Mama, I reasoned, for instance, wouldn’t hinder anything in his destiny, not even marriage to mama. That I understood; that was quite other than the meeting with that one. True, all the same, mama would not have given him peace, but that would even have been better: such people ought to be judged differently, and let their life always be like that; and there’s nothing unseemly in it; on the contrary, it would be unseemly if they settled down, or generally became similar to all average people. His praise of the nobility and his words, “Je mourrai gentilhomme,” didn’t confound me in the least; I perceived what sort of gentilhomme he was; he was the type who gives everything away and becomes the herald of world citizenship and the main Russian thought of the “all-unification of ideas.” And though that, too, was even all nonsense, that is, the “all-unification of ideas” (which, of course, is unthinkable), still there was one good thing, that all his life he had worshipped an idea, and not the stupid golden calf. My God! I, I myself, when I conceived my “idea”—was I bowing down to the golden calf? Was it money I wanted then? I swear I wanted only the idea! I swear I wouldn’t have a single chair or sofa upholstered in velvet, and if I had a hundred million, I’d eat the same bowl of beef soup as now!
I was dressing and hurrying to him irrepressibly. I will add: concerning his outburst yesterday about the “document,” I was also five times more at ease than yesterday. First, I hoped to clarify things with him, and, second, so what if Lambert had filtered through to him and they had talked something over? But my chief joy was in one extraordinary sensation; this was the thought that he “didn’t love her” now; I believed in that terribly, and felt as if someone had rolled an awful stone off my heart. I even remember the flash of a certain surmise then: precisely the ugliness and senselessness of his last fierce outburst at the news about Bjoring and the sending of that insulting letter then; precisely that extremity could also have served as a prophecy and precursor of the most radical change in his feelings and of his approaching return to common sense. It must have been almost as with an illness, I thought, and he precisely had to reach the opposite extreme—a medical episode and nothing more! This thought made me happy.
“And let her, let her dispose of her fate as she likes, let her marry her Bjoring as much as she likes, only let him, my father, my friend, not love her anymore,” I exclaimed. However, there was in it a certain secret of my own feelings, but I don’t wish to smear it around here in my notes.
Enough of that. And now I will tell all the horror that followed, and all the machinations of the facts, without any discussions.
II
AT TEN O’CLOCK, just as I was ready to go out—to see him, of course— Nastasya Egorovna appeared. I asked her joyfully if she was coming from him, and heard with vexation that it was not from him at all, but from Anna Andreevna, and that she, Nastasya Egorovna, had “left the apartment at first light.”
“Which apartment?”
“The same one as yesterday. Yesterday’s apartment, the one with the little baby, is rented in my name now, and Tatyana Pavlovna pays . . .”
“Ah, well, it makes no difference to me!” I interrupted with vexation. “Is he at home at least? Will I find him in?”
And to my astonishment I heard from her that he had left the premises even before she had—meaning that she had left “at first light,” and he still earlier.
“Well, so now he’s come back?”
“No, sir, he certainly hasn’t come back, and he may not come back at all,” she said, looking at me with the same keen and furtive eye, and not taking it off me, just as she had done when she visited me while I lay sick. What mainly made me explode was that here again some secrets and stupidities emerged, and that these people apparently couldn’t do without secrets and slyness.
“Why did you say he certainly won’t come back? What are you implying? He went to mama’s, that’s all!”
“I d-don’t know, sir.”
“And why were you so good as to come?”
She told me that she had come now from Anna Andreevna, who was sending for me and expected me at once, otherwise “it would be too late.” This further mysterious phrase drove me completely beside myself.
“Why too late? I don’t want to go and I won’t go! I won’t let myself be taken over again! I spit on Lambert—tell her that, and that if she sends Lambert to me, I’ll chuck him out—just tell her that!”
Nastasya Egorovna was terribly frightened.
“Ah, no, sir!” she stepped towards me, pressing her hands together as if entreating me, “take your time before you go hurrying so. This is an important matter, very important for you yourself, and also for the lady, and for Andrei Petrovich, and for your mama, for everybody . . . Do go to Anna Andreevna at once, because she simply can’t wait any longer . . . I assure you on my honor . . . and then you can make your decision.”
I stared at her in amazement and disgust.
“Nonsense, nothing will happen, I won’t go!” I cried stubbornly and gleefully. “Now everything will be a new way! And how can you understand that? Good-bye, Nastasya Egorovna, I purposely won’t go, I purposely won’t ask you any questions. You only throw me off. I don’t want to enter into your riddles.”
But as she wouldn’t leave and went on standing there, I grabbed my coat and hat and went out myself, leaving her there in the middle of the room. There were no letters or papers in my room, and previously I had almost never locked my door when I left. But before I reached the front door, my landlord, Pyotr Ippolitovich, came running down the stairs after me, hatless and in his uniform.
“Arkady Makarovich! Arkady Makarovich!”
“What is it now?”
“Have you no orders on leaving?”
“None.”
He looked at me with a stabbing glance and with evident uneasiness.
“Concerning the apartment, for instance?”
“What about the apartment? Didn’t I send you the money on time?”
“No, sir, I’m not talking about money,” he suddenly smiled a long smile and went on stabbing me with his glance.
“What’s the matter with you all?” I finally cried, almost totally ferocious. “What are you after?”
He waited for another few seconds, as if he still expected something from me.
“Well, so you can give the orders later . . . if you’re not in the mood now,” he murmured, with an even longer grin. “Go on, sir, and I myself have my duties.”
He ran upstairs to his apartment. Of course, all that could set one to thinking. I’m purposely not leaving out the slightest stroke from all that petty nonsense, because every little stroke of it later went into the final bouquet, where it found its proper place, as the reader will ascertain. But it was true that they really threw me off then. If I was so agitated and annoyed, it was precisely because I again heard in their words that tiresome tone of intrigue and riddling that reminded me of the old days. But to continue.
Versilov turned out not to be at home, and he had indeed gone out at first light. “To mama’s, of course,” I stubbornly stood my ground. I asked no questions of the nanny, a rather stupid woman, and there was no one else in the apartment. I ran to mama’s, and, I confess, I was so worried that halfway there I grabbed a cab. He hadn’t been at mama’s since last evening. Only Tatyana Pavlovna and Liza were with mama. As soon as I came in, Liza started preparing to leave.
They were all sitting upstairs in my “coffin.” In our drawing room downstairs, Makar Ivanovich was laid out on the table,37 and some old man was measuredly reading the psalter over him. I won’t describe anything now that is not directly related to the matter, but will just observe that the coffin, which they had already had time to make and was standing right there in the room, was not simple, though black, but was lined with velvet, and the shroud on the deceased was an expensive one—a magnificence not suited to the old man or his convictions, but such was the express wish of both mama and Tatyana Pavlovna.
Naturally, I didn’t expect to find them cheerful; but the peculiarly oppressive anguish, with concern and uneasiness, that I read in their eyes, struck me immediately, and I instantly concluded that
