It was even hard for him to believe that this was the same haughty girl sitting before him who had once so proudly and arrogantly read Gavrila Ardalionovich’s letter to him. He could not understand how such an arrogant, stern beauty could turn out to be such a child, who even now might actually not understand all the words.
“Have you always lived at home, Aglaya Ivanovna?” he asked. “I mean to say, you haven’t gone anywhere, to any kind of school, never studied at an institute?”
“I’ve never gone anywhere; I’ve always sat at home, bottled up, and I’ll get married right out of the bottle. Why are you smiling again? I notice that you, too, seem to be laughing at me and to be on their side,” she added, with a menacing frown. “Don’t make me angry, I don’t know what’s the matter with me as it is … I’m sure you’ve come here completely convinced that I’m in love with you and was inviting you to a tryst,” she snapped irritably.
“I actually was afraid of that yesterday,” the prince blurted out simple-heartedly (he was very embarrassed), “but today I’m sure that you …”
“What!” Aglaya cried, and her lower lip suddenly trembled. “You were afraid that I … you dared to think that I … Lord! Maybe you suspected that I invited you here in order to lure you into my nets, and then they would find us here and force you to marry me …”
“Aglaya Ivanovna! Aren’t you ashamed? How could such a dirty thought be born in your pure, innocent heart? I’ll bet you yourself don’t believe a word you’ve said and … you don’t know what you’re saying!”
Aglaya sat stubbornly looking down, as if she herself was frightened at what she had said.
“I’m not ashamed at all,” she murmured. “How do you know my heart is innocent? How did you dare to send me a love letter then?”
“A love letter? My letter—a love letter? That letter was most respectful, that letter poured from my heart at the most painful moment of my life! I remembered about you then as of some sort of light23 … I …”
“Well, all right, all right,” she suddenly interrupted, no longer in the same tone at all, but in complete repentance and almost in alarm; she even bent towards him, still trying not to look straight at him, and made as if to touch his shoulder, to ask him more convincingly not to be angry, “all right,” she added, terribly shamefaced, “I feel that I used a very stupid expression. I did it just like that … to test you. Take it as if I hadn’t said it. And if I offended you, forgive me. Please don’t look straight at me, turn your head. You said it was a very dirty thought: I said it on purpose to needle you. Sometimes I myself am afraid of what I want to say, and then suddenly I say it. You said just now that you wrote that letter at the most painful moment of your life … I know what moment it was,” she said softly, again looking at the ground.
“Oh, if only you could know everything!”
“I do know everything!” she cried with new agitation. “You lived in the same rooms for a whole month then with that loathsome woman you ran away with …”
She did not blush now but turned pale as she said it, and she suddenly got up from her place, as if forgetting herself, but, recollecting herself, she at once sat down; her lower lip went on trembling for a long time. The silence went on for about a minute. The prince was terribly struck by the suddenness of her outburst and did not know what to ascribe it to.
“I don’t love you at all,” she suddenly snapped out.
The prince did not reply; again there was a minute of silence.
“I love Gavrila Ardalionovich …” she said in a quick patter, but barely audibly and bowing her head still more.
“That’s not true,” said the prince, almost in a whisper.
“You mean I’m lying? It is true; I gave him my promise, two days ago, on this same bench.”
The prince was alarmed and thought for a moment.
“That’s not true,” he said resolutely, “you’ve made it all up.”
“How wonderfully polite. Know that he has mended his ways; he loves me more than life itself. He burned his hand in front of me just to prove that he loves me more than life itself.”
“Burned his hand?”
“Yes, his hand. Believe it or don’t—it’s all the same to me.”
The prince fell silent again. There was no joking in Aglaya’s words; she was angry.
“What, did he bring a candle here with him, if it happened here? Otherwise I can’t imagine …”
“Yes … a candle. What’s so incredible?”
“Whole or in a candlestick?”
