how to hold his tongue, and yet would not allow himself to be trampled upon, not simply because he was a general, but also because he was an honest and honourable man. As for his wife, she was, as we have explained already, of good family, though that is not a matter of great consideration among us, unless there are powerful friends as well. But she had acquired a circle of such friends; she was respected, and in the end loved by persons of such consequence that it was natural that every one should follow their example in respecting and receiving her. There could be no doubt that her anxieties about her family were groundless; there was very little cause for them and they were ridiculously exaggerated. But if you have a wart on the forehead or on the nose, you always fancy that no one has anything else to do in the world than stare at your wart, make fun of it, and despise you for it, even though you have discovered America. No doubt Lizaveta Prokofyevna was generally considered “eccentric,” yet there could be no question about her being esteemed; but she came at last to cease to believe in that esteem, and the whole trouble lay in that. Looking at her daughters, she was fretted by the suspicion that she was continually ruining their prospects, that she was ridiculous, insupportable, and did not know how to behave, for which, of course, she was always blaming her daughters and her husband, and quarrelling with them all day long, though she loved them with a self-sacrificing and almost passionate affection.