Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  Myshkin did not know that the Epanchins had left. He was struck by the news, he turned pale; but a minute later he shook his head, confused and meditative, and acknowledged that “so it was bound to be”; then he asked quickly, “where had they gone?”

  Meanwhile “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch watched him carefully, and he marvelled not a little at all this — the rapidity of his questions, their simplicity, his perturbation, restlessness and excitement, and at the same time a sort of strange openness. He told Myshkin about everything, however, courteously and in detail. There was a great deal the latter had not heard, and this was the first person to visit him from the Epanchins’ circle. He confirmed the rumour that Aglaia really had been ill. She had lain for three days and nights in a fever without sleeping. Now she was better and out of all danger, but in a nervous and hysterical state. “It was a good thing,” he said, “that now there was perfect harmony in the house. They tried to make no allusion to the past, not only before Aglaia, but also among themselves. The parents had already made up their minds to a trip abroad in the autumn, immediately after Adelaida’s wedding. Aglaia had received in silence the preliminary hints at this plan. He, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch, might very possibly be going abroad too. Even Prince S. might possibly go with Adelaida for a couple of months if business permitted. The general himself would remain. They had all moved now to Kolmino, their estate fifteen miles out of Petersburg, where they had a spacious manor-house. Princess Byelokonsky had not yet returned to Moscow, and he believed she was staying on at Pavlovsk on purpose. Lizaveta Prokofyevna had insisted emphatically that they could not stay on in Pavlovsk, after what had happened. He, Yevgeny Pavlovitch, had reported to her every day the rumours that were circulating in the town. It did not seem possible for them to move to the villa at Yelagin.”

  “And indeed,” added Yevgeny Pavlovitch, “you’ll admit yourself they could hardly have faced it out. . .. Especially knowing what’s going on here in your house every hour, prince, and your daily calls there in spite of their refusing to see you....”

  “Yes, yes, yes, you’re right. I wanted to see Aglaia Ivanovna,” said Myshkin, shaking his head again.

  “Ah, dear prince,” cried Yevgeny Pavlovitch, with warm-hearted regret. “How then could you allow . . . all that’s happened? Of course, of course, it was all so unexpected. I understand that you must have been at your wits’ end and you could not have restrained the mad girl; that was not in your power. But you ought to have understood how intense and how much in earnest the girl was ... in herfeeling for you. She did not care to share you with another woman and you . . . you could desert and shatter a treasure like that!”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right. I am to blame,” Myshkin began again in terrible distress. “And do you know she alone, Aglaia alone, looked at Nastasya Filippovna like that. ... No one else ever looked at her like that.”

  “Yes, that’s just what makes it all so dreadful that there was nothing serious in it,” cried Yevgeny Pavlovitch, completely carried away. “Forgive me, prince, but I . . . I’ve been thinking about it, prince. I have thouqht a lot about it; I know all that happened before, I know all that happened six months ago, all — and there was nothing serious in it! It was only your head, not your heart, that was involved, an illusion, a fantasy, a mirage, and only the scared jealousy of an utterly inexperienced girl would have taken it for anything serious! ...”

