He fell senseless at last—and was carried into the prince’s study.
Lebedeff, now quite sobered down, sent for a doctor; and he and his daughter, with Burdovsky and General Ivolgin, remained by the sick man’s couch.
When he was carried away unconscious, Keller stood in the middle of the room, and made the following declaration to the company in general, in a loud tone of voice, with em-phasis upon each word.
‘Gentlemen, if any one of you casts any doubt again, be-
fore me, upon Hippolyte’s good faith, or hints that the cap was forgotten intentionally, or suggests that this unhappy boy was acting a part before us, I beg to announce that the person so speaking shall account to me for his words.’
No one replied.
The company departed very quickly, in a mass. Ptitsin, Gania, and Rogojin went away together.
The prince was much astonished that Evgenie Pavlovitch changed his mind, and took his departure without the con-versation he had requested.
‘Why, you wished to have a talk with me when the oth-ers left?’ he said.
‘Quite so,’ said Evgenie, sitting down suddenly beside him, ‘but I have changed my mind for the time being. I con-fess, I am too disturbed, and so, I think, are you; and the matter as to which I wished to consult you is too serious to tackle with one’s mind even a little disturbed; too serious both for myself and for you. You see, prince, for once in my life I wish to perform an absolutely honest action, that is, an action with no ulterior motive; and I think I am hardly in a condition to talk of it just at this moment, and—and—well, we’ll discuss it another time. Perhaps the matter may gain in clearness if we wait for two or three days—just the two or three days which I must spend in Petersburg.’
Here he rose again from his chair, so that it seemed strange that he should have thought it worth while to sit down at all.
The prince thought, too, that he looked vexed and an-noyed, and not nearly so friendly towards himself as he had
been earlier in the night.
‘I suppose you will go to the sufferer’s bedside now?’ he added.
‘Yes, I am afraid…’ began the prince.
‘Oh, you needn’t fear! He’ll live another six weeks all right. Very likely he will recover altogether; but I strongly advise you to pack him off tomorrow.’
‘I think I may have offended him by saying nothing just now. I am afraid he may suspect that I doubted his good faith,—about shooting himself, you know. What do you think, Evgenie Pavlovitch?’
‘Not a bit of it! You are much too good to him; you shouldn’t care a hang about what he thinks. I have heard of such things before, but never came across, till tonight, a man who would actually shoot himself in order to gain a vulgar notoriety, or blow out his brains for spite, if he finds that people don’t care to pat him on the back for his sanguinary intentions. But what astonishes me more than anything is the fellow’s candid confession of weakness. You’d better get rid of him tomorrow, in any case.
‘Do you think he will make another attempt?’
‘Oh no, not he, not now! But you have to be very careful with this sort of gentleman. Crime is too often the last re-source of these petty nonentities. This young fellow is quite capable of cutting the throats of ten people, simply for a lark, as he told us in his ‘explanation.’ I assure you those confounded words of his will not let me sleep.’
‘I think you disturb yourself too much.’
‘What an extraordinary person you are, prince! Do you
mean to say that you doubt the fact that he is capable of murdering ten men?’
‘I daren’t say, one way or the other; all this is very strange— but—‘
‘Well, as you like, just as you like,’ said Evgenie Pavlov-itch, irritably. ‘Only you are such a plucky fellow, take care you don’t get included among the ten victims!’
‘Oh, he is much more likely not to kill anyone at all,’ said the prince, gazing thoughtfully at Evgenie. The latter laughed disagreeably.
‘Well, au revoir! Did you observe that he ‘willed’ a copy of his confession to Aglaya Ivanovna?’
‘Yes, I did; I am thinking of it.’
‘In connection with ‘the ten,’ eh?’ laughed Evgenie, as he left the room.
An hour later, towards four o’clock, the prince went into the park. He had endeavoured to fall asleep, but could not, owing to the painful beating of his heart.
He had left things quiet and peaceful; the invalid was fast asleep, and the doctor, who had been called in, had stated that there was no special danger. Lebedeff, Colia, and Bur-dovsky were lying down in the sick-room, ready to take it in turns to watch. There was nothing to fear, therefore, at home.
But the prince’s mental perturbation increased every moment. He wandered about the park, looking absently around him, and paused in astonishment when he sudden-ly found himself in the empty space with the rows of chairs round it, near the Vauxhall. The look of the place struck
him as dreadful now: so he turned round and went by the path which he had followed with the Epanchins on the way to the band, until he reached the green bench which Agla-ya had pointed out for their rendezvous. He sat down on it and suddenly burst into a loud fit of laughter, immediately followed by a feeling of irritation. His disturbance of mind continued; he felt that he must go away somewhere, any-where.
Above his head some little bird sang out, of a sudden; he began to peer about for it among the leaves. Suddenly the bird darted out of the tree and away, and instantly he thought of the ‘fly buzzing about in the sun’s rays’ that Hip-polyte had talked of; how that it knew its place and was a participator in the universal life, while he alone was an ‘out-cast.’ This picture had impressed him at the time, and he meditated upon it now. An old, forgotten memory awoke in his brain, and suddenly burst into clearness and light. It was a recollection of Switzerland, during the first year of his cure, the very first months. At that time he had been pretty nearly an idiot still; he could not speak properly, and had dificulty in understanding when others spoke to him. He climbed the mountain-side, one sunny morning, and wan-dered long and aimlessly with a certain thought in his brain, which would not become clear. Above him was the blaz-ing sky, below, the lake; all around was the horizon, clear and infinite. He looked out upon this, long and anxiously. He remembered how he had stretched out his arms towards the beautiful, boundless blue of the horizon, and wept, and wept. What had so tormented him was the idea that he was
a stranger to all this, that he was outside this glorious fes-tival.
What was this universe? What was this grand, eternal pageant to which he had yearned from his childhood up, and in which he could never take part? Every morning the same magnificent sun; every morning the same rainbow in the waterfall; every evening the same glow on the snow-mountains.
Every little fly that buzzed in the sun’s rays was a singer in the universal chorus, ‘knew its place, and was happy in it.
‘Every blade of grass grew and was happy. Everything knew its path and loved it, went forth with a song and returned with a song; only he knew nothing, understood nothing, neither men nor words, nor any of nature’s voices; he was a stranger and an outcast.
Oh, he could not then speak these words, or express all he felt! He had been tormented dumbly; but now it appeared to him that he must have said these very words—even then— and that Hippolyte must have taken his picture of the little fly from his tears and words of that time.
He was sure of it, and his heart beat excitedly at the thought, he knew not why.
He fell asleep on the bench; but his mental disquiet con-tinued through his slumbers.
Just before he dozed off, the idea of Hippolyte murder-ing ten men flitted through his brain, and he smiled at the absurdity of such a thought.
Around him all was quiet; only the flutter and whisper of the leaves broke the silence, but broke it only to cause it to
appear yet more deep and still.
He dreamed many dreams as he sat there, and all were full of disquiet, so that he shuddered every moment.
At length a woman seemed to approach him. He knew her, oh! he knew her only too well. He could always name her and recognize her anywhere; but, strange, she seemed to have quite a different face from hers, as he had known it, and he felt a tormenting desire to be able to say she was not the same woman. In the face before him there was such dreadful remorse and horror that he thought she must be a criminal, that she must have just committed some awful crime.
Tears were trembling on her white cheek. She beckoned him, but placed
