Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (620 page)

“It’s been taken in, don’t disturb yourself.”

I made up my mind to wait only another minute or possibly even less, and then TO GO.  I was very well-dressed: my suit and overcoat were new anyway, and my linen was perfectly fresh, Marie Ivanovna had seen to that with a special view to the occasion.  But I learned for a fact, much later, when I was in Petersburg, that these lackeys had heard the evening before from young Versilov’s valet that “the young gentleman’s bastard brother, a student, was coming.”  I know this now for a fact.

The minute passed.  It’s a strange sensation when one decides and cannot decide.  “Shall I go or not, shall I go or not?” I repeated to myself every second, almost in a fever, and suddenly the lackey who had taken my name returned.  Between his fingers he held fluttering four red notes — forty roubles!

“Here, sir, will you please take forty roubles!”

I boiled over.  This was such an insult!  All the night before I had been dreaming of the meeting Versilov had arranged between us two brothers; I had spent the whole night in feverish visions of the demeanour I ought to adopt, that I might not discredit — not discredit the whole cycle of ideas which I had worked out in my solitude, and which might have made me feel proud in any circle.  I dreamed of how proud, gentlemanly, and sad, perhaps, I would be even in Prince V.’s society, and how in that way I should be admitted into that circle — oh, I’m not sparing myself, and so be it, for it’s just such details that I ought to record!  And then — to be given forty roubles by a lackey in the hall, and after being kept ten minutes waiting, and not even in an envelope, not even on a salver, but straight from the lackey’s fingers!

I shouted so violently at the lackey that he started and stepped back; I told him he must go back at once and “his master must bring the money himself” — in fact, my request was, of course, incoherent and incomprehensible to the man.  But I shouted so that he went.  To make things worse my shouting was heard in the room, and the talk and laughter suddenly subsided.

Almost at the same time I heard footsteps, dignified, quiet, unhurried, and a tall figure of a handsome and haughty-looking young man (he seemed to me then even thinner and paler than when I met him to-day) appeared in the doorway a yard from the door leading into the passage.  He was wearing a magnificent red silk dressing-gown and slippers, and had a pince-nez on his nose.  Without uttering a word he fixed me with his pince-nez and proceeded to stare at me.  I took one step towards him like a wild beast, and began glaring at him defiantly.  But he only scrutinized me for a moment, ten seconds at the utmost; suddenly I detected on his lips a scarcely perceptible, but most malignant smile — what made it so malignant was that it was scarcely perceptible: he turned round without a word and went back into the room, just as deliberately, just as quietly and smoothly as he had come.  Oh, these insolent fellows are trained by their mothers from childhood to be insolent!  I lost my head of course. . . .  Oh, why did I lose my head!

Almost at that moment the same lackey reappeared with the same notes in his hand.

“Be so good as to take this, it is sent you from Petersburg, but his honour can’t see you:  ‘perhaps another time, when he’s more at leisure.’”  I felt that these last words were his own addition.  But I was still overwhelmed with confusion.  I took the money and walked to the door, I took it simply because I was confused, I ought not to have taken it; but the lackey, no doubt wanting to mortify me further, ventured upon a regular flunkey’s impertinence; he flung the door extra wide open before me, and pronounced with exaggerated emphasis and dignity, as I went out:

“This way, if you please!”

“You blackguard,” I roared at him, and I raised my hand, but I did not bring it down; “and your master’s a blackguard, too!  Tell him so directly,” I added, and went down the stairs.

“Don’t you dare! if I were to report that to my master, you would be taken, that very minute, with a note to the police station.  And don’t you dare threaten me!”

I went down the stairs.  It was a grand open staircase, and above I could be watched as I went down the red carpeted stairs.  All three lackeys came out and stood looking over the banisters.  I made up my mind to keep quiet, of course: to brawl with lackeys was impossible.  I walked the whole length of the stairs without increasing my pace; I believe I even moved more slowly.

