Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (417 page)

“No, it’s not right at all,” said Ivan Petrovitch, smiling ironically.

“There, he’s off again!” said Princess Byelokonsky, losing patience.

“Laissez le dire, he’s trembling all over,” the old man warned them in an undertone.

Myshkin had completely lost control of himself.

“And what do I find? I find people elegant, simple-

hearted, and clever. I meet an old man who is ready to listen to a boy like me and be kind to him. I find people ready to understand and to forgive, Russian, and kind-hearted, almost as kind and warm-hearted as I met there, and almost their equals. You can judge what a delightful surprise it is! Oh, do let me put it into words! I had heard so often and fully believed myself that society was nothing but manners, and antiquated forms, and that all reality was extinct. But I see now for myself that that cannot be so among us; that may be anywhere else but not in Russia. Can you all be Jesuits and frauds? I heard Prince N. tell a story just now. Wasn’t that simple-hearted, spontaneous humour; wasn’t it genuine frankness? Can such sayings come from the lips of a man . . . who is dead; whose heart and talent have run dry? Could the dead have treated me as you have treated me? Isn’t it material ... for the future, for hope? Can such people lag behind and fail to understand?”

“I beg you again; calm yourself, my dear boy. We’ll talk about all this another time. I shall be delighted. .. ,” smiled the old “dignitary.”

Ivan Petrovitch cleared his throat and turned round in his chair; General Epanchin made a movement; the chief of the department began talking to the old “dignitary’s” wife, paying not the slightest attention to Myshkin; but the “dignitary’s” wife frequently listened and glanced at him.

“No, it’s better for me to speak, you know,” Myshkin began again, with another feverish outburst, addressing the old man with peculiar trustfulness, and as it were, confidentially. “Yesterday, Aglaia Ivanovna told me not to talk, and even told me what subjects not to talk about; she knows I’m absurd on those subjects. I’m twenty-seven, but I know that I’m like a child. I have no right to express an opinion, I’ve said that long ago. It’s only with Rogozhin in Moscow that I’ve talked openly. We read Pushkin together, the whole of him. He knew nothing of him, not even the name of Pushkin. ... I’m always afraid that my absurd manner may discredit the thought or the leading idea. I have no elocution. My gestures are always inappropriate, and that makes people laugh, and degrades my ideas. I’ve no sense of proportion either, and that’s the great thing; that’s the chief thing in fact. ... I know it’s better for me to sit still and keep quiet. When I persist in keepinq quiet, I seem very sensible, and what’s more I think things over. But now it’s better for me to talk. I’m talking because you look at me so nicely; you have such a nice face! I promised Aglaia Ivanovna yesterday that I’d be silent all the evening!”

“Vraiment!”smiled the old dignitary.

“But sometimes I think that I am not right in thinking that. Sincerity is more important than elocution, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

“Sometimes.”

“I want to explain everything, everything, everything! Oh, yes! “Vbu think I’m Utopian? A theorist? My ideas are really all so simple. . . . Don’t you believe it? “Vbu smile? “Vbu know I’m contemptible sometimes, for I lose my faith. As I came here just now, I wondered: ‘How shall I talk to him? With what words shall I begin, so that they may understand a little?’ How frightened I was, but I was more frightened for you. It was awful, awful! And yet, how could I be afraid? Wasn’t it shameful to be afraid? What does it matter that for one advanced man there is such a mass of retrograde and evil ones? That’s what I’m so happy about; that I’m convinced now that there is no such mass, and that it’s all living material! There’s no reason to be troubled because we’re absurd, is there? “Vbu know it really is true that we’re absurd, that we’re shallow, have bad habits, that we’re bored, that we don’t know how to look at things, that we can’t understand; we’re all like that, all of us, you, and I, and they! And you are not offended at my telling you to your faces that you’re absurd? Are you? And if that’s so, aren’t you good material? Do you know, to my thinking it’s a good thing sometimes to be absurd; it’s better in fact, it makes it easier to forgive one another, it’s easier to be humble. One can’t understand everything at once, we can’t begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan’t understand them thoroughly. I say that to you who have been able to understand so much already and . . . have failed to understand so much. I am afraid for you now. “Vbu are not angry at a boy like me for saying things to you? Of course you’re not! Oh, you know how to forget and to forgive those who have offended you and those who have not offended you,

