Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (376 page)

But they didn’t let her finish. They all drew up around her readily. Myshkin at once began pressing every one to stay to tea and apologised for not having thought of it before. Even General Epanchin was so amiable as to murmur something reassuring, and asked Lizaveta Prokofyevna politely whether it was not too cold for her on the verandah. He almost came to the point of asking Ippolit how long he had been at the university, but he didn’t ask him. “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch and Prince S. became suddenly extremely cordial and good-humoured. A look of pleasure began to mingle with astonishment on the faces of Adelaida and Alexandra; in fact all seemed delighted that Madame Epanchin’s paroxysm was over. Only Aglaia still frowned and sat in silence at a little distance. All the rest of the party remained, no one wanted to go away, not even General Ivolgin, to whom, however, Lebedyev whispered in passing something, probably not quite pleasant, for the general at once effaced himself in the corner. Myshkin included in his invitation Burdovsky and his friends, without exception. They muttered with a constrained air that they would wait for Ippolit, and at once withdrew to the furthest corner of the verandah, where they sat down all in a row again. Probably the tea had been got ready for Lebedyev himself long before, for it was brought in almost immediately! It struck eleven.

CHAPTER 10

Ippolit moistened his lips with the cup of tea handed to him by Vera Lebedyev, put down the cup on the little table, and seemed suddenly embarrassed, and looked about him almost in confusion.

“Look at these cups, Lizaveta Prokofyevna,” he began with a sort of strange haste; “These china cups — and I think they are very good china — are never used and always stand in Lebedyev’s sideboard under glass, locked up, as the custom is; they are part of his wife’s dowry . . . it’s their custom to keep them locked up ... and here he’s brought them out for us — in your honour, of course, he is so pleased to see you....”

He meant to say more but could not think of anything.

“He is feeling awkward; I thought he would,”

“Vfevgeny Pavlovitch whispered suddenly in Myshkin’s ear. “It’s dangerous, isn’t it? It’s a sure sign that now he’ll do something out of spite so eccentric that it will be too much for even Lizaveta Prokofyevna, perhaps.”

Myshkin looked at him inquiringly.

“You are not afraid of eccentricity,” added Yevgeny Pavlovitch, “I am not either; I should like it, in fact. I am only anxious that our dear Lizaveta Prokofyevna should be punished — and to-day too, this minute — and I don’t want to go till she has been. You seem feverish.”

“Afterwards, don’t bother me. “Vfes, I am not well,” Myshkin answered carelessly and even impatiently.

He caught his own name. Ippolit was speaking of him.

“You don’t believe it?” Ippolit laughed hysterically. “You’d be sure not to, but the prince will believe it at once and not be a bit surprised.”

“Do you hear, prince,” said Lizaveta Prokofyevna, turning to him, “do you hear?”

People laughed round them. Lebedyev kept officiously putting himself forward and fussing about Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

“He was saying that this clown here, your landlord . . . corrected the article for this gentleman, the one they read this evening about you.”

Myshkin looked at Lebedyev in surprise.

“Why don’t you speak?” cried Lizaveta Prokofyevna, stamping her foot.

“Well,” muttered Myshkin, scanning Lebedyev, “I see now that he did.”

“Is it true?” Lizaveta Prokofyevna turned quickly to Lebedyev.

“It’s the holy truth, your excellency,” answered Lebedyev firmly, without hesitation, laying his hand on his heart.

“He seems to be proud of it!” she cried, nearly jumping up from her chair.

“I am a poor creature,” muttered Lebedyev. His head sank lower and lower, and he began to smite himself on the breast.

“What do I care if you are a poor creature? He thinks he’ll get out of it by saying he is a poor creature! And aren’t you ashamed, prince, to have to do with such contemptible people, I ask you once again? I shall never forgive you!”

“The prince will forgive me,” said Lebedyev sentimentally and with conviction.

“Simply from good feeling,” Keller said in a loud ringing voice, suddenly darting up to them and addressing Lizaveta Prokofyevna directly, “simply from good feeling, madam, and to avoid giving away a friend who is compromised, I said nothing this evening about the corrections, although he did suggest kicking us downstairs, as you heard yourself. To put things in their true light, I confess that I really did apply to him as a competent person and offered him six roubles, not to correct the style, but simply to give me the facts, which were for the most part unknown to me. The gaiters, the appetite at the Swiss professor’s, the fifty roubles instead of two hundred and fifty; in fact all that arrangement, all that belongs to him. He sold it me for six roubles, but he did not correct the style.”

