Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (399 page)

“Did you ever then preach her such . . . sermons?”

“Oh, no,” Myshkin went on dreamily, not observing the tone and the question. “I hardly ever spoke. I often wanted to speak, but I really didn’t know sometimes what to say. You know, in some cases it is better not to speak at all. Oh, I loved her; oh, I loved her very much, but afterwards .. . afterwards .. . afterwards she guessed it all.”

“What did she guess?”

“That I only pitied her, but that I . . . don’t love her any more.”

“How do you know? Perhaps she really fell in love with that... landowner she went away with?”

“No, I know all about it. She was only laughing at him.”

“And did she never laugh at you?”

“N-no. She used to laugh in anger. Oh, then she would reproach me horribly, in a fury — and she was wretched herself! But . . . afterwards . . . Oh, don’t remind me, don’t remind me of that!”

He hid his face in his hands.

“And do you know that she writes letters to me almost everyday?”

“Then it is true!” cried Myshkin, in dismay. “I heard so, but I wouldn’t believe it.”

“From whom did you hear it?” Aglaia asked, scared.

“Rogozhin said so yesterday, but not quite definitely.”

“Yesterday? Yesterday morning? What time yesterday? Before the band played, or after?”

“Afterwards. In the evening, past eleven.”

“Oh, if it was Rogozhin. . . . But do you know what she writes to me in these letters.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised at anything. She’s insane.”

“Here are the letters.” Aglaia pulled three letters in three envelopes out of her pocket and threw them down before Myshkin. “For the last week, she’s been beseeching, imploring, coaxing me to marry you. She . . . Oh, well, she’s clever, though she’s insane. And you’re right in saying she’s much cleverer than I am. . . . She writes that she’s in love with me, that she tries every day to get a chance of seeing me even in the distance. She writes that you love me, that she knows it, that she noticed it long ago, that you used to talk to her about me then. She wants to see you happy. She’s certain that only I can make you happy. . . . She writes so wildly... so strangely . . . I haven’t shown her letters to anyone. I’ve been waiting for you. Do you know what this means? Can you guess?”

“It’s madness, a proof of her insanity,” Myshkin brought out, and his lips began to tremble.

“You’re not crying now, are you?”

“No, Aglaia. No. I’m not crying.” Myshkin looked at her.

“What am I to do about it? What do you advise me? I can’t go on getting these letters!”

“Oh, leave her alone, I entreat you!” cried Myshkin. “What can you do in this darkness? I’ll do all I can to prevent her writing to you again.”

“Then you’re a man of no heart!” cried Aglaia. “Surely you must see that she’s not in love with me, but that she loves you, only you. How can you have noticed everything in her and not have seen that? Do you know what it is, what these letters mean? It’s jealousy. It’s more than jealousy! She ... do you suppose she’d really marry Rogozhin as she writes here in her letters? She’d kill herself the day after our wedding!”

Myshkin started; his heart stood still. But he gazed in amazement at Aglaia. It was strange to him to realize that the child was so fully a woman.

“God knows, Aglaia, that to bring peace back to her and make her happy, I would give up my life. But ... I can’t love her now, and she knows it!”

“Then sacrifice yourself, it’s just in your line! You’re such a charitable person! And don’t call me Aglaia .. . \bu called me simply Aglaia just now. \bu ought to raise her up, you are bound to. You ought to go away with her again so as to give peace and calm to her heart. Why, you love her, you know!”

“I can’t sacrifice myself like that, though I did want to at one time . . . and perhaps I want to still. But I

know for certain that with me she’ll be lost, and so I leave her. I was to have seen her to-day at seven o’clock; but perhaps I won’t go now. In her pride she will never forgive me for my love — and we shall both come to ruin. That’s abnormal, but everything here is abnormal. “Vbu say she loves me, but is this love? Can there be such love after what I have gone through? No, it’s something else, not love!”

“How pale you’ve grown!” Aglaia cried, in sudden dismay.

“It’s nothing. I’ve not had much sleep. I’m exhausted . . . We really did talk about you then, Aglaia ...”

“So that’s true? You actually could talk to her about me and . . . and how could you care for me when you had only seen me once?”

“I don’t know how. In my darkness then I dreamed. ... I had an illusion perhaps of a new dawn. I don’t know how I thought of you at first. It was the truth I wrote you then, that I didn’t know. All that was only a dream, from the horror then. . . . Afterwards I began to work. I shouldn’t have come here for three years. .

“Then you’ve come for her sake?”

And there was a quiver in Aglaia’s voice.

“Yes, for her sake.”

Two minutes of gloomy silence on both sides followed. Aglaia got up from the seat.

