“Well, go on.”
She now rose solemnly from her seat, walked to the centre of the terrace, and stood in front of the prince’s chair. All looked on with some surprise, and Prince S. and her sisters with feelings of decided alarm, to see what new frolic she was up to; it had gone quite far enough already, they thought. But Aglaya evidently thoroughly enjoyed the affectation and ceremony with which she was introducing her recitation of the poem.
“Then look out for him, I warn you! He won’t forgive you easily, for taking back the letter.”
| “At Pavlofsk! He is at Pavlofsk, undoubtedly!” interrupted Lebedeff.... “But come--let us go into the garden--we will have coffee there....” And Lebedeff seized the prince’s arm, and led him from the room. They went across the yard, and found themselves in a delightful little garden with the trees already in their summer dress of green, thanks to the unusually fine weather. Lebedeff invited his guest to sit down on a green seat before a table of the same colour fixed in the earth, and took a seat facing him. In a few minutes the coffee appeared, and the prince did not refuse it. The host kept his eyes fixed on Muishkin, with an expression of passionate servility. |
Lebedeff could restrain himself no longer; he made his way through the row of chairs.
“You seem to be very religious,” he continued, kindly, addressing the prince, “which is a thing one meets so seldom nowadays among young people.”
III.
Aglaya suddenly burst out laughing, as simply as a child.
“I should refuse to say a word if _I_ were ordered to tell a story like that!” observed Aglaya.
The general had not come down from town as yet, nor had Evgenie Pavlovitch arrived.
| Sure enough the cloak was lying on the ground. Nastasia had thrown it off her towards the prince, expecting him to catch it, but the prince had missed it. |
| “Yes, of course; he had written letters to the latter with proposals of peace, had he not?” put in the prince. |
“Oh, but I did not speak of individual representatives. I was merely talking about Roman Catholicism, and its essence--of Rome itself. A Church can never entirely disappear; I never hinted at that!”
“‘Whoso forsakes his country forsakes his God.’
| “No, they did not cure me.” |
“I want to go and look after my country estates. You advised me to do that yourself,” was the reply. “And then I wish to go abroad.”
“It was a dream, of course,” he said, musingly. “Strange that I should have a dream like that at such a moment. Sit down--”
It seemed clear to the prince that Aglaya forgave him, and that he might go there again this very evening; and in his eyes that was not only the main thing, but everything in the world.
| Nastasia introduced the prince to her guests, to most of whom he was already known. |
“Yes.”
“In spite of his lack of amiability, I could not help seeing, in Rogojin a man of intellect and sense; and although, perhaps, there was little in the outside world which was of interest to him, still he was clearly a man with eyes to see.
“Perhaps it wasn’t loaded,” said several voices.
“Where they played last night. Then I found this bench and sat down, and thought and thought--and at last I fell fast asleep.”
“But I tell you she is not in Pavlofsk! She’s in Colmina.”
| Oh, no, he did not think of Aglaya as a boarding-school miss, or a young lady of the conventional type! He had long since feared that she might take some such step as this. But why did she wish to see Nastasia? |
Aglaya was quite alone, and dressed, apparently hastily, in a light mantle. Her face was pale, as it had been in the morning, and her eyes were ablaze with bright but subdued fire. He had never seen that expression in her eyes before.
In a word, the whole place was confined, and a “tight fit” for the party. Gania used to grind his teeth with rage over the state of affairs; though he was anxious to be dutiful and polite to his mother. However, it was very soon apparent to anyone coming into the house, that Gania was the tyrant of the family.