“Well, yes … no … half a candle … a candle end … a whole candle—it’s all the same, leave me alone!… And he brought matches, if you like. He lit the candle and held his finger over the flame for a whole half hour; can’t that be?”
“I saw him yesterday; there was nothing wrong with his fingers.”
Aglaya suddenly burst out laughing, just like a child.
“You know why I lied to you just now?” she suddenly turned to the prince with the most childlike trustfulness and with laughter still trembling on her lips. “Because when you lie, if you skillfully put in something not quite usual, something eccentric, well, you know, something that happens quite rarely or even never, the lie becomes much more believable. I’ve noticed that. Only with me it came out badly, because I wasn’t able to …”
Suddenly she frowned again, as if recollecting herself.
“If,” she turned to the prince, looking at him gravely and even sadly, “if I read to you that time about the ‘poor knight,’ it was because I wanted … to praise you for one thing, but at the same time I wanted to stigmatize you for your behavior and to show you that I know everything …”
“You’re very unfair to me … and to that unfortunate woman, of whom you just spoke so terribly, Aglaya.”
“Because I know everything, everything, that’s why I spoke like that! I know that, six months ago, you offered her your hand in front of everybody. Don’t interrupt, you can see I’m speaking without commentaries. After that she ran away with Rogozhin; then you lived with her in some village or town, and she left you for someone else.” (Aglaya blushed terribly.) “Then she went back to Rogozhin, who loves her like … like a madman. Then you, who are also a very intelligent man, came galloping after her here, as soon as you learned she was back in Petersburg. Yesterday evening you rushed to her defense, and just now you saw her in a dream … You see, I know everything; isn’t it for her, for her, that you came here?”
“Yes, for her,” the prince replied softly, bowing his head sadly and pensively, and not suspecting with what flashing eyes Aglaya glanced at him, “for her, just to find out … I don’t believe she can be happy with Rogozhin, though … in short, I don’t know what I could do for her here and how I could help, but I came.”
He gave a start and looked at Aglaya; she was listening to him with hatred.
“If you came without knowing why, you must love her very much,” she said at last.
“No,” replied the prince, “no, I don’t love her. Oh, if you knew with what horror I remember the time I spent with her!”
A shudder even went through his body at these words.
“Tell me everything,” said Aglaya.
“There’s nothing in it that you shouldn’t hear. Why it is precisely you that I wanted to tell it to, and you alone—I don’t know; maybe because I indeed loved you very much. This unfortunate woman is deeply convinced that she is the most fallen, the most depraved being in all the world. Oh, don’t disgrace her, don’t cast a stone.24 She has tormented herself all too much with the awareness of her undeserved disgrace! And what is she guilty of, oh my God! Oh, in her frenzy she cries constantly that she does not acknowledge her guilt, that she is the victim of people, the victim of a debaucher and a villain; but whatever she tells you, know that she is the first not to believe it herself and that, on the contrary, she believes with all her conscience that she herself … is the guilty one. When I tried to dispel this darkness, her su
ffering reached such a degree that my heart will never be healed as long as I remember that terrible time. It’s as if my heart was pierced through forever. She ran away from me, and do you know why? Precisely to prove to me alone that she is base. But the most terrible thing here is that she herself may not have known that she wanted to prove it to me alone, but ran away because inwardly she felt she absolutely had to do something disgraceful, in order to tell herself then and there: ‘So now you’ve committed some new disgrace, that means you’re a base creature!’ Oh, perhaps you won’t understand this, Aglaya! You know, there may be some terrible, unnatural pleasure for her in this constant awareness of disgrace, a sort of revenge on someone. Sometimes I managed to bring her to a point where she seemed to see light around her; but she would become indignant at once and go so far as to reproach me bitterly for putting myself far above her (when it never entered my mind), and she finally told me straight out, in response to my proposal of marriage, that she asked no one for supercilious compassion, or for help, or to be ‘raised up to his level.’ You saw her yesterday; do you really think she’s happy with that company, that it’s her kind of society? You don’t know how developed she is and what she can understand! She even surprised me sometimes!”
