The possessed or, The devils
kindness and the direct warm sympathy of all the better classes that we
can direct this great common cause in the true path. Oh, heavens, have
we many noble personalities among us! There are some, of course, but
they are scattered far and wide. Let us unite and we shall be stronger.
In one word, I shall first have a literary matinée, then a light
luncheon, then an interval, and in the evening a ball. We meant to begin
the evening by living pictures, but it would involve a great deal
of expense, and so, to please the public, there will be one or two
quadrilles in masks and fancy dresses, representing well-known literary
schools. This humorous idea was suggested by Karmazinov. He has been a
great help to me. Do you know he's going to read us the last thing he's
written, which no one has seen yet. He is laying down the pen, and will
write no more. This last essay is his farewell to the public. It's a
charming little thing called 'Merci.' The title is French; he thinks
that more amusing and even subtler. I do, too. In fact I advised it. I
think Stepan Trofimovitch might read us something too, if it were quite
short and... not so very learned. I believe Pyotr Stepanovitch and some
one else too will read something. Pyotr Stepanovitch shall run round
to you and tell you the programme. Better still, let me bring it to you
myself."
"Allow me to put my name down in your subscription list too. I'll tell
Stepan Trofimovitch and will beg him to consent."
Varvara Petrovna returned home completely fascinated. She was ready
to stand up for Yulia Mihailovna through thick and thin, and for some
reason was already quite put out with Stepan Trofimovitch, while he,
poor man, sat at home, all unconscious.
"I'm in love with her. I can't understand how I could be so mistaken in
that woman," she said to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch and Pyotr Stepanovitch,
who dropped in that evening.
"But you must make peace with the old man all the same," Pyotr
Stepanovitch submitted. "He's in despair. You've quite sent him to
Coventry. Yesterday he met your carriage and bowed, and you turned away.
We'll trot him out, you know; I'm reckoning on him for something, and he
may still be useful."
"Oh, he'll read something."
"I don't mean only that. And I was meaning to drop in on him to-day. So
shall I tell him?"
"If you like. I don't know, though, how you'll arrange it," she said
irresolutely. "I was meaning to have a talk with him myself, and wanted
to fix the time and place."
She frowned.
"Oh, it's not worth while fixing a time. I'll simply give him the
message."
"Very well, do. Add that I certainly will fix a time to see him though.
Be sure to say that too."
Pyotr Stepanovitch ran off, grinning. He was, in fact, to the best of
my recollection, particularly spiteful all this time, and ventured upon
extremely impatient sallies with almost every one. Strange to say, every
one, somehow, forgave him. It was generally accepted that he was not to
be looked at from the ordinary standpoint. I may remark that he took up
an extremely resentful attitude about Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's duel.
It took him unawares. He turned positively green when he was told of it.
Perhaps his vanity was wounded: he only heard of it next day when every
one knew of it.
"You had no right to fight, you know," he whispered to Stavrogin, five
days later, when he chanced to meet him at the club. It was remarkable
that they had not once met during those five days, though Pyotr
Stepanovitch had dropped in at Varvara Petrovna's almost every day.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked at him in silence with an absent-minded
air, as though not understanding what was the matter, and he went on
without stopping. He was crossing the big hall of the club on his way to
the refreshment room.
"You've been to see Shatov too.... You mean to make it known about Marya
Timofyevna," Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered, running after him, and, as
though not thinking of what he was doing he clutched at his shoulder.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch shook his hand off and turned round quickly
to him with a menacing scowl. Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at him with
a strange, prolonged smile. It all lasted only one moment. Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch walked on.
II
He went to the "old man" straight from Varvara Petrovna's, and he was
in such haste simply from spite, that he might revenge himself for an
insult of which I had no idea at that time. The fact is that at
their last interview on the Thursday of the previous week, Stepan
Trofimovitch, though the dispute was one of his own beginning, had
ended by turning Pyotr Stepanovitch out with his stick. He concealed the
incident from me at the time. But now, as soon as Pyotr Stepanovitch ran
in with his everlasting grin, which was so naïvely condescending, and
his unpleasantly inquisitive eyes peering into every corner, Stepan
Trofimovitch at once made a signal aside to me, not to leave the room.
This was how their real relations came to be exposed before me, for on
this occasion I heard their whole conversation.
Stepan Trofimovitch was sitting stretched out on a lounge. He had grown
thin and sallow since that Thursday. Pyotr Stepanovitch seated himself
beside him with a most familiar air, unceremoniously tucking his legs up
under him, and taking up more room on the lounge than deference to his
father should have allowed. Stepan Trofimovitch moved aside, in silence,
and with dignity.
On the table lay an open book. It was the novel, "What's to be done?"
Alas, I must confess one strange weakness in my friend; the fantasy that
he ought to come forth from his solitude and fight a last battle was
getting more and more hold upon his deluded imagination. I guessed that
he had got the novel and was _studying_ it solely in order that when the
inevitable conflict with the "shriekers" came about he might know their
methods and arguments beforehand, from their very "catechism," and in
that way be prepared to confute them all triumphantly, _before her eyes._
Oh, how that book tortured him! He sometimes flung it aside in despair,
and leaping up, paced about the room almost in a frenzy.
