The possessed or, The devils
an intellectual gentleman."
"It's not for a goose like you to judge of his intellect. Did he offer
you his hand?"
The speaker trembled.
"Did he fall in love with you? Speak! Did he offer you his hand?"
Varvara Petrovna shouted peremptorily.
"That was pretty much how it was," she murmured tearfully. "But I took
it all to mean nothing, because of his illness," she added firmly,
raising her eyes.
"What is your name?"
"Sofya Matveyevna, madam."
"Well, then, let me tell you, Sofya Matveyevna, that he is a wretched
and worthless little man.... Good Lord! Do you look upon me as a wicked
woman?"
Sofya Matveyevna gazed open-eyed.
"A wicked woman, a tyrant? Who has ruined his life?"
"How can that be when you are crying yourself, madam?"
Varvara Petrovna actually had tears in her eyes.
"Well, sit down, sit down, don't be frightened. Look me straight in the
face again. Why are you blushing? Dasha, come here. Look at her. What do
you think of her? Her heart is pure...."
And to the amazement and perhaps still greater alarm of Sofya
Matveyevna, she suddenly patted her on the cheek.
"It's only a pity she is a fool. Too great a fool for her age. That's
all right, my dear, I'll look after you. I see that it's all nonsense.
Stay near here for the time. A room shall be taken for you and you shall
have food and everything else from me... till I ask for you."
Sofya Matveyevna stammered in alarm that she must hurry on.
"You've no need to hurry. I'll buy all your books, and meantime you stay
here. Hold your tongue; don't make excuses. If I hadn't come you would
have stayed with him all the same, wouldn't you?"
"I wouldn't have left him on any account," Sofya Matveyevna brought out
softly and firmly, wiping her tears.
It was late at night when Doctor Salzfish was brought. He was a very
respectable old man and a practitioner of fairly wide experience who had
recently lost his post in the service in consequence of some quarrel
on a point of honour with his superiors. Varvara Petrovna instantly
and actively took him under her protection. He examined the patient
attentively, questioned him, and cautiously pronounced to Varvara
Petrovna that "the sufferer's" condition was highly dubious in
consequence of complications, and that they must be prepared "even for
the worst." Varvara Petrovna, who had during twenty years got
accustomed to expecting nothing serious or decisive to come from Stepan
Trofimovitch, was deeply moved and even turned pale. "Is there really no
hope?"
"Can there ever be said to be absolutely no hope? But..." She did not go
to bed all night, and felt that the morning would never come. As soon
as the patient opened his eyes and returned to consciousness (he was
conscious all the time, however, though he was growing weaker every
hour), she went up to him with a very resolute air.
"Stepan Trofimovitch, one must be prepared for anything. I've sent for a
priest. You must do what is right...."
Knowing his convictions, she was terribly afraid of his refusing. He
looked at her with surprise.
"Nonsense, nonsense!" she vociferated, thinking he was already refusing.
"This is no time for whims. You have played the fool enough."
"But... am I really so ill, then?"
He agreed thoughtfully. And indeed I was much surprised to learn from
Varvara Petrovna afterwards that he showed no fear of death at all.
Possibly it was that he simply did not believe it, and still looked upon
his illness as a trifling one.
He confessed and took the sacrament very readily. Every one, Sofya
Matveyevna, and even the servants, came to congratulate him on taking
the sacrament. They were all moved to tears looking at his sunken and
exhausted face and his blanched and quivering lips.
"_Oui, mes amis,_ and I only wonder that you... take so much trouble. I
shall most likely get up to-morrow, and we will... set off.... _Toute
cette cérémonie_... for which, of course, I feel every proper respect...
was..."
"I beg you, father, to remain with the invalid," said Varvara Petrovna
hurriedly, stopping the priest, who had already taken off his vestments.
"As soon as tea has been handed, I beg you to begin to speak of
religion, to support his faith."
The priest spoke; every one was standing or sitting round the sick-bed.
"In our sinful days," the priest began smoothly, with a cup of tea in
his hand, "faith in the Most High is the sole refuge of the race of man
in all the trials and tribulations of life, as well as its hope for that
eternal bliss promised to the righteous."
Stepan Trofimovitch seemed to revive, a subtle smile strayed on his
lips.
_"Mon père, je vous remercie et vous êtes bien bon, mais..."_
"No _mais_ about it, no _mais_ at all!" exclaimed Varvara Petrovna,
bounding up from her chair. "Father," she said, addressing the priest,
"he is a man who... he is a man who... You will have to confess him
again in another hour! That's the sort of man he is."
Stepan Trofimovitch smiled faintly.
"My friends," he said, "God is necessary to me, if only because He is
the only being whom one can love eternally."
Whether he was really converted, or whether the stately ceremony of
the administration of the sacrament had impressed him and stirred the
artistic responsiveness of his temperament or not, he firmly and, I
am told, with great feeling uttered some words which were in flat
contradiction with many of his former convictions.
