“Vassin,” I said at six o’clock in the morning, “if it had not been for your Stebelkov this might not have happened.”
“Who knows?— most likely it would have happened. One can’t draw such a conclusion; everything was leading up to it, apart from that. . . . It is true that Stebelkov sometimes. . . .”
He broke off and frowned disagreeably. At seven o’clock he went out again; he still had a great deal to do. I was left at last entirely alone. It was by now daylight. I felt rather giddy. I was haunted by the figure of Versilov: this lady’s story had brought him out in quite a different light. To think this over better, I lay down on Vassin’s bed just as I was, in my clothes and my boots, just for a minute, with no intention of going to sleep — and suddenly I fell asleep; I don’t remember how it happened, indeed. I slept almost four hours; nobody waked me.
Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:26:21 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.
A Raw Youth, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Chapter X
1
I woke about half-past ten, and for a long time I could not believe my eyes: on the sofa on which I had slept the previous night was sitting my mother, and beside her — the unhappy mother of the dead girl. They were holding each other’s hands, they were talking in whispers, I suppose, that they might not wake me, and both were crying. I got up from the bed, and flew straight to kiss my mother. She positively beamed all over, kissed me and make the sign of the cross over me three times with the right hand. Before we had time to say a word the door opened, and Versilov and Vassin came in. My mother at once got up and led the bereaved woman away. Vassin gave me his hand, while Versilov sank into an armchair without saying a word to me. Mother and he had evidently been here for some time. His face looked overcast and careworn.
“What I regret most of all,” he began saying slowly to Vassin, evidently in continuation of what they had been discussing outside, “is that I had no time to set it all right yesterday evening; then probably this terrible thing would not have happened! And indeed there was time, it was hardly eight o’clock. As soon as she ran away from us last night, I inwardly resolved to follow her and to reassure her, but this unforeseen and urgent business, though of course I might quite well have put it off till to-day . . . or even for a week — this vexatious turn of affairs has hindered and ruined everything. That’s just how things do happen!”