| “Eighteen thousand roubles, for me? Why, you declare yourself a fool at once,” she said, with impudent familiarity, as she rose from the sofa and prepared to go. Gania watched the whole scene with a sinking of the heart. |
“I don’t know whether I did or not,” said Rogojin, drily, seeming to be a little astonished at the question, and not quite taking it in.
“No? No?” shouted Rogojin, almost out of his mind with joy. “You are not going to, after all? And they told me--oh, Nastasia Philipovna--they said you had promised to marry him, _him!_ As if you _could_ do it!--him--pooh! I don’t mind saying it to everyone--I’d buy him off for a hundred roubles, any day pfu! Give him a thousand, or three if he likes, poor devil, and he’d cut and run the day before his wedding, and leave his bride to me! Wouldn’t you, Gania, you blackguard? You’d take three thousand, wouldn’t you? Here’s the money! Look, I’ve come on purpose to pay you off and get your receipt, formally. I said I’d buy you up, and so I will.”| “What, you here too, prince?” said Rogojin, absently, but a little surprised all the same “Still in your gaiters, eh?” He sighed, and forgot the prince next moment, and his wild eyes wandered over to Nastasia again, as though attracted in that direction by some magnetic force. |
| Evgenie Pavlovitch flushed up and looked angrily at Nastasia Philipovna, then turned his back on her. |
“You are still suspicious, I see, and do not believe me; but you may be quite at your ease. There shall be no more tears, nor questions--not from my side, at all events. All I wish is that you may be happy, you know that. I have submitted to my fate; but my heart will always be with you, whether we remain united, or whether we part. Of course I only answer for myself--you can hardly expect your sister--”
The prince followed her.
| “You must excuse my asking, you know. Your appearance led me to think--but just wait for the secretary; the general is busy now, but the secretary is sure to come out.” |
“My father went into the army, too. He was a sub-lieutenant in the Vasiliefsky regiment.”
| “It’s only a couple of yards,” said Colia, blushing. |
“Oh, it was about the general,” began the prince, waking abruptly from the fit of musing which he too had indulged in “and--and about the theft you told me of.”
“But why talk now?” replied Lizabetha Prokofievna, more and more alarmed; “You are quite feverish. Just now you would not stop shouting, and now you can hardly breathe. You are gasping.”| Clearly and reasonably, and with great psychological insight, he drew a picture of the prince’s past relations with Nastasia Philipovna. Evgenie Pavlovitch always had a ready tongue, but on this occasion his eloquence, surprised himself. “From the very beginning,” he said, “you began with a lie; what began with a lie was bound to end with a lie; such is the law of nature. I do not agree, in fact I am angry, when I hear you called an idiot; you are far too intelligent to deserve such an epithet; but you are so far _strange_ as to be unlike others; that you must allow, yourself. Now, I have come to the conclusion that the basis of all that has happened, has been first of all your innate inexperience (remark the expression ‘innate,’ prince). Then follows your unheard-of simplicity of heart; then comes your absolute want of sense of proportion (to this want you have several times confessed); and lastly, a mass, an accumulation, of intellectual convictions which you, in your unexampled honesty of soul, accept unquestionably as also innate and natural and true. Admit, prince, that in your relations with Nastasia Philipovna there has existed, from the very first, something democratic, and the fascination, so to speak, of the ‘woman question’? I know all about that scandalous scene at Nastasia Philipovna’s house when Rogojin brought the money, six months ago. I’ll show you yourself as in a looking-glass, if you like. I know exactly all that went on, in every detail, and why things have turned out as they have. You thirsted, while in Switzerland, for your home-country, for Russia; you read, doubtless, many books about Russia, excellent books, I dare say, but hurtful to _you_; and you arrived here; as it were, on fire with the longing to be of service. Then, on the very day of your arrival, they tell you a sad story of an ill-used woman; they tell _you_, a knight, pure and without reproach, this tale of a poor woman! The same day you actually _see_ her; you are attracted by her beauty, her fantastic, almost demoniacal, beauty--(I admit her beauty, of course). |
“I am of your opinion on that last point,” said Ivan Fedorovitch, with ill-concealed irritation.
| “What is this ‘star’?” asked another. |
“But do you know what I have been thinking out during this last week, Parfen? I’ll tell you. What if she loves you now better than anyone? And what if she torments you _because_ she loves you, and in proportion to her love for you, so she torments you the more? She won’t tell you this, of course; you must have eyes to see. Why do you suppose she consents to marry you? She must have a reason, and that reason she will tell you some day. Some women desire the kind of love you give her, and she is probably one of these. Your love and your wild nature impress her. Do you know that a woman is capable of driving a man crazy almost, with her cruelties and mockeries, and feels not one single pang of regret, because she looks at him and says to herself, ‘There! I’ll torment this man nearly into his grave, and then, oh! how I’ll compensate him for it all with my love!’”
Suddenly the prince caught the man by the shoulder and twisted him round towards the light, so that he might see his face more clearly.
