Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (356 page)

On Rogozhin himself Nastasya Filippovna made a very different impression from that produced on his companions. As soon as the curtain over the door was raised and he saw her, everything else ceased to exist for him, as it had that morning, and even more completely than it had that morning. He turned pale, and for an instant stopped short. It might be conjectured that his heart was beating violently. He gazed for some seconds timidly and desperately at Nastasya Filippovna without taking his eyes off her.

Suddenly, as though lost to all reason, almost staggering as he moved, he went up to the table. On the way he stumbled against Ptitsyn’s chair and trod with his huge dirty boots on the lace trimming of the dumb German beauty’s magnificent light blue dress. He did not apologise, and indeed he did not notice it. He laid on the table a strange object, which he was holding before him in both hands when he entered the drawing-room. It was a thick roll of paper, six inches thick and eight inches long, stoutly and tightly wrapped up in a copy of the Financial News, tied round and round and twice across with string, as loaves of sugar are tied up. Then he stood still without uttering a word and let his hands fall, as though awaiting his sentence. He was dressed exactly as before, except for a new bright red and green silk scarf round his neck, a huge diamond pin in the form of a beetle stuck in it, and a massive diamond ring on a finger of his grubby right hand.

Lebedyev stopped short three paces from the table; the others, as I have said, were gradually making their way into the drawing-room. Katya and Pasha, Nastasya Filippovna’s maids, had run up too to look under the lifted curtain in qreat amazement and alarm.

“What’s this?” asked Nastasya Filippovna, scanning Rogozhin intently and curiously and glancing towards “the object.”

“A hundred thousand!” answered Rogozhin almost in a whisper.

“Ah, so he’s kept his word! What a man! Sit down, please, here on this chair; I shall have something to say to you later. Who is with you? All the same party? Well, let them come in and sit down; they can sit on that sofa and this other sofa here. Here are two armchairs.... What’s the matter with them, don’t they want to?”

Some of them were in fact completely overcome with confusion; they beat a retreat and settled down to wait in the other room. But others remained and sat down as they were invited, only rather further from the table, and for the most part in out-of-the-way corners. Some of them still wished to efface themselves, but others regained their effrontery with incredible rapidity, as time went on. Rogozhin too sat down on the chair assigned him, but he did not sit there long; he stood up and did not sit down again. By degrees he began to scrutinise and distinguish the visitors. Seeing Ganya, he smiled malignantly and whispered to himself “Hullo!” He gazed at the general and Totsky without shyness or special interest. But when he noticed Myshkin beside Nastasya Filippovna, he was extremely amazed and could not take his eyes off him for a long time; he seemed at a loss to explain his presence. It may well have been that he was at moments in actual delirium. Besides the violent emotions he had gone through that day, he had spent all the previous night in the train and had been almost forty-eight hours without sleep.

“This, friends, is a hundred thousand roubles,” said Nastasya Filippovna, addressing the company with a sort of feverish, impatient defiance, “in this dirty bundle. This afternoon he shouted like a madman that he would bring me a hundred thousand this evening, and I’ve been expecting him all the time. He was bidding for me: he began at eighteen, then he suddenly passed at one bound to forty, and then this hundred here. He’s kept his word! Foo! how pale he is! . . . It all happened at Ganya’s this afternoon. I went to pay his mother a visit, in my future home, and there his sister shouted in my face, ‘Won’t they turn this shameless creature out!’ and she spat in her brother Ganya’s face. She is a girl of character!”

“Nastasya Filippovna!” General Epanchin articulated reproachfully.

He was beginning to understand the situation in his own way.

“What’s the matter, general? Is it improper? Let’s give up hum-bugging! What if I used to sit in the box at the French theatre like an inaccessible paragon of virtue; what if I did run like a wild thing from all who have been pursuing me for the last five years, and wore the airs of proud innocence — it was all because I was a silly fool! Here in your presence he has come in and put a hundred thousand on the table, after my five years of innocence, and no doubt they’ve troikas outside waiting for me. He prices me at a hundred thousand. Ganya, I see you are still angry with me. Could you really have meant to make me one of your family? Me, Rogozhin’s woman? What did the prince say just now?”

“I didn’t say you were Rogozhin’s. “Vbu don’t belong to Rogozhin,” Myshkin articulated in a shaking voice.