“And did you also preach her such … sermons?”
“Oh, no,” the prince went on pensively, not noticing the tone of the question, “I was silent most of the time. I often wanted to speak, but I really didn’t know what to say. You know, on certain occasions it’s better not to speak at all. Oh, I loved her; oh, I loved her very much … but then … then … then she guessed everything.”
“What did she guess?”
“That I only pitied her and … no longer loved her.”
“How do you know, maybe she really fell in love with that … landowner she went off with?”
“No, I know everything; she only laughed at him.”
“And did she ever laugh at you?”
“N-no. She laughed out of spite; oh, she reproached me terribly then, in anger—and suffered herself! But … then … oh, don’t remind me, don’t remind me of it!”
He covered his face with his hands.
“And do you know that she writes me letters almost every day?”
“So it’s true!” the prince cried in anxiety. “I heard it, but I still didn’t want to believe it.”
“Who did you hear it from?” Aglaya roused herself fearfully.
“Rogozhin told me yesterday, only not quite clearly.”
“Yesterday? Yesterday morning? When yesterday? Before the music or after?”
“After, in the evening, past eleven o’clock.”
“Ahh, well, if it’s Rogozhin … And do you know what she writes to me in those letters?”
“Nothing would surprise me; she’s insane.”
“Here are the letters” (Aglaya took from her pocket three letters in three envelopes and threw them down in front of the prince). “For a whole week now she’s been imploring, persuading, luring me into marrying you. She … ah, yes, she’s intelligent, though she’s insane, and you say rightly that she’s much more intelligent than I am … she writes to me that she’s in love with me, that every day she looks for a chance of seeing me at least from afar. She writes that you love me, that she knows it, that she noticed it long ago, and that you spoke with her about me there. She wants to see you happy; she’s sure that only I can make you happy … She writes so wildly … strangely … I haven’t shown anyone these letters, I was waiting for you. Do you know what it means? Can you guess anything?”
“It’s madness; it’s proof that she’s insane,” said the prince, and his lips trembled.
“You’re not crying, are you?”
“No, Aglaya, no, I’m not crying,” the prince looked at her.
“What am I to do about it? What do you advise me? I cannot keep receiving these letters!”
“Oh, let her be, I implore you!” the prince cried. “What can you do in this darkness; I’ll make every effort so that she doesn’t write to you anymore.”
“If so, then you’re a man with no heart!” cried Aglaya. “Can’t you see that it’s not me she’s in love with, but you, you alone that she loves! Can it be that you’ve managed to notice everything in her, but didn’t notice that? Do you know what these letters mean? It’s jealousy; it’s more than jealousy! She … do you think she’ll really marry Rogozhin, as she writes here in these letters? She’ll kill herself the very day after we get married!”
The prince gave a start; his heart sank. But he looked at Aglaya in surprise: it was strange for him to admit that this child had long been a woman.
“God knows, Aglaya, I’d give my life to bring back her peace and make her happy, but … I can’t love her now, and she knows it!”
“Sacrifice yourself, then, it suits you so well! You’re such a great benefactor. And don’t call me ‘Aglaya’ … Earlier, too, you called me simply ‘Aglaya’ … You must resurrect her, it’s your duty, you must go away with her again to pacify and soothe her heart. Anyway, you do love her!”
“I can’t sacrifice myself like that, though I did want to once and … maybe still want to. But I know for certain that she’ll perish with me, and that’s why I’m leaving her. I was to see her tonight at seven o’clock; maybe I won’t go now. In her pride she’ll never forgive me my love—and we’ll both perish! It’s unnatural, but everything here is unnatural. You say she loves me, but is this love? Can there be such a love, after what I’ve already endured? No, there’s something else here, but not love!”
“How pale you’ve grown!” Aglaya suddenly became alarmed.
