The presence of certain of those in the room surprised the prince vastly, but the guest whose advent filled him with the greatest wonder--almost amounting to alarm--was Evgenie Pavlovitch. The prince could not believe his eyes when he beheld the latter, and could not help thinking that something was wrong.
| “Why did you add that?--There! Now you are cross again,” said the prince, wondering. |
| Murmurs arose in the neighbourhood of Burdovsky and his companions; Lebedeff’s nephew protested under his breath. |
“You seem to be a little feverish tonight,” said the actress.
“Yes, yes, so he does,” laughed the others.
| “Why, I declare, here he is!” she cried, stopping suddenly. “The man one can’t find with all one’s messengers sent about the place, sitting just under one’s nose, exactly where one never thought of looking! I thought you were sure to be at your uncle’s by this time.” |
| The prince was listening open-mouthed, and still in a condition of excited agitation. The old man was evidently interested in him, and anxious to study him more closely. |
“Prince,” he cried, “you are forgetting that if you consented to receive and hear them, it was only because of your kind heart which has no equal, for they had not the least right to demand it, especially as you had placed the matter in the hands of Gavrila Ardalionovitch, which was also extremely kind of you. You are also forgetting, most excellent prince, that you are with friends, a select company; you cannot sacrifice them to these gentlemen, and it is only for you to have them turned out this instant. As the master of the house I shall have great pleasure ....”
Hippolyte gazed eagerly at the latter, and mused for a few moments.
“I am vile, vile; I know it!” cried Lebedeff, beating his breast with a contrite air. “But will not the general be too hospitable for you?”
“‘Look here now,’ I said, when we came out, ‘none of your interference here after this--do you understand?’ He laughed: ‘And how are you going to settle up with your father?’ says he. I thought I might as well jump into the Neva at once without going home first; but it struck me that I wouldn’t, after all, and I went home feeling like one of the damned.”
“I do desire it,” murmured Gania, softly but firmly, lowering his eyes; and he relapsed into gloomy silence.
“I am very sorry; I was not thinking at the time. I merely said that Aglaya was almost as beautiful as Nastasia Philipovna.”
“If I am admitted and tolerated here,” he had said one day, “it is simply because I talk in this way. How can anyone possibly receive such a man as I am? I quite understand. Now, could I, a Ferdishenko, be allowed to sit shoulder to shoulder with a clever man like Afanasy Ivanovitch? There is one explanation, only one. I am given the position because it is so entirely inconceivable!”
| “Well?” said Mrs. Epanchin angrily, surprised at his tone; “well, what more?” |
There was absolute hatred in his eyes as he said this, but his look of fear and his trembling had not left him.
“Wait--listen!” cried Rogojin, suddenly, starting up. “Somebody’s walking about, do you hear? In the hall.” Both sat up to listen.
“You don’t answer me; perhaps you think I am very fond of you?” added Hippolyte, as though the words had been drawn from him.
“Very well, gentlemen--very well,” replied the prince. “At first I received the news with mistrust, then I said to myself that I might be mistaken, and that Pavlicheff might possibly have had a son. But I was absolutely amazed at the readiness with which the son had revealed the secret of his birth at the expense of his mother’s honour. For Tchebaroff had already menaced me with publicity in our interview....”
“I admit I was afraid that that was the case, yesterday,” blundered the prince (he was rather confused), “but today I am quite convinced that--”
I.
“Oh no! Certainly not! ‘I am free,’ she says; you know how she insists on that point. ‘I am entirely free.’ She repeats it over and over again. She is living in Petersburgskaia, with my sister-in-law, as I told you in my letter.”