"I agree that the author's fundamental idea is a true one," he said to
me feverishly, "but that only makes it more awful. It's just our idea,
exactly ours; we first sowed the seed, nurtured it, prepared the way,
and, indeed, what could they say new, after us? But, heavens! How it's
all expressed, distorted, mutilated!" he exclaimed, tapping the book
with his fingers. "Were these the conclusions we were striving for? Who
can understand the original idea in this?"
"Improving your mind?" sniggered Pyotr Stepanovitch, taking the book
from the table and reading the title. "It's high time. I'll bring you
better, if you like."
Stepan Trofimovitch again preserved a dignified silence. I was sitting
on a sofa in the corner.
Pyotr Stepanovitch quickly explained the reason of his coming. Of
course, Stepan Trofimovitch was absolutely staggered, and he listened in
alarm, which was mixed with extreme indignation.
"And that Yulia Mihailovna counts on my coming to read for her!"
"Well, they're by no means in such need of you. On the contrary, it's by
way of an attention to you, so as to make up to Varvara Petrovna. But,
of course, you won't dare to refuse, and I expect you want to yourself,"
he added with a grin. "You old fogies are all so devilishly ambitious.
But, I say though, you must look out that it's not too boring. What have
you got? Spanish history, or what is it? You'd better let me look at it
three days beforehand, or else you'll put us to sleep perhaps."
The hurried and too barefaced coarseness of these thrusts was obviously
premeditated. He affected to behave as though it were impossible to talk
to Stepan Trofimovitch in different and more delicate language. Stepan
Trofimovitch resolutely persisted in ignoring his insults, but what his
son told him made a more and more overwhelming impression upon him.
"And she, she herself sent me this message through you?" he asked,
turning pale.
"Well, you see, she means to fix a time and place for a mutual
explanation, the relics of your sentimentalising. You've been coquetting
with her for twenty years and have trained her to the most ridiculous
habits. But don't trouble yourself, it's quite different now. She keeps
saying herself that she's only beginning now to 'have her eyes opened.'
I told her in so many words that all this friendship of yours is nothing
but a mutual pouring forth of sloppiness. She told me lots, my boy. Foo!
what a flunkey's place you've been filling all this time. I positively
blushed for you."
"I filling a flunkey's place?" cried Stepan Trofimovitch, unable to
restrain himself.
"Worse, you've been a parasite, that is, a voluntary flunkey too lazy to
work, while you've an appetite for money. She, too, understands all that
now. It's awful the things she's been telling me about you, anyway. I
did laugh, my boy, over your letters to her; shameful and disgusting.
But you're all so depraved, so depraved! There's always something
depraving in charity--you're a good example of it!"
"She showed you my letters!"
"All; though, of course, one couldn't read them all. Foo, what a lot of
paper you've covered! I believe there are more than two thousand letters
there. And do you know, old chap, I believe there was one moment when
she'd have been ready to marry you. You let slip your chance in the
silliest way. Of course, I'm speaking from your point of view, though,
anyway, it would have been better than now when you've almost been
married to 'cover another man's sins,' like a buffoon, for a jest, for
money."
"For money! She, she says it was for money!" Stepan Trofimovitch wailed
in anguish.
"What else, then? But, of course, I stood up for you. That's your only
line of defence, you know. She sees for herself that you needed money
like every one else, and that from that point of view maybe you were
right. I proved to her as clear as twice two makes four that it was a
mutual bargain. She was a capitalist and you were a sentimental buffoon
in her service. She's not angry about the money, though you have milked
her like a goat. She's only in a rage at having believed in you
for twenty years, at your having so taken her in over these noble
sentiments, and made her tell lies for so long. She never will admit
that she told lies of herself, but you'll catch it the more for that. I
can't make out how it was you didn't see that you'd have to have a day
of reckoning. For after all you had some sense. I advised her yesterday
to put you in an almshouse, a genteel one, don't disturb yourself;
there'll be nothing humiliating; I believe that's what she'll do. Do you
remember your last letter to me, three weeks ago?"
"Can you have shown her that?" cried Stepan Trofimovitch, leaping up in
horror.
"Rather! First thing. The one in which you told me she was exploiting
you, envious of your talent; oh, yes, and that about 'other men's sins.'
You have got a conceit though, my boy! How I did laugh. As a rule your
letters are very tedious. You write a horrible style. I often don't read
them at all, and I've one lying about to this day, unopened. I'll send
it to you to-morrow. But that one, that last letter of yours was the
tiptop of perfection! How I did laugh! Oh, how I laughed!"
"Monster, monster!" wailed Stepan Trofimovitch.
"Foo, damn it all, there's no talking to you. I say, you're getting
huffy again as you were last Thursday."
Stepan Trofimovitch drew himself up, menacingly.
"How dare you speak to me in such language?"
"What language? It's simple and clear."
"Tell me, you monster, are you my son or not?"
"You know that best. To be sure all fathers are disposed to be blind in
such cases."