He covered his face with his hands and fell to thinking.
“It was this: as you were taking your leave earlier, I suddenly thought: here are these people, and they’ll never be there anymore, never! And no trees either—there’ll just be the brick wall, red brick, of Meyer’s house … across from my window … well, go and tell them about all that … try telling them; here’s a beautiful girl … but you’re dead, introduce yourself as a dead man, tell her ‘a dead man can say everything’ … and that Princess Marya Alexeevna won’t scold you,42 ha, ha!… You’re not laughing?” he looked around mistrustfully. “And you know, a lot of thoughts occurred to me on that pillow … you know, I became convinced that nature is very much given to mockery … You said earlier that I was an atheist, but you know, this nature … Why are you laughing again? You’re terribly cruel!” he suddenly said with rueful indignation, looking them all over. “I haven’t corrupted Kolya,” he ended in a completely different tone, serious and assured, as if also suddenly remembering.
“Nobody, nobody here is laughing at you, calm down!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna was almost suffering. “Tomorrow a new doctor will come; the other one was wrong; and sit down, you can hardly stand on your feet! You’re delirious … Ah, what’s to be done with him now!” she bustled about, sitting him in an armchair. A small tear glistened on her cheek.
Ippolit stopped almost dumbstruck, raised his hand, reached out timidly, and touched that little tear. He smiled a sort of childlike smile.
“I … you …” he began joyfully, “you don’t know how I … he always spoke of you with such rapture, him, Kolya … I love his rapture. I haven’t corrupted him! I have only him to leave … I wanted to have them all, all of them—but there was no one, no one … I wanted to be an activist, I had the right … Oh, there was so much I wanted! Now I don’t want anything, I don’t want to want anything, I gave myself my word on it, that I would no longer want anything; let them, let them seek the truth without me! Yes, nature is given to mockery! Why does she,” he suddenly continued ardently, “why does she create the best beings only so as to mock them afterwards? Didn’t she make it so that the single being on earth who has been acknowledged as perfect43 … didn’t she make it so that, having shown him to people, she destined him to say things that have caused so much blood to be shed, that if it had been shed all at once, people would probably have drowned in it! Oh, it’s good that I’m dying! I, too, might utter some terrible lie, nature would arrange it that way!… I haven’t corrupted anybody … I wanted to live for the happiness of all people, for the discovery and proclaiming of the truth!… I looked through my window at Meyer’s wall and thought I could talk for only a quarter of an hour and everybody, everybody would be convinced, and for once in my life I got together … with you, if not with the people! And what came of it? Nothing! It turned out that you despise me! Therefore I’m not needed, therefore I’m a fool, therefore it’s time to go! Without managing to leave any memory! Not a sound, not a trace, not a single deed, not spreading any conviction!… Don’t laugh at the stupid man! Forget! Forget everything … please forget, don’t be so cruel! Do you know, if this consumption hadn’t turned up, I’d have killed myself …”
It seemed he wanted to say more, but he did not finish, dropped into his chair, covered his face with his hands, and wept like a little child.
“Well, what would you have me do with him now?” Lizaveta Prokofyevna exclaimed, jumped over to him, seized his head, and pressed it tightly to her bosom. He was sobbing convulsively. “There, there, there! Don’t cry! There, there, enough, you’re a good boy, God will forgive you in your ignorance; there, enough, be brave … And besides, you’ll be ashamed …”
“At home,” Ippolit said, trying to raise his head, “at home I have a brother and sisters, children, little, poor, innocent … She will corrupt them! You—you’re a saint, you’re … a child yourself—save them! Tear them away from that … she … shame … Oh, help them, help them, God will reward you for it a hundredfold, for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake!…”
“Speak finally, Ivan Fyodorovich, what’s to be done now!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried irritably. “Kindly break your majestic silence! If you don’t decide anything, be it known to you that I myself will stay and spend the night here; you’ve tyrannized me enough under your autocracy!”
Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked with enthusiasm and wrath, and expected an immediate answer. But in such cases, those present, even if there are many of them, most often respond with silence, with passive curiosity, unwilling to take anything on themselves, and express their thoughts long afterwards. Among those present this time there were some who were prepared to sit even till morning without saying a word, for instance, Varvara Ardalionovna, who sat a little apart all evening, silent and listening all the while with extreme curiosity, and who may have had her own reasons for doing so.
“My opinion, dear,” the general spoke out, “is that what’s needed here is, so to speak, sooner a sick-nurse than our agitation, and probably a reliable, sober person for the night. In any case, we must ask the prince and … immediately give him rest. And tomorrow we can concern ourselves again.”
“It’s now twelve o’clock, and we’re leaving. Does he come with us or stay with you?” Doktorenko addressed the prince irritably and angrily.
“If you want, you may also stay with him,” said the prince, “there will be room enough.”
“Your Excellency,” Mr. Keller unexpectedly and rapturously jumped over to the general, “if there’s need of a satisfactory person for the night, I’m prepared to make the sacrifice for a friend … he’s such a soul! I’ve long considered him a great man, Your Excellency! I, of course, have neglected my education, but when he criticizes, it’s pearls, pearls pouring out, Your Excellency!…”
The general turned away in despair.
“I’ll be very glad if he stays, of course, it’s hard for him to go,” the prince said in reply to Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s irritable questions.
“Are you asleep, or what? If you don’t want to, dear boy, I’ll have him transported to my place! Lord, he can barely stand up himself! Are you sick, or what?”
Earlier, not finding the prince on his deathbed, Lizaveta Prokofyevna had indeed greatly exaggerated the satisfactoriness of his state of health, judging it by appearances, but the recent illness, the painful memories that accompanied it, the fatigue of the eventful evening, the incident with “Pavlishchev’s son,” the present incident with Ippolit—all this irritated the prince’s morbid impressionability indeed almost to a feverish state. But, besides that, in his eyes there was now some other worry, even fear; he looked at Ippolit warily, as if expecting something more from him.
Suddenly Ippolit stood up, terribly pale and with a look of dreadful, despairing shame on his distorted face. It was expressed mainly in the glance that he shot hatefully and timorously at the gathering, and in the lost, crooked, and creeping grin on his twitching lips. He lowered his eyes at once and trudged, swaying and still smiling in the same way, towards Burdovsky and Doktorenko, who stood by the terrace door: he was leaving with them.
“Well, that’s what I was afraid of!” exclaimed the prince. “It had to be so!”
Ippolit quickly turned to him with the most furious spite, and every little line of his face seemed to quiver and speak.
“Ah, you were afraid of that! ‘It had to be so,’ in your opinion? Know, then, that if I hate anyone here,” he screamed, wheezing, shrieking, spraying from his mouth, “and I hate all of you, all of you!—but you, you Jesuitical, treacly little soul, idiot, millionairebenefactor, I hate you more than anyone or anything in the world! I understood you and hated you long ago, when I’d only heard about you, I hated you with all the hatred of my soul … It was you who set it all up! It was you who drove me into a fit! You’ve driven a dying man to shame, you, you, you are to blame for my mean faintheartedness! I’d kill you, if I stayed alive! I don’t need your benefactions, I won’t accept anythi
ng from anybody, do you hear, from anybody! I was delirious, and don’t you dare to triumph!… I curse you all now and forever!”
By then he was completely out of breath.
“Ashamed of his tears!” Lebedev whispered to Lizaveta Prokofyevna. “ ‘It had to be so!’ That’s the prince for you! Read right through him …”
But Lizaveta Prokofyevna did not deign to look at him. She stood proud, erect, her head thrown back, and scrutinized “these wretched little people” with scornful curiosity. When Ippolit finished, the general heaved his shoulders; she looked him up and down wrathfully, as if demanding an account of his movement, and at once turned to the prince.