for it’s always more difficult to forgive those who have not offended one, and just because they’ve not injured one, and that therefore one’s complaint of them is groundless. That’s what I expected of the best people, that’s what I was in a hurry to tell you as I came here, and did not know how to tell you. . . . \bu are laughing, Ivan Petrovitch? You think that I was afraid for them, that I’m their champion, a democrat, an advocate of equality?” he laughed hysterically (he had been continually breaking into short laughs of delight). “I’m afraid for you, for all of you, for all of us together. I am a prince myself, of ancient family, and I am sitting with princes. I speak to save us all, that our class may not vanish in vain; in darkness, without realising anything, abusing everything, and losing everything. Why disappear and make way for others when we might remain in advance and be the leaders? If we are advanced we shall be the leaders. Let us be servants in order to be leaders.”

He began to try to get up from his chair, but the old man still held him, though he looked at him with growing uneasiness.

“Listen! I know it’s not right to talk. Better set an example, better to begin. ... I have already begun . . . and — and — can one really be unhappy? Oh, what does my grief, what does my sorrow matter if I can be happy? Do you know I don’t know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one talk to a man and not be happy in loving him! Oh, it’s only that I’m notable to express it. . . . And what beautiful things there are at every step, that even the most hopeless man must feel to be beautiful! Look at a child! Look at God’s sunrise! Look at the grass, how it grows! Look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you! ...”

He had for some time been standing as he talked. The old man looked at him in alarm. Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried out, “Ah, my God!” and threw up her hands in dismay, the first to realise what was wrong.

Aglaia quickly ran up to him. She was in time to catch him in her arms, and with horror, with a face distorted with pain, she heard the wild scream of the “spirit tearing and casting down the unhappy man.”

The sick man lay on the carpet. Some one hastened to put a pillow under his head.

No one had expected this. A quarter of an hour later, Prince N. “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch, and the old dignitary were trying to restore the liveliness of the company, but within half an hour the party had broken up. Many words of sympathy and regret were uttered, a few comments were made. Ivan Petrovitch remarked that “the young man was a Slavophil or something of the sort, but that there was nothing very dangerous about that, however.” The old dignitary expressed no opinion. It’s true that later on, next day and the day after, every one who had been present seemed rather cross. Ivan Petrovitch was positively offended, but not seriously so. The chief of the department was for some time rather cold to General Epanchin. The old dignitary, who was their “patron,” mumbled something by way of admonition to the father of the family, though, in flattering terms he expressed the deepest interest in Aglaia’s future. He really was a rather good-hearted man; but one reason for the interest he had taken in Myshkin that evening was the part that the prince had played in the scandal connected with Nastasya Filippovna. He had heard something of the story and had been much interested by it, and would have liked indeed to ask questions about it.

Princess Byelokonsky said to Lizaveta Prokofyevna as she took leave that evening:

“Well, there’s good and bad in him. And if you care to know my opinion, there’s more bad than good. “Vbu can see for yourselves what he is, a sick man!”

Madame Epanchin made up her mind, once for all, that as a bride-groom he was “impossible,” and that night she vowed to herself that “as long as she was living, he should not be the husband of Aglaia.” She got up in the same mind next morning. But in the course of the morning, by lunch-time at one o’clock, she was drawn into contradicting herself in an extraordinary way.

In reply to her sisters’ carefully guarded question, Aglaia replied coldly, but haughtily, as it were, rapping it out:

“I’ve never given him a promise of any sort, I’ve never in my life looked on him or thought of him as my betrothed. He is no more to me than anyone else.”

Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly flared up.

“That I should never have expected of vou,” she said with chagrin. “As a suitor he’s out of the question, I know, and thank God that we’re agreed about it. But I didn’t expect such words from you. I looked for something very different from you. I’d be ready to turn away all those people who were here last night and to keep him. That’s what I think of him!

At that point she stopped short, frightened at her words. But if only she had known how unjust she was to her daughter at that moment! Everything was settled in Aglaia’s mind. She too was waiting for the hour that was to decide everything, and every hint, every incautious touch dealt a deep wound to her heart.