“Well, meanwhile that sick boy was brought here, and those guests came in, and we had tea, and--well, we made merry--to my ruin! Hearing of your birthday afterwards, and excited with the circumstances of the evening, I ran upstairs and changed my plain clothes once more for my uniform [Civil Service clerks in Russia wear uniform.]--you must have noticed I had my uniform on all the evening? Well, I forgot the money in the pocket of my old coat--you know when God will ruin a man he first of all bereaves him of his senses--and it was only this morning at half-past seven that I woke up and grabbed at my coat pocket, first thing. The pocket was empty--the purse gone, and not a trace to be found!”
| “Or would you like me to bid him, _bid him_, do you hear, _command him_, now, at once, to throw you up, and remain mine for ever? Shall I? He will stay, and he will marry me too, and you shall trot home all alone. Shall I?--shall I say the word?” she screamed like a madwoman, scarcely believing herself that she could really pronounce such wild words. |
“It was a large old-fashioned pocket-book, stuffed full; but I guessed, at a glance, that it had anything in the world inside it, except money.
| Evgenie Pavlovitch flushed up and looked angrily at Nastasia Philipovna, then turned his back on her. |
“He is the sort of man,” he continued, “who won’t give up his object, you know; he is not like you and me, prince--he belongs to quite a different order of beings. If he sets his heart on a thing he won’t be afraid of anything--” and so on.
| “And now it is you who have brought them together again?” |
| At this point General Epanchin, noticing how interested Muishkin had become in the conversation, said to him, in a low tone: |
“However, I bear you no grudge,” said Hippolyte suddenly, and, hardly conscious of what he was doing, he held out his hand with a smile. The gesture took Evgenie Pavlovitch by surprise, but with the utmost gravity he touched the hand that was offered him in token of forgiveness.
“I don’t know at all; but she said I was to tell you particularly.”
“Here they are,” said Rogojin, after a still longer pause.
“Her mother allowed all this to go on, and nodded her head and encouraged them. The old woman was very ill at that time, and knew she was dying (she really did die a couple of months later), and though she felt the end approaching she never thought of forgiving her daughter, to the very day of her death. She would not even speak to her. She made her sleep on straw in a shed, and hardly gave her food enough to support life.
And so they parted.
| “To the station, quick! If you catch the train you shall have another. Quick!” |
| Lebedeff immediately procured the services of an old doctor, and carried the latter away to Pavlofsk to see the prince, by way of viewing the ground, as it were, and to give him (Lebedeff) counsel as to whether the thing was to be done or not. The visit was not to be official, but merely friendly. |
“Widower. Why do you want to know all this?”
| “Kapiton Eropegoff--not Captain Eropegoff!--Kapiton--major retired--Eropegoff--Kapiton.” |
“Yes, Nicolai Andreevitch--that was his name,” and the young fellow looked earnestly and with curiosity at the all-knowing gentleman with the red nose.
“He is drunk,” said the prince, quietly, “and he loves you very much.”
“Pure amiable curiosity,--I assure you--desire to do a service. That’s all. Now I’m entirely yours again, your slave; hang me if you like!”
“If you don’t mind, I would rather sit here with you,” said the prince; “I should prefer it to sitting in there.”
“Why not? But look here, Colia, I’m tired; besides, the subject is too melancholy to begin upon again. How is he, though?”
When the prince entered, Lebedeff was standing in the middle of the room, his back to the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves, on account of the extreme heat, and he seemed to have just reached the peroration of his speech, and was impressively beating his breast.
| “Only on condition that he has a napkin under his chin at lunch, then,” said Mrs. Epanchin, “and let Fedor, or Mavra, stand behind him while he eats. Is he quiet when he has these fits? He doesn’t show violence, does he?” |
The prince actually felt glad that he had been interrupted,--and might return the letters to his pocket. He was glad of the respite.
“Look at that, now,” thought the mother to herself, “she does nothing but sleep and eat for a year at a time, and then suddenly flies out in the most incomprehensible way!”
“But what a pretty girl! Who is she?”
| “One word, just one word from you, and I’m saved.” |
| “What? Impossible! To Nastasia Philipovna? Nonsense!” cried the prince. |
“When I entered the yard I thought I saw a man going along on the far side of it; but it was so dark I could not make out his figure.
“No--I asked you this--answer this! Do you intend to ask for my hand, or not?”
“Yes, a candle! What’s there improbable about that?”
| “I daren’t say, one way or the other; all this is very strange--but--” |
| “She ought to be whipped--that’s the only way to deal with creatures like that--she ought to be whipped!” |
“No, they did not cure me.”