Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (346 page)

“It was at Tver,” persisted the general. “He was transferred to Tver just before his death, and before his illness showed itself, in fact. \bu were too little to remember the removal or the journey. Pavlishtchev may easily have forgotten, though he was an excellent man.”

“Did you know Pavlishtchev too?”

“He was a rare man, but I was on the spot. I blessed him on his death-bed.”

“My father died while he was awaiting trial,” Mvshkin observed aqain; “thouqh I’ve never been able to find out what he was accused of. He died in a hospital.”

“Oh, that was about the case of the private Kolpakov, and there’s no doubt that the prince would have been acquitted.”

“Was that so? Are you sure?” asked Myshkin with marked interest.

“I should think so!” cried the general. “The court broke up without coming to a decision. It was an incredible case! A mysterious case, one may say. Captain Larionov, the commander of the company, died; the prince was appointed for a time to take his duty. Good. The private Kolpakov committed a theft — stole boot-leather from a comrade and spent it on drink. Good. The prince — in the presence, observe, of the sergeant and the corporal — gave Kolpakov a blowing-up and threatened to have him flogged. Very good. Kolpakov went to the barracks, lay down on his bed, and died a quarter of an hour afterwards. Excellent. But it was so unexpected, it was quite incredible. Anyway, Kolpakov was buried. The prince reported the matter and Kolpakov’s name was removed from the lists. One would have thought it was all right. But just six months later at the brigade review the private Kolpakov turns up, as though nothing had happened, in the third company of the second battalion of the Novozemlyansky infantry regiment of the same brigade and of the same division.”

“What?” cried Myshkin, beside himself with astonishment.

“It’s not so, it’s a mistake,” said Nina Alexandrovna, addressing him suddenly and looking at him almost with anguish. “Mori mari se trompe.”

“But, my dear, se trompe — it’s easy to say. How do you explain a case like that? Every one was dumbfounded. I should have been the first to say quon se trompe. But unhappily I was a witness and was on the commission myself. All who had seen him testified that this was the same private Kolpakov who had been buried six months before with the usual parade and the beating of drums. It was an unusual incident, almost incredible, I admit, but...”

“Father, your dinner is ready,” announced Varvara Ardalionovna, entering the room.

“Ah, that’s capital, excellent! I am certainly hungry.

. . . But it was, one may even say, a psychological incident...”

“The soup will be cold again,” said Varya impatiently.

“I am coming — I am coming,” muttered the general as he went out of the room. “And in spite of all inquiries,” he was heard saying in the corridor.

“You must overlook a great deal in Ardalion Alexandrovitch, if you stay with us,” said Nina Alexandrovna to Myshkin. “But he won’t be much in your way; he even dines alone. All have their failings, you know, and their. . . peculiarities, some perhaps even more than those who are usually looked down upon for it. One special favour I will ask of you. If my husband ever applies to you for payment, tell him, please, that you’ve already paid me. Of course, anything you give to Ardalion Alexandrovitch will be taken off your bill, but I ask you simply to avoid muddling our accounts.... What is it, Varya?”

Varya came back into the room and without speaking handed her mother a portrait of Nastasya Filippovna. Nina Alexandrovna started, and examined it for some time — at first, it seemed, with dismay, and then with overwhelming and bitter emotion. At last she looked inquiringly at Varya.

“A present to him to-day from herself,” said Varya, “and this evening everything will be settled.”

“This evening!” Nina Alexandrovna repeated in a low voice, as though in despair. “Well, there can be no more doubt about it then, and no hope left. She announced her decision by giving the portrait. . . . But did he show it to you himself?” she added with surprise.

“You know that we’ve scarcely spoken a word for the last month. Ptitsyn told me all about it, and the portrait was lying on the floor by the table; I picked it up.”

“Prince,” said Nina Alexandrovna, addressing him suddenly, “I wanted to ask you (that was why I asked you to come to me), have you known my son long? I believe he told me you’d only arrived from somewhere to-day.”

Myshkin gave a brief account of himself, leaving out the greater part. Nina Alexandrovna and Varya listened.

