'Tell me, Alyosha, why have I left off saying my prayers? What has
become of my faith? Oh, why did you talk of religion before me?
You've shaken my faith, you and your friends. I never pray now.'
He put compresses on her forehead, chafed her hands, gave her tea to drink, while she huddled up to him in terror. . . .
Towards morning she was worn out and fell asleep, while Laptev sat beside her and held her hand. So that he could get no sleep. The whole day afterwards he felt shattered and dull, and wandered listlessly about the rooms without a thought in his head.
XVI
The doctor said that Fyodor's mind was affected. Laptev did not know what to do in his father's house, while the dark warehouse in which neither his father nor Fyodor ever appeared now seemed to him like a sepulchre. When his wife told him that he absolutely must go every day to the warehouse and also to his father's, he either said nothing, or began talking irritably of his childhood, saying that it was beyond his power to forgive his father for his past, that the warehouse and the house in Pyatnitsky Street were hateful to him, and so on.
One Sunday morning Yulia went herself to Pyatnitsky Street. She found old Fyodor Stepanovitch in the same big drawing-room in which the service had been held on her first arrival. Wearing slippers, and without a cravat, he was sitting motionless in his arm-chair, blinking with his sightless eyes.
'It's I—your daughter-in-law,' she said, going up to him. 'I've come to see how you are.'
He began breathing heavily with excitement.
Touched by his affliction and his loneliness, she kissed his hand; and he passed his hand over her face and head, and having satisfied himself that it was she, made the sign of the cross over her.
'Thank you, thank you,' he said. 'You know I've lost my eyes and can see nothing. . . . I can dimly see the window and the fire, but people and things I cannot see at all. Yes, I'm going blind, and Fyodor has fallen ill, and without the master's eye things are in a bad way now. If there is any irregularity there's no one to look into it; and folks soon get spoiled. And why is it Fyodor has fallen ill? Did he catch cold? Here I have never ailed in my life and never taken medicine. I never saw anything of doctors.'
And, as he always did, the old man began boasting. Meanwhile the servants hurriedly laid the table and brought in lunch and bottles of wine.
Ten bottles were put on the table; one of them was in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. There was a whole dish of hot pies smelling of jam, rice, and fish.
'I beg my dear guest to have lunch,' said the old man.
She took him by the arm, led him to the table, and poured him out a glass of vodka.
'I will come to you again to-morrow,' she said, 'and I'll bring your grandchildren, Sasha and Lida. They will be sorry for you, and fondle you.'
'There's no need. Don't bring them. They are illegitimate.'
'Why are they illegitimate? Why, their father and mother were married.'
'Without my permission. I do not bless them, and I don't want to know them. Let them be.'
'You speak strangely, Fyodor Stepanovitch,' said Yulia, with a sigh.
'It is written in the Gospel: children must fear and honour their parents.'
'Nothing of the sort. The Gospel tells us that we must forgive even our enemies.'
'One can't forgive in our business. If you were to forgive every one, you would come to ruin in three years.'
'But to forgive, to say a kind, friendly word to any one, even a sinner, is something far above business, far above wealth.'
Yulia longed to soften the old man, to awaken a feeling of compassion in him, to move him to repentance; but he only listened condescendingly to all she said, as a grown-up person listens to a child.
'Fyodor Stepanovitch,' said Yulia resolutely, 'you are an old man, and God soon will call you to Himself. He won't ask you how you managed your business, and whether you were successful in it, but whether you were gracious to people; or whether you were harsh to those who were weaker than you, such as your servants, your clerks.'
'I was always the benefactor of those that served me; they ought to remember me in their prayers forever,' said the old man, with conviction, but touched by Yulia's tone of sincerity, and anxious to give her pleasure, he said: 'Very well; bring my grandchildren to-morrow. I will tell them to buy me some little presents for them.'
The old man was slovenly in his dress, and there was cigar ash on his breast and on his knees; apparently no one cleaned his boots, or brushed his clothes. The rice in the pies was half cooked, the tablecloth smelt of soap, the servants tramped noisily about the room. And the old man and the whole house had a neglected look, and Yulia, who felt this, was ashamed of herself and of her husband.
'I will be sure to come and see you to-morrow,' she said.
She walked through the rooms, and gave orders for the old man's bedroom to be set to rights, and the lamp to be lighted under the ikons in it. Fyodor, sitting in his own room, was looking at an open book without reading it. Yulia talked to him and told the servants to tidy his room, too; then she went downstairs to the clerks. In the middle of the room where the clerks used to dine, there was an unpainted wooden post to support the ceiling and to prevent its coming down. The ceilings in the basement were low, the walls covered with cheap paper, and there was a smell of charcoal fumes and cooking. As it was a holiday, all the clerks were at home, sitting on their bedsteads waiting for dinner. When Yulia went in they jumped up, and answered her questions timidly, looking up at her from under their brows like convicts.
'Good heavens! What a horrid room you have!' she said, throwing up her hands. 'Aren't you crowded here?'
'Crowded, but not aggrieved,' said Makeitchev. 'We are greatly indebted to you, and will offer up our prayers for you to our Heavenly Father.'
'The congruity of life with the conceit of the personality,' said
Potchatkin.
And noticing that Yulia did not understand Potchatkin, Makeitchev hastened to explain:
'We are humble people and must live according to our position.'
She inspected the boys' quarters, and then the kitchen, made acquaintance with the housekeeper, and was thoroughly dissatisfied.
When she got home she said to her husband:
'We ought to move into your father's house and settle there for good as soon as possible. And you will go every day to the warehouse.'
Then they both sat side by side in the study without speaking. His heart was heavy, and he did not want to move into Pyatnitsky Street or to go into the warehouse; but he guessed what his wife was thinking, and could not oppose her. He stroked her cheek and said:
'I feel as though our life is already over, and that a grey half-life is beginning for us. When I knew that my brother Fyodor was hopelessly ill, I shed tears; we spent our childhood and youth together, when I loved him with my whole soul. And now this catastrophe has come, and it seems, too, as though, losing him, I am finally cut away from my past. And when you said just now that we must move into the house in Pyatnitsky Street, to that prison, it began to seem to me that there was no future for me either.'
He got up and walked to the window.
'However that may be, one has to give up all thoughts of happiness,' he said, looking out into the street. 'There is none. I never have had any, and I suppose it doesn't exist at all. I was happy once in my life, though, when I sat at night under your parasol. Do you remember how you left your parasol at Nina's?' he asked, turning to his wife. 'I was in love with you then, and I remember I spent all night sitting under your parasol, and was perfectly