“I must observe,” Lebedyev interposed with feverish impatience and in a sort of crawling voice, while the laughter grew louder and louder, “that I only corrected the first half of the article, but as we didn’t aqree in the middle and quarrelled over one idea, I

didn’t correct the second half, so that everything that is bad grammar there (and some of it is bad grammar!) mustn’t be set down to me....”

“That’s what he is worried about!” cried Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

“Allow me to ask you,” said “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch, addressing Keller, “when was the article corrected?”

“Yesterday morning,” answered Keller, “we met together promising on our honour to keep the secret on both sides.”

“This was while he was crawling before you protesting his devotion. A nice set of people! I don’t want your Pushkin, and don’t let your daughter come and see me!”

Lizaveta Prokofyevna was on the point of getting up, but suddenly turned irritably to Ippolit, who was laughing.

“Have you put me here to be a laughing-stock, young man?”

“Heaven forbid,” said Ippolit with a wry smile, “but what strikes me most of all is your extraordinary eccentricity, Lizaveta Prokofyevna. I confess I led up the conversation to Lebedyev on purpose; I knew the effect it would have on you and on you only, for the prince will certainly forgive it, and has probably forgiven it already ... he has found an excuse for him in his own mind by now most likely; that’s true, prince, isn’t it?”

He was breathless; his strange excitement grew greater at every word.

“Well!” said Lizaveta Prokofyevna wrathfully, wondering at his tone, “Well?”

“I’ve heard a great deal about you of the same sort of thing . . . with great pleasure. . . . I’ve learnt to respect you extremely,” Ippolit went on.

He said one thing, but said it as though he meant something quite different by the words. He spoke with a shade of mockery; yet, at the same time, was unaccountably excited. He looked about him uneasily. He was obviously muddled, and lost the thread of what he was saying at every word. All this, together with his consumptive appearance and strange, glittering, and almost frenzied eyes, could not fail to hold the general attention.

“I should have been surprised, though I know nothing of the world (I am aware of that), at your not only remaining yourself in our company — though we were not fit company for you — but even allowing these . . . young ladies to listen to a scandalous business, though they have read it all in novels already. Though I don’t know, perhaps . . . because I am muddled, but in any case, who could have stayed except you ... at the request of a boy (well, yes a boy, I confess it again) to spend the evening with him and to take . . . part in everything . . . though you knew you would be ashamed next day ... (I must admit I am not expressing myself properly). I commend all this extremely and respect it profoundly, though one can see from the very countenance of his excellency, your husband, how improper all this seems to him. He-he!” he chuckled, completely at a loss; and he suddenly coughed, so that for two minutes he could not go on.

“Now he is choking!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna pronounced coldly and sharply, scanning him with stern curiosity. “Well, my dear fellow, we’ve had enough of you. We must be going.”

“Allow me too, sir, to tell you for my part,” Ivan Fyodorovitch broke out irritably, losing patience, “that my wife is here, visiting Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch, our friend and neighbour, and that in any case it’s not for you, young man, to criticise Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s actions, nor to refer aloud, and to my face, to what is written on my countenance. No, sir. And if my wife has remained here,” he went on, his irritation increasing almost at every word, “it’s rather from amazement, sir, and from an interest, comprehensible nowadays to all, in the spectacle of strange young people. I stopped myself, as I sometimes stop in the street when I see something at which one can look as ... as ... as . .

“As a curiosity,”

“Vfevgeny Pavlovitch prompted him.

“Excellent and true.” His excellency, rather at a loss for a comparison, was delighted. “Precisely, as a curiosity. But in any case, what is more amazing than anything, and even regrettable to me, if it is grammatical so to express oneself, is that you are not even able, young man, to understand that Lizaveta Prokofyevna has stayed with you now because you are ill — if only you really are dying — so to say from compassion, for the sake of your piteous appeal, sir, and that no kind of slur can in any case attach to her name, character, and consequence. .. .

Lizaveta Prokofyevna!” the general concluded, with a crimson face, “if you mean to go, let us take leave of our dear prince ...”

