Oh, she was smiling and joking; but it was only from her immeasurable kindness, because her whole soul was filled at that moment, as I later realized, with such enormous care of her own and such strong and powerful feeling, that she could talk with me and answer my trifling, irksome questions only as one answers a little boy who has asked some importunate, childish question, in order to get rid of him. I suddenly understood that and felt ashamed, but I was no longer able to stop.
“No,” I cried, losing control of myself, “no, I didn’t kill the one who spoke badly of you, but, on the contrary, I even seconded him!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t, there’s no need, don’t tell me anything,” she suddenly reached her hand out to stop me, and even with a sort of suffering in her face, but I had already jumped up from my seat and stood before her in order to speak everything out, and if I had spoken it out, what happened later wouldn’t have happened, because it would certainly have ended with my confessing everything and returning the document to her. But she suddenly laughed:
“Don’t, don’t say anything, no details! I know all your crimes myself. I’ll bet you wanted to marry me or something like that, and were just talking it over with one of your accomplices, a former schoolmate of yours . . . Ah, it seems I’ve guessed right!” she cried, peering gravely into my face.
“How . . . how could you guess?” I stammered like a fool, terribly struck.
“Well, what else! But enough, enough! I forgive you, only stop talking about it,” she waved her hand again, now with visible impatience. “I’m a dreamer myself, and if you knew what means I resort to in my dreams when nothing holds me back! Enough, you keep confusing me. I’m very glad that Tatyana Pavlovna left; I wanted very much to see you, and with her here it would be impossible to speak as we’re doing now. It seems I’m guilty before you for what happened then. Right? Am I right?”
“You, guilty? But I betrayed you to him then and—what can you have thought of me! I’ve been thinking about that all this time, all these days, ever since then, every moment, thinking and feeling.” (I wasn’t lying to her.)
“You needn’t have tormented yourself so much, I understood only too well then how it all happened; you simply blurted out to him in joy that you were in love with me and that I . . . well, that I had listened to you. That’s twenty years old for you. You do love him more than anything in the world, you’re looking for a friend, an ideal in him? I understood that only too well, but it was too late. Oh, yes, I was the guilty one then: I should have sent for you right then and put you at ease, but I was vexed; and I requested that you not be received in the house; and what came of it was that scene at the front door, and then that night. And you know, all this time, just like you, I’ve dreamed of meeting you secretly, only I didn’t know how to arrange it. And what do you think I feared most? That you would believe his slander against me.”
“Never!” I cried.
“I value our former meetings; your youth is dear to me, and even, perhaps, this sincerity itself . . . For I’m a most serious character. I’m the most serious and scowling character of all modern women, know that . . . ha, ha, ha! We’ll talk our fill some other time, but now I’m a bit out of sorts, I’m agitated and . . . it seems I’m in hysterics. But at last, at last, he will let me live in the world, too!”
This exclamation escaped involuntarily; I understood that at once and didn’t want to pick it up, but I trembled all over.
“He knows I’ve forgiven him!” she suddenly exclaimed again, as if to herself.
“Could you really have forgiven him that letter? And how can he know that you’ve forgiven him?” I exclaimed, no longer restraining myself.
“How does he know? Oh, he knows,” she went on answering me, but looked as if she had forgotten me and was talking to herself. “He’s come to his senses now. And how could he not know I’ve forgiven him, since he knows my soul by heart? He knows I’m somewhat of the same sort as he.”
“You?”
“Well, yes, he’s aware of that. Oh, I’m not passionate, I’m calm: but, like him, I also want everybody to be good . . . He does love me for something after all.”
“Then how is it he said you have all the vices?”
“He just said that; he’s keeping another secret to himself. And isn’t it true that the way he wrote his letter is terribly funny?”
“Funny?” (I was listening to her with all my might; I suppose she really was as if in hysterics and . . . maybe wasn’t speaking for me at all; but I couldn’t keep myself from asking.)
