Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (608 page)

Well, of course, Lambert had been and he came twice afterwards, and “he looked at all the rooms, saying that perhaps he would take them.”  Darya Onisimovna had come several times, goodness knows why.  “She was very inquisitive,” added my landlord.

But I did not gratify him by asking what she was inquisitive about.  I did not ask questions at all, in fact.  He did all the talking, while I kept up a pretence of rummaging in my trunk (though there was scarcely anything left in it).  But what was most vexatious, he too thought fit to play at being mysterious, and noticing that I refrained from asking questions, felt it incumbent upon him to be more fragmentary and even enigmatic in his communications.

“The young lady has been here, too,” he added, looking at me strangely.

“What young lady?”

“Anna Andreyevna; she’s been here twice; she made the acquaintance of my wife.  A very charming person, very pleasant.  Such an acquaintance is quite a privilege, Arkady Makarovitch.”

And as he pronounced these words he positively took a step towards me.  He seemed very anxious that I should understand something.

“Did she really come twice?” I said with surprise.

“The second time she came with her brother.”

“That was with Lambert,” I thought involuntarily.

“No, not with Mr. Lambert,” he said, seeming to guess at once, as though piercing into my soul with his eyes.  “But with her real brother, young Mr. Versilov.  A kammer-junker, I believe.”

I was very much confused.  He looked at me, smiling very caressingly.

“Oh, and some one else came and was asking after you, that ma’amselle, a French lady, Mamselle Alphonsine de Verden.  Oh, how well she sings and recites poetry.  She’d slipped off to see Prince Nikolay Ivanovitch at Tskarskoe, to sell him a dog, she told me, a rare kind, black, and no bigger than your fist . . .”

I asked him to leave me alone on the pretext of a headache.  He immediately fell in with my request, even breaking off in the middle of a sentence, and not only without the slightest sign of huffiness, but almost with pleasure, waving his hand mysteriously, as though to say, “I understand, I understand,” and though he did not actually say this he could not resist the satisfaction of walking out of the room on tiptoe.

There are very vexatious people in the world.

I sat for an hour and a half alone, deliberating; rather, not really deliberating but dreaming.  Though I was perplexed I was not in the least surprised.  I even expected to hear something more, other marvels.  “Perhaps they have already hatched them,” I thought.  I had for a long time been firmly persuaded that the machinery of their plot was wound up and was in full swing.  “They’re only waiting for me,” I thought again with a sort of irritable and pleasant self-satisfaction.  That they were eagerly awaiting me, and were scheming to carry out some plan at my lodging was clear as day.  “The old prince’s wedding, can it be?  He’s surrounded by a regular network of intrigue.  But am I going to permit it, my friends?  That’s the question,” I said in conclusion with haughty satisfaction.

“Once I begin I shall be carried away by the whirlpool like a chip.  Am I free now, this minute, or am I not?  When I go back to mother this evening can I still say to myself as I have done all these days ‘I am my own master’?”

That was the gist of my questions, or rather of the throbbing at my heart in the hour and a half I spent sitting on the bed in the corner, with my elbows on my knees and my head propped in my hands.  But I knew, I knew even then that all these questions were utter nonsense, and that I was drawn only by HER — by her, by her alone!  At last I have said this straight out and have written it with pen on paper, though even now as I write this a year later I don’t know what name to give to the feeling I had then!

Oh, I was sorry for Liza, and my heart was full of a most unfeigned grief.  Nothing but the feeling of pain on her account could have calmed or effaced in me for a time that “carnivorousness” (I recall that word).  But I was immensely spurred on by curiosity and a sort of dread and another feeling — I don’t know what; but I know and I knew then that it was an evil feeling.  Perhaps my impulse was to fall at HER feet, or perhaps I wanted to put her to every torture, and “quickly, quickly” to show her something.  No grief, no compassion for Liza, could stop me.  Could I have got up and gone home . . . to Makar Ivanovitch?

“And is it quite impossible to go to them, to find out everything from them, and to go away from them for ever, passing unscathed among marvels and monsters?”

At three o’clock, pulling myself together and reflecting that I might be late, I went out hastily, took a cab, and flew to Anna Andreyevna.

