“Yes, it’s twenty years — twenty years and three months. We were at school together; I went straight into the army.”
“My father was in the army too: sub-lieutenant in the Vassilkovsky regiment.”
“In the Byelomirsky. He was transferred to the Byelomirsky just before his death. I was at his bedside and blessed him for eternity. Your mother. .
The general paused, as though arrested by painful memory.
“Yes, she died six months later from a chill,” said Myshkin.
“It was not a chill — not a chill. You may trust an old man’s words. I was there; I buried her too. It was grief at the loss of her husband; not a chill. Yes, I remember the princess too. Ah, youth! It was for her sake that the prince and I, friends from childhood, were on the point of becoming each other’s murderers.”
Myshkin began to listen with a certain scepticism.
“I was passionately in love with your mother when she was betrothed — betrothed to my friend. The prince observed it and it was a blow to him. He came to me early in the morning, before seven o’clock, and waked me up. I dressed in amazement. There was silence on both sides; I understood it all. He pulled two pistols out of his pocket. Across a handkerchief, without witnesses. What need of witnesses when within five minutes we should have sent each other into eternity? We loaded, stretched the handkerchief, aimed the pistols at each other’s hearts and gazed in each other’s faces. Suddenly tears gushed from the eyes of both; our hands trembled. Of both — of both at once. Then naturally followed embraces and a conflict in mutual generosity. The prince cried, ‘She is yours.’ I cried, ‘No, yours.’ In fact… in fact. . . you’ve come to live with us?”
“Yes, for a little time perhaps,” said Myshkin, seeming to hesitate.
“Mother asks you to come to her, prince,” cried Kolya, looking in at the door.
Myshkin got up to go, but the general put his right hand on his shoulder and affectionately made him sit down again.
“As a true friend of your father’s I want to warn you,” said the general. “You can see for yourself I have suffered, through a tragic catastrophe, but without trial. Without trial! Nina Alexandrovna is a rare woman. Varvara Ardalionovna, my daughter, is a rare daughter. We are driven by circumstances to take boarders — an incredible downfall! I, who was on the eve of becoming a governor-general! . . . But you we shall always be glad to receive. And meanwhile there is a tragedy in my house!”
Myshkin looked at him inquiringly and with great curiosity.
“A marriage is being arranged, and a strange marriage. A marriage between a woman of doubtful character and a young man who might be a kammeijunker. That woman is to be brought into the house where are my daughter and my wife! But as long as I breathe, she shall not enter it! I will lie down on the threshold and she must walk over me. Ganya I scarcely speak to now; I avoid meeting him, indeed. I warn you beforehand; since you’ll be living with us, you’ll see it anyway. But you are the son of my friend and I have the right to hope …”
“Prince, will you be so good as to come into the drawing-room?” Nina Alexandrovna herself appeared in the doorway and called him.
“Only fancy, my dear,” cried the general, “it appears that I used to dandle the prince in my arms!”
Nina Alexandrovna glanced reproachfully at the general and searchingly at Myshkin, but did not say a word. Myshkin followed her, but as soon as they had entered the drawing-room and sat down, and Nina Alexandrovna had begun in an undertone and very rapidly telling Myshkin something, the general himself made his appearance. Nina Alexandrovna ceased speaking instantly and, with evident annoyance, bent over her knitting. The general perhaps observed this annoyance, but was still in excellent spirits.
“The son of my friend,” he cried, addressing Nina Alexandrovna. “And so unexpectedly! I’d long given up all idea. . . . My dear, surely you must remember Nikolay Lvovitch? He was still at . . . Tver when you were there.”
“I don’t remember Nikolay Lvovitch. Is that your father?” she asked Myshkin.
“Yes. I don’t think it was at Tver he died, though, but at Elisavetgrad,” Myshkin observed timidly to the general. “I was told so by Pavlishtchev.”
“It was at Tver,” persisted the general. “He was transferred to Tver just before his death, and before his illness showed itself, in fact. \bu were too little to remember the removal or the journey. Pavlishtchev may easily have forgotten, though he was an excellent man.”
“Did you know Pavlishtchev too?”
