The possessed or, The devils
was telling, "it was something so lofty, so subtle, that we never spoke
of it to one another all our lives." As the story went on, the cause
of this position of affairs appeared to be a blonde lady (if not Darya
Pavlovna I don't know of whom Stepan Trofimovitch could have been
thinking), this blonde owed everything to the brunette, and had grown up
in her house, being a distant relation. The brunette observing at last
the love of the blonde girl to Stepan Trofimovitch, kept her feelings
locked up in her heart. The blonde girl, noticing on her part the love
of the brunette to Stepan Trofimovitch, also locked her feelings in her
own heart. And all three, pining with mutual magnanimity, kept silent in
this way for twenty years, locking their feelings in their hearts. "Oh,
what a passion that was, what a passion that was!" he exclaimed with a
stifled sob of genuine ecstasy. "I saw the full blooming of her beauty"
(of the brunette's, that is), "I saw daily with an ache in my heart
how she passed by me as though ashamed she was so fair" (once he said
"ashamed she was so fat"). At last he had run away, casting off all this
feverish dream of twenty years--_vingt ans_--and now here he was on the
high road....
Then in a sort of delirium be began explaining to Sofya Matveyevna the
significance of their meeting that day, "so chance an encounter and
so fateful for all eternity." Sofya Matveyevna got up from the sofa in
terrible confusion at last. He had positively made an attempt to drop on
his knees before her, which made her cry. It was beginning to get dark.
They had been for some hours shut up in the room....
"No, you'd better let me go into the other room," she faltered, "or else
there's no knowing what people may think...."
She tore herself away at last; he let her go, promising her to go to bed
at once. As they parted he complained that he had a bad headache. Sofya
Matveyevna had on entering the cottage left her bag and things in the
first room, meaning to spend the night with the people of the house; but
she got no rest.
In the night Stepan Trofimovitch was attacked by the malady with which
I and all his friends were so familiar--the summer cholera, which was
always the outcome of any nervous strain or moral shock with him. Poor
Sofya Matveyevna did not sleep all night. As in waiting on the invalid
she was obliged pretty often to go in and out of the cottage through the
landlady's room, the latter, as well as the travellers who were sleeping
there, grumbled and even began swearing when towards morning she set
about preparing the samovar. Stepan Trofimovitch was half unconscious
all through the attack; at times he had a vision of the samovar being
set, of someone giving him something to drink (raspberry tea), and
putting something warm to his stomach and his chest. But he felt almost
every instant that she was here, beside him; that it was she going out
and coming in, lifting him off the bed and settling him in it again.
Towards three o'clock in the morning he began to be easier; he sat up,
put his legs out of bed and thinking of nothing he fell on the floor
at her feet. This was a very different matter from the kneeling of the
evening; he simply bowed down at her feet and kissed the hem of her
dress.
"Don't, sir, I am not worth it," she faltered, trying to get him back on
to the bed.
"My saviour," he cried, clasping his hands reverently before her. "_Vous
êtes noble comme une marquise!_ I--I am a wretch. Oh, I've been dishonest
all my life...."
"Calm yourself!" Sofya Matveyevna implored him.
"It was all lies that I told you this evening--to glorify myself, to
make it splendid, from pure wantonness--all, all, every word, oh, I am a
wretch, I am a wretch!"
The first attack was succeeded in this way by a second--an attack
of hysterical remorse. I have mentioned these attacks already when I
described his letters to Varvara Petrovna. He suddenly recalled Lise
and their meeting the previous morning. "It was so awful, and there must
have been some disaster and I didn't ask, didn't find out! I thought
only of myself. Oh, what's the matter with her? Do you know what's the
matter with her?" he besought Sofya Matveyevna.
Then he swore that "he would never change," that he would go back to
her (that is, Varvara Petrovna). "We" (that is, he and Sofya Matveyevna)
"will go to her steps every day when she is getting into her carriage
for her morning drive, and we will watch her in secret.... Oh, I wish
her to smite me on the other cheek; it's a joy to wish it! I shall turn
her my other cheek _comme dans votre livre!_ Only now for the first time
I understand what is meant by... turning the other cheek. I never
understood before!"
The two days that followed were among the most terrible in Sofya
Matveyevna's life; she remembers them with a shudder to this day. Stepan
Trofimovitch became so seriously ill that he could not go on board the
steamer, which on this occasion arrived punctually at two o'clock in the
afternoon. She could not bring herself to leave him alone, so she
did not leave for Spasov either. From her account he was positively
delighted at the steamer's going without him.
"Well, that's a good thing, that's capital!" he muttered in his bed.
"I've been afraid all the time that we should go. Here it's so nice,
better than anywhere.... You won't leave me? Oh, you have not left me!"
It was by no means so nice "here", however. He did not care to hear of
her difficulties; his head was full of fancies and nothing else. He
looked upon his illness as something transitory, a trifling ailment, and
did not think about it at all; he thought of nothing but how they would
go and sell "these books." He asked her to read him the gospel.