CHAPTER V

1

As soon as I was announced, Anna Andreyevna threw down her sewing and rushed to meet me in the outermost of her rooms, a thing which had never happened before.  She held out both hands to me and flushed quickly.  She led me into her room in silence, sat down to her needlework again, made me sit down beside her.  She did not go on with her sewing, but still scrutinized me with the same fervent sympathy, without uttering a word.

“You sent Darya Onisimovna to me,” I began bluntly, rather overwhelmed by this exaggerated display of sympathy, though I found it agreeable.

She suddenly began talking without answering my question.

“I have heard all about it, I know all about it.  That terrible night. . . .  Oh, what you must have gone through!  Can it be true!  Can it be true that you were found unconscious in the frost?”

“You heard that . . . from Lambert. . . .” I muttered, reddening.

“I heard it all from him at the time; but I’ve been eager to see you.  Oh, he came to me in alarm!  At your lodging . . . where you have been lying ill, they would not let him in to see you . . . and they met him strangely . . . I really don’t know how it was, but he kept telling me about that night; he told me that when you had scarcely come to yourself, you spoke of me, and . . . and of your devotion to me.  I was touched to tears, Arkady Makarovitch, and I don’t know how I have deserved such warm sympathy on your part, especially considering the condition in which you were yourself!  Tell me, M. Lambert was the friend of your childhood, was he not?”

“Yes, but what happened? . . .  I confess I was indiscreet, and perhaps I told him then a great deal I shouldn’t have.”

“Oh, I should have heard of that wicked horrible intrigue apart from him!  I always had a presentiment that they would drive you to that, always.  Tell me, is it true that Büring dared to lift his hand against you?”

She spoke as though it were entirely owing to Büring and HER that I had been found under the wall.  And she is right too, I thought, but I flared up:

“If he had lifted his hand against me, he would not have gone away unpunished.  And I should not be sitting before you now without having avenged myself,” I answered hotly.  It struck me that she wanted for some reason to irritate me, to set me against somebody (I knew of course against whom); yet I fell in with it.

“You say that you had a presentiment that I should be driven to THIS, but on Katerina Nikolaevna’s side it was of course only a misunderstanding . . . though it is true that she was too hasty in allowing her kindly feeling for me to be influenced by that misunderstanding. . . .”

“I should think she was too hasty indeed!” Anna Andrevevna assented quickly, with a sort of ecstasy of sympathy.  “Oh, if only you knew the intrigue that is being hatched there now!  Of course, Arkady Makarovitch, of course it is difficult for you to realize now all the delicacy of my position,” she brought out, blushing and casting down her eyes.  “Since I saw you last . . . that very morning I took a step which not every one would be able to understand and interpret rightly; so it is hardly likely that it would be understood by anyone with your still uncorrupted mind, and your fresh, loving, unsophisticated heart.  Believe me, my dear friend, I appreciate your devotion to me, and I shall repay it with my everlasting gratitude.  In the world, of course, they will throw stones at me, they have thrown them already.  But even if they were right, from their odious point of view, which of them could, which of them dare judge me I have been abandoned by my father from childhood up; we Versilovs are an ancient noble Russian family, yet we are adventurers, and I am eating the bread of charity.  Was it not natural I should turn to one who has taken the place of a father to me, at whose hands I have received nothing but kindness during all these years?  My feelings for him are known only to God, and he alone can judge them, and I refuse to accept the judgment of the world upon the step I have taken.  When there is, moreover, at the bottom of this the most cunning, the most evil intrigue, and the plot to ruin a trusting, noble-hearted father is the work of his own daughter, is it to be endured?  No, I will save him if I have to ruin my reputation.  I am ready to be with him simply as a nurse, to take care of him, and to look after him, but I will not let hateful, cold, mercenary worldliness triumph!”

