Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (412 page)

The happy frame of mind of the family did not last long. Next day Aglaia quarrelled with Myshkin again, and things went on like that for several days. For hours together she would jeer at Myshkin and make him almost a laughing-stock. It is true they would sometimes sit for an hour or two together in the arbour in the garden, but it was observed that, at such times, Myshkin almost always read aloud the newspaper or some book to Aglaia.

“Do you know,” Aglaia said one day, interrupting his reading of the newspaper, “I have noticed that you are dreadfully uneducated. “Vbu don’t know anything thoroughly, if one asks you who some one is, or in what year anything happened, or the name of a treaty. You’re much to be pitied.”

“I told you that I have not much learning,” answered Myshkin.

“What have you if you haven’t that? How can I respect you after that? Read on; or rather, don’t. Leave off reading.”

And again, that evening, there was something that mystified them all in her behaviour. Prince S. came back; Aglaia was very cordial to him, she made many inquiries about Yevgeny Pavlovitch. (Myshkin had not yet come in.) Suddenly Prince S. permitted himself an allusion to “another approaching event in the family,” to a few words which had escaped Lizaveta Prokofyevna, suggesting that they might have to put off Adelaida’s wedding again in order that the two weddings might take place together. Aglaia flared up in a way no one could have expected at “these stupid suppositions,” and among other things the phrase broke from her that she had “no intention at present of taking the place of anybody’s mistress.”

These words struck everybody, and above all her parents. In a secret confabulation with her husband, Lizaveta Prokofyevna insisted that he must go into the question of Nastasya Filippovna with Myshkin, once for all.

Ivan Fyodorovitch swore that all this was only “a whim,” and put it down to Aglaia’s “delicacy”; that if Prince S. had not referred to the marriage there would not have been this outburst, because Aglaia knew herself, knew on good authority, that it was all a slander of ill-natured people, and that Nastasya Filippovna was going to marry Rogozhin, that the prince had nothing to do with it, let alone a liaison with her; and never had had, if one’s to speak the whole truth.

“Vfet Myshkin went on being blissful and untroubled by anything. Oh, of course, he too noticed sometimes something gloomy and impatient in Aglaia’s expression; but he had more faith in something different, and the gloom vanished of itself.

Once having faith in anything, he could not waver afterwards. Perhaps he was too much at ease in his mind; so it seemed at least to Ippolit who chanced to meet him in the park.

“Well, didn’t I tell you at the time that you were in love?” he began, going up to Myshkin and stopping him.

Myshkin shook hands with him and congratulated him on his “looking so much better.” The invalid seemed hopeful himself, as consumptives are so apt to be.

He had come up to Myshkin to say something sarcastic about his happy expression, but he soon drifted off the subject and began to talk about himself. He began complaining, and his complaints were many and long-winded, and rather incoherent.

“You wouldn’t believe,” he concluded, “how irritable they all are there; how petty, how egoistic, vain, and commonplace. Would you believe it, they only took me on condition of my dying as quickly as possible, and now they’re all in a fury that I am not dying, but, on the contrary, better. It’s a farce! I bet you don’t believe me.”

Myshkin had no inclination to reply.

“I sometimes think of moving back to you again,” Ippolit added carelessly. “So you don’t think they’re capable of taking a man in on condition of his dying as quickly as possible?”

“I thought they invited you with other views.”

“Aha! You are by no means so simple as you are reputed to be! Now is not the time, or I’d tell you something about that wretched Ganya and his hopes. They’re undermining your position, prince; they’re doing it mercilessly and . . . it’s quite pitiful to see you so serene. But, alas! you can’t help it!”

“That’s a funny thing to pity me for!” laughed Myshkin; “do you think I should be happier if I were less serene?”

“Better be unhappy and know the truth, than be happy and live . . . like a fool. You don’t seem to believe that you have a rival — and in that quarter?”

“What you say about a rival is rather cynical, Ippolit; I am sorry I have not the right to answer you. As for Gavril Ardalionovitch, judge for yourself whether he can be happy in his mind after all he has lost; that is, if you know anything at all about his affairs? It seems to me better to look at it from that point of view. There’s time for him to change; he has a life before him, and life is rich . . . though . . . though. . . .” Myshkin broke off uncertainly. “As for under-mining I don’t know what you are talking about; let’s drop this conversation, Ippolit.”