"I haven't read it for a long time... in the original. Some one may ask
me about it and I shall make a mistake; I ought to prepare myself after
all."
She sat down beside him and opened the book.
"You read beautifully," he interrupted her after the first line. "I see,
I see I was not mistaken," he added obscurely but ecstatically. He was,
in fact, in a continual state of enthusiasm. She read the Sermon on the
Mount.
"_Assez, assez, mon enfant,_ enough.... Don't you think that that is
enough?"
And he closed his eyes helplessly. He was very weak, but had not yet
lost consciousness. Sofya Matveyevna was getting up, thinking that he
wanted to sleep. But he stopped her.
"My friend, I've been telling lies all my life. Even when I told the
truth I never spoke for the sake of the truth, but always for my own
sake. I knew it before, but I only see it now.... Oh, where are those
friends whom I have insulted with my friendship all my life? And all,
all! _Savez-vous..._ perhaps I am telling lies now; no doubt I am telling
lies now. The worst of it is that I believe myself when I am lying. The
hardest thing in life is to live without telling lies... and without
believing in one's lies. Yes, yes, that's just it.... But wait a bit,
that can all come afterwards.... We'll be together, together," he added
enthusiastically.
"Stepan Trofimovitch," Sofya Matveyevna asked timidly, "hadn't I better
send to the town for the doctor?"
He was tremendously taken aback.
"What for? _Est-ce que je suis si malade? Mais rien de sérieux._ What need
have we of outsiders? They may find, besides--and what will happen then?
No, no, no outsiders and we'll be together."
"Do you know," he said after a pause, "read me something more, just the
first thing you come across."
Sofya Matveyevna opened the Testament and began reading.
"Wherever it opens, wherever it happens to open," he repeated.
"'And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans...'"
"What's that? What is it? Where is that from?"
"It's from the Revelation."
"_Oh, je m'en souviens, oui, l'Apocalypse. Lisez, lisez,_ I am trying our
future fortunes by the book. I want to know what has turned up. Read on
from there...."
"'And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write: These things
saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the
creation of God;
"'I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot;
I would thou wert cold or hot.
"'So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,
I will spue thee out of my mouth.
"'Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods,
and have need of nothing: and thou knowest not that thou art wretched,
and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.'"
"That too... and that's in your book too!" he exclaimed, with flashing
eyes and raising his head from the pillow. "I never knew that grand
passage! You hear, better be cold, better be cold than lukewarm, than
only lukewarm. Oh, I'll prove it! Only don't leave me, don't leave me
alone! We'll prove it, we'll prove it!"
"I won't leave you, Stepan Trofimovitch. I'll never leave you!" She took
his hand, pressed it in both of hers, and laid it against her heart,
looking at him with tears in her eyes. ("I felt very sorry for him at
that moment," she said, describing it afterwards.)
His lips twitched convulsively.
"But, Stepan Trofimovitch, what are we to do though? Oughtn't we to let
some of your friends know, or perhaps your relations?"
But at that he was so dismayed that she was very sorry that she had
spoken of it again. Trembling and shaking, he besought her to fetch no
one, not to do anything. He kept insisting, "No one, no one! We'll be
alone, by ourselves, alone, _nous partirons ensemble._"
Another difficulty was that the people of the house too began to be
uneasy; they grumbled, and kept pestering Sofya Matveyevna. She paid
them and managed to let them see her money. This softened them for the
time, but the man insisted on seeing Stepan Trofimovitch's "papers."
The invalid pointed with a supercilious smile to his little bag. Sofya
Matveyevna found in it the certificate of his having resigned his post
at the university, or something of the kind, which had served him as
a passport all his life. The man persisted, and said that "he must be
taken somewhere, because their house wasn't a hospital, and if he were
to die there might be a bother. We should have no end of trouble." Sofya
Matveyevna tried to speak to him of the doctor, but it appeared that
sending to the town would cost so much that she had to give up all
idea of the doctor. She returned in distress to her invalid. Stepan
Trofimovitch was getting weaker and weaker.
"Now read me another passage.... About the pigs," he said suddenly.
"What?" asked Sofya Matveyevna, very much alarmed.
"About the pigs... that's there too... _ces cochons._ I remember the
devils entered into swine and they all were drowned. You must read me
that; I'll tell you why afterwards. I want to remember it word for word.
I want it word for word."
Sofya Matveyevna knew the gospel well and at once found the passage in
St. Luke which I have chosen as the motto of my record. I quote it here
again:
"'And there was there one herd of many swine feeding on the mountain;
and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And
he suffered them.
"'Then went the devils out of the man and entered into the swine;
and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were
choked.
"'When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and
told it in the city and in the country.
"'Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus and found
the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of
Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind; and they were afraid.'"
"My friend," said Stepan Trofimovitch in great excitement "_savez-vous,_
that wonderful and... extraordinary passage has been a stumbling-block