  At this point, without mincing matters, Yevgeny Pavlovitch gave full vent to his indignation. Clearly and reasonably, and, we repeat, with great psychological insight, he drew a vivid picture of Myshkin’s past relations with Nastasya Filippovna. He had at all times a gift for language, and at this moment he rose to positive eloquence. “From the very first,” he declared, “it began with falsity. What begins in a lie must end in a lie; that’s a law of nature. I don’t agree, and, in fact, I’m indignant when somebody calls you — well — an idiot. bu’re too clever to be called that. But you’re so strange that you’re not like other people — you must admit that yourself. I’ve made up my mind that what’s at the bottom of all that’s happened is your innate inexperience (mark that word, ‘innate,’ prince), and your extraordinary simple-heartedness, and then the phenomenal lack of all feeling for proportion in you (which you have several times recognised yourself), and finally the huge mass of intellectual convictions, which you, with your extraordinary honesty, have hitherto taken for real, innate, intuitive convictions! bu must admit yourself, prince, that from the very beginning, in your relations with Nastasya Filippovna, there was an element of conventional democratic feeling (I use the expression for brevity), the fascination, so to say, of the ‘woman question’ (to express it still more briefly). I know all the details of the strange, scandalous scene that took place at Nastasya Filippovna’s, when Rogozhin brought his money. If you like, I will analyse you to yourself on my fingers, I will show you to yourself as in a looking-glass, I know so exactly how it all was, and why it all turned out as it did. As a youth in Switzerland you yearned for your native country, and longed for Russia as for an unknown land of promise. You had read a great many books about Russia, excellent books perhaps, but pernicious for you. bu arrived in the first glow of eagerness to be of service, so to say; you rushed, you flew headlong to be of service. And on the very dav of vour arrival, a sad and heartrending story of an injured woman is told you, you a virginal knight — and about a woman! The very same day you saw that woman, you were bewitched by her beauty, her fantastic, demoniacal beauty (I admit she’s a beauty, of course). Add to that your nerves, your epilepsy, add to that our Petersburg thaw which shatters the nerves, add all that day, in an unknown and to you almost fantastic town, a day of scenes and meetings, a day of unexpected acquaintances, a day of the most surprising reality, of meeting the three Epanchin beauties, and Aglaia among them; then your fatigue and the turmoil in your head, and then the drawing-room of Nastasya Filippovna, and the tone of that drawing-room, and .. . what could you expect of yourself at such a moment, what do you think?”

  “Yes, yes; yes, yes,” Myshkin shook his head, beginning to flush crimson. “Yes, that’s almost exactly how it was. And do you know I’d scarcely slept at all in the train the night before, and all the night before that, and was fearfully exhausted.”

  “Yes, of course, that’s just what I am driving at,”

  “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch went on warmly, “the fact’s clear that you, intoxicated with enthusiasm, so to speak, clutched at the opportunity of publicly proclaiming the generous idea, that you, a prince by birth and a man of pure life, did not regard a woman as dishonoured who had been put to shame, not through her own fault, but through the fault of a disgusting aristocratic profligate. Good heavens, of course one can understand it. But that’s not the point, dear prince, the point is whether there was reality, whether there was genuineness in your emotions, whether there was natural feeling or only intellectual enthusiasm. What do you think; in the temple the woman was forgiven — just such a woman, but she wasn’t told that she’d done well, that she was deserving of all respect and honour, was she? Didn’t common sense tell you within three months the true state of the case? But, even granting that she’s innocent now — I won’t insist on that for I don’t want to — but could all her adventures justify such intolerable, diabolical pride, such insolent, such rapacious egoism? Forgive me, prince, I let myself be carried away, but.

  “Yes, all that may be so. Maybe you are right. . . .” Myshkin muttered again, “she certainly is very much irritated, and you’re right, no doubt, but...”

  “Deserving of compassion? That’s what you mean to say, my kind-hearted friend? But how could you, out of compassion, for the sake of her pleasure, put to shame another, a pure and lofty girl, humiliate her in those haughty, those hated eyes? What will compassion lead you to next? It’s an exaggeration that passes belief! How can you, loving a girl, humiliate her like this before her rival, jilt her for the sake of another woman, in the very presence of that other, after you had
yourself made her an honourable offer. . . and you did make her an offer, didn’t you? “Vbu said so before her parents and her sisters! Do you call yourself an honourable man after that, allow me to ask you, prince? And . . . and didn’t you deceive that adorable girl when you told her that you loved her?”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right. Ach, I feel that I am to blame!” Myshkin replied, in unutterable distress.

  “But is that enough?” cried “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch, indignantly. “Is it sufficient to cry out: ‘Ach, I’m to blame?’ “Vbu are to blame, but yet you persist! And where was your heart then, your ‘Christian’ heart? Why, you saw her face at that moment: well, was she suffering less than the other, that other woman who has come between you? How could you have seen it and allowed it? How could you?”

  “But ... I didn’t allow it,” muttered the unhappy prince.

  “You didn’t allow it?”

