“Tell me,” I said, dumbfoundered at this new and unexpected information, “what am I to do with this letter now? How am I to act?”
“That’s for you to decide.”
“Impossible; my hands are tied, you must admit that! Versilov is so reckoning on this fortune . . . and, you know, he’ll be utterly lost without it; and it suddenly appears that a document like this exists!”
“It only exists here in this room.”
“Is that really so?” I looked at him attentively.
“If you can’t decide how to act in this case, what can I advise you?”
“But I can’t give it to the Sokolskys either. I should ruin all Versilov’s hopes, and be a traitor to him besides. . . . On the other hand if I give it to Versilov I plunge the innocent into poverty, and I should put Versilov in a hopeless dilemma too; he would either have to give up the fortune or become a thief.”
“You exaggerate the importance of the matter.”
“Tell me one thing: is this letter decisive, conclusive?”
“No, it isn’t. I’m not much of a lawyer. A lawyer on the other side would, no doubt, know how to make use of such a document and to turn it to account; but Alexey Nikanoritch considered positively that if this letter were put forward it would have no great legal value, so that Versilov’s case might be won all the same. This letter is more a matter of conscience, so to say. . . .”
“But that’s what matters most of all,” I interrupted, “just because it would put Versilov in a hopeless dilemma.”
“He may on the contrary destroy the document, and so escape all danger.”
“Have you any grounds for supposing such a thing of him, Kraft? That’s what I want to know; that’s why I’m here.”
“I believe every one would do the same in his place.”
“Would you behave so, yourself?”
“I’m not going to receive a fortune, so I can’t tell about myself.”
“Very well,” I said, putting the letter in my pocket. “The matter’s settled for the present. Listen, Kraft. Marie Ivanovna, who has, I assure you, told me a great deal, said to me that you and only you could tell me the truth of what happened at Ems a year and a half ago between Versilov and Mme. Ahmakov. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you as a sun that would throw light on everything. You don’t know my position, Kraft. I beseech you to tell me the whole truth. What I want to know is what kind of man He is, and now — now I need to know it more than ever.”
“I wonder Marie Ivanovna did not tell you all about it herself; she might have heard it all from Andronikov, and of course she has heard it and very likely knows more than I do.”
“Andronikov was not clear about it himself, so Marie Ivanovna told me. It seems a maze to which no one has the clue. The devil himself would be lost in it. I know that you were at Ems yourself at the time.”
“I never knew the whole of it, but what I do know I will willingly tell you if you like, though I doubt whether I shall satisfy you.”
2
I won’t reproduce his story word for word, but will only give a brief summary of it.
A year and a half before, Versilov (through the old prince) became a constant visitor at the Ahmakovs’ (they were all abroad then, at Ems) and made a great impression on the general himself, a man who had during three years of marriage squandered all his wife’s large dowry over cards, and as a result of his irregular life had already had a paralytic stroke, though he was not an old man. He had recovered from it before going abroad, and was staying at Ems for the sake of his daughter by his first wife. She was a girl of seventeen, in delicate health — consumptive — and said to be extremely beautiful, but at the same time very fantastical. She had no dowry; but they rested their hopes, as usual, on the old prince. Mme. Ahmakov was said to be a good stepmother, but the girl, for some reason, became particularly attached to Versilov. He was preaching at that time “something impassioned,” as Kraft expressed it, some sort of new life; “was in a state of religious fervour of the most exalted kind,” in the strange and perhaps ironical phrase of Andronikov, which was repeated to me. But it was noticeable that they all soon began to dislike him. The general was positively afraid of him. Kraft did not altogether deny the rumour that Versilov succeeded in instilling into the invalid husband’s mind the suspicion that his wife, Katerina Nikolaevna, was not indifferent to the young Prince Sokolsky (who had left Ems and was at that time in Paris). He did this not directly, but “after his usual fashion” — by hints, inferences, and all sorts of roundabout ways, “at which he is a great master,” said Kraft. I may say that Kraft considered him, and preferred to consider him, altogether rather as an impostor and an inveterate intriguer than as a man genuinely possessed by some exalted, or at least original, idea. I knew, apart from Kraft, that Versilov, who had at first had an extraordinary influence on Katerina Nikolaevna, had by degrees come to an open rupture with her. What lay behind all this I could not find out from Kraft, but every one confirmed the story of the mutual hatred that had sprung up between them after their friendship. Then came a strange circumstance: Katerina Nikolaevna’s invalid stepdaughter apparently fell in love with Versilov, or was struck by something in him, or was inflamed by his eloquence or I don’t know what; but it is known that at one time Versilov spent almost every day at her side. It ended by the young lady’s suddenly announcing to her father that she wanted to marry Versilov. That this actually had happened was confirmed by every one — by Kraft, by Andronikov, and by Marie Ivanovna, and even Tatyana Pavlovna once spoke about it before me. They asserted also that Versilov not only desired it himself but positively insisted on a marriage with this girl, and that these two creatures of such different species, one old and the other young, were in complete agreement about it. But the father was alarmed at the idea. As he became more estranged from Katerina Nikolaevna, whom he had been very fond of, he now began almost to idolize his daughter, especially after his stroke. But the bitterest opposition to the idea of such a marriage came from Katerina Nikolaevna. There followed a great number of secret and extremely unpleasant family wrangles, disputes, mortifying and in fact revolting scenes. At last the father began to give way before the persistence of the love-sick girl who was, as Kraft expressed it, “fanaticized” by Versilov. But Katerina Nikolaevna still resisted it with implacable hatred. And it is at this stage that the muddle begins which no one can understand. But this was Kraft’s conjecture based on the facts — only a conjecture, however.