“Never mind; I didn’t sleep enough; I feel weak, I … we actually did talk about you then, Aglaya.”
“So it’s true? You really could talk with her about me and … and how could you love me, if you’d seen me only once?”
“I don’t know how. In my darkness then I dreamed … perhaps I thought I’d seen a new dawn. I don’t know how it was that you were the first one I thought of. I wrote you the truth then, that I didn’t know. It was all only a dream, from the horror of that time … I began to study then; I wouldn’t have come back here for three years …”
“So you came for her sake?”
And something trembled in Aglaya’s voice.
“Yes, for her sake.”
Two minutes of gloomy silence passed on both sides. Aglaya got up from her place.
“If you say,” she began in an unsteady voice, “if you yourself believe that this … your woman … is insane, then I have nothing to do with her insane fantasies … I ask you, Lev Nikolaevich, to take these three letters and throw them at her from me! And if she dares,” Aglaya suddenly cried, “if she dares once more to send me even a single line, tell her that I will complain to my father, and she will be taken to the madhouse …”
The prince jumped up and stared in alarm at Aglaya’s sudden rage; and all at once it was as if a mist fell before him …
“You can’t feel that way … it’s not true!” he murmured.
“It is true! True!” Aglaya cried, almost forgetting herself.
“What is true? How is it true?” a frightened voice was heard close by.
Before them stood Lizaveta Prokofyevna.
“It’s true that I’m going to marry Gavrila Ardalionovich! That I love Gavril Ardalionovich and am eloping from the house with him tomorrow!” Aglaya fell upon her. “Do you hear? Is your curiosity satisfied? Are you pleased?”
And she ran home.
“No, my dear man, you’re not leaving now,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna stopped the prince. “Do me a service, kindly come home and explain yourself to me … This is such a torment, and I didn’t sleep all night as it is …”
The prince followed after her.
IX
ON ENTERING HER HOUSE, Lizaveta Prokofyevna stopped in the very first room; she could not go any further and lowered herself onto the couch, quite strengthless, forgetting even to invite th
e prince to sit down. It was a rather large room, with a round table in the middle, a fireplace, a multitude of flowers on what-nots by the windows, and with another glass door to the garden in the far wall. Adelaida and Alexandra came in at once, looking at the prince and their mother questioningly and with perplexity.
The girls usually got up at around nine o’clock in the country; only Aglaya, during the last two or three days, had taken to getting up a little earlier and going for a stroll in the garden, but all the same not at seven o’clock, but at eight or even a bit later. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who indeed had not slept all night because of her various worries, got up at around eight o’clock, on purpose to meet Aglaya in the garden, supposing that she was already up; but she did not find her either in the garden or in her bedroom. At this point she became definitively alarmed and awakened her daughters. They learned from the maid that Aglaya Ivanovna had gone out to the park before seven. The girls smiled at this new fantasy of their fantastic little sister’s and observed to their mama that if she went looking for her in the park, Aglaya might get angry, and that she was probably now sitting with a book on the green bench, which she had already spoken of three days ago and over which she had almost quarreled with Prince Shch., because he did not find anything special in the location of this bench. Coming upon the meeting and hearing her daughter’s strange words, Lizaveta Prokofyevna was terribly frightened, for many reasons; but, now that she had brought the prince home with her, she felt cowardly at having begun the business: “Why shouldn’t Aglaya have met and conversed with the prince in the park, even, finally, if it was a previously arranged meeting?”
“Don’t imagine, my dear Prince,” she finally pulled herself together, “that I’ve dragged you here today for an interrogation … After yesterday evening, dear heart, I might not have wanted to meet you for a long time …”
She faltered slightly.
“But all the same you’d like very much to know how Aglaya Ivanovna and I met today?” the prince finished quite calmly.
“Well, and what if I would!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna flared up at once. “I’m not afraid of speaking directly. Because I’m not offending anyone and have never wished to offend …”
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