Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (386 page)

“I, of course, cannot boast of so much knowledge on that subiect. But I had to know vour name.”

He nodded and walked away. The police hurried up five seconds after the last of the persons concerned had disappeared. But the scene had not lasted more than two minutes. Some of the audience had got up from their chairs and gone away; some had simply moved from one place to another; while some were delighted at the scene, and others were eagerly talking and inquiring about it. The incident, in fact, passed off in the usual way. The band began playing again. Myshkin followed the Epanchins. If he had thought, or had had time to look to the left as he was sitting there, after he had been pushed away, he might have seen, twenty paces from him, Aglaia, who had stood still to watch the scandalous scene, regardless of her mother’s and sisters’ calls to her. Prince S. had run up to her and at last persuaded her to come quickly away. Her mother remembered that she had returned to them so excited that she could scarcely have heard their calling her. But within two minutes, when they were walking back into the park, Aglaia said in her usual careless and capricious tones:

“I wanted to see how the farce would end.”

CHAPTER 3

The SCENE in the gardens had impressed both mother and daughters almost with horror. Excited and alarmed, Lizaveta Prokofyevna had literally almost run all the way home with her daughters. According to her notions and ideas, so much had happened, and so much had been brought to light by the incident, that certain ideas had taken definite shape in her brain, in spite of her confusion and alarm. But every one realised that something peculiar had happened, and that perhaps, and fortunately too, some extraordinary secret was on the verge of being disclosed. In spite of all Prince S.’s former assurances and explanations, Yevgeny Pavlovitch had been “unmasked,” exposed, detected, “and publicly found out in his connection with that creature.” So thought the mother and both her elder daughters. The only effect of that conclusion was to intensify the mystery. Though the girls were secretly somewhat indignant with their mother for her extreme alarm and too conspicuous flight, yet they did not venture to worry her with questions during the first shock of the disturbance. Moreover, something made them fancy that their sister Aglaia knew more of the matter than their mother and all of them put together. Prince S. too, looked black as night; he too seemed plunged in thought. Lizaveta Prokofyevna did not say a word to him all the way home, and he did not seem to be aware of it. Adelaida made an attempt to ask him, “What uncle had been spoken of just now and what had happened in Petersburg?” But with a very sour face he muttered something vague in reply about making inquiries, and its being all nonsense.

“No doubt of that,” assented Adelaida, and she asked nothing more.

Aglaia became exceptionally quiet, and only observed on the way that they were hurrying too fast. Once she turned round and caught sight of Myshkin, who was hastening after them. She smiled ironically at his efforts to overtake them, and did not look round at him again.

At last, when they were nearly reaching their villa, they saw Ivan Fyodorovitch, who had just arrived from Petersburg, coming to meet them. His first word was to ask after “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch. But his wife walked by him wrathfully, without answering or even looking at him. From the faces of his daughters and Prince S. he guessed at once there was a storm brewing. But apart from this, there was an unusual uneasiness in his expression. He took Prince S.’s arm, stopped him at the entrance, and exchanged a few words with him almost in a whisper. From the troubled air of both as they walked afterwards on to the verandah and went up to Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s room it might be surmised that they had heard some extraordinary news. By degrees, they were all gathered in Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s room upstairs, and no one but Myshkin was left at last on the verandah. Though he had no conscious motive for staying, yet he sat on in the corner as though expecting something. It did not occur to him, as they seemed so upset, that he had better go away. He seemed oblivious of the whole universe, and ready to go on sitting for the next two years, wherever he might be put. From time to time, sounds of anxious conversation reached him from above. He could not have said how long he had been sitting there. It had grown late and was quite dark when Aglaia suddenly came out on to the verandah. She looked calm though she was rather pale. Seeing Myshkin, whom she apparently had not expected to find sitting there in the corner, Aglaia smiled, as though perplexed.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, going up to him.

Myshkin muttered something in confusion, and jumped up from his seat. But Aglaia at once sat down beside him, and he sat down again. Suddenly she examined him attentively, then looked as though aimlessly at the window, and then again at him.

“Perhaps she wants to laugh at me,” Myshkin thought. “No, she’d have laughed at me then.”

“Perhaps you’d like some tea. I’ll order some,” she said, after a silence.

“N-no. I don’t know...”

“How do you mean — you don’t know? Oh, by the way, listen. If some one challenged you to a duel, what would vou do? I wanted to ask vou before.”