“Nastasya Filippovna, give over, my dear, give over, darling,” Darya Alexeyevna said suddenly, unable to restrain herself. “If they make you so miserable, why think about them? And can you really mean to go off with a fellow like that, even for a hundred thousand? It’s true it’s a hundred thousand, that’s something. You take the hundred thousand and send him about his business; that’s the way to treat them. Ech! if I were in your place I’d send them all... upon my word!”

Darya Alexeyevna was moved to positive anger. She was a very good-natured and impressionable woman.

“Don’t be angry, Darya Alexeyevna,” Nastasya Filippovna laughed to her. “I did not speak to him in anger. Did I reproach him? I simply can’t understand what folly possessed me to want to enter an honourable family. I’ve seen his mother; I kissed her hand. And the pranks I played at your flat this afternoon, Ganya, were on purpose to see for the last time how far you could go. \bu surprised me, really. I expected a good deal, but not that. Would vou actually have married me, knowinq that he was giving me such pearls almost on the eve of your wedding and I was accepting them? And Rogozhin! why, in your home, in the presence of your mother and sister, he was bidding for me; and even after that you came here to make a match of it and nearly brought your sister! Can Rogozhin have been right when he said that you’d crawl on all fours to the other end of Petersburg for three roubles?”

“Yes, he would too!” Rogozhin brought out suddenly, speaking quietly, but with an air of profound conviction.

“It would be a different matter if you were starving, but I am told you get a good salary. And, apart from the disgrace and everything else, to think of bringing a wife you hate into your house (for you do hate me, I know that)! Yes, now I do believe that such a man would murder any one for money! Every one is possessed with such a greed nowadays, they are all so overwhelmed by the idea of money that they seem to have gone mad. The very children take to moneylending! A man winds silk round his razor, makes it firm, comes from behind and cuts his friend’s throat like a sheep’s, as I read lately. Well,

you are a shameless fellow! I am a shameless woman, but you are worse. I say nothing about that bouquet-holder....”

“Is this you — is this you, Nastasya Filippovna!” General Epanchin clasped his hands in genuine distress. “\bu, so refined, with such delicate ideas — and now! What language! What expressions!”

“I am tipsy now, general,” Nastasya Filippovna laughed suddenly. “I want to have my fling! This is my day, my holiday, my red-letter day; I’ve been waiting for it a long time! Darya Alexeyevna, do you see this bouquet-holder, this monsieur aux camelias? There he sits laughing at us....”

“I am not laughing, Nastasya Filippovna, I am only listening with the greatest attention,” Totsky protested with dignity.

“Why have I been tormenting him for the last five years and not letting him go? Was he worth it? He is just what he ought to be. . . . Most likely he reckons I have treated him badly too. He gave me education, he kept me like a countess, and the money — the money wasted on me! He looked me out a respectable husband in the country in those days, and now Ganya here; and, would you believe it, I

have not lived with him for the last five years, and yet have taken his money and thought I had a right to! I’ve been so completely lost to all sense! “Vbu say, take the hundred thousand and get rid of him, if it’s horrid. And it really is horrid. ... I might have been married long ago, and not to Ganya either; but that would have been just as horrid too. And why have I wasted five years in my anger? And would you believe it, four years ago I thought at times whether I hadn’t better marry my Afanasy Ivanovitch outright? I thought of it out of spite. I had all sorts of ideas in my head at that time; and, you know, I could have brought him to it. He used to urge it himself, though you mayn’t believe it. He was lying, it’s true; but he is easily tempted, he can’t restrain himself. But afterwards, thank God, I thought he wasn’t worth such anger! And I suddenly felt so disgusted with him then that, if he had besought me, I wouldn’t have married him. And for the last five years I’ve been keeping up this farce. No, I’d better be in my proper place, in the streets! I must either have a spree with Rogozhin or go out as a washer-woman to-morrow. For I’ve nothing of my own. If I go away, I shall give up evervthinq of his, I shall leave every raq behind. And who’ll take one with nothing? Ask Ganya there if he’ll have me! Why, even Ferdyshtchenko wouldn’t!”

“Perhaps Ferdyshtchenko wouldn’t, Nastasya Filippovna. I am a candid person,” interposed Ferdyshtchenko; “but the prince would take you. You sit here and complain, but you should look at the prince. I’ve been watching him a long time.”

Nastasya Filippovna turned with curiosity to Myshkin.

“Is that true?” she asked.

“It’s true,” whispered Myshkin.

“Will you take me as I am, with nothing?”

“I will, Nastasya Filippovna.”

