The possessed or, The devils
ray of light, every gleam of colour, and transforming everything into
one smoky, leaden, indistinguishable mass. It had long been daylight,
yet it seemed as though it were still night. And suddenly in this cold
foggy mist there appeared coming towards them a strange and absurd
figure. Picturing it now I think I should not have believed my eyes if
I had been in Lizaveta Nikolaevna's place, yet she uttered a cry of
joy, and recognised the approaching figure at once. It was Stepan
Trofimovitch. How he had gone off, how the insane, impracticable idea
of his flight came to be carried out, of that later. I will only mention
that he was in a fever that morning, yet even illness did not prevent
his starting. He was walking resolutely on the damp ground. It was
evident that he had planned the enterprise to the best of his ability,
alone with his inexperience and lack of practical sense. He wore
"travelling dress," that is, a greatcoat with a wide patent-leather
belt, fastened with a buckle and a pair of new high boots pulled over
his trousers. Probably he had for some time past pictured a traveller as
looking like this, and the belt and the high boots with the shining tops
like a hussar's, in which he could hardly walk, had been ready some time
before. A broad-brimmed hat, a knitted scarf, twisted close round his
neck, a stick in his right hand, and an exceedingly small but extremely
tightly packed bag in his left, completed his get-up. He had, besides,
in the same right hand, an open umbrella. These three objects--the
umbrella, the stick, and the bag--had been very awkward to carry for the
first mile, and had begun to be heavy by the second.
"Can it really be you?" cried Liza, looking at him with distressed
wonder, after her first rush of instinctive gladness.
_"Lise,"_ cried Stepan Trofimovitch, rushing to her almost in delirium too.
"_Chère, chère_.... Can you be out, too... in such a fog? You see the glow
of fire. _Vous êtes malheureuse, n'est-ce pas?_ I see, I see. Don't tell
me, but don't question me either. _Nous sommes tous malheureux mais il
faut les pardonner tous. Pardonnons, Lise,_ and let us be free forever.
To be quit of the world and be completely free. _Il faut pardonner,
pardonner, et pardonner!"_
"But why are you kneeling down?"
"Because, taking leave of the world, I want to take leave of all my past
in your person!" He wept and raised both her hands to his tear-stained
eyes. "I kneel to all that was beautiful in my life. I kiss and give
thanks! Now I've torn myself in half; left behind a mad visionary who
dreamed of soaring to the sky. _Vingt-deux ans,_ here. A shattered, frozen
old man. A tutor _chez ce marchand, s'il existe pourtant ce
marchand...._ But how drenched you are, _Lise!"_ he cried, jumping on to
his feet, feeling that his knees too were soaked by the wet earth. "And
how is it possible... you are in such a dress... and on foot, and in
these fields?... You are crying! _Vous êtes malheureuse._ Bah, I did hear
something.... But where have you come from now?" He asked hurried
questions with an uneasy air, looking in extreme bewilderment at Mavriky
Nikolaevitch. _"Mais savez-vous l'heure qu'il est?"_
"Stepan Trofimovitch, have you heard anything about the people who've
been murdered?... Is it true? Is it true?"
"These people! I saw the glow of their work all night. They were bound
to end in this...." His eyes flashed again. "I am fleeing away from
madness, from a delirious dream. I am fleeing away to seek for Russia.
_Existe-t-elle, la Russie? Bah! C'est vous, cher capitaine!_
I've never doubted that I should meet you somewhere on some high
adventure.... But take my umbrella, and--why must you be on foot? For
God's sake, do at least take my umbrella, for I shall hire a carriage
somewhere in any case. I am on foot because Stasie (I mean, Nastasya)
would have shouted for the benefit of the whole street if she'd found out
I was going away. So I slipped away as far as possible incognito. I don't
know; in the _Voice_ they write of there being brigands everywhere, but I
thought surely I shouldn't meet a brigand the moment I came out on the
road. _Chère Lise,_ I thought you said something of someone's being
murdered. _Oh, mon Dieu!_ You are ill!"
"Come along, come along!" cried Liza, almost in hysterics, drawing
Mavriky Nikolaevitch after her again. "Wait a minute, Stepan
Trofimovitch!" she came back suddenly to him. "Stay, poor darling, let
me sign you with the cross. Perhaps, it would be better to put you under
control, but I'd rather make the sign of the cross over you. You, too,
pray for 'poor' Liza--just a little, don't bother too much about it.
Mavriky Nikolaevitch, give that baby back his umbrella. You must give it
him. That's right.... Come, let us go, let us go!"
They reached the fatal house at the very moment when the huge crowd,
which had gathered round it, had already heard a good deal of Stavrogin,
and of how much it was to his interest to murder his wife. Yet, I
repeat, the immense majority went on listening without moving or
uttering a word. The only people who were excited were bawling drunkards
and excitable individuals of the same sort as the gesticulatory
cabinet-maker. Every one knew the latter as a man really of mild
disposition, but he was liable on occasion to get excited and to fly off
at a tangent if anything struck him in a certain way. I did not see
Liza and Mavriky Nikolaevitch arrive. Petrified with amazement, I first
noticed Liza some distance away in the crowd, and I did not at once
catch sight of Mavriky Nikolaevitch. I fancy there was a moment when
he fell two or three steps behind her or was pressed back by the crush.