“We’ll drop it for the time; besides, you must always go in for being gentlemanly, of course. “Vfes, prince, you’d have to touch it with your finger in order to disbelieve it again. Ha, ha! And do you despise me very much now, what do you think?”

“What for? Because you have suffered and are still suffering more than we?”

“No, but because lam unworthy of my suffering.”

“If anyone is able to suffer more, he must be more worthy of suffering. When Aglaia Ivanovna read your confession, she wanted to see you, but....”

“She’s putting it off . . . she can’t. I understand, I understand ...” Ippolit interrupted, as though anxious to break off the conversation as quickly as possible. “By the way, they tell me that you read all that rigmarole aloud to her yourself; it was literally in delirium that I wrote it and ... did it. And I don’t understand how anyone can be so — I won’t say cruel (it would be humiliating for me), but so childishly vain and revenqeful, as to reproach me with that confession and to use it against me as a weapon. Don’t be uneasy, I’m not talking about you.”

“But I am sorry that you repudiate that manuscript, Ippolit; it is sincere, and you know that even the most absurd points in it, and there are many of them” (Ippolit scowled), “are redeemed by suffering, because to confess them is suffering and . . . perhaps great manliness. The idea that animated you must have had a noble foundation, however it may seem. I see that more clearly as time goes on, I swear I do. I don’t judge you. I speak to say what I think, and I’m sorry that I didn’t speak at the time.”

Ippolit flushed hotly. The thought flashed through his mind that Myshkin was pretending, and taking him in. But, looking into his face he could not help being convinced of his sincerity. His face brightened.

“Yet I must die all the same!” he said, almost adding, “a man like me!”

“And only fancy how your Ganya plagues me; the objection he has trumped up is that three or four who heard my confession will very likely die before I do. What do you say to that! He supposes that’s a comfort to me, ha! ha! In the first place they haven’t died yet. And even if these people did die, you’ll admit that’s no comfort to me. He judges by himself; but he goes further. He simply abuses me now; he says a decent man would die in silence, and that it’s all egoism on my part! What do you say to that! Yes, what about egoism on his part; what refinement, and yet at the same time what ox-like coarseness of egoism, though they can’t see it in themselves! Have you ever read, prince, of the death of Stepan Glyebov in the eighteenth century? I happened to read about it yesterday....”

“What Stepan Glyebov?”

“He was impaled in the time of Peter.”

“Oh dear, yes, I know. He was fifteen hours on the stake, in the frost, in a fur coat, and died with extraordinary grandeur. Yes, I read it... what of it?”

“God grants such deaths to men, but not to us! “Vbu think, perhaps, I’m not capable of dying like Glyebov?”

“Oh, not at all!” Myshkin said, confused. “I only meant to say that you . . . that is, not that you would not be like Glyebov, but . . . that you . . . that you would be more likely then to be....”

“I guess, like Osterman? And not Glyebov — that’s what you meant to say?”

“What Osterman?” said Myshkin, surprised.

“Osterman, the diplomat Osterman, Peter’s Osterman,” muttered Ippolit, suddenly disconcerted.

A certain perplexity followed.

“Oh, n-n-no! I didn’t mean to say that,” Myshkin said emphatically, after a brief silence. “You would never, I think ... have been an Osterman.”

Ippolit frowned.

“The reason I maintain that, though,” Myshkin resumed suddenly, obviously anxious to set things right, “is because the men of those days (I swear I’ve always been struck by it) were absolutely not the same people that we are now; it was not the same race as now, in our age, really, it seems we are a different species. ... In those days they were men of one idea, but now we are more nervous, more developed, more sensitive; men capable of two or three ideas at once. . . . Modern men are broader-minded — and I swear that this prevents their being so all-of-a-piece as they were in those days. I ... I simply said it with that idea, and not...”

“I understand; you’re doing your level best to console me now for the simplicity with which you disagreed with me, ha, ha! \bu’re a perfect child,

prince. I notice though that you all handle me like a china cup. ... I’m not angry, it’s all right, never mind! Anyway, we’ve had an awfully funny conversation; you’re sometimes a perfect child, prince. Let me tell you, though, that I should like perhaps to be something better than Osterman. It would not be worth while to rise from the dead for the sake of Osterman. ... I see I ought to die as soon as possible though, or I, myself, shall. . . . Leave me. Good-bye! Well now, come, tell me what do you think would be the best way for me to die? ... To make a virtuous ending of it as far as may be, that is? Come, tell me!”

“Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness,” said Myshkin in a low voice.

“Ha, ha, ha! Just as I thought! I knew it was sure to be something like that! Though you are . . . you are. . . . Well, well! “Vbu are eloquent people! Good-bye! Good-bye!”

CHAPTER 6

What VARVARA Ardalionovna had told her brother about the evening party at the Epanchins’ at which Princess Byelokonsky was expected was also quite correct; the guests were expected that evening. But in this case too she had expressed herself rather too strongly. It had, indeed, all been arranged with too much hurry, and even with some quite unnecessary excitement, just because in that family “they never could do things like other people.” It was all due to the impatience of Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who was “anxious not to be kept longer in suspense,” and to the feverish tremors of both parental hearts concerning the happiness of their favourite daughter. Moreover, Princess Byelokonsky really was going away soon, and as her patronage certainly did carry weight in society, and as they hoped she would be well disposed to Myshkin, the parents reckoned that “the world” would accept Aglaia’s betrothed straight from the hands of the omnipotent “old princess,” and that therefore if there were anything strange about it, it would seem much less strange under such patronage. The real fact was that the parents were quite unable to settle the question themselves whether there was anything strange in the matter, and if so how much. Or whether there were nothing strange about it at all. The candid and friendly opinion of influential and competent persons would be of use just at the present moment when, thanks to Aglaia, nothing had been finally settled. In any case, sooner or later the prince would have to be introduced into society, of which he had so far not the faintest idea. In short, they were intending to “show” him. The party arranged was, however, a simple one. Only “friends of the family” were expected, and not many of them. One other lady besides Princess Byelokonsky was coming, the wife of a very important dignitary. “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch was almost the only young man expected, and he was to escort Princess Byelokonsky.

Myshkin heard that Princess Byelokonsky was coming three days beforehand; of the party he learned only the previous day. He noticed, of course, the busy air of the members of the family, and even from certain insinuating and anxious attempts to broach the subject to him, he perceived that they dreaded the impression he might make. But somehow the Epanchins, all without exception, were possessed by the idea that he was too simple to be capable of guessing that they were uneasy in this way on his account; and so, looking at him, every one was inwardly troubled. He did in fact, however, attach scarcely any consequence to the approaching event. He was occupied with something quite different. Aglaia was becoming every hour more gloomy and capricious — that was crushing him. When he knew that they were expecting Yevgeny Pavlovitch, he was greatly delighted, and said that he had long been wishing to see him. For some reason no one liked these words. Aglaia went out of the room in vexation, and only late at night, about twelve o’clock, when Myshkin was going away, she seized an opportunity of a few words alone with him,

as she saw him out.

“I should like you not to come and see us all day to-morrow, but to come in the evening when these . . . visitors are here. You know that there are to be visitors?”

She spoke impatiently and with intense severity. It was the first time she had spoken to him of this “party.” To her, too, the idea of these visitors was almost insufferable; every one noticed it. She may have felt greatly tempted to quarrel with her parents about it, but pride and modesty kept her from speaking. Myshkin saw at once that she also was afraid on his account (and did not want to admit that she was afraid), and he too felt suddenly frightened.

“Yes, I’ve been invited,” he answered.

She evidently found it difficult to go on.

“Can one speak to you about anything serious? Just for once?” She grew suddenly fearfully angry, not knowing why, and not able to control herself.

“You can, and I am listening. I’m very glad,” muttered Myshkin.

Aglaia paused again for a minute, and began with evident repugnance:

“I didn’t want to dispute with them about it, for vou can’t make them see reason about some things. Some ofmaman’s principles have always been revolting to me. I say nothing about papa; it’s no use expecting anything from him. Maman is a noble woman, of course; if you dared to propose anything mean to her, you’d see. Yet she bows down before these . . . contemptible creatures. I don’t mean the old princess. She’s a contemptible old woman, contemptible in character, but clever and knows how to turn them all round her finger — one can say that for her, anyway. Oh, the meanness of it! And it’s ludicrous. We’ve always been people of the middle-class, as middle-class as could possibly be. Why force ourselves into this aristocratic circle? And my sisters are on the same tack. Prince S. has upset them all. Why are you pleased that Yevgeny Pavlovitch will be here?”