“Here’s a new development,” muttered the general. “I might have expected it.”

Myshkin looked with a stern, mournful and penetrating gaze into the face of Nastasya Filippovna, who was still scanning him.

“Here’s a find!” she said suddenly, turning again to Darya Alexeyevna. “And simply from goodness of heart, too; I know him. I have found a benefactor! But maybe it’s true what they say about him, that he is . . . not quite. What are you going to live on if you are so in love that you, a prince, are ready to marry Rogozhin’s woman?”

“I am going to marry an honest woman, Nastasya Filippovna, not Rogozhin’s woman,” said Myshkin.

“Do you mean that I am an honest woman?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, all those notions . . . come out of novels! Those are old-fashioned fancies, prince darling; nowadays the world has grown wiser. And how can you get married? \bu want a nurse to look after you!”

Myshkin got up and in a shaking, timid voice, but with an air of intense conviction, pronounced:

“I know nothing about it, Nastasya Filippovna. I’ve seen nothing of life. \bu are right there, but ... I consider that you will be doing me an honour, not I you. I am nothing, and you have suffered and have come pure out of that hell, and that is a great deal. Why, then, are you ashamed, and ready to go off with Rogozhin? It’s fever. . . . \bu have given back seventy thousand to Mr. Totsky and you say that you will give up everything — everything here. No one here would do that. I . . . Nastasya Filippovna ... I love you! I would die for you, Nastasya Filippovna! I won’t let any one say a word about you. If we are poor, I’ll work, Nastasya Filippovna....”

At the last word a snigger was heard from Ferdyshtchenko and Lebedyev, and even the general gave a sort of snort of great dissatisfaction. Ptitsyn and Totsky could not help smiling, but controlled themselves. The others simply gaped with astonishment.

“. . . But perhaps we shan’t be poor, but very rich, Nastasya Filippovna,” Myshkin went on in the same timid voice. “I don’t know for certain, and I am sorry that I haven’t been able all day to find out about it; but I had a letter from Moscow while I was in Switzerland, from a certain Mr. Salazkin, and he informed me that I may receive a very large inheritance. Here is the letter....”

Myshkin did in fact produce a letter from his pocket.

“Isn’t he raving!” muttered the general. “This is a perfect madhouse!”

For an instant there was silence.

“I believe you said, prince, that the letter was from Salazkin?” asked Ptitsyn. “He is a man very well known in his own circle; he is a very distinguished lawyer, and, if it is really he who sends you the news,

you may put complete trust in it. Fortunately I know his handwriting, for I had business with him lately. .. . If you would let me have a look at it, I might tell you.”

With a shaking hand Myshkin held out the letter without a word.

“What now? What now?” the general cried, looking at everybody like one possessed. “Can it really be an inheritance?”

Every one fixed their eyes on Ptitsyn as he read the letter. The general curiosity had received a new and violent stimulus. Ferdyshtchenko could not keep still; Rogozhin looked on with amazement and great anxiety, turning his eyes from Myshkin to Ptitsyn. Darya Alexeyevna seemed on tenter-hooks of expectation. Even Lebedyev could not help coming out of his corner and bending himself into a triangle, peeped at the letter over Ptitsyn’s shoulder with the airofa man expecting a blow for doing so.

CHAPTER 16

Irs a genuine thing,” Ptitsyn announced at last, folding up the letter and handing it to Myshkin. “By the uncontested will of your aunt you will come into a very large fortune without any difficulty.”

“Impossible!” the general fired off like a pistol-shot.

Everyone was agape with astonishment again.

Ptitsyn explained, addressing his remarks chiefly to General Epanchin, that Myshkin had five months previously lost an aunt, whom he had never known personally, the elder sister of his mother and the daughter of a Moscow merchant of the third guild, called Papushin, who had died bankrupt and in poverty. But the elder brother of this Papushin, who had also died lately, had been a well-known rich merchant. His two only sons had both died in the same month a year before. The shock of their loss had led to the old man’s illness and death shortly after. He was a widower and had no heirs in the world but his niece, Myshkin’s aunt, who was quite a poor woman without a home of her own. At the time she inherited the fortune she was almost dying of dropsy, but she had at once tried to find Myshkin, putting the matter into Salazkin’s hands, and she had had time to make her will. Apparently neither Myshkin nor the doctor in whose charge he was in Switzerland had cared to wait for an official notification or to make inquiries, and the prince, with Salazkin’s letter in his pocket, had decided to set off himself.