was almost like terror, Myshkin held the paper clenched tightly in his right hand again, and hastily leapt away from the window, from the light, like a frightened thief; but in doing so he ran full-tilt into a gentleman who was standing just behind his back.
“I have been following you, prince,” said the gentleman.
“Is that you, Keller?” cried Myshkin, surprised.
“I was looking for you, prince. I’ve been watching for you by the Epanchins’. Of course, I couldn’t go in. I walked behind you while you were with the general. I am at your service, prince, you may dispose of me. lam ready for any sacrifice, even death, if need be.”
“Oh .. .what for?”
“Why, no doubt a challenge will follow. That Lieutenant. … I know him, though not personally . . . he won’t accept an affront. The likes of us, that is, Rogozhin and me, he is inclined to look upon as dirt, and perhaps deservedly, so you are the only one called upon. You’ll have to pay the piper, prince. He’s been inquiring about you, I hear, and no doubt, a friend of his will call on you to-morrow, or he may be waiting for you now. If you do me the honour to choose me for your second, I’m ready to be degraded to the ranks for you. That’s why I’ve been looking for you, prince.”
“So you’re talking of a duel too!” laughed Myshkin, to Keller’s great surprise.
He laughed heartily. Keller, who had been on tenterhooks until he had satisfied himself by offering to be Myshkin’s second, was almost offended at the sight of the prince’s light-hearted mirth.
“But you seized him by the arms, this afternoon, prince. That’s hard for a man of honour to put up with in a public place.”
“And he gave me a push in the chest!” cried Myshkin, laughing. “There’s nothing for us to fight about! I’ll beg his pardon, that’s all. But if we must fight, we will! Let him shoot, I should like it. Ha-ha! I know how to load a pistol now. Do you know I’ve been taught how to load a pistol? Can you load a pistol, Keller? First you have to buy powder, pistol powder, not damp, and not as coarse as for cannon. Then you have to put the powder in first, and get some felt off a door. And then you have to put the bullet in afterwards, and not the bullet before the powder, or it won’t go off. Do you hear, Keller? or else it won’t go off. Ha-ha! Isn’t that a magnificent reason, friend Keller? Ach, Keller, do you know I must hug you and give you a kiss this minute! Ha-ha-ha! How was it that you turned up so suddenly this afternoon? Come and see me some time soon and have some champagne. We’ll all get drunk. Do you know I’ve twelve bottles of champagne at home in Lebedyev’s cellar? They came into his hands somehow and he sold them to me the day before yesterday; the very day after I moved into his house, I bought them all. I’ll get the whole party together. Are you going to sleep to-night?”
“As I do every night, prince.”
“Well, pleasant dreams, then. Ha-ha!”
Myshkin crossed the road and vanished into the park, leaving Keller somewhat perplexed. He had never yet seen Myshkin in such a strange mood, and could not have imagined him like this.
“Fever, perhaps, for he’s a nervous man, and all this has affected him; but yet he won’t be frightened. I am sure that sort are not cowards, by Jove!” Keller was thinking to himself. “Hm! champagne! an interesting fact, though! Twelve bottles, a dozen; a decent provision. I’ll bet that Lebedyev got that champagne as a pledge from some one. Hm! he’s rather nice, that prince; I like such fellows; there’s no time to lose though, and . . . if there’s champagne, it’s the moment for it….”
That Myshkin was almost in a fever was, of course, a correct surmise.
He wandered a long while about the dark park, and at last “found himself walkinq alonq an avenue.
The impression was left on his consciousness of having walked thirty or forty times up and down that avenue from the seat to a tall and conspicuous old tree, a distance of a hundred paces. He could not, if he had tried, have remembered what he had been thinking all that time, which must have been at least an hour. He caught himself, however, thinking one thought which made him burst out laughing; though there was nothing to laugh at, he kept wanting to laugh. It occurred to him that the suggestion of a duel might have arisen not only in Keller’s mind, and that, therefore, the conversation about the loading of pistols was not without motive.
“Bah!” He stopped suddenly. Another idea dawned upon him. “She came out on to the verandah just now when I was sitting there in the corner, and was awfully surprised to find me there and — how she laughed . . . she talked about tea; and she had that note in her hands all the while, of course. So she must have known I was sitting on the verandah. Why then was she surprised? Ha-ha!”
He took the letter out of his pocket and kissed it, but at once stopped short and pondered.
“How strange it is! How strange it is!” he said, a minute later, even with a certain sadness. In moments of intense joy he always grew sad, he could not himself have said why. He looked round attentively and was surprised that he had come there. He was very tired; he went to the seat and sat down on it. There was an extraordinary stillness all round. The music in the gardens had ceased, there was perhaps no one left in the park. It must have been at least half-past eleven. It was a soft, warm, clear night — a Petersburg night in early June, but in the thick shady avenue where he was sitting it was almost dark.
If anyone had told him at that moment that he had fallen in love, that he was passionately in love, he would have rejected the idea with surprise and perhaps with indignation. And if anyone had added that Aglaia’s letterwas a love-letter, arranging a tryst with a lover, he would have been hotly ashamed of such a man, and would perhaps have challenged him to a duel. All this was perfectly sincere, and he never once doubted it, or admitted the slightest “double” thought of a possibility of the girl’s loving him or even of his loving her. He would have been ashamed of such an idea. The possibility of love for him, “for such a man as he was,” he would have looked upon as a monstrous thing. He fancied that, if it really meant anything, it was only mischief on her part. But he was quite unconcerned by that consideration, and thought it all in the natural order of things. He was occupied and absorbed with something quite different. He fully believed the statement dropped by the excited general that she was making fun of every one, and of him, Myshkin, particularly. He did not feel in the least insulted at this; to his thinking, it was quite as it should be. To him the chief thing was that to-morrow he would see her again early in the morning, would sit beside her on the green seat, would learn how to load a pistol, and would look at her. He wanted nothing more. It did once or twice occur to him to wonder what she meant to say to him, and what was this important matter which concerned him so directly. Moreover, he never had a moment’s doubt of the real existence of that “important matter” for which he was summoned. But he was far from considering that “important matter” now. He did not feel, indeed, the slightest inclination to think about it.
The crunch of slow footsteps on the sand of the avenue made him raise his head. A man whose face was difficult to distinguish in the dark came up to the seat and sat down beside him. Myshkin turned quickly, almost touching him, and discerned the pale face of Rogozhin.
“I knew you were wandering about here somewhere. I haven’t been long finding you,” Rogozhin muttered through his teeth.
It was the first time they had seen each other since their meeting in the corridor of the hotel. Amazed at Rogozhin’s sudden appearance, Myshkin could not for some time collect his thoughts, and an agonizing sensation rose up again in his heart. Rogozhin saw the effect he had produced, but although he was at first taken aback and talked with an air of studied ease, Myshkin fancied soon that there was nothing studied about him, nor even any special embarrassment. If there were any awkwardness in his gestures and words, it was only on the surface. The man could not change at heart.
“How did . . . you find me here?” asked Myshkin, in order to say something.
“I heard from Keller (I was qoinq to see vou), ‘he’s gone into the park,’ he said. Well, thought I, so that’s how it is.”
“What is?” Myshkin anxiously caught up the phrase he had dropped.
Rogozhin laughed but gave no explanation.
“I got your letter, Lyov Nikolayevitch. It’s all of no use . . . and I wonder at you. But now I’ve come to you from her. She bade me bring you without fail. She is very anxious to say something to you.