“You may say,” she began in an unsteady voice, “you may believe that that . . . your woman ... is insane, but I have nothing to do with her insane fancies. ... I beg you, Lyov Nikolayevitch, to take these three letters and fling them back to her from me! And if,” Aglaia cried suddenly, “and if she dares write me a single line again, tell her I shall complain to my father, and have her put into a House of Correction....”

Myshkin jumped up, and gazed in alarm at Aglaia’s sudden fury; a mist seemed to fall before his eyes.

“You can’t feel like that. ... It’s not true!” he muttered.

“It’s the truth! It’s the truth!” screamed Aglaia, almost beside herself.

“What’s the truth? What truth?” They heard a frightened voice saying near them.

Lizaveta Prokofyevna stood before them.

“It’s the truth that I’m going to marry Gavril Ardalionovitch! That I love Gavril Ardalionovitch, and that I’m going to run away from home with him tomorrow!” cried Aglaia, flying out at her. “Do you hear? Is your curiosity satisfied? Is that enough for you?”

And she ran home.

“No, my friend, don’t you go away,” said Lizaveta Prokofyevna, detaining him, “you’ll be so good as to give me an explanation. What have I done to be so worried? I’ve been awake all night as it is.”

Myshkin followed her.

CHAPTER 9

On REACHING home Lizaveta Prokofyevna stopped in the first room; she could get no further and sank on the couch perfectly limp, forgetting even to ask Myshkin to sit down. It was a rather large room, with a round table in the middle of it, with an open fireplace, with quantities of flowers on an etagere in the window, and with another glass door leading into the garden in the opposite wall. Adelaida and Alexandra came in at once, and looked inquiringly and with perplexity at their mother and Myshkin.

At their summer villa the girls usually got up about nine o’clock; but for the last three days Aglaia had been getting up earlier and going for a walk in the garden, not at seven o’clock, but at eight or even later. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who really had been kept awake all night by her various worries, got up about eight o’clock on purpose to meet Aglaia in the garden, reckoning on her being up already; but she did not find her either in the garden or in her bedroom. At last she grew thoroughly alarmed and waked her daughters. From the servants she learnt that Aglaia Ivanovna had gone out into the park at seven o’clock. The girls laughed at their whimsical sister’s new whim, and observed to their mother that Aglaia might very likely be angry, if she went to look for her in the park, and that she was probably with a book sitting on the green seat of which she had been talking the day before yesterday, and about which she had almost quarrelled with Prince S. because he saw nothing particularly picturesque about it. Coming upon the couple, and hearing her daughter’s strange words, Lizaveta Prokofyevna was greatly alarmed for many reasons, but when she brought Myshkin home with her, she felt uneasy at having spoken openly about it. “After all, why should Aglaia not meet the prince in the park and talk to him, even if the interview had been arranged between them beforehand?”

“Don’t imagine, my good friend,” she braced herself to say, “that I brought you here to cross-examine you. After what happened yesterday I might well not have been anxious to see you for some time.

She could not go on for a moment.

“But you would very much like to know how I came to meet Aglaia Ivanovna this morning?” Myshkin completed her sentence with perfect serenity.

“Well, I did want to!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna flared up at once. “I am not afraid of speaking plainly. For I’m not insulting anyone, and I don’t want to offend anyone....”

“To be sure, you naturally want to know, without any offence; you are her mother. I met Aglaia Ivanovna this morning at the green seat, at seven o’clock, as she invited me to do so yesterday. She let me know by a note yesterday evening that she wanted to meet me to talk of an important matter. We met and had been talking for a whole hour of matters that only concerned Aglaia Ivanovna. That’s all.”

“Of course it’s all, my good sir, and without a shadow of doubt,” Madame Epanchin assented with dignity.

“Capital, prince,” said Aglaia, suddenly entering the room, “I thank you with all my heart for not believing that I would condescend to lie about it. Is that enough, maman, or do you intend to cross-examine him further?”

“You know that I have never yet had to blush for anything before you, though you would perhaps be glad if I had,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna replied impressively. “Good-bye, prince. Forgive me for having troubled you. And I hope you will remain convinced of my unchanged respect for you.”

Myshkin at once bowed to right and to left, and silently withdrew. Alexandra and Adelaida laughed and whispered together. Their mother looked sternly at them.

“Maman,” laughed Adelaida, “it was only that the prince made such magnificent bows; sometimes he’s so clumsy, but he was suddenly just like . . . like Yevgeny Pavlovitch.”

“Delicacy and dignity are taught by the heart and not by the dancing-master,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna summed up sententiously. And she went up to her room without even looking at Aglaia.

