Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (369 page)

“My motherless children!” he wailed as he came up. “And this baby in her arms is motherless, her sister, my daughter Lubov — born in most lawful wedlock from my departed wife Elena, who died six weeks ago in childbirth, by the will of God. . . . “Vfes .. . she takes her mother’s place to the baby, though she is a sister and no more ... no more, no more. ..

“And you, sir, are no more than a fool, if you’ll excuse me! That’s enough, you know it yourself, I suppose,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna rapped out in extreme indignation.

“Perfectly true,” Lebedyev assented with a low and respectful bow.

“Listen, Mr. Lebedyev, is it true what they say, that you interpret the Apocalypse?” asked Aglaia.

“Perfectly true ... for fifteen years.”

“I’ve heard about you. I think there was something in the newspapers about you?”

“No, that was about another interpreter, another one; but he is dead. I’ve succeeded him,” said Lebedyev, beside himself with delight.

“Be so good as to interpret it to me some day soon, as we are neighbours. I don’t understand anything in the Apocalypse.”

“I must warn you, Aglaia Ivanovna, that all this is mere charlatanism on his part, believe me,” General Ivolgin put in quickly. He was sitting beside Aglaia, and tingling all over with eagerness to enter into conversation. “Of course there are certain privileges on a holiday,” he went on, “and certain pleasures, and to take up such an extraordinary intrus for the interpretation of the Apocalypse is a diversion like any other, and even a remarkably clever diversion, but I ... I think you are looking at me with surprise? General Ivolgin. I have the honour to introduce myself. I used to carry you in my arms, Aglaia Ivanovna.”

“Very glad to meet you. I know Varvara Ardalionovna and Nina Alexandrovna,” Aglaia muttered, making desperate efforts not to burst out laughing.

Lizaveta Prokofyevna flushed. The irritation that had been accumulating for a long time in her heart suddenly craved for an outlet. She could not endure General Ivolgin, with whom she had been acquainted, but very long ago.

“You are lying, sir, as usual. \bu have never carried her in your arms,” she snapped out indignantly.

“You’ve forgotten, maman, he really did, at Tver,” Aglaia suddenly asserted. “We were living at Tver then. I was six years old then, I remember. He made me a bow and arrow and taught me to shoot, and I killed a pigeon. Do you remember we killed a pigeon together?”

“And you brought me a helmet made of cardboard, and a wooden sword, I remember, too!” cried Adelaida.

“I remember it too,” Alexandra chimed in. “\bu quarrelled over the wounded pigeon. You were put in separate corners. Adelaida stood in the corner wearing the helmet and the sword.”

When General Ivolgin told Aglaia that he had carried her in his arms, he said it without meaning it, merely to begin the conversation, and because he always began a conversation in that way with young people, if he wanted to make their acquaintance. But this time, as it happened, he was speaking the truth, though, as it happened, he had forgotten it. So when Aglaia declared that they had shot a pigeon together, it revived his memory of the past, and he recalled every detail himself, as elderly people often do remember something in the remote past. It is hard to say what there was in that reminiscence to produce so strong an effect on the poor general, who was, as usual, a little drunk, but he was all at once greatly moved.

“I remember, I remember it all!” he cried. “I was a captain then. “Vbu were such a pretty little mite. . . . Nina Alexandrovna. . . . Ganya ... I used to be ... a guest in your house, Ivan Fyodorovitch ...”

“And see what you’ve come to now!” put in Madame Epanchin. “So you haven’t drunk away all your better feeling, it affects you so much? But you’ve worried your wife to death! Instead of looking after your children, you sit in a debtors’ prison. Go awav, mv friend; stand in some corner behind the door and have a cry. Remember your innocence in the past, and maybe God will forgive you. Go along, go along, I mean it. Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret.”

But to repeat that she was speaking seriously was unnecessary. General Ivolgin, like all drunkards, was very emotional, and, like all drunkards who have sunk very low, he was much upset by memories of the happy past. He got up and walked humbly to the door, so that Lizaveta Prokofyevna was at once sorry for him.

“Ardalion Alexandrovitch, my dear man!” she called after him. “Stop a minute; we are all sinners. When you feel your conscience more at ease, come and see me; we’ll sit and chat over the past. I daresay I am fifty times as great a sinner myself. But now, good-bye; go along, it’s no use your staying here,” she added suddenly, afraid he was coming back.