CHAPTER 8

For MYSHKIN, too, that morning began under the influence of painful forebodings; they might be explained by his invalid state, but his sadness was quite indefinite, and that was what made it most distressing to him. It is true that painful, mortifying facts stood vividly before him, but his sadness went beyond everything he remembered, and the reflections that followed that memory. He realised that he could not regain his serenity alone. By degrees the conviction took root in him that something special, something decisive, would happen to him that very day. His fit of the previous evening had been a slight one. Besides depression and a certain weariness in his head and pain in his limbs, he had nothing the matter with him. His brain worked fairly accurately, though his soul was ill at ease. He got up rather late, and at once clearly recalled the previous evening. He remembered, too, though not quite distinctly, how he had been taken home half an hour after the fit. He learnt that a messenger had already been from the Epanchins to ask after his health. At half-past eleven another called to inquire and this pleased him. Vera Lebedyev was among the first to visit him and wait upon him. She burst out crying for the first minute when she saw him, but when Myshkin at once reassured her she began laughing. He was suddenly struck by the girl’s deep sympathy for him. He took her hand and kissed it. Vera flushed crimson.

“Ach, what are you doing!” she cried, drawing her hand away in dismay. She went away quickly in strange confusion. She had time though to tell him, among other things, that her father had run off very early to see the “departed,” as he persisted in calling the general, to find out whether he had died in the night, and it was reported, so she was told, that he was at the point of death. At twelve o’clock Lebedyev himself came home, and went in to Myshkin, not merely “for a minute to inquire after his precious health,” and so on, but also to look into the cupboard. He did nothing but sigh and groan and Myshkin soon dismissed him; yet he made an attempt to question the prince about his fit the previous evening, though it was evident he knew full details about it already. After him Kolya ran in also for a minute. He really was in a hurry, and was in great and painful agitation. He began by directly and insistently begging Myshkin for an explanation of all that they had been concealing from him, asserting that he had learned almost everything the day before. He was deeply and violently distressed.

With all possible sympathy Myshkin told him the whole story, relating the facts with absolute exactness, and it fell like a thunderbolt on the poor boy. He could not utter a word and wept in silence. Myshkin felt that this was one of those impressions which remain for ever and make a turning-point in a young life. He hastened to give him his view of the case, adding that in his opinion the old man’s death might principally be due to the horror inspired by his own action, and that not every one was capable of such a feeling. Kolya’s eyes flashed as he listened to Myshkin.

“They’re a worthless lot — Ganya and Varya and Ptitsyn! I’m not going to quarrel with them, but our paths lie apart from this moment. Ah, prince, I’ve had so many new feelings since yesterday! It’s a lesson for me! I consider that my mother, too, is entirely my responsibility now; though she’s provided for at Varya’s, that’s not the thing ...”

He jumped up, remembering that he was expected at home, hurriedly asked after Myshkin’s health, and listening to the answer, added in haste:

“Isn’t there something else? I heard yesterday (though I’ve no right) ... but if you ever want a devoted servant for any purpose, here he is before you. It seems as though we’re both of us not quite happy, isn’t that so? But ... I don’t ask anything, I don’t ask ...”

He went away, and Myshkin sank into still deeper brooding. Every one was predicting misfortune, everyone had already drawn conclusions, everyone looked at him, as though they knew something and something he did not know. “Lebedyev asks questions, Kolya directly hints at it, and Vera weeps.” At last he dismissed the subject in vexation. “It’s all mv accursed sicklv over-sensitiveness,” he thought. His face brightened when, after one o’clock he saw the Epanchins, who came to visit him “for a moment.” They really did come only for a moment. When Lizaveta Prokofyevna got up from lunch, she announced that they were all going for a walk at once, and all together. The announcement was made in the form of a command, dry, abrupt and unexplained. They all went out, that is the mother, the girls, and Prince S. Lizaveta Prokofyevna turned in a direction exactly opposite to that which they took every day. Every one understood what it meant, but every one refrained from speaking for fear of irritating Madame Epanchin, and, as though to escape from reproaches or objections, she walked in front without looking back at them. At last Adelaida observed that there was no need to race along like that and that there was no catching mamma up.