“Arkady,” Versilov cried, “run instantly to Tatyana Pavlovna. She’s sure to be at home. Ask her to come at once. Take a sledge. Make haste, I entreat you!”
His eyes were shining. I remember that clearly. I did not notice in his face anything like simple pity, anything like tears. The others, mother, Liza, and Lukerya, were crying. I was struck, on the contrary — and I remember this very well — by a look of unusual excitement almost of elation in his face. I ran for Tatyana Pavlovna.
It was not far to go, as the reader knows already. I did not take a sledge, but ran all the way without stopping. My mind was in confusion, and yet there was something almost like elation in my heart, too. I realized something momentous was happening. Every trace of drunkenness had disappeared completely, and with it every ignoble thought, by the time I was ringing at Tatyana Pavlovna’s door.
The Finnish cook opened the door: “Not at home!” she said and would have shut it at once.
“Not at home?” I cried, and rushed headlong into the passage. “Impossible! Makar Ivanovitch is dead!”
“Wha — at!” I heard Tatyana Pavlovna cry out in her drawing-room, through the closed door.
“He is dead! Makar Ivanovitch is dead! Andrey Petrovitch begs you to go this minute!”
“What nonsense you’re talking.”
The bolt clicked, but the door only opened an inch. “What has happened, tell me! . . .”
“I don’t know, he was dead when I arrived. Andrey Petrovitch says it’s rupture of the heart!”
“I’ll come at once, this minute. Run and tell them I’m coming, run along! run along! run along! What are you stopping for?”
But through the half-opened door I had distinctly seen some one come suddenly out from behind the curtain that screened Tatyana Pavlovna’s bed, and that some one was standing at the back of the room behind Tatyana Pavlovna. Mechanically and instinctively I clutched at the look and would not let the door be shut.
“Arkady Makarovitch, is it really true that he’s dead?” I heard a soft, smooth, ringing voice, a well-known voice that thrilled everything in my heart at once. In the question was a note of some emotion that deeply stirred HER heart.
“Oh, if that’s how it is,” cried Tatyana Pavlovna, abandoning the door, “if that’s how it is — you may settle it to please yourself. It’s your own doing!”
She ran full speed out of the flat, flinging on her kerchief and her fur coat as she went downstairs. We were left alone. I threw off my fur coat, took a step forward, and shut the door. She stood before me as she had done that time before, with a bright face, and just as she had done then, she held out both hands to me. As though I had been struck down I literally fell at her feet.
3
I was beginning to cry, I don’t know why; I don’t remember how she made me sit down beside her, I only remember, as one of my most precious memories, that we sat side by side, hand in hand, and talked eagerly: she was questioning me about the old man and his death, and I was telling her about him — so that it might have been supposed that I had been crying over Makar Ivanovitch, though that would have been the acme of absurdity; and I know that she could not possibly have suspected me of such childish banality. All at once I pulled myself together and felt ashamed. I imagine now that I cried simply from joy, and I believe she knew that perfectly well, so that my heart is quite at rest when I remember it.
It suddenly struck me as very strange that she should go on questioning me about Makar Ivanovitch.
“Why, did you know him?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes. I have never seen him, but he has played a part in my life, too. I was told a great deal about him at one time, by that man whom I fear. You know what man I mean.”
“All I know is that ‘that man’ has been in the past much nearer to your heart than you told me before,” I said. I don’t know what I meant to express by this, but I spoke as it were reproachfully and with a frown.
“You say he was kissing your mother just now? Holding her in his arms? You saw that yourself?” she did not hear what I said, but went on cross-examining me.
“Yes, I saw it; and, believe me,” I hastened to assure her, seeing her joy, “it was with true and generous feeling.”
“God grant it,” she said, crossing herself. “Now he is set free. That admirable old man simply held his life in bondage. His death will mean for him a renewal of duty . . . and dignity, as they were renewed once before. Oh, he is before all things generous, he will give peace of heart to your mother, whom he loves more than anything on earth, and will at last be at peace himself, and thank God — it’s high time.”
“He is dear to you?”
“Yes, very dear, though not in the way he would have liked to be and you mean by your question.”
“And is it for yourself or for him that you are afraid now?” I asked suddenly.
“Oh, these are deep questions, let us leave them.”
“Let us leave them, of course; but I knew nothing of this, nor of too much else perhaps; but may you be right, now everything will begin anew, and if anyone is to be renewed, it’s I first of all. I have been base in my thoughts in regard to you, Katerina Nikolaevna, and not more than an hour ago, perhaps, I was guilty of a low action in regard to you, but do you know I am sitting beside you and feel no pang of conscience. For everything now is over, and everything is beginning anew, and the man who was plotting vileness against you an hour ago I don’t know, and don’t want to know!”
“Come, calm yourself,” she smiled; “one would think you were a little delirious.”
“And how can one condemn oneself beside you, whether one is good or vile — you are as far beyond one as the sun. . . . Tell me, how could you come out to me after all that’s happened? Oh, if only you knew what happened only an hour ago! And what a dream has come true.”
“I expect I know all that,” she smiled softly: “you have just been wanting to punish me in some way, you swore to ruin me, and would certainly have killed, or at least have beaten, anyone who had dared to say one word against me.”
Oh, she smiled and jested: but this was only from her excessive kindness, for her heart at that moment, as I realized later, was full of such an immense anxiety of her own, such a violent over-mastering emotion, that she can only have talked to me and have answered my foolish irritating questions, she can only have done that as one sometimes answers the persistent prattle of a little child, simply to get rid of it. I understood that dully and felt ashamed, but I could not help persisting.
“No,” I cried, unable to control myself. “No, I did not kill the man who spoke ill of you, I encouraged him instead!”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, please don’t; there’s no need to tell me anything,” she said, suddenly putting out her hand to stop me, with a look of compassion in her face; but I leapt up from my seat and was standing before her, to tell her everything, and if I had told her, nothing of what happened afterwards would have happened, for it would certainly have ended in my confessing everything and returning the document to her. But she suddenly laughed.
“There’s no need, there’s no need of anything, no facts at all! I know all your misdoings; I’m ready to bet that you meant to marry me or something of that sort, and you have only just been plotting about it with some one, with some accomplice, some old school friend. . . . Why I believe I’ve guessed right!” she cried, looking gravely at my face.
“What . . . how could you guess!” I faltered like a fool, tremendously impressed.
“Well, what next! But that’s enough, that’s enough! I forgive you, but no more about it,” she waved her hand again, with unmistakable impatience. “I am given to dreaming myself, and if you only knew what shifts I have recourse to in my dreams when I let myself go! That’s enough, you make me forget what I was going to say. I am very glad that Tatyana Pavlovna has gone away; I have been very anxious to see you, and we could not have talked as we are doing before her. I believe I was to blame for what happened. I was! Of course I was!”
“You to blame? But I had betrayed you to HIM, and — what can you have thought of me! I have been thinking of that all this time, all these days, I’ve been thinking and feeling about it every minute.” (It was not a lie.)