“Thank you for the lesson, general,” Ippolit interrupted suddenly, speaking earnestly and looking thoughtfully at him.

“Let’s go, maman. How much longer is this to go on!” Aglaia said wrathfully and impatiently, getting up from her chair.

“Two minutes more, dear Ivan Fyodorovitch, if you allow it,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna turned with dignity to her husband. “I believe he is in a fever and simply delirious; I am sure of it from his eyes; he can’t be left like this. Lyov Nikolayevitch, could he stay the night with you, that he needn’t be dragged to Petersburg to-night? Cher prince, I hope you are not bored,” she added, for some reason suddenly addressing Prince S. “Come here, Alexandra; put your hairtidy, my dear.”

She did something to Alexandra’s hair, which was already perfectly tidy, and kissed her; that was all she had called her for.

“I thought you were capable of development,”

Ippolit began again, coming out of his reverie. “Yes, this was what I meant to say.” He was delighted, as though suddenly remembering something. “Burdovsky here genuinely wants to protect his mother, doesn’t he? And it turns out that he has disgraced her. The prince here wants to help Burdovsky, and in all sincerity offers him his tender friendship and a fortune, and perhaps he is the only one of us who does not feel an aversion for him, and yet they stand facing one another like actual enemies. Ha ha ha! You all hate Burdovsky because to your thinking he has behaved in an ugly and unseemly way to his mother; isn’t that so? Isn’t it? Isn’t it? You are all awfully fond of external beauty and seemliness, and that’s all you care for; that’s true, isn’t it? I’ve suspected that was all you care for, for a long time. Well, let me tell you that very likely not one of you has loved his mother as Burdovsky has! I know, prince, you’ve sent money to Burdovsky’s mother on the sly, through Ganya, and I’ll bet, he he he!” — he laughed hysterically— “I’ll bet that now Burdovsky will accuse you of indelicacy and disrespect to his mother. I swear that’s how it will be. Ha ha ha!”

At this point he choked again and coughed.

“Well, is that all? That’s all now; you’ve said everything? Well, now go to bed; you are in a fever,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna interrupted impatiently, keeping her eyes fixed anxiously on him. “Good heavens, he is speaking again!”

“I think you are laughing. Why do you keep laughing at me? I notice that you are laughing at me all the time,” he said, turning with a sudden and uneasy irritation to Yevgeny Pavlovitch.

The latter really was laughing. “I only wanted to ask you, Mr. . . . Ippolit. . . excuse me, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Mr. Terentyev,” said Myshkin.

“Yes, Terentyev. Thank you, prince. It was mentioned before, but it escaped my memory. ... I wanted to ask you, Mr. Terentyev, is it true what I’ve heard, that you believe that you have only to talk to the peasants out of the window for a quarter of an hour and they’ll agree with you and follow you at once?”

“It’s quite possible I’ve said so,” answered Ippolit, seeming to recall something. “I certainly did say so,” he added suddenly, growing eager again and looking at Yevgeny Pavlovitch. “What of it?”

“Absolutely nothing; I simply wanted to know, to put the finishing touch.”

“Vfevgeny Pavlovitch was silent, but Ippolit still looked at him in impatient expectation.

“Well, have you finished?” Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch. “Make haste and finish, my friends; he ought to be in bed. Or don’t you know how to?”

She was in terrible vexation.

“I am very much tempted to add,” Yevgeny Pavlovitch went on, smiling, “that everything I’ve heard from your companions, Mr. Terentyev, and everything you’ve said just now, and with such unmistakable talent, amounts in my opinion to the theory of the triumph of right before everything and setting everything aside, and even to the exclusion of everything else, and perhaps even before finding out what that right consists in. Perhaps I am mistaken.”

“Of course you are mistaken; I don’t even understand you.... Further?”

There was a murmur in the corner, too. Lebedyev’s nephew was muttering something in an undertone.

“Why, scarcely anything further,” Yevgeny Pavlovitch went on. “I only meant to observe that from that position one may easily make a jump to the right of might, that is, to the right of the individual fist and of personal caprice, as indeed has often happened in the history of the world. Proudhon arrived at the right of might. In the American War, many of the most advanced Liberals declared themselves on the side of the planters on the ground that Negroes are Negroes, lower than the white race, and therefore that right of might was on the side of the white men..