| “Yes, but what am I to do, Lebedeff? What steps am I to take? I am ready.” |
“I took her to see my mother, and she was as respectful and kind as though she were her own daughter. Mother has been almost demented ever since father died--she’s an old woman. She sits and bows from her chair to everyone she sees. If you left her alone and didn’t feed her for three days, I don’t believe she would notice it. Well, I took her hand, and I said, ‘Give your blessing to this lady, mother, she’s going to be my wife.’ So Nastasia kissed mother’s hand with great feeling. ‘She must have suffered terribly, hasn’t she?’ she said. She saw this book here lying before me. ‘What! have you begun to read Russian history?’ she asked. She told me once in Moscow, you know, that I had better get Solovieff’s Russian History and read it, because I knew nothing. ‘That’s good,’ she said, ‘you go on like that, reading books. I’ll make you a list myself of the books you ought to read first--shall I?’ She had never once spoken to me like this before; it was the first time I felt I could breathe before her like a living creature.”
“Yes, I think I can.”
“You will not deny, I am sure,” said Gavrila Ardalionovitch, turning to Burdovsky, who sat looking at him with wide-open eyes, perplexed and astonished. “You will not deny, seriously, that you were born just two years after your mother’s legal marriage to Mr. Burdovsky, your father. Nothing would be easier than to prove the date of your birth from well-known facts; we can only look on Mr. Keller’s version as a work of imagination, and one, moreover, extremely offensive both to you and your mother. Of course he distorted the truth in order to strengthen your claim, and to serve your interests. Mr. Keller said that he previously consulted you about his article in the paper, but did not read it to you as a whole. Certainly he could not have read that passage. ....”
“Rogojin only leaned his elbow on the table and silently stared at me. So passed two or three minutes, and I recollect that his silence hurt and offended me very much. Why did he not speak?
“Probably there’s some new silliness about it,” said Mrs. Epanchin, sarcastically.
“Come, speak out! Don’t lie, for once in your life--speak out!” continued Hippolyte, quivering with agitation.
“Look here, my dear prince, no one jumps out of the window if they can help it; but when there’s a fire, the dandiest gentleman or the finest lady in the world will skip out! When the moment comes, and there’s nothing else to be done--our young lady will go to Nastasia Philipovna’s! Don’t they let the young ladies out of the house alone, then?”
His words seemed tinged with a kind of sarcastic mockery, yet he was extremely agitated, casting suspicious glances around him, growing confused, and constantly losing the thread of his ideas. All this, together with his consumptive appearance, and the frenzied expression of his blazing eyes, naturally attracted the attention of everyone present.
“Well, well! Enough! You’ve pitied me, and that’s all that good manners exact. I forgot, how are you?”
| “Ah! Well, if it was Rogojin--but do you know what she writes to me about?” |
| “I knew nothing about your home before,” said the prince absently, as if he were thinking of something else. |
“I don’t understand you in the least, Parfen.”
The general looked significantly at his host.
“Did you never take your knife to Pavlofsk with you?” “No. As to the knife,” he added, “this is all I can tell you about it.” He was silent for a moment, and then said, “I took it out of the locked drawer this morning about three, for it was in the early morning all this--happened. It has been inside the book ever since--and--and--this is what is such a marvel to me, the knife only went in a couple of inches at most, just under her left breast, and there wasn’t more than half a tablespoonful of blood altogether, not more.”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand--”
She did not finish her indefinite sentence; she restrained herself in a moment; but it was enough.
But Nastasia could not hide the cause of her intense interest in her wedding splendour. She had heard of the indignation in the town, and knew that some of the populace was getting up a sort of charivari with music, that verses had been composed for the occasion, and that the rest of Pavlofsk society more or less encouraged these preparations. So, since attempts were being made to humiliate her, she wanted to hold her head even higher than usual, and to overwhelm them all with the beauty and taste of her toilette. “Let them shout and whistle, if they dare!” Her eyes flashed at the thought. But, underneath this, she had another motive, of which she did not speak. She thought that possibly Aglaya, or at any rate someone sent by her, would be present incognito at the ceremony, or in the crowd, and she wished to be prepared for this eventuality.