“Oh, yes, funny, and how I’d laugh if . . . if I wasn’t afraid. Though I’m not such a coward, don’t think it; but on account of that letter I didn’t sleep all that night, it’s written as if with some sort of sick blood . . . and after such a letter, what’s left? I love life, I’m terribly afraid for my life, I’m terribly pusillanimous about it . . . Ah, listen!” she suddenly roused herself. “Go to him! He’s alone now, he can’t be there all the time, he must have gone somewhere alone. Find him quickly, you must, run to him quickly, show him you’re his loving son, prove to him that you’re a dear, kind boy, my student, whom I . . . Oh, God grant you happiness! I don’t love anyone, and it’s better that way, but I wish everyone happiness, everyone, and him first, and let him know of it . . . even right now, I’d be very pleased . . .”
She got up and suddenly disappeared behind the portière; tears glistened on her cheeks at that moment (hysterical, after laughing). I remained alone, agitated and confused. I positively did not know to what to ascribe such agitation in her, which I could never have supposed in her. It was as if something contracted in my heart.
I waited five minutes, and finally ten; I was suddenly struck by the profound silence, and I ventured to peek through the door and call out. At my call, Marya appeared and declared to me in the most calm voice that the lady had long since dressed and gone out by the back door.
Chapter Seven
I
THAT WAS ALL I needed. I grabbed my fur coat and, putting it on as I went, ran outside, thinking, “She told me to go to him, but where am I going to get him?”
But, apart from everything else, I was struck by the question, “Why does she think something’s come now and he will give her peace? Of course, because he’s going to marry mama, but what about her? Is she glad that he’s marrying mama, or, on the contrary, is that what makes her unhappy? Is that why she’s in hysterics? Why can’t I resolve this?”
I note this second thought that flashed in me then literally, as a reminder: it’s important. That evening was fateful. And here, perhaps, against one’s will, one comes to believe in predestination: I hadn’t gone a hundred steps in the direction of mama’s apartment, when I suddenly ran into the man I was looking for. He seized my shoulder and stopped me.
“It’s you!” he cried joyfully and at the same time as if in the greatest astonishment. “Imagine, I went to your place,” he spoke quickly, “looking for you, asking for you—you’re the only one I need now in the whole universe! Your official told me God knows what lies; but you weren’t at home, and I left, even forgetting to ask him to tell you to run to me at once—and what then? I was going along in the unshakable conviction that fate couldn’t help sending you now, when I need you most, and here you’re the first one I meet! Let’s go to my place. You’ve never been to my place.”
In short, the two of us had been looking for each other, and something similar, as it were, had happened to each of us. We walked on, hurrying very much.
On the way he just uttered a few short phrases about having left mama with Tatyana Pavlovna, and so on. He led me, holding on to my arm. He lived not far away, and we got there quickly. I had, in fact, never been to his place. It was a small apartment of three rooms, which he rented (or, more correctly, Tatyana Pavlovna rented) solely for that “nursing baby.” This apartment had always been under Tatyana Pavlovna’s supervision, and was inhabited by a nanny with the baby (and now also by Nastasya Egorovna); but there had always been a room for Versilov as well—namely, the very first one, by the front door, rather spacious and rather well and plushly furnished, a sort of study for bookish and scribal occupations. In fact, there were many books on the table, in the bookcase, and on the shelves (while at mama’s there were almost none at all); there were pages covered with writing, there were tied-up bundles of letters—in short, it all had the look of a corner long lived in, and I know that, before as well, Versilov had sometimes (though rather rarely) moved to this apartment altogether and stayed in it even for weeks at a time. The first thing that caught my attention was a portrait of mama that hung over the desk, in a magnificent carved frame of costly wood—a photograph, taken abroad, of course, and, judging by its extraordinary size, a very costly thing. I hadn’t known and had never heard of this portrait before, and the main thing that struck me was the extraordinary likeness in the photograph, a spiritual likeness, so to speak—in short, as if it was a real portrait by an artist’s hand, and not a mechanical print. As soon as I came in, I stopped involuntarily before it.