He thought Versilov had succeeded, IN HIS CHARACTERISTIC WAY, in subtly suggesting to the young person that the reason Katerina Nikolaevna would not agree was that she was in love with him herself, and had been for a long time past worrying him with her jealousy, pursuing him and intriguing; that she had declared her feeling to him and was now ready to horsewhip him for loving some one else: something of that sort, anyway. Worst of all, that he had “hinted” this to the girl’s father, the husband of the “unfaithful” wife, explaining that the prince had only been a passing amusement. The house, of course, began to be a perfect hell. In some versions of the story Katerina Nikolaevna was devoted to her stepdaughter and now was in despair at being calumniated to her, to say nothing of her relations with her invalid husband. And, what is more, there existed another version, which, to my grief, I found Kraft fully believed, and therefore I believed myself (of all this I had heard already). It was maintained (Andronikov, it was said, had heard it from Katerina Nikolaevna herself) that, on the contrary, Versilov had in the past, before his feeling for the girl, made love to Katerina Nikolaevna; that though she had been his friend and had been for a time carried away by his religious exaltation, yet she had constantly opposed and mistrusted him, and that she had met Versilov’s declaration with deep resentment and had ridiculed him vindictively; that she had formally dismissed him for having openly suggested that she should become his wife as her husband was expected to have a second attack very shortly. On this theory Katerina Nikolaevna must have felt a p
eculiar hatred for Versilov when she saw him afterwards so openly trying to win her stepdaughter’s hand. Marie Ivanovna, who told me all this in Moscow, believed in both versions — both together, that is; she maintained that there was nothing inconsistent in all this, that it was something in the style of la haine dans l’amour, of the wounded pride of love on both sides, etc. etc. — something, in fact, like a very subtle, intricate romance, quite out of keeping with any serious and common-sense man and, moreover, with an element of nastiness in it. But Marie Ivanovna, in spite of her estimable character, had been from childhood upwards saturated with sentiment, from the novels which she read day and night. The sequel exhibited Versilov’s evident baseness, his lying and intriguing, something dark and loathsome in him, the more so as the affair had a tragic ending. The poor infatuated girl poisoned herself, they say, by means of phosphorus matches, though even now I don’t know whether to believe that last detail. They did their utmost to hush it up, anyway. The young lady was ill for a fortnight and then died. So the matches remained an open question, but Kraft firmly believed in them. Shortly afterwards the young lady’s father died too — it was said from his grief, which brought on a second stroke, though this did not occur till three months later. But after the young lady’s funeral the young Prince Sokolsky, who had returned to Ems from Paris, gave Versilov a slap in the face in a public garden, and the latter had not replied with a challenge but had, on the contrary, showed himself next day on the promenade as though nothing had happened. Then every one turned against him, in Petersburg as well. Though Versilov kept up with some acquaintances, they were quite in a different circle. All his aristocratic friends blamed him, though, as a fact, scarcely anyone knew the details; they only knew something of the young lady’s romantic death and the slap in the face. Only two or three persons knew the story fully, so far as that was possible. The one who had known most of all was the deceased, Andronikov, who had for many years had business relations with the Ahmakovs, and had had to do with Katerina Nikolaevna particularly in one case. But he kept all these secrets even from his own family and had only told part of the story to Kraft and Marie Ivanovna, and that from necessity.
“The chief point is that there is a document in existence,” concluded Kraft, “which Mme. Ahmakov is very much afraid of.”
And this was what he told me about that. When the old prince, Katerina Nikolaevna’s father, was abroad, beginning to recover from his attack, she was so indiscreet as to write to Andronikov in dead secret (Katerina Nikolaevna put implicit faith in him) an extremely compromising letter. During his convalescence the old prince actually did, it was said, display a propensity to waste his money — almost to fling it away, in fact; he began buying, when he was abroad, quite useless but expensive objects, pictures, vases, making donations and subscriptions of large sums to various institutions out there, and goodness knows what. He almost bought, on the sly, for an immense sum, a ruined and encumbered estate from a fashionable Russian spendthrift; and, finally, began even dreaming of matrimony. And in view of all this, Katerina Nikolaevna, who had never left her father’s side during his illness, wrote to Andronikov, as a “lawyer” and “an old friend,” inquiring whether “it would be legally possible to put the old prince under guardianship or to declare him incompetent to manage his own affairs, and, if so, how it could best be done without scandal, that no one might blame her and that her father’s feelings might be spared, etc. etc.” It was said that Andronikov advised her against this and dissuaded her; and later on, when the old prince had completely recovered, it was impossible to return to the idea: but the letter remained in Andronikov’s hands. And now he had died, and Katerina Nikolaevna had at once remembered the letter: if it turned up among the deceased’s papers and fell into the old prince’s hands, he would, no doubt, have cast her off for ever, cut her out of his will and not have given her another farthing during his lifetime. The thought that his own daughter did not believe in his sanity, and even wanted to have him certified as a lunatic would change the lamb into a wild beast. Her husband’s gambling habits had left her at his death without a farthing, and she had only her father to look to. She fully hoped to receive from him a second dowry as ample as the first.