“On the contrary, he seems to be very well brought up. His manners are excellent--but here he is himself. Here you are, prince--let me introduce you, the last of the Muishkins, a relative of your own, my dear, or at least of the same name. Receive him kindly, please. They’ll bring in lunch directly, prince; you must stop and have some, but you must excuse me. I’m in a hurry, I must be off--”
“My word! what a thing to be melancholy about! Why, do you think I should be any happier if I were to feel disturbed about the excavations you tell me of?” There she stood at last, face to face with him, for the first time since their parting.“Restrain your tongue!” she said. “I did not come here to fight you with your own weapons.
“Hey! look at it, it’ll burn in another minute or two!” cried Nastasia Philipovna. “You’ll hang yourself afterwards, you know, if it does! I’m not joking.”| “Tell me, how do you intend to live now, and what are your plans?” interrupted the general. |
“It’s only for mother’s sake that I spare him,” said Gania, tragically.
| “Nervous about you?” Aglaya blushed. “Why should I be nervous about you? What would it matter to me if you were to make ever such a fool of yourself? How can you say such a thing? What do you mean by ‘making a fool of yourself’? What a vulgar expression! I suppose you intend to talk in that sort of way tomorrow evening? Look up a few more such expressions in your dictionary; do, you’ll make a grand effect! I’m sorry that you seem to be able to come into a room as gracefully as you do; where did you learn the art? Do you think you can drink a cup of tea decently, when you know everybody is looking at you, on purpose to see how you do it?” |
“Nastasia Philipovna,” he began, and there paused; he was clearly much agitated and annoyed. The prince reminded him of the portrait.
| “There, come along, Lef Nicolaievitch; that’s all I brought you here for,” said Rogojin. |
“Let it to me,” said the prince.
| “Whom did you tell about it?” |
“I shall leave you nothing!” exclaimed his uncle angrily.
| “Oh! then you did come ‘to fight,’ I may conclude? Dear me!--and I thought you were cleverer--” |
“In the first place, that is a considerable admission, and in the second place, one of the above was a peasant, and the other two were both landed proprietors!”
“I defy you to find another beauty like that,” said a fourth.
“Has anyone a coin about them? Give me a twenty-copeck piece, somebody!” And Hippolyte leapt from his chair.
| Nastasia gazed at the prince in bewilderment. “Prince? He a Prince? Why, I took him for the footman, just now, and sent him in to announce me! Ha, ha, ha, isn’t that good!” |
She gazed thirstily at him and clutched his hands.
| The fact is that probably Hippolyte was not quite so black as Gania painted him; and it was hardly likely that he had informed Nina Alexandrovna of certain events, of which we know, for the mere pleasure of giving her pain. We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another. It is much better for the writer, as a rule, to content himself with the bare statement of events; and we shall take this line with regard to the catastrophe recorded above, and shall state the remaining events connected with the general’s trouble shortly, because we feel that we have already given to this secondary character in our story more attention than we originally intended. |
“Very likely--I don’t recollect,” continued Prince S.
| “How did you come here?” she asked, at last. |
| “Well, go on! never mind me!” mocked the other. “Don’t be afraid!” |
All this looked likely enough, and was accepted as fact by most of the inhabitants of the place, especially as it was borne out, more or less, by daily occurrences.
“What’s the matter with him? Do his fits begin like that?” said Lizabetha Prokofievna, in a high state of alarm, addressing Colia.“No, sir--in the Bielomirsky; he changed into the latter shortly before his death. I was at his bedside when he died, and gave him my blessing for eternity. Your mother--” The general paused, as though overcome with emotion.
“So it is!” said Rogojin, unexpectedly. They had now reached the front door.| By the end of the third day the incident of the eccentric lady and Evgenie Pavlovitch had attained enormous and mysterious proportions in his mind. He sorrowfully asked himself whether he had been the cause of this new “monstrosity,” or was it... but he refrained from saying who else might be in fault. As for the letters N.P.B., he looked on that as a harmless joke, a mere childish piece of mischief--so childish that he felt it would be shameful, almost dishonourable, to attach any importance to it. |
“Come along,” he whispered.
It was said that Elizabetha Prokofievna and her daughters had there and then denounced the prince in the strongest terms, and had refused any further acquaintance and friendship with him; their rage and denunciations being redoubled when Varia Ardalionovna suddenly arrived and stated that Aglaya had been at her house in a terrible state of mind for the last hour, and that she refused to come home.“H’m!” grunted the astonished servant.
| “Don’t go so fast, Lebedeff; you are much milder in the morning,” said Ptitsin, smiling. |
| “Here you are,” said Lebedeff, handing him one; he thought the boy had gone mad. |
“Well, it was a little drawn out, perhaps; but--”
“Of course, of course! And about your fits?”
| “Then it was _you_ who came--_you_--_you?_” |
“I’ll tell you afterwards,” he said quietly.