“Thank you, Prince, eccentric friend of our house, for the pleasant evening you have provided for us all. Your heart must surely be glad of your success in hitching us to your foolery … Enough, dear friend of our house, thank you for at least allowing us finally to have a look at you!…”
She indignantly began straightening her mantilla, waiting until “they” left. At that moment a hired droshky, which Doktorenko had sent Lebedev’s son, a high-school student, to fetch a quarter of an hour ago, drove up for “them.” Right after his wife, the general put in his own little word:
“Indeed, Prince, I never expected … after everything, after all our friendly connections … and, finally, Lizaveta Prokofyevna …”
“But how, how can this be!” exclaimed Adelaida, and she quickly went up to the prince and gave him her hand.
The prince, looking like a lost man, smiled at her. Suddenly a hot, quick whisper seemed to scald his ear.
“If you don’t drop these loathsome people at once, I’ll hate you alone all my life, all my life!” whispered Aglaya; she was as if in a frenzy, but she turned away before the prince had time to look at her. However, there was nothing and no one for him to drop: they had meanwhile managed to put the sick Ippolit into the cab, and it drove off.
“Well, is this going to go on long, Ivan Fyodorovich? What do you think? How long am I to suffer from these wicked boys?”
“I, my dear … naturally, I’m prepared … and the prince …”
Ivan Fyodorovich nevertheless held out his hand to the prince, but had no time for a handshake and rushed after Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who was noisily and wrathfully going down the steps from the terrace. Adelaida, her fiancé, and Alexandra took leave of the prince sincerely and affectionately. Evgeny Pavlovich was also among them, and he alone was merry.
“It turned out as I thought! Only it’s too bad that you, too, suffered, poor man,” he whispered with the sweetest smile.
Aglaya left without saying good-bye.
But the adventures of that evening were not over yet. Lizaveta Prokofyevna was to endure one more quite unexpected meeting.
Before she had time to go down the steps to the road (which skirted the park), a splendid equipage, a carriage drawn by two white horses, raced past the prince’s dacha. Two magnificent ladies were sitting in the carriage. But before it had gone ten paces past, the carriage stopped abruptly; one of the ladies quickly turned, as if she had suddenly seen some needed acquaintance.
“Evgeny Pavlych! Is that you, dear?” a ringing, beautiful voice suddenly cried, which made the prince, and perhaps someone else, give a start. “Well, I’m so glad I’ve finally found you! I sent a messenger to you in town—two messengers! I’ve been looking for you all day!”
Evgeny Pavlovich stood on the steps as if thunderstruck. Lizaveta Prokofyevna also stopped in her tracks, but not in horror or petrified like Evgeny Pavlovich: she looked at the brazen woman with the same pride and cold contempt as at the “wretched little people” five minutes earlier, and at once shifted her intent gaze to Evgeny Pavlovich.
“News!” the ringing voice went on. “Don’t worry about Kupfer’s promissory notes; Rogozhin bought them up at thirty, I persuaded him. You can be at peace for at least another three months. And we’ll probably come to terms with Biskup and all that riffraff in a friendly way! Well, so there, it means everything’s all right! Cheer up. See you tomorrow!”
The carriage started off and soon vanished.
“She’s crazy!” Evgeny Pavlovich cried at last, turning red with indignation and looking around in perplexity. “I have no idea what she’s talking about! What promissory notes? Who is she?”
Lizaveta Prokofyevna went on looking at him for another two seconds; finally, she turned quickly and sharply to go to her own dacha, and the rest followed her. Exactly a minute later Evgeny Pavlovich went back to the prince’s terrace in extreme agitation.
“Prince, you truly don’t know what this means?”
“I don’t know anything,” replied the prince, who was under extreme and morbid strain himself.
“No?”
“No.”
“I don’t either,” Evgeny Pavlovich suddenly laughed. “By God, I’ve had nothing to do with these promissory notes, believe my word of honor!… What’s the matter, are you feeling faint?”