She spoke with unwonted fire, very possibly half assumed, though at the same time sincere, because it was evident how deeply involved she was in the matter.  Oh, I felt that she was lying (though sincerely, for one can lie sincerely).  And that she was now evil; but it is wonderful how it often is, in dealing with women: this assumption of perfect refinement, these lofty manners, these inaccessible heights of well-bred grandeur and proud chastity — all this quite threw me out of my reckoning, and I began agreeing with her on every point, so long as I was with her; that is, I could not bring myself to contradict her, anyway.  Oh, a man is in absolute moral slavery to a woman, especially if he is a generous man!  Such a woman can convince a generous man of anything she likes.  “She and Lambert, my goodness!” I thought, looking at her in perplexity.  To tell the whole truth, however, I don’t know what to think of her to this day; truly her feelings were known only to God, and, besides, human beings are such complicated machines, that one cannot analyse them in some cases, and above all if the human being in question is a woman.

“Anna Andreyevna, what is it you exactly want me to do?” I asked, with a good deal of decision however.

“How?  What do you mean by your question, Arkady Makarovitch?”

“I fancy, from everything . . . and from certain other considerations . . .” I explained stammering, “that you sent to me because you expected something from me; so what is it exactly?”

Without answering my question, she immediately began talking again, as rapidly and as earnestly as before:

“But I cannot, I am too proud to enter into explanations and negotiations with unknown persons, like M. Lambert.  I have been waiting for you, I don’t want M. Lambert.  My position is awful, desperate, Arkady Makarovitch!  I am forced to duplicity, hemmed in by the machinations of that woman — and that is more than I can endure.  I am driven almost to the humiliation of intriguing, and I have been waiting for you as my saviour.  You must not blame me for looking greedily about me to find one friend at least, and so I cannot help being glad to see a friend: he, who could think of me and even utter my name, half frozen on that night, must be devoted to me.  That’s what I’ve been thinking all this time and that is why I rely on you.”

She looked into my face with impatient inquiry.  And again I had not the heart to disillusion her, and to tell her plainly that Lambert had deceived her, and that I had by no means told him that I was so devoted to her, and that her name was not the only one I mentioned.  And so by my silence I confirmed, as it were, Lambert’s lie.  Oh, she knew very well, I am convinced, that Lambert had been exaggerating and simply lying to her, solely in order to have a plausible excuse to call upon her, and to get into touch with her; though she looked into my face as though she were convinced of my truth and devotion, she must have known that I did not bring myself to contradict her from delicacy of feeling, and the awkwardness of youth.  But whether I was right in this surmise, I don’t know.  Perhaps I am horribly evil-minded.

“My brother is taking my part,” she said with sudden heat, seeing that I was not disposed to speak.

“I’m told you have been at my lodgings,” I muttered in confusion.

“Yes . . . you know poor Prince Nikolay Ivanitch has no place now where he can take refuge from this intrigue, or rather from his own daughter, unless in your lodgings, that is the lodgings of a friend; you know he looks upon you at least as a friend! . . .  And if you will only do something for his benefit, then do this — if only you can, if only you have the generosity and courage . . . and, and finally if it is really true, that there is SOMETHING YOU CAN DO.  Oh, it is not for my sake, it’s not for my sake, but for the sake of the poor old man, the only person who genuinely loved you, and who has become as attached to you as though you were his own son, and is still missing you!  For myself I expect nothing, even from you — since even my own father has played me such a treacherous, such a spiteful trick.”

“I believe, Andrey Petrovitch . . .” I began.

“Andrey Petrovitch,” she repeated with bitter mockery; “Andrey Petrovitch, in answer to a direct question from me, told me on his word of honour that he had never had any intentions in regard to Katerina Nikolaevna and I completely believed it when I took that step; and yet it seemed that his composure only lasted till he heard of Baron Büring.”

“That’s wrong,” I cried, “there was a moment when I too believed in his love for that woman, but it’s a mistake . . . and even if it were so, he might, I should think, be perfectly composed about it now . . . since the retirement of that gentleman.”

“What gentleman?”

“Büring.”

“Who has told you of his retirement?  Perhaps the gentle man in question never had any such views,” she jeered malignantly; I fancied too, that she looked at me jeeringly.

“Darya Onisimovna told me,” I muttered in confusion, which I was not able to conceal, and which she saw only too clearly.

“Darya Onisimovna is a very nice person, and, of course, I cannot forbid her loving me, but she has no means of knowing what does not concern her.”