“You’d better not go after him for a while,” said Myshkin, checking Kolya, who was about to run after his father, “or he will be vexed directly and all this minute will be spoiled for him.”

“That’s true; don’t disturb him; go in half an hour,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna decided.

“See what comes of speaking the truth for once in his life; it reduced him to tears,” Lebedyev ventured to comment.

“You are another pretty one, my man, if what I’ve heard is true,” said Lizaveta Prokofyevna, suppressing him at once.

The mutual relations of the guests about Myshkin gradually became evident. Myshkin was, of course, able to appreciate and did appreciate to the full the sympathy shown to him by Madame Epanchin and her daughters, and he told them with truth that before they came he had intended to have paid them a visit that day in spite of his invalid state and the late hour. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, looking at his visitors, observed that it was still possible to carry out his intention. Ptitsyn, who was a very polite and tactful person, promptly retreated to Lebedyev’s quarters, and was very anxious to get Lebedyev away with him. The latter promised to follow him quickly. Varya, meanwhile, had got into talk with the girls, and remained, and she and Ganya were greatly relieved by the departure of the general. Ganya himself withdrew soon after Ptitsyn. For the few minutes that he was in the verandah with the Epanchins, he had behaved modestly and with dignity, and was not in the least disconcerted by the determined air with which Madame Epanchin twice scanned him from head to foot. Anyone who had known him before would certainly have thought that there was a great change in him. Aglaia was very much pleased at it.

“Was that Gavril Ardalionovitch who went out?” she asked suddenly, as she was fond of doing sometimes, interrupting the general conversation by her loud abrupt question, and addressing no one in particular.

“Yes,” answered Myshkin.

“I hardly knew him. He is very much changed and . .. greatly for the better.”

“I am very glad,” said Myshkin.

“He has been very ill,” added Varya, in a tone of glad commiseration.

“How has he changed for the better?” Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked with angry perplexity and almost in dismay. “What an idea! There’s nothing better. What improvement do you see?”

“There is nothing better than the ‘poor knight,’”

Kolya, who had been standing by Madame Epanchin’s chair, brought out suddenly.

“That’s exactly what I think,” said Prince S. and he laughed.

“I am precisely of the same opinion,” Adelaida declared solemnly.

“What poor knight?” asked Madame Epanchin, staring at all who had spoken, with perplexity and vexation, but seeing that Aglaia flushed hotly, she added angrily, “Some nonsense, of course! Who is this ‘poor knight’?”

“It’s not the first time that urchin, your favourite, has twisted other people’s words awry!” answered Aglaia, with haughty indignation.

In every outburst of anger from Aglaia (and she was very often angry) there was apparent, in spite of her evident seriousness and severity, something childish and impatiently schoolgirlish, so naively disguised that it was sometimes impossible not to laugh when one looked at her, though this was the cause of extreme indignation to Aglaia, who could not understand what people were laughing at, and “how they could, how they dared, laugh.” Her sisters and Prince S. lauqhed now, and even Mvshkin smiled, though he, too, flushed at something. Kolya roared with laughter, and was triumphant. Aglaia was angry in earnest, and looked twice as pretty. Her confusion was very becoming to her, and so was her vexation at her own confusion.

“He has twisted so many of your words awry, too!” she added.

“I based it on your own exclamation!” cried Kolya. “A month ago you were looking through ‘Don Quixote,’ and you cried out those very words, that there was nothing better than the ‘poor knight.’ I don’t know whom you were talking of, whether it was Don Quixote or Yevgeny Pavlovitch or some other person; but you were talking of some one and the conversation lasted a long while.”

“I see you allow yourself to go too far, young man, with your conjectures,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna checked him with vexation.

“But am I the only one?” Kolya persisted. “Everybody said so, and they are saying so still. Why, Prince S. and Adelaida Ivanovna and every one declared just now that they stood up for the ‘poor knight.’ So there must be a ‘poor knight,’ and he does exist, and I believe if it were not for Adelaida Ivanovna, we should have known long ago who the ‘poor knight’ was.”

“What have I done?” laughed Adelaida.

“You wouldn’t draw his portrait, that’s what you did! Aglaia Ivanovna begged you then to draw the portrait of the ‘poor knight,’ and described the whole subject of the picture. She made the subject up herself, you remember. You wouldn’t.”

“But how could I draw it? According to the poem, that ‘poor knight’

‘no more in sight of any Raised the visor from his face.’

