“My God, Dunechka, what will come of this?” said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, turning anxiously and fearfully to her daughter.
“Calm yourself, mama,” Dunya answered, taking off her hat and cape, “God Himself has sent us this gentleman, though he may have come straight from some binge. We can rely on him, I assure you. And with all he's already done for my brother . . .”
“Ah, Dunechka, God knows if he'll come back! How could I bring myself to leave Rodya! And this is not at all, not at all how I imagined finding him! He was so stern, as if he weren't glad to see us . . .”
Tears came to her eyes.
“No, mama, it's not so. You didn't look closely, you kept crying. He's very upset from this great illness—that's the reason for it all.”
“Ah, this illness! What will come of it, what will come of it! And how he spoke with you, Dunya!” her mother said, peeking timidly into her daughter's eyes in order to read the whole of her thought, and already half comforted by the fact that Dunya herself was defending Rodya and had therefore forgiven him. “I'm sure he'll think better of it tomorrow,” she added, trying to worm it all out of her.
“And I am sure he'll say the same thing tomorrow...about that,” Avdotya Romanovna cut her off, and here, of course, was the snag, because this was the point which Pulcheria Alexandrovna was simply too afraid to bring up now. Dunya went over and kissed her mother.
Her mother hugged her tightly and said nothing. Then she sat down, anxiously awaiting Razumikhin's return, and began timidly to watch her daughter who, also in expectation, crossed her arms and began to pace the room back and forth, thinking to herself. Such thoughtful pacing from corner to corner was a usual habit with Avdotya Romanovna, and her mother was somehow always afraid to interrupt her thinking at such times.
Razumikhin was of course ridiculous, with the sudden, drunken flaring up of his passion for Avdotya Romanovna; but one look at Avdotya Romanovna, especially now, as she paced the room with her arms crossed, sad and thoughtful, and many would perhaps have excused him, quite apart from his eccentric state. Avdotya Romanovna was remarkably good-looking—tall, wonderfully trim, strong, self-confident, as showed in her every gesture, but without in the least detracting from the softness and grace of her movements. She resembled her brother in looks, and could even be called a beauty. Her hair was dark blond, a little lighter than her brother's; her eyes were almost black, flashing, proud, and at the same time, occasionally, for moments, remarkably kind. She was pale, but not sickly pale; her face shone with freshness and health. Her mouth was somewhat small, and her lower lip, fresh and red, protruded slightly, as did her chin—the only irregularity in this beautiful face, but which lent it a specially characteristic quality and, incidentally, a trace of arrogance. The expression of her face was always serious and thoughtful rather than gay; but how becoming was her smile, how becoming her laughter—gay, young, wholehearted! It was understandable that Razumikhin, ardent, sincere, simple, honest, strong as a folk hero, and drunk, who had never seen anything like that, lost his head at first sight. Moreover, as if by design, chance showed him Dunya for the first time in a beautiful moment of love and joy at seeing her brother. Then he noticed how her lower lip trembled indignantly in response to her brother's impertinent and ungratefully cruel orders—and lost all resistance.
He was telling the truth, however, when he let out that drunken nonsense earlier, on the stairs, about Raskolnikov's eccentric landlady, Praskovya Pavlovna, becoming jealous on his account not only of Avdotya Romanovna, but perhaps of Pulcheria Alexandrovna as well. Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was already forty-three years old, her face still kept the remnants of its former beauty, and besides, she looked much younger than her age, as almost always happens with women who keep their clarity of spirit, the freshness of their impressions, and the honest, pure ardor of their hearts into old age. Let us say parenthetically that keeping all this is the only means of preserving one's beauty even in old age. Her hair was already thinning and starting to turn gray, little radiating wrinkles had long since appeared around her eyes, her cheeks were sunken and dry from worry and grief, and still her face was beautiful. It was a portrait of Dunechka's face, only twenty years later, and lacking the expression of the protruding lower lip. Pulcheria Alexandrovna was sentimental, though not to the point of being saccharine; she was timid and yielding, but only up to a limit: she would yield much, would agree to much, even to something that went against her convictions, but there was always a limit of honesty, principle, and ultimate conviction beyond which no circumstances could make her step.
Exactly twenty minutes after Razumikhin left, there came two soft but hurried knocks on the door; he was back.
“No time to come in!” he began hastily, when they opened the door. “He's snoring away excellently, peacefully, and God grant he sleeps for ten hours. Nastasya's with him; I told her not to leave before I get back. Now I'll go and drag Zossimov there, he'll give you a report, and then you, too, should turn in; I see you're impossibly worn out.”
And he set off again down the corridor.
“What an efficient and...devoted young man!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna exclaimed, exceedingly glad.
“He seems to be a nice person!” Avdotya Romanovna answered with some warmth, again beginning to pace the room back and forth.
Almost an hour later steps were heard in the corridor and there was another knock at the door. Both women were waiting, this time, with complete faith in Razumikhin's promise; and indeed he had managed to drag Zossimov along. Zossimov had agreed at once to leave the feast and go to have a look at Raskolnikov, but he came to the ladies reluctantly and with great mistrust, not trusting the drunken Razumikhin. Yet his vanity was immediately set at ease, and even flattered: he realized that he was indeed being awaited like an oracle. He stayed for exactly ten minutes and managed to convince Pulcheria Alexandrovna and set her at ease completely. He spoke with extraordinary sympathy, but with restraint and with a somehow eager seriousness, precisely like a twenty-seven-year-old doctor in an important consultation, not deviating from the subject by a single word or revealing the least desire to enter into more private and personal relations with the two ladies. Having noted upon entering how dazzlingly beautiful Avdotya Roma-novna was, he immediately tried not to pay her any notice during the whole time of his visit, and addressed himself to Pulcheria Alexandrovna alone. All this gave him great inner satisfaction. About the patient himself he was able to say that at the present moment he found his condition quite satisfactory. Also, from his observations, the patient's illness had, apart from the poor material circumstances of the recent months of his life, some moral causes as well, “being, so to speak, a product of many complex moral and material influences, anxieties, apprehensions, worries, certain ideas...and other things.” Having noted in passing that Avdotya Romanovna had begun to listen with special attentiveness, Zossimov expanded somewhat further on this subject. To Pulcheria Alexandrovna's anxious and timid question concerning “some supposed suspicions of madness,” he replied, with a calm and frank smile, that his words had been overly exaggerated; that, of course, some fixed idea could be observed in the patient, something suggesting monomania—since he, Zossimov, was now especially following this extremely interesting branch of medicine—but it was also to be remembered that the patient had been delirious almost up to that day, and...and, of course, the arrival of his family would strengthen, divert, and have a salutary effect upon him, “if only it is possible to avoid any special new shocks,” he added significantly. Then he got up, bowed his way out sedately and cordially, to the accompaniment of blessings, warm gratitude, entreaties, and even, without his having sought it, the offer of Avdotya Romanovna's little hand to shake, and left extremely pleased with his visit and still more with himself.