The man was completely bewildered in fact. He talked alone for the whole journey, which lasted almost an hour, asked questions, answered them himself, pressed Myshkin’s hand, and did at any rate convince the prince that he did not dream of suspecting him.
This was what mattered to Myshkin. He finished up by telling him about “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch’s uncle, who was chief of some department in Petersburg. “In a conspicuous position, seventy years old, a viveur,
a gourmand — altogether an old gentleman with habits. … Ha ha! I know he’d heard of Nastasya Filippovna, and in fact was after her. I went to see him not long ago; he didn’t see me. He was unwell; but he is a wealthy man, very wealthy, a man of consequence and . . . please God, he will go on flourishing for years, but Yevgeny Pavlovitch will come in for his money in the end. “Vfes, yes. . . . But yet I’m afraid, I don’t know why, but I’m afraid. It’s as though there were something in the air, some trouble hovering like a bat, and I’m afraid, I’m afraid! …”
And it was only on the third day, as we have said already, that the formal reconciliation of the Epanchins with Myshkin took place at last.
Chapter 12
It WAS seven o’clock in the evening. Myshkin was getting ready to go into the park. All of a sudden Lizaveta Prokofyevna walked alone on to his verandah.
“To begin with, don’t you dare to imagine,” she began, “that I’ve come to beg your pardon. Nonsense! It was entirely your fault.”
Myshkin did not speak.
“Was it your fault or not?”
“As much mine as yours, though neither I nor you was intentionally to blame. I did think myself to blame the day before yesterday, but now I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not so.”
“So that’s what you say! Very well; listen and sit down, for I don’t intend to stand.”
They both sat down. “Secondly, not one word about mischievous urchins! I’ll sit and talk to you for ten minutes; I’ve come to make an inquiry (and you are fancying all sorts of things, I expect?). And if you drop a single word about insolent urchins, I shall get up and go away and break with you completely.”
“Very well,” answered Myshkin.
“Allow me to ask you: did you two months or two and a half ago, about Easter, send Aglaia a letter?”
“I did write to her.”
“With what object? What was in the letter? Show me the letter!”
Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s eyes glowed, she was almost quivering with impatience.
“I haven’t got the letter.” Myshkin was surprised and horribly dismayed. “If it still exists, Aglaia Ivanovna has it.”
“Don’t wriggle out of it. What did you write about?”
“I’m not, and I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t write….”
“Hold your tongue! “Vbu shall speak afterwards. What was in the letter? Why are you blushing?”
Myshkin thought a little.
“I don’t know what’s in your mind, Lizaveta Prokofyevna. I only see that you don’t like the letter. “Vbu must admit that I might refuse to answer such a question; but to show you that I’m not uneasy about the letter and don’t regret having written it, and am not blushing in the least on account of it” — Myshkin blushed at least twice as red— “I’ll repeat that letter to you, for I believe I know it by heart.”
Saying this, Myshkin repeated the letter almost word for word as he had written it.
“What a string of nonsense! What can be the meaning of such twaddle, according to you?” Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked sharply, after listening to the letter with extraordinary attention.
“I can’t quite tell myself; I know that my feeling was sincere. At that time I had moments of intense life and extraordinary hopes.”
“What hopes?”
“It’s hard to explain, but not what you’re thinking of now, perhaps. Hopes … well, in one word, hopes for the future and joy that perhaps I was not a stranger, not a foreigner, there. I took suddenly a great liking to my own country. One sunny morning I took up a pen and wrote a letter to her; why to her — I don’t know. Sometimes one lonqs for a friend at one’s side, you know; and I suppose I was longing for a friend….” Myshkin added after a pause.
“Are you in love?”
“N-no. I … I wrote to her as to a sister; I signed myself her brother, indeed.”
“Hm! On purpose; I understand.”
“It’s very unpleasant for me to answer these questions, Lizaveta Prokofyevna.”
“I know it’s unpleasant, but it doesn’t matter to me in the least whether it is unpleasant. Listen, tell me the truth as you would before God. Are you telling me lies or not?”
“I’m not.”
“Are you speaking the truth saying that you are not in love?”
“I believe quite the truth.”
“Upon my word, ‘you believe’! Did the urchin give it her?”