When Myshkin got home about nine o’clock he found Vera Lukyanovna and the servant on the verandah. They were sweeping up and clearing away after the disorder of the previous evening.

“Thank goodness, we’ve had time to finish before you came!” said Vera joyfully.

“Good-morning; I feel a little giddy, I didn’t sleep well. I should like a nap.”

“Here, in the verandah, as you did yesterday? Good. I’ll tell them all not to wake you. Father’s gone off somewhere.”

The maid went away. Vera was about to follow her, but she turned and went anxiously up to Myshkin.

“Prince, don’t be hard on that... poorfellow; don’t send him away to-day.”

“I won’t on any account. It’s as he chooses.”

“He won’t do anything now, and . . . don’t be severe with him.”

“Certainly not, why should I?”

“And don’t laugh at him, that’s the chief thing.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think of it.”

“I’m silly to speak of it to a man like you,” said Vera, flushing. “Though you’re tired,” she laughed,

half turning to go away, “your eyes are so nice at this moment... they look happy.”

“Do they, really?” Myshkin asked eagerly, and he laughed, delighted.

But Vera, who was as simple-hearted and blunt as a boy, was suddenly overcome with confusion, she turned redder and redder, and, still laughing, she went hurriedly away.

“What a . . . jolly girl,” thought Myshkin, and immediately forgot her. He went to the corner of the verandah where there stood a sofa with a little table beside it; he sat down, hid his face in his hands and sat so for some ten minutes. All at once, with haste and agitation, he took three letters out of his coat-pocket.

But again the door opened and Kolya came out. Myshkin was, as it were, relieved that he had to replace the letters in his pocket and put off the evil moment.

“Well, what an adventure!” said Kolya, sitting down on the sofa and going straight for the subject, as boys like him always do. “What do you think of Ippolit now? Have you no respect for him?”

“Why not. . . but, Kolya, I’m tired. . . . Besides, it’s too sad to begin about that again. . . . How is he, though?”

“He’s asleep and won’t wake for another two hours. I understand; you haven’t slept at home. “Vbu’ve been in the park ... it was the excitement, of course ... and no wonder!”

“How do you know that I have been walking in the park and haven’t been asleep?”

“Vera said so just now. She tried to persuade me not to come, but I couldn’t resist coming for a minute. I’ve been watching for the last two hours by his bedside; now Kostya Lebedyev is taking his turn. Burdovsky has gone. Then lie down, prince, goodnight ... or rather day! Only, do you know, I’m amazed!”

“Of course ... all this....”

“No, prince, no. I’m amazed at his ‘Confession.’ Especially the part in which he spoke of Providence and the future life. There’s a gigantic thought in it!”

Myshkin looked affectionately at Kolya who had no doubt come in to talk at once about the “gigantic thought.”

“But it was not only the thought; it was the whole settinq of it! If it had been written bv Voltaire,

Rousseau, Proudhon, I shouldn’t have been so much struck. But for a man who knows for certain that he has only ten minutes to talk like that — isn’t that pride? Why, it’s the loftiest assertion of personal dignity, it’s regular defiance. . . . Yes, it’s titanic strength of will! And after that to declare he left the cap out on purpose — it’s base, incredible! But you know, he deceived us yesterday; he was sly. I didn’t pack his bag with him, and I never saw the pistol. He packed everything up himself, so he took me quite off my guard. Vera says that you’re going to let him stay here; I swear there’ll be no danger, especially as we shall never leave him.”

“And which of you have been with him in the night?”

“Kostya Lebedyev, Burdovsky, and I. Keller was there a little while, but he went off to Lebedyev’s part to sleep, because there wasn’t room for us all to lie down. Ferdyshtchenko, too, slept in Lebedyev’s part of the house. He went off at seven. The general sleeps always at Lebedyev’s — he’s gone too. . . . Lebedyev will come out to you presently. He’s been looking for you, I don’t know why; he asked for you twice. Shall I let him in or not, as you want to sleep? I’m going to have a sleep, too. Oh, by the way, I should like to tell you one thing. I was surprised at the general this morning. I came out for a minute and suddenly met the general, and still so drunk that he didn’t know me: he stood before me like a post; he fairly flew at me when he came to himself. ‘How’s the invalid?’ said he, ‘I came to ask after the invalid. . . .’ I reported this and that. ‘Well, that’s all right,’ he said, ‘but what I really came out for, what I got up for was to warn you. I have reasons for supposing that one can’t say everything before Mr. Ferdyshtchenko and . . . one must be on one’s guard.’ Do you understand, prince?”