Oh, there may be philosophers (and shame upon them!) who will say that all this is nonsense, the irritability of a milksop; let them say so, but for me it was a wound — a wound which has not healed to this day, even to the present moment, when I am writing this, when all is over and even avenged.  Oh, I swear I am not given to harbouring malice and I am not revengeful.  No doubt I always, even before my illness, wanted to revenge myself when I was insulted, but I swear it was only to revenge myself by magnanimity.  Let me revenge myself magnanimously, but so that he felt it and understood, and I should have been avenged!  And, by the way, I must add: that though I am not revengeful I have a good memory for injuries, in spite of being magnanimous; I wonder whether others are the same? Then, oh, then I went with generous feelings, perhaps absurd, but no matter: better they were absurd and generous, than not absurd but mean, vulgar and mediocre!  I never told anyone of that meeting with “my brother,” even Marie Ivanovna, even Liza: that interview was exactly like an insulting slap in the face.  And now I came across this gentleman when I least expected to meet him; he smiles to me, takes off his hat and says bonsoir in quite a friendly way.  That give one something to think about of course. . . .  But the wound was reopened.

5

After sitting for more than four hours in the restaurant I suddenly rushed away as though I were in a fit, again to Versilov’s of course, and again, of course, I did not find him at home; he had not been to the house at all; the nurse was bored, and she asked me to send Darya Onisimovna; as though I had thoughts for that!  I ran to mother’s, but did not go in.  Calling Lukerya into the passage I learnt from her that he had not been there either, and that Liza, too, was not at home.  I saw that Lukerya, too, would have liked to ask me something, and also, perhaps, to give me some commission; but I had no thoughts for that!  There was one last hope left — that he had gone to my lodging; but I had no faith in this.

I have already stated that I was almost out of my mind.  And lo, and behold! in my room I found Alphonsine and my landlord.  They were coming out, it is true, and in Pyotr Ippolitovitch’s hand was a candle.

“What’s this?” I yelled at the landlord, almost senselessly. “How dare you take that hussy into my room?”

“Tien,” cried Alphonsine “et les amis?”

“Get out,” I roared.

“Mais c’est un ours!” she whisked out into the passage, pretending to be alarmed, and instantly disappeared into the landlady’s room.  Pyotr Ippolitovitch, still holding the candle in his hand, came up to me with a severe face.

“Allow me to observe, Arkady Makarovitch, that you are too hasty; with all respect to you, Mademoiselle Alphonsine is not a hussy, but quite the contrary, indeed, is here, not as your visitor, but as my wife’s, with whom she has been for some time past acquainted.”

“And how dared you take her into my room?” I repeated, clutching at my head, which almost suddenly began to ache violently.

“By chance.  I went in to shut the window, which I had opened to air the room; and as Alphonsine Karlovna and I were continuing our conversation, she came into your room simply following me.”

“That’s a lie.  Alphonsine’s a spy, Lambert’s a spy!  Perhaps you’re a spy, too!  And Alphonsine came into my room to steal something.”

“That’s as you please.  You’ll say one thing to-day, but tomorrow you’ll speak differently.  And I’ve let our rooms for some time, and have moved with my wife into the little room so that Alphonsine Karlovna is almost as much a lodger here as you are.”

“You’ve let your rooms to Lambert?” I cried in dismay.

“No, not to Lambert,” he answered with the same broad grin, in which, however, the hesitation I had seen in the morning was replaced by determination.  “I imagine that you know to whom and only affect not to know for the sake of appearances, and that’s why you’re angry.  Good-night, sir!”

“Yes, yes, leave me, leave me alone!” I waved my hand, almost crying, so that he looked at me in surprise; he went away, however.  I fastened the door with the hook and threw myself on my bed with my face in the pillow.  And that is how I passed that awful day, the first of those three momentous days with which my story concludes.

CHAPTER X

1

But, again anticipating the course of events, I find it is necessary to explain to the reader something of what is coming, for the logical sequence of the story is obscured by such numerous incidents, that otherwise it would be impossible to understand it.

