“I must not listen to you, Rakhmétof,” she said, in a tone of extreme dissatisfaction. “You are pouring reproaches upon a man to whom I am endlessly indebted.”
“No, Viéra Pavlovna; if there had been no necessity of my saying that, I should not have said it. Did I notice it today only for the first time? Could I have said it if I had seen it only today for the first time? You know that it is impossible to avoid a conversation with me, if I think a conversation is necessary. Indeed, I could have told you this long ago, but I held my peace. So if I speak now, it is because it is necessary to speak. I do not say anything before it is necessary. You saw how I kept the note ten hours in my pocket, though it was pitiful to look at you; but it was necessary not to speak, and I did not speak. Consequently, if I speak now, it shows that I thought long ago about Dmitri Sergéitch’s relations towards you; thus, of course, it was necessary to speak about them.”
“No, I do not want to listen,” said Viéra Pavlovna, greatly stirred. “I ask you to be silent, Rakhmétof. I beg of you to go. I am very much obliged to you for wasting an evening on my account, but I beg you to leave me.”
“Are you in earnest?”
“In earnest.”
“Very well,” he said laughing. “It’s all right, Viéra Pavlovna, but you cannot get rid of me so easily; I foresaw that this would happen and I provided for it. The little note which I burned up, he wrote of his own accord; but this he wrote according to my request; this I can leave in your hands because it is not a proof. Here it is.”
Rakhmétof gave Viéra Pavlovna this note:—
“Twenty-third of July; two o’clock in the morning. Dear friend Viérotchka, listen to everything that Rakhmétof will have to say to you. I do not know what he wants to tell you; I have not authorized him to say anything; he has not given me the least hint that he wants to speak to you, but I know that he never says anything but what he thinks is necessary. Yours, D. L.”
Viéra Pavlovna kissed this note, God knows how many times.
“Why didn’t you let me have it before. You probably have something else of his?”
“No, I have nothing more, because nothing more was necessary. Why didn’t I let you have it? Until there was necessity, there was no need of giving it to you.”
“Bozhe moï! Why so? For the sake of my own pleasure in having some lines from him, now that he has gone from me!”
“Well, if it was only for that reason, nu, that was not very important.” He smiled.
“Akh, Rakhmétof, you want to tease me!”
“So this note is going to serve as another quarrel between us, is it?” he said, laughing again. “If that is the case, I shall take it away from you and burn it up, for you know that it is said about such people as you and me, that we consider nothing holy, for we are capable of all murderous deeds of violence. But how is it? may I continue?”
They both grew a little more subdued; she, on account of having seen the note; he, because he had been sitting a few minutes in silence while she was kissing it.
“Yes; I am obliged to listen.”
“He did not notice that which he ought to have noticed,” continued Rakhmétof, in a calm tone of voice, “and this brought about bad consequences. But if he could not be blamed for not having noticed it, still he could not be excused for it either. Let us suppose that he did not know that this was bound unavoidably to arise from the very nature of the given relations between your character and his, still he ought, at all events, to have given you some preparation for something of the kind, simply as a thing that might happen, which is not desirable and which it is not necessary to expect, but which still may arise; no one can guarantee what occurrences the future may bring. This axiom, that there are a good many contingencies, he certainly knew. How did he leave you in this state of mind, that when this happened you were not prepared for it? The very fact that he did not foresee it resulted only from neglectfulness which was insulting to you, but in itself is a matter of no importance, not a bad one, not a good one. That he did not prepare you at all for any such event came about from a very, very bad motive. Of course he acted unconsciously, but a man’s nature is betrayed in those things which are done unconsciously. To prepare you for it would have been contradictory to his interests. But if you had been prepared, your resistance to the feeling which was contradictory to his interests would have been less violent. There was always such a strong feeling in you that the most energetic resistance on your part was useless, but it is a matter of mere chance that the feeling appealed in such a strength. If it had been caused by a man less deserving, but still a decent man, it would have been weaker. Such strong feelings, against which all struggles are useless, are rare exceptions. Many more are the chances for the appearance of feelings which it is possible