  “I really didn’t allow anything. I don’t understand to this hour how it all came to pass. I ... I was running after Aglaia Ivanovna at the time, but Nastasya Filippovna fell down fainting. And since then they haven’t let me see Aglaia Ivanovna.”

  “Never mind! bu ought to have run after Aglaia even if the other woman was fainting!”

  “Yes . . . Yes, I ought to have. . . . She would have died, you know. She would have killed herself, you don’t know her, and ... it made no difference, I should have told Aglaia Ivanovna everything afterwards, and . . . you see, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch, I see that you don’t know everything. Tell me, why won’t they let me see Aglaia Ivanovna? I would have explained everything to her. bu see, they both talked of the wrong thing, utterly wrong; that’s why it all happened. ... I can’t explain it to you at all; but perhaps I could explain it to Aglaia. . . . Oh, dear; oh, dear! You speak of her face at that moment when she ran away.... Oh, dear, I remember it! -... Let us go, let us go!” He jumped hastily up from his seat and pulled Yevgeny Pavlovitch by the hand.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Let’s go to Aglaia Ivanovna; let’s go at once! ...”

  “But she’s not in Pavlovsk now, I told you so. And why go to her?”

  “She will understand, she will understand!” Myshkin muttered, clasping his hands imploringly. “She would understand that it’s all not that, but something quite different!”

  “How do you mean, something quite different? Only, you’re going to marry her, anyhow. So you persist in it.... Are you going to be married or not?”

  “Well, yes ... lam; yes, lam!”

  “Then how is it ‘not that’?”

  “No, it’s not that, not that. It makes no difference that I’m going to marry her. That’s nothing, nothing.”

  “How do you mean it makes no difference, that it’s nothing? Why, it’s not a trifling matter, is it? You’re marrying a woman you love to make her happy, and Aglaia Ivanovna sees that and knows it. How can you say it makes no difference?”

  “Happy? Oh, no! I’m only just marrying her; she wants me to. And what is there in my marrying her? I . . . oh, well, all that’s no matter! Only she would certainly have died. I see now that her marrying Rogozhin was madness. I understand now all that I didn’t understand before, and, you see, when they stood there, facing one another, I couldn’t bear Nastasya Filippovna’s face. . . . bu don’t know, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch” — he dropped his voice mysteriously— “I’ve never said this to anyone, not even to Aglaia, but I can’t bear Nastasya Filippovna’s face. ... It was true what you said just now about that evening at Nastasya Filippovna’s; but there is one thing you left out because you don’t know it. I looked at her face! That morning, in her portrait, I couldn’t bear the sight of it. . . . Vera, now, Lebedyev’s daughter, has quite different eyes. I . . . I’m afraid of her face!” he added with extraordinary terror.

  “You’re afraid of it?”

  “Yes; she’s mad—” he whispered, turning pale.

  “You’re sure of that?” asked “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch,

  with extreme interest.

  “Yes, sure. Now I’m sure. Now, during these last days, I’ve become quite sure!”

  “But what are you doing, prince?” Yevgeny Pavlovitch cried with horror. “So you’re marrying her from a sort of fear? There’s no understanding it! Without even loving her, perhaps?”

  “Oh, no. I love her with my whole heart! Why, she’s ... a child! Now she’s a child, quite a child! Oh, you know nothing about it!”

  “And at the same time you have declared your love to Aglaia Ivanovna?”

  “Oh, yes, yes!”

  “How so? Then you want to love both of them?”

  “Oh, yes, yes!”

  “Upon my word, prince, think what you’re saying!”

  “Without Aglaia I’m . . . I absolutely must see her! I . . . I shall soon die in my sleep, I thought I should have died last night in my sleep. Oh, if Aglaia only knew, if she only knew everything . . . absolutely everything I mean. For in this case one needs to know everything, that’s what matters most. Why is it we never can know everything about another person, when one ought to, when that other one’s to blame! . . . But I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m muddled. bu’ve shocked me very much . . . and does her face look now as it did when she ran away? Oh, yes, I am to blame! Most likely it’s all my fault. I don’t know quite how, but I am to blame. . . . There’s something in all this I can’t explain to you, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch. I can’t find the words, but . . . Aglaia Ivanovna will understand! Oh, I’ve always believed that she would understand.”