Liza, forcing her way through the crowd, seeing and noticing nothing
round her, like one in a delirium, like a patient escaped from a
hospital, attracted attention only too quickly, of course. There arose
a hubbub of loud talking and at last sudden shouts. Some one bawled out,
"It's Stavrogin's woman!" And on the other side, "It's not enough to
murder them, she wants to look at them!" All at once I saw an arm raised
above her head from behind and suddenly brought down upon it. Liza fell
to the ground. We heard a fearful scream from Mavriky Nikolaevitch as
he dashed to her assistance and struck with all his strength the man who
stood between him and Liza. But at that instant the same cabinetmaker
seized him with both arms from behind. For some minutes nothing could be
distinguished in the scrimmage that followed. I believe Liza got up but
was knocked down by another blow. Suddenly the crowd parted and a
small space was left empty round Liza's prostrate figure, and Mavriky
Nikolaevitch, frantic with grief and covered with blood, was standing
over her, screaming, weeping, and wringing his hands. I don't remember
exactly what followed after; I only remember that they began to carry
Liza away. I ran after her. She was still alive and perhaps still
conscious. The cabinet-maker and three other men in the crowd were
seized. These three still deny having taken any part in the dastardly
deed, stubbornly maintaining that they have been arrested by mistake.
Perhaps it's the truth. Though the evidence against the cabinet-maker
is clear, he is so irrational that he is still unable to explain what
happened coherently. I too, as a spectator, though at some distance,
had to give evidence at the inquest. I declared that it had all happened
entirely accidentally through the action of men perhaps moved by
ill-feeling, yet scarcely conscious of what they were doing--drunk and
irresponsible. I am of that opinion to this day.
CHAPTER IV. THE LAST RESOLUTION
I
THAT MORNING MANY people saw Pyotr Stepanovitch. All who saw him
remembered that he was in a particularly excited state. At two o'clock
he went to see Gaganov, who had arrived from the country only the day
before, and whose house was full of visitors hotly discussing the events
of the previous day. Pyotr Stepanovitch talked more than anyone and made
them listen to him. He was always considered among us as a "chatterbox
of a student with a screw loose," but now he talked of Yulia Mihailovna,
and in the general excitement the theme was an enthralling one. As one
who had recently been her intimate and confidential friend, he disclosed
many new and unexpected details concerning her; incidentally (and of
course unguardedly) he repeated some of her own remarks about persons
known to all in the town, and thereby piqued their vanity. He dropped
it all in a vague and rambling way, like a man free from guile driven
by his sense of honour to the painful necessity of clearing up a perfect
mountain of misunderstandings, and so simple-hearted that he hardly knew
where to begin and where to leave off. He let slip in a rather unguarded
way, too, that Yulia Mihailovna knew the whole secret of Stavrogin and
that she had been at the bottom of the whole intrigue. She had taken
him in too, for he, Pyotr Stepanovitch, had also been in love with this
unhappy Liza, yet he had been so hoodwinked that he had _almost_ taken her
to Stavrogin himself in the carriage. "Yes, yes, it's all very well
for you to laugh, gentlemen, but if only I'd known, if I'd known how it
would end!" he concluded. To various excited inquiries about Stavrogin
he bluntly replied that in his opinion the catastrophe to the Lebyadkins
was a pure coincidence, and that it was all Lebyadkin's own fault for
displaying his money. He explained this particularly well. One of his
listeners observed that it was no good his "pretending"; that he had
eaten and drunk and almost slept at Yulia Mihailovna's, yet now he was
the first to blacken her character, and that this was by no means such
a fine thing to do as he supposed. But Pyotr Stepanovitch immediately
defended himself.
"I ate and drank there not because I had no money, and it's not my fault
that I was invited there. Allow me to judge for myself how far I need to
be grateful for that."
The general impression was in his favour. "He may be rather absurd, and
of course he is a nonsensical fellow, yet still he is not responsible
for Yulia Mihailovna's foolishness. On the contrary, it appears that he
tried to stop her."
About two o'clock the news suddenly came that Stavrogin, about whom
there was so much talk, had suddenly left for Petersburg by the midday
train. This interested people immensely; many of them frowned. Pyotr
Stepanovitch was so much struck that I was told he turned quite pale and
cried out strangely, "Why, how could they have let him go?" He hurried
away from Gaganov's forthwith, yet he was seen in two or three other
houses.
Towards dusk he succeeded in getting in to see Yulia Mihailovna though
he had the greatest pains to do so, as she had absolutely refused to see
him. I heard of this from the lady herself only three weeks afterwards,
just before her departure for Petersburg. She gave me no details, but
observed with a shudder that "he had on that occasion astounded her
beyond all belief." I imagine that all he did was to terrify her
by threatening to charge her with being an accomplice if she "said
anything." The necessity for this intimidation arose from his plans at
the moment, of which she, of course, knew nothing; and only later,
five days afterwards, she guessed why he had been so doubtful of her
reticence and so afraid of a new outburst of indignation on her part.
Between seven and eight o'clock, when it was dark, all the five members
of the quintet met together at Ensign Erkel's lodgings in a little
crooked house at the end of the town. The meeting had been fixed by
Pyotr Stepanovitch himself, but he was unpardonably late, and the
members waited over an hour for him. This Ensign Erkel was that young