judge of such men as of others, and their life must always be different; and that’s not unseemly at all; on the contrary, it would be unseemly if they settled down and became altogether like other ordinary people. His praises of the nobility, and his words: “Je mourrai gentilhomme,” did not disconcert me in the least; I understood what sort of gentilhomme he was; he was a man ready to abandon everything, and to become the champion of political rights for all, and the leading Russian thought of a universal harmony of ideas. And even though all this might be nonsense, that is “the universal harmony of ideas” (which is of course inconceivable), yet the very fact that he had all his life bowed down to an idea, and not to the stupid golden calf, was good. My God! why, conceiving “my idea,” had I, I myself — could I— have been bowing down to the golden calf, could I have been aiming only at money, then? I swear that all I wanted was the idea! I swear I would not have had one chair, one sofa upholstered in velvet, and I would have eaten the same plate of soup as now, if I had had millions. I dressed and hurried off impatiently to see him. I may add that in regard to his outburst yesterday about the “document,” I was ever so much more at ease in my mind than I had been the day before. To begin with, I hoped to have it out with him, and besides, what was there in Lambert’s having wormed his way in to him, and having talked to him of something? But what rejoiced me most was an extraordinary sensation: it came from the thought that “he no longer loved HER”; I put absolute faith in it, and felt as if some one had lifted a fearful weight off my heart. I recall a conjecture that flashed upon me at the time: that the unseemliness and senselessness of his last violent outbreak, on hearing about Buring, and the sending of that insulting letter, that that final crisis might be taken as a sign and augury of a change in his feeling, and an approaching return to sanity; it must be as it is in illness, I thought, and, in fact, he is bound to reach the opposite extreme, it is a pathological episode, and nothing more.
This thought made me happy.
“And let her arrange her life as she pleases, let her marry her Buring as much as she likes, so long as he, my father, my friend, loves her no longer,” I exclaimed.
I had, however, certain secret feelings of my own, on which I do not care to enlarge in my notes here.
That’s enough. And now, without further reflections, I will give an account of the awful event that followed, and how the facts worked together to bring it about.
2
At ten o’clock, just as I was getting ready to go out, to see him of course, Darya Onisimovna appeared. I asked her joyfully: “whether she came from him?” and heard with vexation that she did not come from him, but from Anna Andreyevna, and that she, Darya Onisimovna, “had left the lodging as soon as it was light.”
“What lodging?”
“Why, the same where you were yesterday. You know, the lodging where you were yesterday, where the baby is; it is taken in my name now, and Tatyana Pavlovna pays the rent. . . .”
“Oh, well, that’s nothing to me!” I interrupted with annoyance. “Is he at home, anyway? Shall I find him?”
And to my surprise I heard from her that he had gone out even before she had; so she had gone out as soon as it was light, and he had gone out even earlier.
“Then has he come back yet?”
“No, he’s certainly not back yet, and perhaps he won’t come back at all,” she declared, turning upon me the same sharp and furtive eye, and keeping it fixed on me, as she had done on the occasion I have described, when she visited me as I lay ill in bed. What infuriated me most was that their mysteries and imbecilities should be forced on me again, and that these people could not get on without secrets and intrigues.
“Why do you say: ‘he will certainly not come back’? What do you mean by that? He has gone to see mother, that’s all!”
“I d — don’t know.”
“And what have you come for?”
She told me that she had just come from Anna Andreyevna, who had sent her for me, and urgently expected me at once, or else it would be “too late.” These last enigmatic words finally exasperated me:
“Why too late? I don’t want to come and I’m not coming! I won’t let them take possession of me again! I don’t care a damn for Lambert, you can tell her so, and if she sends Lambert to me, I’ll kick him out, you can tell her so!”
Darya Onisimovna was awfully alarmed.
“Oh no,” she said, taking a step towards me, clasping her hands as though she were beseeching me. “Don’t be so hasty. There’s something very important the matter, very important to yourself, to them, too, to Andrey Petrovitch, to your mamma, to every one. . . . Go and see Anna Andreyevna at once, she can’t wait any longer . . . I assure you, on my honour . . . and afterwards you can make your decision.”
I looked at her with surprise and repulsion.
“Nonsense, it will be nothing, I’m not coming!” I shouted obstinately and vindictively: “Now everything’s different! Though how could you understand that? Good-bye, Darya Onisimovna, I won’t go on purpose, I won’t question you on purpose. You simply bother me. I don’t want to know anything about your mysteries.”
As she did not go away, however, but still stood waiting, I snatched up my fur coat and cap, and went out myself, leaving her in the middle of the room. There were no letters or papers in my room, and I never used to lock my door when I went out. But before I had reached the front door my landlord ran after me downstairs, without his hat, and not in full uniform.
“Arkady Makarovitch! Arkady Makarovitch!”
“What now?”
“Have you no instructions to leave?”
“No, nothing.”
He looked at me with eyes like gimlets, in evident uneasiness:
“About your room, for instance?”
“What about my room? Why, I sent you the rent when it was due?”
“Oh no, sir, I was not thinking of the money,” he said with a broad smile, his eyes still piercing into me like pins.
“Why, what on earth’s the matter with you all?” I shouted at last, growing almost savage. “What do you want too?”
He waited for a few seconds longer, still seeming to expect something from me.
“Well, then, you will give instructions later . . . if you are not in the humour now,” he muttered, grinning more broadly than ever; “you go on and I’ll see to it.”
He ran back upstairs. Of course all this might well make one reflect. I purposely avoid omitting a single detail in all that petty tomfoolery, for every little detail helped to make up the final situation and had its place in it, a fact of which the reader will be convinced. But that they really did bother me was true. If I was upset and irritated, it was at hearing again in their words that tone of intrigue and mystery of which I was so sick, and which so brought back the past. But to continue.
It turned out that Versilov was not at home, and it appeared that he really had gone out as soon as it was light. “To mother’s, of course”: I stuck obstinately to my idea. I did not question the nurse, rather a stupid peasant woman, and there was no one else in the lodging. I ran to mother’s and I must admit I was so anxious that I took a sledge half-way. HE HAD NOT BEEN AT MOTHER’S SINCE THE EVENING BEFORE. There was no one with mother except Tatyana Pavlovna and Liza. Liza began getting ready to go out as soon as I went in.
They were all sitting upstairs, in my “coffin.” In the drawing room Makar Ivanovitch was laid out on the table, and an old man was reading the psalter over him in an even, monotonous voice. For the future I am not going to describe anything more that does not relate to the matter in hand. I will only say that the coffin, which they had already made, was standing in the middle of the room, and was not a plain one, though it was black; it was upholstered in velvet, and the pall was of an expensive sumptuousness that was not in keeping with the character of a monk, or with the convictions of the dead man; but such was the special desire of my mother and Tatyana Pavlovna, who arranged the matter together.
I had not of course expected to find them cheerful; but the peculiar overwhelming distress mixed with uneasiness and anxiety, which I read in their eyes, struck me at once, and I instantly concluded that “sorrow for the dead was certainly not the only cause.” All this, I repeat, I remember perfectly.
In spite of everything I embraced mother tenderly and at once asked about HIM. A gleam of tremulous curiosity came into mother’s eyes at once. I made haste to mention that we had spent the whole evening together,