  “No, prince, she won’t understand. Aglaia Ivanovna loved you like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince, the most likely thing is that you’ve never loved either of them!”

  “I don’t know, perhaps so . .. perhaps. bu’re right in a great deal, “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch. You are very clever, Yevgeny Pavlovitch. Oh, my head is beginning to ache again. For God’s sake, let’s go to her! For God’s sake!”

  “But I tell you she’s not in Pavlovsk, she’s in Kolmino.”

  “Let’s go to Kolmino. Let’s go at once!”

  “That’s impossible!” Yevgeny Pavlovitch said emphatically, qettinq up.

  “Listen. I’ll write to her. You take a letter!”

  “No, prince, no! Spare me such a commission. I can’t!”

  They parted. Yevgeny Pavlovitch went away with odd impressions, and in his judgment too the upshot of it was that Myshkin was not in his right mind. And what was the meaning of that face he feared so much, and yet loved! And yet perhaps he really would die without seeing Aglaia, so that Aglaia never would know how much he loved her! “Ha-ha! And how can one love two at once? With two different sorts of love? That’s interesting . . . poor idiot! What will become of him now?”

  CHAPTER 10

  But MYSHKIN did not die before his wedding, either awake or “in his sleep,” as he had predicted to “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch. Perhaps he did not sleep well and had bad dreams; but by day, with people, he was kind and seemed contented. At times he seemed lost in brooding, but that was only when he was alone. The wedding was being hurried on; it was fixed for about a week after Yevgeny Pavlovitch’s visit. With such haste his best friends, if he had any, could hardly have “saved the poor crazy fellow.” There were rumours that General Epanchin and his wife, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, were partly responsible for Yevgeny Pavlovitch’s visit. But if, in the immense kindness of their hearts, they may both have wished to save the poor lunatic from ruin, they could hardly go beyond this feeble effort; neither their position nor, perhaps, their inclination was compatible (naturally enough) with a more pronounced action. We have mentioned already that many even of those immediately surrounding Myshkin had turned against him. Vera Lebedyev, however, confined herself to shedding a few tears in solitude, staying more in the lodge, and looking in upon Myshkin less than before. Kolya at this time was occupied with his father’s funeral. The old general had died of a second stroke eight days after th
e first. Myshkin showed the warmest sympathy with the grief of the family, and for the first few days spent several hours daily with Nina Alexandrovna. He went to the funeral and to the service in the church. Many people noticed that Myshkin’s arrival and departure were accompanied by whispers among the crowd in the church. It was the same thing in the streets and in the gardens. Wherever he walked or drove out, he was greeted by a hum of talk, his name was mentioned, he was pointed out; and Nastasya Filippovna’s name, too, was audible. People looked out for her at the funeral, but she was not present. Another person conspicuously absent was the captain’s widow, whom Lebedyev succeeded in preventing from coming. The burial service had a strong and painful effect on Myshkin. He whispered to Lebedyev in answer to some question that it was the first time he had been present at an Orthodox funeral, though he had a faint memory of a similar service at a village church in his childhood.

  “Yes, it seems as though it’s not the same man in the coffin as we elected president lately — do you remember, prince?” Lebedyev whispered to Myshkin. “Whom are you looking for?”

  “Oh, nothing. I fancied ...”

  “Not Rogozhin?”

  “Why, is he here?”

  “Yes, in the church.”

  “I fancied I saw his eyes,” Myshkin muttered in confusion. “But why? What’s he here for? Was he invited?”

  “They never thought of him. Why, they don’t know him at all. There are all kinds of people in the crowd here. But why are you so astonished? I often meet him now. Why, four times in this last week I’ve met him in Pavlovsk.”

  “I’ve never seen him once since . . . that time,”

  muttered Myshkin.

  As Nastasya Filippovna too had not once told him that she had met Rogozhin “since that time,” Myshkin concluded now that Rogozhin was for some reason keeping out of sight on purpose. All that day he was lost in thought, while Nastasya Filippovna was exceptionally lively during the dayand evening.