He nodded and walked away. The police hurried up five seconds after the last of the persons concerned had disappeared. But the scene had not lasted more than two minutes. Some of the audience had got up from their chairs and gone away; some had simply moved from one place to another; while some were delighted at the scene, and others were eagerly talking and inquiring about it. The incident, in fact, passed off in the usual way. The band began playing again. Myshkin followed the Epanchins. If he had thought, or had had time to look to the left as he was sitting there, after he had been pushed away, he might have seen, twenty paces from him, Aglaia, who had stood still to watch the scandalous scene, regardless of her mother’s and sisters’ calls to her. Prince S. had run up to her and at last persuaded her to come quickly away. Her mother remembered that she had returned to them so excited that she could scarcely have heard their calling her. But within two minutes, when they were walking back into the park, Aglaia said in her usual careless and capricious tones:
“I wanted to see how the farce would end.”
Chapter 3
The SCENE in the gardens had impressed both mother and daughters almost with horror. Excited and alarmed, Lizaveta Prokofyevna had literally almost run all the way home with her daughters. According to her notions and ideas, so much had happened, and so much had been brought to light by the incident, that certain ideas had taken definite shape in her brain, in spite of her confusion and alarm. But every one realised that something peculiar had happened, and that perhaps, and fortunately too, some extraordinary secret was on the verge of being disclosed. In spite of all Prince S.’s former assurances and explanations, Yevgeny Pavlovitch had been “unmasked,” exposed, detected, “and publicly found out in his connection with that creature.” So thought the mother and both her elder daughters. The only effect of that conclusion was to intensify the mystery. Though the girls were secretly somewhat indignant with their mother for her extreme alarm and too conspicuous flight, yet they did not venture to worry her with questions during the first shock of the disturbance. Moreover, something made them fancy that their sister Aglaia knew more of the matter than their mother and all of them put together. Prince S. too, looked black as night; he too seemed plunged in thought. Lizaveta Prokofyevna did not say a word to him all the way home, and he did not seem to be aware of it. Adelaida made an attempt to ask him, “What uncle had been spoken of just now and what had happened in Petersburg?” But with a very sour face he muttered something vague in reply about making inquiries, and its being all nonsense.
“No doubt of that,” assented Adelaida, and she asked nothing more.
Aglaia became exceptionally quiet, and only observed on the way that they were hurrying too fast. Once she turned round and caught sight of Myshkin, who was hastening after them. She smiled ironically at his efforts to overtake them, and did not look round at him again.
At last, when they were nearly reaching their villa, they saw Ivan Fyodorovitch, who had just arrived from Petersburg, coming to meet them. His first word was to ask after “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch. But his wife walked by him wrathfully, without answering or even looking at him. From the faces of his daughters and Prince S. he guessed at once there was a storm brewing. But apart from this, there was an unusual uneasiness in his expression. He took Prince S.’s arm, stopped him at the entrance, and exchanged a few words with him almost in a whisper. From the troubled air of both as they walked afterwards on to the verandah and went up to Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s room it might be surmised that they had heard some extraordinary news. By degrees, they were all gathered in Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s room upstairs, and no one but Myshkin was left at last on the verandah. Though he had no conscious motive for staying, yet he sat on in the corner as though expecting something. It did not occur to him, as they seemed so upset, that he had better go away. He seemed oblivious of the whole universe, and ready to go on sitting for the next two years, wherever he might be put. From time to time, sounds of anxious conversation reached him from above. He could not have said how long he had been sitting there. It had grown late and was quite dark when Aglaia suddenly came out on to the verandah. She looked calm though she was rather pale. Seeing Myshkin, whom she apparently had not expected to find sitting there in the corner, Aglaia smiled, as though perplexed.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, going up to him.
Myshkin muttered something in confusion, and jumped up from his seat. But Aglaia at once sat down beside him, and he sat down again. Suddenly she examined him attentively, then looked as though aimlessly at the window, and then again at him.