“Why . . . who ... no one will challenge me to a duel.”

“But if they did? Would you be very much frightened?”

“I think I should be very... much afraid.”

“You mean it? Then you are a coward?”

“N-no. Perhaps not. A coward is a man who’s afraid and runs away. If one’s afraid and doesn’t run away, one’s not a coward,” said Myshkin, smiling, after a moment’s thought.

“And you wouldn’t run away?”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t run away.” He laughed at last at Aglaia’s questions.

“Though I’m a woman, nothing would make me run away,” she observed, almost offended. “But you’re laughing at me and pretending, as you usually do, to make yourself more interesting. Tell me, they fire at twelve paces, don’t they, sometimes at ten, so they must be killed or wounded?”

“People are not often killed at duels, I imagine.”

“Not often! Pushkin was killed.”

“That may have been accidental.”

“It wasn’t an accident. It was a duel to the death and he was killed.”

“The bullet struck him so low down that no doubt Dantes aimed higher, at his head or at his chest; no one aims like that, so it’s most likely that the bullet hit Pushkin by accident. People who understand told me so.”

“But a soldier I talked to once told me that they were ordered by the regulations to fire half-way-up, that’s their phrase ‘half-way-up.’ So they’re not ordered to fire at the head or the chest, but ‘half-way-up.’ I asked an officer afterwards and he told me it was perfectly true.”

“That’s probably because they fire from a long distance.”

“But can you shoot?”

“I never have shot.”

“Don’t you even know how to load a pistol?”

“No. That is, I know how it’s done, but I’ve never done it myself.”

“Well, that means you don’t know, for it wants practice. Listen and remember: first you must buy some good gun-powder, not damp (they say it must not be damp, but very dry), very fine powder, you must ask for that sort, not what’s used in cannon. The bullets, I’m told, people make themselves somehow. Have you pistols?”

“No, and I don’t want them,” laughed Myshkin.

“Oh, what nonsense! “Vbu must buy a good one, French or English. I’m told they’re the best. Then take a thimbleful of powder, or two thimblefuls, perhaps, and sprinkle it in. Better put plenty. Ram it in with felt (they say that felt is necessary for some reason); you can get that out of some mattress, or doors are sometimes covered with felt. Then, when you’ve poked the felt in, put in the bullet — do you hear, the bullet afterwards, the powder first, or it won’t shoot. Why are you laughing? I want you to practise shooting every day, and to learn to hit a mark. Will you?”

Myshkin laughed. Aglaia stamped her foot with vexation. The earnest air with which she carried on such a conversation somewhat surprised him. He rather felt that he must find out something, ask about something; something more serious anyway than the loading of a pistol. But everything had flown out of his head except the one fact, that she was sitting beside him, and that he was looking at her, and it made no difference to him at that moment what she talked about.

Ivan Fyodorovitch, himself, came downstairs and on to the verandah at last. He was going out with a frowning, anxious and resolute face.

“Ah, Lyov Nikolayevitch, that’s you. . . . Where are you going now?” he asked, though Myshkin showed no signs of moving. “Come along, I’ve a word to say to you.”

“Good-bye,” said Aglaia, and held out her hand to Myshkin.

It was rather dark on the verandah by now. He could not make out her face quite clearly. A minute later, when he had left the villa with the general, he suddenly flushed hotly, and squeezed his right hand tightly.

It appeared that Ivan Fyodorovitch had to go the same way. In spite of the late hour, he was hurrying to discuss something with some one. But meanwhile, on the way, he began talking to Myshkin, quickly, excitedly, and somewhat incoherently, frequently mentioning Lizaveta Prokofyevna. If Myshkin could have been more observant at that moment, he might perhaps have guessed that the general wanted to find out something from him, or rather, wanted to ask him a plain question, but could not bring himself to the real point. Myshkin was so absent-minded that at first he heard nothing at all, and when the general stopped before him with some excited question, to his shame he was forced to confess that he had not understood a word.

The general shrugged his shoulders.

