“And I will do my duty!” she declared with energy.
She went out. I may add, anticipating events, that she went out to look for Lambert herself; this was her last hope; she also went to her brother’s, and to her relations, the Fanariotovs’; it may well be understood what her state of mind must have been when she returned.
The old prince waked up about an hour after her departure. I heard him groan through the wall, and at once ran in to him; I found him sitting on the bed in his dressing-gown, but so terrified by his isolation, the light of the solitary lamp, and the strange room, that when I went in he started, jumped up and screamed. I flew up to him, and when he recognised me, he began embracing me with tears of joy.
“I was told that you had moved into another lodging, that you had taken fright, and run away.”
“Who can have told you that?”
“Who could? You see I may have imagined it myself, or some one may have told me. Only fancy, I’ve just had a dream: an old man with a beard came in carrying an ikon, an ikon broken in two, and all at once he said, ‘So shall your life be broken in two!’”
“Good heavens! You must have heard from some one that Versilov broke an ikon in two yesterday?”
“N’est-ce pas? I heard so, I heard so! I heard from Darya Onisimovna yesterday morning. She brought my trunk here and the dog.”
“And so you dreamed of it.”
“Yes, I suppose so, and that old man kept shaking his finger at me. Where is Anna Andreyevna?”
“She’ll be back directly.”
“Where from? Has she gone away, too?” he exclaimed piteously.
“No, no, she’ll be here directly, and she asked me to stay with you.”
“Oui. And so our Andrey Petrovitch has gone off his head, ‘so rapidly and unexpectedly!’ I always predicted that that’s how he’d end. Stay, my dear. . . .”
He suddenly clutched me by my coat, and drew me towards him.
“The landlord,” he whispered: “brought in some photographs just now, horrid photographs of women, naked women in various oriental poses, and began showing them me in a glass. . . . I admired them of course, though I did not like them, but you know that’s just as they brought horrid women to that poor fellow, so as to make him drunk more easily. . . .”
“Why, you are talking of Von Sohn, but that’s enough, prince! The landlord’s a fool and nothing more!”
“A fool and nothing more! C’est mon opinion! My dear, rescue me from here if you can!” He suddenly clasped his hands before me.
“Prince, I will do everything I can! I am entirely at your service. . . . Dear prince, wait a little and perhaps I will put everything right!”
“N’est-ce pas? We’ll cut and run and we’ll leave my trunk here to look as though we are coming back.”
“Where should we run to! And what of Anna Andreyevna?”
“No, no, we’ll go with Anna Andreyevna. . . . Oh, mon cher, there’s a regular muddle in my head. . . . Stay: there in my bag on the right, is Katya’s portrait. I slipped it in on the sly so that Anna Andreyevna, and still more, that Darya Onisimovna should not notice it; take it out, for goodness’ sake make haste, be careful, mind we are not caught. . . . Couldn’t you fasten the door with the hook?”
I did in fact, find in the bag a photograph of Katerina Nikolaevna in an oval frame. He took it in his hands, carried it to the light, and tears suddenly flowed down his thin yellow cheeks.
“C’est un ange, c’est un ange du ciel!” he exclaimed: “I never have been as good to her as I ought . . . and see what’s happened now! Cher enfant, I don’t believe a word of it, not a word of it! My dear, tell me: can you imagine, they are wanting to put me in a madhouse? Je dis des choses charmantes et tout le monde rit . . . and all of a sudden they take a man like that to a madhouse!”
“That’s never happened!” I cried, “that’s a mistake. I know her feelings.”
“You know her feelings, too? That’s splendid! My dear, you’ve given me new life. How could they say things against you! My dear, fetch Katya here, and let them kiss each other before me, and I will take them home, and we’ll get rid of the landlord!”
He stood up, clasped his hands, and fell on his knees before me.
“Cher,” he whispered, shaking like a leaf in a sort of insane terror: “My dear, tell me the whole truth: where will they put me now?”
“My God!” I cried, raising him up, and making him sit on the bed: “why you don’t believe in me at last; do you think that I’m in the plot too? I won’t let anyone lay a finger on you!”
“C’est-ça, don’t let them,” he faltered, clutching me tightly by the elbow with both hands, and still trembling. “Don’t let anyone touch me! And don’t tell me lies yourself about anything . . . for will they take me away from here? Listen, that landlord, Ippolit or whatever his name is . . . isn’t a doctor?”
“A doctor?”
“This . . . this isn’t a madhouse, here, in this room?”
But at that instant the door opened, and Anna Andreyevna came in. She must have been listening at the door, and, could not resist opening the door too suddenly — and the prince, who started at every creak, shrieked, and flung himself on his face on the pillow. Finally he had something like a fit, which ended in sobs.
“See? This is your doing,” I said to her, pointing to the old man.
“No, it’s your doing!” she raised her voice harshly, “I appeal to you for the last time, Arkady Makarovitch, will you unmask the diabolical intrigue against this defenceless old man, and sacrifice ‘your mad and childish dreams of love,’ to save your OWN sister?”
“I will save you all, but only in the way I told you this morning! I am running off again, and perhaps in an hour Katerina Nikolaevna will be here herself! I will reconcile you all, and you will all be happy!” I exclaimed almost with inspiration.
“Fetch her, fetch her here,” cried the prince in a flutter. “Take me to her! I want to see Katya and to bless her,” he exclaimed, lifting up his hands and springing off the bed.
“You see,” I said to Anna Andreyevna, motioning towards him: “you hear what he says: now at all events no ‘document’ will be any help to you.”
“I see, but it might help to justify my conduct in the opinion of the world, as it is, I’m disgraced! Enough, my conscience is clear. I am abandoned by everyone, even by my own brother, who has taken fright at my failure. . . . But I will do my duty and will remain by this unhappy man, to take care of him and be his nurse!”
But there was no time to be lost. I ran out of the room: “I shall come back in an hour, and shall not come back alone,” I cried from the doorway.
Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:26:22 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.
A Raw Youth, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Chapter XII
1
At last I found Tatyana Pavlovna at home! I at once explained everything to her — all about the “document,” and every detail of what was going on at my lodgings. Though she quite understood the position, and might have fully grasped what was happening in two words, yet the explanation took us, I believe, some ten minutes. I did the talking, I put aside all shame and told her the whole truth. She sat in her chair silent and immovable, drawing herself up straight as a knitting needle, with her lips compressed, and her eyes fixed upon me, listening greedily. But when I finished she promptly jumped up from her chair, and with such impetuosity that I jumped up too.
“Ach, you puppy! So you really had that letter sewn up in your pocket and it was sewn up there by that fool Marya Ivanovna! Oh, you shameless villains! So you came here to conquer hearts and take the fashionable world by storm. You wanted to revenge yourself on the devil knows who, because you’re an illegitimate son, eh?”
“Tatyana Pavlovna, don’t dare to abuse me!” I cried. “Perhaps you in your abuse have been the cause from the very beginning of my vindictiveness here. Yes, I am an illegitimate son, and perhaps I worked to revenge myself for being an illegitimate son, and perhaps I did want to revenge myself on the devil knows who, the devil himself could scarcely find who is guilty; but remember, I’ve cut off all connection with these villains, and have conquered my passions. I will lay the document before her in silence and will go away without even waiting for a word from her; you’ll be the witness of it!”