How could I draw the face then? What was I to draw — the visor? — the anonymous hero?”

“I don’t understand what you mean by the visor,” said Madame Epanchin angrily, though she was beginning to have a very clear idea who was meant by the nickname (probably agreed upon long ago) of the “poor knight.” But what specially angered her was that Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch was also disconcerted, and at last quite abashed like a bovof ten.

“Well, will you put a stop to this foolishness or not? Will they explain to me this ‘poor knight’? Is it such an awful secret that one can’t approach it?”

But they only went on laughing.

“The fact is, there is a strange Russian poem about a poor knight,” Prince S. began at last, obviously anxious to suppress the subject and change the conversation, “a fragment without a beginning or an end. About a month ago we were all laughing after dinner and trying as usual to find a subject for Adelaida Ivanovna’s next picture. “Vbu know that the whole family is always trying to find subjects for Adelaida Ivanovna’s pictures. Then we hit on the ‘poor knight,’ which of us first I don’t remember.”

“Aglaia Ivanovna!” cried Kolya.

“Perhaps, I dare say, only I don’t remember,” Prince S. went on. “Some of us laughed at the subject, others declared that nothing could be better, but that to paint the ‘poor knight’ we must find a face for him. We began to go over the faces of all our friends. Not one was suitable, and there we left it,

that was all. I don’t know why Nikolay Ardalionovitch thought fit to recall it all and bring it up again. What was amusing and appropriate at the time is quite uninteresting now.”

“Because some fresh foolishness is meant, mischievous and offensive,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna snapped out.

“There’s no foolishness in it, nothing but the deepest respect,” Aglaia suddenly brought out, quite unexpectedly, in a grave and earnest voice.

She had mastered her confusion by now and completely recovered from it. What’s more, one might, looking at her, have supposed from certain signs that she was positively glad that the jest was going so far; and this revulsion of feeling took place in her at the very moment when Myshkin’s increasing and overwhelming embarrassment had become unmistakably evident to every one.

“At one time they are laughing like mad things, and then they talk of the deepest respect! Crazy creatures! Why respect? Tell me at once, what makes you drag in deepest respect when it’s neither here nor there? ...”

“Deepest respect,” Aglaia went on as gravely and earnestly in response to her mother’s almost spiteful questions, “because that poem simply describes a man who is capable of an ideal, and what’s more, a man who having once set an ideal before him has faith in it, and having faith in it gives up his life blindly to it. This does not always happen in our day. We are not told in that poem exactly what the ‘poor knight’s’ ideal was, but one can see it was some vision, some image of ‘pure beauty,’ and the knight in his loving devotion has put a rosary round his neck instead of a scarf. It’s true that there is some obscure device of which we are not told in full, the letters A.N.B. inscribed on his shield ...”

“A.M.D.” Kolya corrected her.

“But I say A.N.B. and that’s what I want to say,” Aglaia interrupted with vexation. “Anyway, it’s clear that that poor knight did not care what his lady was, or what she did. It was enough for him that he had chosen her and put faith in her ‘pure beauty and then did homage to her for ever. That’s just his merit, that if she became a thief afterwards, he would still be bound to believe in her and be ready to break a spear for her pure beauty. The poet seems to have meant to unite in one striking figure the grand conception of the piatonic love of mediaeval chivalry, as it was felt by a pure and lofty knight. Of course all that’s an ideal. In the ‘poor knight’ that feeling reaches its utmost limit in asceticism. It must be admitted that to be capable of such a feeling means a great deal, and that such feelings leave behind a profound impression, very, from one point of view, laudable, as with Don Quixote, for instance. The ‘poor knight’ is the same Don Quixote, only serious and not comic. I didn’t understand him at first, and laughed, but now I love the ‘poor knight,’ and what’s more, respect his exploits.”

This was how Aglaia concluded, and, looking at her, it was difficult to tell whether she was in earnest or laughing.

“Well, he must have been a fool anyway, he and his exploits,” was her mother’s comment. “And you are talking nonsense, my girl, a regular tirade. It’s not quite nice of you, to my thinking. In any case, it’s not good manners. What poem? Read it; no doubt you know it! I must hear it. I’ve always disliked poetry; I knew no good would come of it. For goodness’ sake, put up with it, prince! “Vbu and I have got to put up with thinqs toqether, it seems,” she added,