He hid his face in his hands.
“And do you know that she writes letters to me almost everyday?”
“Then it is true!” cried Myshkin, in dismay. “I heard so, but I wouldn’t believe it.”
“From whom did you hear it?” Aglaia asked, scared.
“Rogozhin said so yesterday, but not quite definitely.”
“Yesterday? Yesterday morning? What time yesterday? Before the band played, or after?”
“Afterwards. In the evening, past eleven.”
“Oh, if it was Rogozhin. . . . But do you know what she writes to me in these letters.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised at anything. She’s insane.”
“Here are the letters.” Aglaia pulled three letters in three envelopes out of her pocket and threw them down before Myshkin. “For the last week, she’s been beseeching, imploring, coaxing me to marry you. She . . . Oh, well, she’s clever, though she’s insane. And you’re right in saying she’s much cleverer than I am. . . . She writes that she’s in love with me, that she tries every day to get a chance of seeing me even in the distance. She writes that you love me, that she knows it, that she noticed it long ago, that you used to talk to her about me then. She wants to see you happy. She’s certain that only I can make you happy. . . . She writes so wildly… so strangely . . . I haven’t shown her letters to anyone. I’ve been waiting for you. Do you know what this means? Can you guess?”
“It’s madness, a proof of her insanity,” Myshkin brought out, and his lips began to tremble.
“You’re not crying now, are you?”
“No, Aglaia. No. I’m not crying.” Myshkin looked at her.
“What am I to do about it? What do you advise me? I can’t go on getting these letters!”
“Oh, leave her alone, I entreat you!” cried Myshkin. “What can you do in this darkness? I’ll do all I can to prevent her writing to you again.”
“Then you’re a man of no heart!” cried Aglaia. “Surely you must see that she’s not in love with me, but that she loves you, only you. How can you have noticed everything in her and not have seen that? Do you know what it is, what these letters mean? It’s jealousy. It’s more than jealousy! She … do you suppose she’d really marry Rogozhin as she writes here in her letters? She’d kill herself the day after our wedding!”
Myshkin started; his heart stood still. But he gazed in amazement at Aglaia. It was strange to him to realize that the child was so fully a woman.
“God knows, Aglaia, that to bring peace back to her and make her happy, I would give up my life. But … I can’t love her now, and she knows it!”
“Then sacrifice yourself, it’s just in your line! You’re such a charitable person! And don’t call me Aglaia .. . \bu called me simply Aglaia just now. \bu ought to raise her up, you are bound to. You ought to go away with her again so as to give peace and calm to her heart. Why, you love her, you know!”
“I can’t sacrifice myself like that, though I did want to at one time . . . and perhaps I want to still. But I
know for certain that with me she’ll be lost, and so I leave her. I was to have seen her to-day at seven o’clock; but perhaps I won’t go now. In her pride she will never forgive me for my love — and we shall both come to ruin. That’s abnormal, but everything here is abnormal. “Vbu say she loves me, but is this love? Can there be such love after what I have gone through? No, it’s something else, not love!”
“How pale you’ve grown!” Aglaia cried, in sudden dismay.
“It’s nothing. I’ve not had much sleep. I’m exhausted . . . We really did talk about you then, Aglaia …”
“So that’s true? You actually could talk to her about me and . . . and how could you care for me when you had only seen me once?”
“I don’t know how. In my darkness then I dreamed. … I had an illusion perhaps of a new dawn. I don’t know how I thought of you at first. It was the truth I wrote you then, that I didn’t know. All that was only a dream, from the horror then. . . . Afterwards I began to work. I shouldn’t have come here for three years. .
“Then you’ve come for her sake?”
And there was a quiver in Aglaia’s voice.
“Yes, for her sake.”
Two minutes of gloomy silence on both sides followed. Aglaia got up from the seat.