“I am not trying to find out anything about Gavril Ardalionovitch in questioning you,” observed Nina Alexandrovna. “You must make no mistake on that score. If there is anything he can’t tell me about himself, I don’t want to learn it without his knowledge. I ask you, because just now when you’d gone out, Ganya answered, when I asked him about you: ‘He knows everything; you needn’t stand on ceremony with him.’ What does that mean? That is, I should like to know to what extent...”

Ganya and Ptitsyn suddenly came in. Nina Alexandrovna instantly ceased speaking. Myshkin remained sitting beside her, while Varya moved away. Nastasya Filippovna’s photograph was left lying in the most conspicuous place on Nina Alexandrovna’s work-table, just in front of her. Ganya saw it and frowned. He picked it up with an air of annoyance and flung it on his writing-table at the other end of the room.

“Is it to-day, Ganya?” his mother asked suddenly.

“Is what — to-day?” Ganya was startled, and all at once he flew at Myshkin. “Ah, I understand! \bur doing again! It seems to be a regular disease in you. Can’t you keep quiet? But let me tell you, your excellency...”

“It’s my fault, Ganya, no one else’s,” interposed Ptitsvn.

Ganya looked at him inquiringly.

“It’s better so, Ganya, especially as on one side the affair is settled,” muttered Ptitsyn; and moving away, he sat down at the table, and taking out of his pocket a piece of paper covered with writing in pencil, he began looking at it intently.

Ganya stood sullenly, in uneasy expectation of a family scene. It did not even occur to him to apologise to Myshkin.

“If everything is settled, then Ivan Petrovitch is certainly right,” observed Nina Alexandrovna. “Don’t scowl, please, Ganya, and don’t be angry. I am not going to ask you anything you don’t care to tell me of yourself, and I assure you I am completely resigned. Please don’t be uneasy.”

She went on with her work as she said this and seemed to be really calm. Ganya was surprised, but was prudently silent, looking at his mother and waiting for her to say something more definite. He had suffered too much from domestic quarrels already. Nina Alexandrovna noticed this prudence, and added with a bitter smile:

“You are still doubtful and do not believe me. Don’t be uneasy, there shall be no more tears and entreaties, on my part anyway. All I want is that you may be happy, and you know that. I submit to the inevitable, but my heart will always be with you whether we remain together or whether we part. Of course I only answer for myself; you can’t expect the same from your sister....”

“Ah, Varya again!” cried Ganya, looking with hatred and mockery at his sister. “Mother, I swear again what I promised you already! No one shall ever dare to be wanting in respect to you so long as I am here, so long as I am alive. Whoever may be concerned, I shall insist on the utmost respect being shown to you from anyone who enters our doors.”

Ganya was so relieved that he looked with an almost conciliatory, almost affectionate, expression at his mother.

“I was not afraid for myself, Ganya, you know. I’ve not been anxious and worried all this time on my own account. I am told that to-day everything will be settled. What will be settled?”

“She promised to let me know to-night whether she agrees or not,” answered Ganya.

“For almost three weeks we have avoided speaking of it, and it has been better so. Now that everything is settled, I will allow myself to ask one question only. How can she give you her consent and her portrait when you don’t love her? How, with a woman so ... so ...”

“Experienced, you mean?”

“I didn’t mean to put it that way. Can you have hood-winked her so completely?”

A note of intense exasperation was suddenly audible in the question. Ganya stood still, thought a minute, and with undisguised irony said:

“You are carried away, mother, and can’t control yourself again. And that’s how it always begins and then gets hotter and hotter with us. \bu said that there should be no questions asked and no reproaches and they’ve begun already! We’d better drop it; we’d better, really. Your intentions were good, anyway. ... I will never desert you under any circumstances. Any other man would have run away from such a sister. See how she is looking at me now! Let us make an end of it. I was feeling so relieved . . . And how do you know I am deceiving Nastasya Filippovna? As for Varya, she can please herself, and that’s all about it. Well, that’s quite enough now.”

Ganya got hotter with every word and paced aimlessly about the room. Such conversations quickly touched the sore spot in every member of the family.

“I have said that, if she comes into the house, I shall go out of it, and I too shall keep my word,” said Varya.