“You’re all such queer people all about one,” he began again. “I tell you that I am at a loss to understand the notions and alarms of Lizaveta Prokofyevna. She’s in hysterics, crying and declaring that we’ve been disgraced, shamed. Who? How? By whom? When and why? I confess I am to blame (I recognise it), I’m very much to blame, but the persecutions of . . . this troublesome woman (who’s misconducting herself into the bargain) can be restrained, by the police at the worst, and I intend to see some one to-day and take steps. Everything can be done quietly, gently, kindly even, in a friendly way and without a breath of scandal. I admit that many things may happen in the future, and that there’s a great deal that’s unexplained; there’s an intrigue in it; but if they know nothing about it here, they can make no explanation there. If I’ve heard nothing and you’ve heard nothing, he’s heard nothing, and she’s heard nothing, who has heard, I should like to ask you? How is it to be explained, do you suppose, except that half of it is mirage, unreal, something like moonshine or some hallucination.”

“She is mad,” muttered Myshkin, recalling with pain the recent scene.

“That’s just what I say, if you’re talking of her. That idea has occurred to me too, and I slept peacefully. But now I see that their opinion is more correct, and I don’t believe in madness. She’s a nonsensical woman, I grant, but she’s artful as well, and far from mad. Her freak to-day about Kapiton Alexeyitch shows that too clearly. It’s a fraudulent business, or at least a Jesuitical business for objects of her own.”

“What Kapiton Alexeyitch?”

“Ah, mercy on us, Lyov Nikolayevitch, you don’t listen. I began by telling you about Kapiton Alexeyitch; I was so upset that I’m all of a tremble still. That’s what kept me so long in town to-day. Kapiton Alexeyitch Radomsky, Yevgeny Pavlovitch’s uncle....”

“Ah!” cried Myshkin.

“Shot himself at daybreak this morning, at seven o’clock. A highly respected old man, seventy, a free-liver. And it’s just exactly as she said — a large sum of government money missing.”

“Where could she have ...”

“Heard of it? Ha-ha! Why, she had a whole regiment around her, as soon as she arrived here. \bu know what sort of people visit her now and seek ‘the honour of her acquaintance.’ She might naturally have heard it this morning from some one coming from town; for all Petersburg knows it by now, and half Pavlovsk, or perhaps the whole of it. But what a sly remark it was she made about the uniform, as it was repeated to me, about “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch’s having sent in his papers in the nick of time! What a fiendish hint! No, that doesn’t smack of madness. I refuse to believe, of course, that Yevgeny Pavlovitch could have known of the catastrophe beforehand, that is, that at seven o’clock on a certain day, and so on. But he may have had a presentiment of it all. And I, and all of us, and Prince S. reckoned that he would leave him a fortune. It’s awful! But understand me, I don’t charge “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch with anything, and I hasten to make that clear, but still, it’s suspicious, I

must say. Prince S. is tremendously struck by it. It’s all fallen out so strangely.”

“But what is there suspicious about Yevgeny Pavlovitch’s conduct?”

“Nothing. He’s behaved most honourably. I haven’t suggested anything of the sort. His own property, I believe, is untouched. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, of course, won’t listen to anything. But, what’s worse, all this family upset, or rather, all this tittle-tattle, really one doesn’t know what to call it.... You’re a friend of the family in a real sense, Lyov Nikolayevitch, and would you believe it, it appears now, though it’s not known for certain, that “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch made Aglaia an offer a month ago, and that she refused him point-blank.”

“Impossible!” cried Myshkin warmly.

“Why, do you know anything about it? \bu see, my dear fellow,” cried the general, startled and surprised, stopping short as though petrified, “I may have chattered on to you more than I should. That’s because you . . . because you . . . are such an exceptional fellow, one may say. Perhaps you know something?”

“I know nothinq . . . about “Vfevqenv Pavlovitch,”

muttered Myshkin.

“I don’t either. As for me, my boy, they certainly want to see me dead and buried, and they won’t consider how hard it is for a man, and that I can’t stand it. I’ve just been through an awful scene! I speak to you as though you were my son. The worst of it is that Aglaia seems to be laughing at her mother. Her sisters told their mother, as a guess, and a pretty certain one, that she’d refused Yevgeny Pavlovitch and had a rather formal explanation with him a month ago. But she’s such a willful and whimsical creature, it’s beyond words. Generosity and every brilliant quality of mind and heart she has, but capricious, mocking — in fact, a little devil, and full of fancies, too. She laughed at her mother to her face just now, at her sisters too, and at Prince S. I don’t count, of course, for she never does anything but laugh at me. But yet, you know, I love her; I love her laughing even — and I believe she, little devil, loves me specially for it, that is, more than anyone else, I believe. I’ll bet anything she’s made fun of you too. I found her talking to you just now after the storm upstairs; she was sitting with you, as though nothing had happened.”