“I asked Nikolay Ardalionovitch …”
“The urchin! the urchin!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna interrupted vehemently. “I know nothing about any Nikolay Ardalionovitch! The urchin!”
“Nikolay Ardalionovitch …”
“The urchin, I tell you!”
“No, not the urchin, but Nikolay Ardalionovitch,” Myshkin answered at last, firmly though rather softly.
“Oh, very well, my dear, very well! I shall keep that against you.” For a minute she overcame her emotion and was calm.
“And what’s the meaning of the ‘poor knight’?”
“I don’t know at all; I had nothing to do with it. Some joke.”
“Pleasant to hear it all at once! Only, could she have been interested in you? Why, she has called you a freak and an idiot.”
“You need not have told me that,” Myshkin observed reproachfully, though almost in a whisper.
“Don’t be angry. She’s a wilful, mad, spoilt girl — if she cares for any one she’ll be sure to rail at him aloud and abuse him to his face; I was just such another. Only please don’t be triumphant, my dear fellow, she’s not yours. I won’t believe that, and it never will be! I speak that you may take steps now. Listen, swear you’re not married to that woman.”
“Lizaveta Prokofyevna, what are you saying? Upon my word!” Myshkin almost jumped up in amazement.
“But you were almost marrying her, weren’t you?”
“I was almost marrying her,” Myshkin whispered, and he bowed his head.
“Well, are you in love with her, then? Have you come here on her account — for her sake?”
“I have not come to get married,” answered Myshkin.
“Is there anything in the world you hold sacred?”
“Yes.”
“Swear that it was not to get married to her.”
“I’ll swear by anything you like!”
“I believe you. Kiss me. At last I can breathe freely; but let me tell you: Aglaia doesn’t love you, you must be warned of that, and she won’t marry you while I’m alive; do you hear?”
“I hear.” Myshkin blushed so much that he could not look at Lizaveta Prokofyevna.
“Make a note of it. I’ve been looking for you back as my Providence (you’re not worth it!). I’ve been watering my pillow with my tears at night. Not on your account, my dear — don’t be uneasy. I have my own grief — a very different one, everlasting and always the same. But this is why I’ve been looking for you back with such impatience. I still believe that God Himself has sent you to me as a friend and brother. I have no one else, except old Princess Byelokonsky, and she’s gone away; and besides, she’s as stupid as a sheep in her old age. Now answer me simply: yes or no. Do you know why she shouted from her carriage the day before yesterday?”
“On my word of honour, I had nothing to do with it and know nothing about it!”
“That’s enough; I believe you. Now I have other ideas about that, but only yesterday morning I put the whole blame of it on “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch — all the day before yesterday and yesterday morning. Now, of course, I can’t help agreeing with them. It’s perfectly obvious that he was being turned into ridicule like a fool on some account, for some reason, with some object. Anyway, it’s suspicious! And it doesn’t look well! But Aglaia won’t marry him, I can tell you that! He may be a nice man, but that’s how it’s to be. I was hesitating before, but now I’ve made up my mind for certain: ‘You can lay me in my coffin and bury me in the earth and then you can marry your daughter’; that’s what I said straight out to Ivan Fyodorovitch to-day. \bu see that I trust you. D’you see?”
“I see and I understand.”
Lizaveta Prokofyevna looked penetratingly at Myshkin. Perhaps she keenly desired to find out what impression this news about “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch made upon him.
“Do you know nothing about Gavril Ivolgin?”
“You mean … I know a great deal.”
“Did you know or didn’t you that he was in correspondence with Aglaia.”
“I didn’t know at all,” said Myshkin, surprised and even startled. “What! you say Gavril Ardalionovitch is in correspondence with Aglaia Ivanovna? Impossible!”
“Quite lately. His sister has been paving the way for him here all the winter. She’s been working like a rat.”
“I don’t believe it,” Myshkin repeated firmly, after some reflection and uneasiness. “If it had been so I should certainly have known it.”
“I daresay he’d have come of himself and made a tearful confession on your bosom! Ach, you’re a simpleton, a simpleton! Everyone deceives you like a … like a .. . And aren’t vou ashamed to trust him?
Surely you must see that he’s cheating you all round?”
“I know very well he does deceive me sometimes,” Myshkin brought out reluctantly in a low voice, “and he