“You may say,” she began in an unsteady voice, “you may believe that that . . . your woman … is insane, but I have nothing to do with her insane fancies. … I beg you, Lyov Nikolayevitch, to take these three letters and fling them back to her from me! And if,” Aglaia cried suddenly, “and if she dares write me a single line again, tell her I shall complain to my father, and have her put into a House of Correction….”
Myshkin jumped up, and gazed in alarm at Aglaia’s sudden fury; a mist seemed to fall before his eyes.
“You can’t feel like that. … It’s not true!” he muttered.
“It’s the truth! It’s the truth!” screamed Aglaia, almost beside herself.
“What’s the truth? What truth?” They heard a frightened voice saying near them.
Lizaveta Prokofyevna stood before them.
“It’s the truth that I’m going to marry Gavril Ardalionovitch! That I love Gavril Ardalionovitch, and that I’m going to run away from home with him tomorrow!” cried Aglaia, flying out at her. “Do you hear? Is your curiosity satisfied? Is that enough for you?”
And she ran home.
“No, my friend, don’t you go away,” said Lizaveta Prokofyevna, detaining him, “you’ll be so good as to give me an explanation. What have I done to be so worried? I’ve been awake all night as it is.”
Myshkin followed her.
Chapter 9
On REACHING home Lizaveta Prokofyevna stopped in the first room; she could get no further and sank on the couch perfectly limp, forgetting even to ask Myshkin to sit down. It was a rather large room, with a round table in the middle of it, with an open fireplace, with quantities of flowers on an etagere in the window, and with another glass door leading into the garden in the opposite wall. Adelaida and Alexandra came in at once, and looked inquiringly and with perplexity at their mother and Myshkin.
At their summer villa the girls usually got up about nine o’clock; but for the last three days Aglaia had been getting up earlier and going for a walk in the garden, not at seven o’clock, but at eight or even later. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who really had been kept awake all night by her various worries, got up about eight o’clock on purpose to meet Aglaia in the garden, reckoning on her being up already; but she did not find her either in the garden or in her bedroom. At last she grew thoroughly alarmed and waked her daughters. From the servants she learnt that Aglaia Ivanovna had gone out into the park at seven o’clock. The girls laughed at their whimsical sister’s new whim, and observed to their mother that Aglaia might very likely be angry, if she went to look for her in the park, and that she was probably with a book sitting on the green seat of which she had been talking the day before yesterday, and about which she had almost quarrelled with Prince S. because he saw nothing particularly picturesque about it. Coming upon the couple, and hearing her daughter’s strange words, Lizaveta Prokofyevna was greatly alarmed for many reasons, but when she brought Myshkin home with her, she felt uneasy at having spoken openly about it. “After all, why should Aglaia not meet the prince in the park and talk to him, even if the interview had been arranged between them beforehand?”
“Don’t imagine, my good friend,” she braced herself to say, “that I brought you here to cross-examine you. After what happened yesterday I might well not have been anxious to see you for some time.
She could not go on for a moment.
“But you would very much like to know how I came to meet Aglaia Ivanovna this morning?” Myshkin completed her sentence with perfect serenity.
“Well, I did want to!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna flared up at once. “I am not afraid of speaking plainly. For I’m not insulting anyone, and I don’t want to offend anyone….”
“To be sure, you naturally want to know, without any offence; you are her mother. I met Aglaia Ivanovna this morning at the green seat, at seven o’clock, as she invited me to do so yesterday. She let me know by a note yesterday evening that she wanted to meet me to talk of an important matter. We met and had been talking for a whole hour of matters that only concerned Aglaia Ivanovna. That’s all.”
“Of course it’s all, my good sir, and without a shadow of doubt,” Madame Epanchin assented with dignity.
“Capital, prince,” said Aglaia, suddenly entering the room, “I thank you with all my heart for not believing that I would condescend to lie about it. Is that enough, maman, or do you intend to cross-examine him further?”
“You know that I have never yet had to blush for anything before you, though you would perhaps be glad if I had,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna replied impressively.