"My immortality is necessary if only because God will not be guilty
of injustice and extinguish altogether the flame of love for Him once
kindled in my heart. And what is more precious than love? Love is higher
than existence, love is the crown of existence; and how is it possible
that existence should not be under its dominance? If I have once loved
Him and rejoiced in my love, is it possible that He should extinguish me
and my joy and bring me to nothingness again? If there is a God, then I
am immortal. _Voilà ma profession de foi._"
"There is a God, Stepan Trofimovitch, I assure you there is," Varvara
Petrovna implored him. "Give it up, drop all your foolishness for once
in your life!" (I think she had not quite understood his _profession de
foi_.)
"My friend," he said, growing more and more animated, though his voice
broke frequently, "as soon as I understood... that turning of the cheek,
I... understood something else as well. _J'ai menti toute ma vie,_ all my
life, all! I should like... but that will do to-morrow.... To-morrow we
will all set out."
Varvara Petrovna burst into tears. He was looking about for someone.
"Here she is, she is here!" She seized Sofya Matveyevna by the hand and
led her to him. He smiled tenderly.
"Oh, I should dearly like to live again!" he exclaimed with an
extraordinary rush of energy. "Every minute, every instant of life ought
to be a blessing to man... they ought to be, they certainly ought to be!
It's the duty of man to make it so; that's the law of his nature, which
always exists even if hidden.... Oh, I wish I could see Petrusha... and
all of them... Shatov..."
I may remark that as yet no one had heard of Shatov's fate--not Varvara
Petrovna nor Darya Pavlovna, nor even Salzfish, who was the last to come
from the town.
Stepan Trofimovitch became more and more excited, feverishly so, beyond
his strength.
"The mere fact of the ever present idea that there exists something
infinitely more just and more happy than I am fills me through and
through with tender ecstasy--and glorifies me--oh, whoever I may be,
whatever I have done! What is far more essential for man than personal
happiness is to know and to believe at every instant that there is
somewhere a perfect and serene happiness for all men and for
everything.... The one essential condition of human existence is that
man should always be able to bow down before something infinitely great.
If men are deprived of the infinitely great they will not go on living
and will die of despair. The Infinite and the Eternal are as essential
for man as the little planet on which he dwells. My friends, all, all:
hail to the Great Idea! The Eternal, Infinite Idea! It is essential to
every man, whoever he may be, to bow down before what is the Great Idea.
Even the stupidest man needs something great. Petrusha... oh, how I want
to see them all again! They don't know, they don't know that that same
Eternal, Grand Idea lies in them all!"
Doctor Salzfish was not present at the ceremony. Coming in suddenly, he
was horrified, and cleared the room, insisting that the patient must not
be excited.
Stepan Trofimovitch died three days later, but by that time he was
completely unconscious. He quietly went out like a candle that is burnt
down. After having the funeral service performed, Varvara Petrovna
took the body of her poor friend to Skvoreshniki. His grave is in the
precincts of the church and is already covered with a marble slab. The
inscription and the railing will be added in the spring.
Varvara Petrovna's absence from town had lasted eight days. Sofya
Matveyevna arrived in the carriage with her and seems to have settled
with her for good. I may mention that as soon as Stepan Trofimovitch
lost consciousness (the morning that he received the sacrament) Varvara
Petrovna promptly asked Sofya Matveyevna to leave the cottage again, and
waited on the invalid herself unassisted to the end, but she sent for
her at once when he had breathed his last. Sofya Matveyevna was terribly
alarmed by Varvara Petrovna's proposition, or rather command, that she
should settle for good at Skvoreshniki, but the latter refused to listen
to her protests.
"That's all nonsense! I will go with you to sell the gospel. I have no
one in the world now."
"You have a son, however," Salzfish observed.
"I have no son!" Varvara Petrovna snapped out--and it was like a
prophecy.
CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION
ALL THE CRIMES AND VILLAINIES THAT had been perpetrated were discovered
with extraordinary rapidity, much more quickly than Pyotr Stepanovitch
had expected. To begin with, the luckless Marya Ignatyevna waked up
before daybreak on the night of her husband's murder, missed him and
flew into indescribable agitation, not seeing him beside her. The woman
who had been hired by Anna Prohorovna, and was there for the night,
could not succeed in calming her, and as soon as it was daylight ran
to fetch Arina Prohorovna herself, assuring the invalid that the latter
knew where her husband was, and when he would be back. Meantime Arina
Prohorovna was in some anxiety too; she had already heard from her
husband of the deed perpetrated that night at Skvoreshniki. He had
returned home about eleven o'clock in a terrible state of mind and
body; wringing his hands, he flung himself face downwards on his bed and
shaking with convulsive sobs kept repeating, "It's not right, it's not
right, it's not right at all!" He ended, of course, by confessing it all
to Arina Prohorovna--but to no one else in the house. She left him on
his bed, sternly impressing upon him that "if he must blubber he must do
it in his pillow so as not to be overheard, and that he would be a fool
if he showed any traces of it next day." She felt somewhat anxious,
however, and began at once to clear things up in case of emergency;
she succeeded in hiding or completely destroying all suspicious papers,
books, manifestoes perhaps. At the same time she reflected that she, her
sister, her aunt, her sister-in-law the student, and perhaps even her
long-eared brother had really nothing much to be afraid of. When the
nurse ran to her in the morning she went without a second thought to
Marya Ignatyevna's. She was desperately anxious, moreover, to find out
whether what her husband had told her that night in a terrified and