“I cannot remember how long this lasted; I cannot recollect, either, whether consciousness forsook me at intervals, or not. But at last Rogojin rose, staring at me as intently as ever, but not smiling any longer,--and walking very softly, almost on tip-toes, to the door, he opened it, went out, and shut it behind him.
| The prince turned sharply round and looked at both of them. Gania’s face was full of real despair; he seemed to have said the words almost unconsciously and on the impulse of the moment. |
The girls could see that their mother concealed a great deal from them, and left out large pieces of the letter in reading it to them.
| “I had a bundle; it’s in the entrance hall.” |
“How?” cried Aglaya--and her lower lip trembled violently. “You were _afraid_ that I--you dared to think that I--good gracious! you suspected, perhaps, that I sent for you to come here in order to catch you in a trap, so that they should find us here together, and make you marry me--”
“What have I done? Where are you dragging me to?”
The prince sat silent for a long while. His mind was filled with dread and horror.
He did not dare look at her, but he was conscious, to the very tips of his fingers, that she was gazing at him, perhaps angrily; and that she had probably flushed up with a look of fiery indignation in her black eyes.
“No--in anger, perhaps. Oh yes! she reproached me dreadfully in anger; and suffered herself, too! But afterwards--oh! don’t remind me--don’t remind me of that!”
| “Very sorry; but in point of fact, you know, it was all nonsense and would have ended in smoke, as usual--I’m sure of that. Last year,”--he turned to the old man again,--“Countess K. joined some Roman Convent abroad. Our people never seem to be able to offer any resistance so soon as they get into the hands of these--intriguers--especially abroad.” |
“Antip Burdovsky,” stuttered the son of Pavlicheff.
All the guests were known to the prince; but the curious part of the matter was that they had all arrived on the same evening, as though with one accord, although he had only himself recollected the fact that it was his birthday a few moments since.
| Lizabetha therefore decided that the prince was impossible as a husband for Aglaya; and during the ensuing night she made a vow that never while she lived should he marry Aglaya. With this resolve firmly impressed upon her mind, she awoke next day; but during the morning, after her early lunch, she fell into a condition of remarkable inconsistency. |
“Did not you ask me the question seriously” inquired the prince, in amazement.
“No, they cut off people’s heads in France.”
“I will think about it,” said the prince dreamily, and went off.
| “So that is true, is it?” cried the prince, greatly agitated. “I had heard a report of it, but would not believe it.” |
| “Is what today?” cried the former. Then suddenly recollecting himself, he turned sharply on the prince. “Oh,” he growled, “I see, you are here, that explains it! Is it a disease, or what, that you can’t hold your tongue? Look here, understand once for all, prince--” |
“Not about the theft.”
| “What do you mean by ‘arrangements’?” |
“Why, he knows everything--Lebedeff knows everything! I was a month or two with Lihachof after his father died, your excellency, and while he was knocking about--he’s in the debtor’s prison now--I was with him, and he couldn’t do a thing without Lebedeff; and I got to know Nastasia Philipovna and several people at that time.”
“Whose fault is it that they are all miserable, that they don’t know how to live, though they have fifty or sixty years of life before them? Why did that fool allow himself to die of hunger with sixty years of unlived life before him?
The prince took his note. Ferdishenko rose.
| Prince S. was now no longer smiling; he gazed at the prince in bewilderment. |
“‘What do you think of it yourself?” replied the prince, looking sadly at Rogojin.
“Sometimes, thinking over this, I became quite numb with the terror of it; and I might well have deduced from this fact, that my ‘last conviction’ was eating into my being too fast and too seriously, and would undoubtedly come to its climax before long. And for the climax I needed greater determination than I yet possessed.
“What are you thinking of, my dear Nastasia?” said Daria Alexeyevna in alarm. “What are you saying?” “You are not going mad, are you?”
| “It’s true then, Lebedeff, that you advertise to lend money on gold or silver articles?” |
| “You know of course why I requested this meeting?” she said at last, quietly, and pausing twice in the delivery of this very short sentence. |
Lebedeff, now quite sobered down, sent for a doctor; and he and his daughter, with Burdovsky and General Ivolgin, remained by the sick man’s couch.