“He was a rare man, but I was on the spot. I blessed him on his death-bed.”
“My father died while he was awaiting trial,” Mvshkin observed aqain; “thouqh I’ve never been able to find out what he was accused of. He died in a hospital.”
“Oh, that was about the case of the private Kolpakov, and there’s no doubt that the prince would have been acquitted.”
“Was that so? Are you sure?” asked Myshkin with marked interest.
“I should think so!” cried the general. “The court broke up without coming to a decision. It was an incredible case! A mysterious case, one may say. Captain Larionov, the commander of the company, died; the prince was appointed for a time to take his duty. Good. The private Kolpakov committed a theft — stole boot-leather from a comrade and spent it on drink. Good. The prince — in the presence, observe, of the sergeant and the corporal — gave Kolpakov a blowing-up and threatened to have him flogged. Very good. Kolpakov went to the barracks, lay down on his bed, and died a quarter of an hour afterwards. Excellent. But it was so unexpected, it was quite incredible. Anyway, Kolpakov was buried. The prince reported the matter and Kolpakov’s name was removed from the lists. One would have thought it was all right. But just six months later at the brigade review the private Kolpakov turns up, as though nothing had happened, in the third company of the second battalion of the Novozemlyansky infantry regiment of the same brigade and of the same division.”
“What?” cried Myshkin, beside himself with astonishment.
“It’s not so, it’s a mistake,” said Nina Alexandrovna, addressing him suddenly and looking at him almost with anguish. “Mori mari se trompe.”
“But, my dear, se trompe — it’s easy to say. How do you explain a case like that? Every one was dumbfounded. I should have been the first to say quon se trompe. But unhappily I was a witness and was on the commission myself. All who had seen him testified that this was the same private Kolpakov who had been buried six months before with the usual parade and the beating of drums. It was an unusual incident, almost incredible, I admit, but…”
“Father, your dinner is ready,” announced Varvara Ardalionovna, entering the room.
“Ah, that’s capital, excellent! I am certainly hungry.
. . . But it was, one may even say, a psychological incident…”
“The soup will be cold again,” said Varya impatiently.
“I am coming — I am coming,” muttered the general as he went out of the room. “And in spite of all inquiries,” he was heard saying in the corridor.
“You must overlook a great deal in Ardalion Alexandrovitch, if you stay with us,” said Nina Alexandrovna to Myshkin. “But he won’t be much in your way; he even dines alone. All have their failings, you know, and their. . . peculiarities, some perhaps even more than those who are usually looked down upon for it. One special favour I will ask of you. If my husband ever applies to you for payment, tell him, please, that you’ve already paid me. Of course, anything you give to Ardalion Alexandrovitch will be taken off your bill, but I ask you simply to avoid muddling our accounts…. What is it, Varya?”
Varya came back into the room and without speaking handed her mother a portrait of Nastasya Filippovna. Nina Alexandrovna started, and examined it for some time — at first, it seemed, with dismay, and then with overwhelming and bitter emotion. At last she looked inquiringly at Varya.
“A present to him to-day from herself,” said Varya, “and this evening everything will be settled.”
“This evening!” Nina Alexandrovna repeated in a low voice, as though in despair. “Well, there can be no more doubt about it then, and no hope left. She announced her decision by giving the portrait. . . . But did he show it to you himself?” she added with surprise.
“You know that we’ve scarcely spoken a word for the last month. Ptitsyn told me all about it, and the portrait was lying on the floor by the table; I picked it up.”
“Prince,” said Nina Alexandrovna, addressing him suddenly, “I wanted to ask you (that was why I asked you to come to me), have you known my son long? I believe he told me you’d only arrived from somewhere to-day.”
Myshkin gave a brief account of himself, leaving out the greater part. Nina Alexandrovna and Varya listened.
“I am not trying to find out anything about Gavril Ardalionovitch in questioning you,” observed Nina Alexandrovna. “You must make no mistake on that score. If there is anything he can’t tell me about himself, I don’t want to learn it without his knowledge. I ask you, because just now when you’d gone out, Ganya answered, when I asked him about you: ‘He knows everything; you needn’t stand on ceremony with him.’ What