That something is the “deadly noose” to which Tatyana Pavlovna let slip an allusion.  It appeared that Anna Andreyevna had ventured at last on the most audacious step that could be imagined in her position; she certainly had a will of her own!  On the pretext of his health the old prince had been in the nick of time carried off to Tsarskoe Syelo so that the news of his approaching marriage with Anna Andreyevna might not be spread abroad, but might for the time be stifled, so to say, in embryo, yet the feeble old man, with whom one could do anything else, would not on any consideration have consented to give up his idea and jilt Anna Andreyevna, who had made him an offer.  On this subject he was a paragon of chivalry, so that he might sooner or later bestir himself and suddenly proceed to carry out his intentions with that irresistible force which is so very frequently met with in weak characters, for they often have a line beyond which they cannot be driven.  Moreover, he fully recognised the delicacy of the position of Anna Andreyevna, for whom he had an unbounded respect; he was quite alive to the possibility of rumours, of gibes, of injurious gossip.  The only thing that checked him and kept him quiet for the time was that Katerina Nikolaevna had never once allowed herself to drop the faintest hint reflecting on Anna Andreyevna in his presence, or to raise the faintest objection to his intention of marrying her; on the contrary, she showed the greatest cordiality and every attention to her father’s fiancée.  In this way Anna Andreyevna was placed in an extremely awkward position, perceiving with her subtle feminine instinct that she would wound all the old prince’s tenderest feelings, and would arouse his distrust and even, perhaps, his indignation by the slightest criticism of Katerina Nikolaevna, whom he worshipped, too, and now more than ever just because she had so graciously and dutifully consented to his marriage.  And so for the present the conflict was waged on that plane: the two rivals vied with one another in delicacy and patience, and as time went on the prince did not know which of them to admire the most, and like all weak but tender-hearted people, he ended by being miserable and blaming himself for everything.  His depression of spirits reached a morbid point, I was told: his nerves were thoroughly upset, and instead of regaining health in Tsarskoe, he was, so I was assured, on the point of taking to his bed.

Here I may note in parenthesis what I only learnt long afterwards that Büring had bluntly proposed to Katerina Nikolaevna that they should take the old gentleman abroad, inducing him to go by some sort of strategy, letting people know privately meanwhile that he had gone out of his mind, and obtaining a doctor’s certificate to that effect abroad.  But Katerina Nikolaevna would not consent to that on any account; so at least it was declared afterwards.  She seems to have rejected the project with indignation.  All this is only a rather roundabout rumour, but I believe it.

And just when things had reached this apparently hopeless position, Anna Andreyevna suddenly learnt through Lambert that there was in existence a letter, in which the daughter had consulted a lawyer about declaring her father insane.  Her proud and revengeful mind was roused to the utmost.  Recalling previous conversations with me and putting together many trifling circumstances, she could not doubt the truth of it.  Then, inevitably, the plan of a bold stroke matured in her resolute, inflexible, feminine heart. . . .  That plan was to tell the prince all about it, suddenly, with no preliminaries or negotiations, to frighten him, to give him a shock, to prove to him that what inevitably awaited him was the lunatic asylum, and if he were perverse, if he refused to believe and expressed indignation, to show him his daughter’s letter, as though to say, “Since there was once an intention of declaring him insane, it might well be tried again in order to prevent his marriage.”  Then to take the frightened and shattered old man to Petersburg — STRAIGHT TO MY LODGING.

It was a terrible risk, but she had complete confidence in her powers.  Here I will digress for a moment to observe that the later course of events proved that she had not been mistaken as to the effect of this blow; what is more, the effect of it exceeded her expectations.  The news of the existence of this letter produced, perhaps, a far stronger effect on the old prince than she or any of us had anticipated.  I had no idea until then that the old prince had heard of this letter before; but like all weak and timid people he did not believe the rumour, and did his utmost to dismiss it from his mind in order to preserve his serenity; what is more, he reproached himself for his baseness in being ready to believe it.  I may add that the fact, that is the existence of the letter, had a far greater effect on Katerina Nikolaevna than I had expected. . . . In fact, this scrap of paper turned out to be of far greater consequence than I, carrying it in my pocket, had imagined.  But I am running too far ahead.

But why, I shall be asked to my lodgings?  Why convey the old prince to my pitiful little den, and alarm him, perhaps, by the sordidness of his surroundings?  If not to his own home (where all her plans might be thwarted at once), why not to some “sumptuous” private apartments, as Lambert urged?  But it was just on this that Anna Andreyevna reckoned in her desperate step.