Kraft did not quite know what had become of the letter, but observed that Andronikov never tore up papers of consequence, and he was, besides, a man of “broad principles” as well as “broad intelligence.” (I was positively surprised at the independence of Kraft’s criticism of Andronikov, whom he had loved and respected so much.) But Kraft felt convinced that Versilov had obtained possession of the compromising document through his close relations with Andronikov’s widow and daughters; it was known, indeed, that they had at once, of necessity, handed over all the deceased’s papers to Versilov. He knew, too, that Katerina Nikolaevna was already aware that the letter was in Versilov’s possession and that she was frightened on account of it, imagining that Versilov would take the letter straight to her old father; that on her return from abroad she had searched for the document in Petersburg, had been at the Andronikovs’, and was still hunting for it now, so that she must still have some hope that the letter was not in Versilov’s hands; and, finally, that she had gone to Moscow simply with the same object, and had entreated Marie Ivanovna to look for it among the papers that had remained with her. She had only recently, since her return to Petersburg, heard of the existence of Marie Ivanovna, and of the footing on which the latter had stood with Andronikov.
“You don’t think she found it at Marie Ivanovna’s?” I asked. “I have my own ideas.”
“If Marie Ivanovna has not told even you about it, probably she hasn’t got it.”
“Then you suppose the document is in Versilov’s hands?”
“Most likely it is. I don’t know, though. Anything is possible,” he answered with evident weariness.
I gave up questioning him, and indeed there was no object in doing so. All that mattered most had been made clear to me, in spite of all this sordid tangle; all that I feared most was confirmed.
“It’s all like a delirious nightmare,” I said, deeply dejected, as I took up my hat.
“Is the man so dear to you?” asked Kraft. I read his deep sympathy on his face at that minute.
“I felt I shouldn’t learn the whole story from you,” said I. “Mme. Ahmakov is the only hope left me. I was resting my hopes on her. Perhaps I shall go to her and perhaps not.”
Kraft looked at me with some surprise.
“Good-bye, Kraft,” I said. “Why force oneself on people who don’t want to see one? Isn’t it better to break with everything, eh?”
“And what then?” he asked almost sullenly, keeping his eyes on the ground.
“Retreat within oneself! Break with everything and withdraw within oneself!”
“To America?”
“To America! Within oneself, simply within oneself! That’s my whole idea, Kraft!” I said enthusiastically.
He looked at me with some curiosity.
“Have you such a place ‘within yourself’?”
“Yes. Good-bye, Kraft; thank you. I am sorry to have troubled you. If I were in your place and had that sort of Russia in my head I’d send them all to hell; I’d say: ‘Get out with you; keep your fretting and intriguing to yourselves — it’s nothing to do with me.’”
“Stay a little longer,” he said suddenly when he was already with me at the front door.
I was a little surprised. I went back and sat down again. Kraft sat opposite. We looked at each other with a sort of smile. I can see it all now. I remember that I felt a sort of wonder at him.
“What I like in you is that you’re so — courteous,” I said suddenly.
“Yes?”
“I feel that, because I don’t often succeed in being courteous myself, though I should like to. And yet perhaps it’s better for people to be rude to one; at least they save one from the misfortune of liking them.”
“What hour of the day do you like best?” he aske
d, evidently not listening to me.
“What hour? I don’t know. I don’t like sunset.”
“No?” he brought out with a peculiar curiosity.
“Are you going away again?”
“Yes. I’m going away.”
“Soon?”
“Yes.”
“Surely you don’t want a revolver to get to Vilna?” I asked, without the faintest hidden meaning in my words — and indeed there was no meaning at all! I asked the question simply because I happened to glance at the revolver and I was at a loss for something to say.
He turned and looked intently at the revolver.
“No, I take it simply from habit.”
“If I had a revolver I should keep it hidden somewhere, locked up. It really is a temptation, you know. I may not believe in an epidemic of suicide, but if it’s always catching my eye, there really are moments, you know, when it might tempt one.”
“Don’t talk about it,” he said, and suddenly got up from his chair.
“I wasn’t thinking of myself,” I said, standing up too. “I’m not going to use it. If you were to give me three lives it wouldn’t be enough for me.”
“Long life to you,” broke from him.
He gave me an absent-minded smile and, strange to say, walked straight into the passage as though to show me out, probably not noticing what he was doing.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 441