“Oh, no, no, I assure you …”
XI
ONLY THREE DAYS later were the Epanchins fully propitiated. Though the prince blamed himself for many things, as usual, and sincerely expected to be punished, all the same he had at first a full inner conviction that Lizaveta Prokofyevna could not seriously be angry with him, but was more angry with herself. Thus it was that such a long period of enmity brought him by the third day to the gloomiest impasse. Other circumstances also brought him there, but one among them was predominant. For all three days it had been growing progressively in the prince’s suspiciousness (and lately the prince had been blaming himself for the two extremes: his uncommonly “senseless and importunate” gullibility and at the same time his “dark and mean” suspiciousness). In short, by the end of the third day the adventure with the eccentric lady who had talked to Evgeny Pavlovich from her carriage had taken on terrifying and mysterious proportions in his mind. The essence of the mystery, apart from the other aspects of the matter, consisted for the prince in one grievous question: was it precisely he who was to blame for this new “monstrosity,” or only … But he never finished who else. As for the letters N.F.B., that was, in his view, nothing but an innocent prank, even a most childish prank, so that it was shameful to reflect on it at all and in one respect even almost dishonest.
However, on the very first day after the outrageous “evening,” of the disorder of which he had been so chiefly the “cause,” the prince had the pleasure, in the morning, of receiving Prince Shch. and Adelaida: “they came, chiefly, to inquire after his health,” came together, during a stroll. Adelaida had just noticed a tree in the park, a wonderful old tree, branchy, with long, crooked boughs, all in young green, with a hole and a split in it; she had decided that she had, she simply had to paint it! So that she talked of almost nothing else for the entire half hour of her visit. Prince Shch. was amiable and nice, as usual, asked the prince about former times, recalled the circumstances of their first acquaintance, so that almost nothing was said about the day before. Finally Adelaida could not stand it and, smiling, confessed that they had come incognito; with that, however, the confessions ended, though this incognito made one think that the parents, that is, mainly Lizaveta Prokofyevna, were somehow especially ill-disposed. But Adelaida and Prince Shch. did not utter a single word either about her, or about Aglaya, or even about Ivan Fyodorovich during their visit. They left for a walk again, but did not invite the prince to join them. Of an invitation to call on them there was not so much as a hint; in that regard Adelaida even let slip a very characteristic little phrase: speaking of one of her watercolors, she suddenly wanted very much to show it to him. “How shall we do it the sooner? Wait! I’ll either send it to you today with Kolya, if he comes, or bring it over myself tomorrow, when the prince and I go for a walk again,” she finally concluded her perplexity, happy to have succeeded in resolving the problem so adroitly and conveniently for everyone.
Finally, on the point of taking his leave, Prince Shch. see
med suddenly to remember:
“Ah, yes,” he asked, “might you at least know, dear Lev Nikolaevich, who that person was who shouted to Evgeny Pavlych from her carriage yesterday?”
“It was Nastasya Filippovna,” said the prince, “haven’t you learned yet that it was she? But I don’t know who was with her.”
“I know, I’ve heard!” Prince Shch. picked up. “But what did the shout mean? I confess, it’s such a riddle … for me and others.”
Prince Shch. spoke with extraordinary and obvious amazement.
“She spoke about some promissory notes of Evgeny Pavlych’s,” the prince replied very simply, “which came to Rogozhin from some moneylender, at her request, and for which Rogozhin will allow Evgeny Pavlych to wait.”
“I heard, I heard, my dear Prince, but that simply cannot be! Evgeny Pavlych could not have any promissory notes here. With his fortune … True, there were occasions before, owing to his flightiness, and I even used to help him out … But with his fortune, to give promissory notes to a moneylender and then worry about them is impossible. And he can’t be on such friendly and familiar terms with Nastasya Filippovna—that’s the chief puzzle. He swears he doesn’t understand anything, and I fully believe him. But the thing is, dear Prince, that I wanted to ask you: do you know anything? That is, has any rumor reached you by some miracle?”
“No, I don’t know anything, and I assure you that I took no part in it.”
“Ah, Prince, what’s become of you! I simply wouldn’t know you today. How could I suppose that you took part in such an affair?… Well, you’re upset today.”
He embraced and kissed him.
The Idiot Page 39