“Out of obstinacy!” cried Ganya. “And it’s out of obstinacy that you won’t be married either. Don’t snort at me! I don’t care a damn for it, Varvara Ardalionovna! \bu can carry out your plan at once, if you like. I am sick of you. What! You have made up your mind to leave us at last, prince, have you?” he cried to Myshkin, seeing him get up from his place.

Ganya’s voice betrayed that pitch of irritation when a man almost revels in his own irritability, gives himself up to it without restraint and almost with growing enjoyment, regardless of consequences. Myshkin looked round at the door to answer the insult, but seeing from Ganya’s exasperated face that another word would be too much for him, he turned and went out in silence. A few minutes later he heard from their voices in the drawinq-room that the conversation had become even noisier and more unreserved in his absence.

He crossed the dining-room into the hall on the way to his room. As he passed the front door, he heard and noticed some one outside making desperate efforts to ring the bell. But something seemed to have gone wrong with the bell, it only shook without making a sound. Myshkin unbolted the door, opened it, and stepped back in amazement, startled. Nastasya Filippovna stood before him. He knew her at once from her photograph. There was a gleam of annoyance in her eyes when she saw him. She walked quickly into the hall, pushing him out of her way, and said angrily, flinging off her fur coat:

“If you are too lazy to mend the bell, you might at least be in the hall when people knock. Now he’s dropped my coat, the duffer!”

The coat was indeed lying on the floor. Nastasya Filippovna, without waiting for him to help her off with it, had flung it on his arm from behind without looking, but Myshkin was not quick enough to catch it.

“They ought to turn you off. Go along and announce me.”

Myshkin was about to say something, but was so abashed that he could not, and, carrying the coat which he had picked up from the floor, he walked towards the drawing-room.

“Well, now he is taking my coat with him! Why are you carrying my coat away? Ha, ha, ha! Are you crazy?”

Myshkin went back and stared at her, as though he were petrified. When she laughed he smiled too, but still he could not speak. At the first moment when he opened the door to her, he was pale; now the colour rushed to his face.

“What an idiot!” Nastasya Filippovna cried out, stamping her foot in indignation. “Where are you going now? What name are you going to take in?”

“Nastasya Filippovna,” muttered Myshkin.

“How do you know me?” she asked him quickly. “I’ve never seen you. Go along, take in my name. What’s the shouting about in there?”

“They are quarrelling,” said Myshkin, and he went into the drawing-room.

He went in at a rather critical moment. Nina Alexandrovna was on the point of entirely forgetting that “she was resigned to everything”; she was defending Varya, however. Ptitsyn too was standing by Varya’s side; he had left his pencilled note. Varya herself was not overawed; indeed, she was not a girl of the timid sort; but her brother’s rudeness became coarser and more insufferable at every word. In such circumstances she usually left off speaking and only kept her eyes fixed on her brother in ironical silence. By this proceeding she was able, she knew, to drive her brother out of all bounds. At that moment Myshkin entered the room and announced: “Nastasya Filippovna.”

CHAPTER 9

THERE WAS complete silence in the room; every one stared at Myshkin as though they didn’t understand him and didn’t want to understand him. Ganya was numb with horror. The arrival of Nastasya Filippovna, and especially at this juncture, was the strangest and most disturbing surprise for everyone. The very fact that Nastasya Filippovna had for the first time thought fit to call on them was astounding. Hitherto she had been so haughty that she had not in talking to Ganya even expressed a desire to make the acquaintance of his family, and of late had made no allusion to them at all, as though they were nonexistent. Though Ganya was to some extent relieved at avoiding so difficult a subject, yet in his heart he treasured it up against her. In any case he would rather have expected biting and ironical remarks from her about his family than a visit to them. He knew for a fact that she was aware of all that was going on in his home in regard to his engagement and of the attitude of his family towards her. Her visit now, after the present of her photograph and on her birthday, the day on which she had promised to decide his fate, was almost equivalent to the decision itself.

The stupefaction with which all stared at Myshkin did not last long. Nastasya Filippovna herself appeared at the drawing-room door and again slightly pushed him aside as she entered the room.

“At last I have managed to get in. Why do you tie up the bell?” she said good-humouredly, giving her hand to Ganya, who rushed to meet her. “Why do you look so upset? Introduce me, please.”