“Perhaps she wants to laugh at me,” Myshkin thought. “No, she’d have laughed at me then.”
“Perhaps you’d like some tea. I’ll order some,” she said, after a silence.
“N-no. I don’t know…”
“How do you mean — you don’t know? Oh, by the way, listen. If some one challenged you to a duel, what would vou do? I wanted to ask vou before.”
“Why . . . who … no one will challenge me to a duel.”
“But if they did? Would you be very much frightened?”
“I think I should be very… much afraid.”
“You mean it? Then you are a coward?”
“N-no. Perhaps not. A coward is a man who’s afraid and runs away. If one’s afraid and doesn’t run away, one’s not a coward,” said Myshkin, smiling, after a moment’s thought.
“And you wouldn’t run away?”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t run away.” He laughed at last at Aglaia’s questions.
“Though I’m a woman, nothing would make me run away,” she observed, almost offended. “But you’re laughing at me and pretending, as you usually do, to make yourself more interesting. Tell me, they fire at twelve paces, don’t they, sometimes at ten, so they must be killed or wounded?”
“People are not often killed at duels, I imagine.”
“Not often! Pushkin was killed.”
“That may have been accidental.”
“It wasn’t an accident. It was a duel to the death and he was killed.”
“The bullet struck him so low down that no doubt Dantes aimed higher, at his head or at his chest; no one aims like that, so it’s most likely that the bullet hit Pushkin by accident. People who understand told me so.”
“But a soldier I talked to once told me that they were ordered by the regulations to fire half-way-up, that’s their phrase ‘half-way-up.’ So they’re not ordered to fire at the head or the chest, but ‘half-way-up.’ I asked an officer afterwards and he told me it was perfectly true.”
“That’s probably because they fire from a long distance.”
“But can you shoot?”
“I never have shot.”
“Don’t you even know how to load a pistol?”
“No. That is, I know how it’s done, but I’ve never done it myself.”
“Well, that means you don’t know, for it wants practice. Listen and remember: first you must buy some good gun-powder, not damp (they say it must not be damp, but very dry), very fine powder, you must ask for that sort, not what’s used in cannon. The bullets, I’m told, people make themselves somehow. Have you pistols?”
“No, and I don’t want them,” laughed Myshkin.
“Oh, what nonsense! “Vbu must buy a good one, French or English. I’m told they’re the best. Then take a thimbleful of powder, or two thimblefuls, perhaps, and sprinkle it in. Better put plenty. Ram it in with felt (they say that felt is necessary for some reason); you can get that out of some mattress, or doors are sometimes covered with felt. Then, when you’ve poked the felt in, put in the bullet — do you hear, the bullet afterwards, the powder first, or it won’t shoot. Why are you laughing? I want you to practise shooting every day, and to learn to hit a mark. Will you?”
Myshkin laughed. Aglaia stamped her foot with vexation. The earnest air with which she carried on such a conversation somewhat surprised him. He rather felt that he must find out something, ask about something; something more serious anyway than the loading of a pistol. But everything had flown out of his head except the one fact, that she was sitting beside him, and that he was looking at her, and it made no difference to him at that moment what she talked about.
Ivan Fyodorovitch, himself, came downstairs and on to the verandah at last. He was going out with a frowning, anxious and resolute face.
“Ah, Lyov Nikolayevitch, that’s you. . . . Where are you going now?” he asked, though Myshkin showed no signs of moving. “Come along, I’ve a word to say to you.”
“Good-bye,” said Aglaia, and held out her hand to Myshkin.
It was rather dark on the verandah by now. He could not make out her face quite clearly. A minute later, when he had left the villa with the general, he suddenly flushed hotly, and squeezed his right hand tightly.
It appeared that Ivan Fyodorovitch had to go the same way. In spite of the late hour, he was hurrying to discuss something with some one. But
