God! What is the matter with you? You are forgetting yourself!” said Alexandra Mihalovna, numb and half dead with horror.
“Not so loud, please,” Pyotr Alexandrovitch interrupted her contemptuously. “I don’t like it. This is a simple matter, plain, vulgar in the extreme. I am asking you about her behaviour. Do you know…”
But I did not let him finish, and seizing him by the arm, I forcibly drew him away. Another minute — and everything might have been lost.
“Don’t speak of the letter,” I said quickly, in a whisper. “You will kill her on the spot. Censure of me will be censure of her too. She cannot judge me, for I know all…. Do you understand? I know all!”
He looked at me intently with wild curiosity, was confused; the blood rushed to his face.
“I know all, all!” I repeated.
He was still hesitating. A question was trembling on his lips. I forestalled him.
“This is what happened,” I said aloud hurriedly, addressing Alexandra Mihalovna, who was looking at us with timid and anxious amazement. “It was all my fault. I have been deceiving you for the last four years. I carried off the key of the library, and have for four years been secretly reading the books in it. Pyotr Alexandrovitch caught me reading a book which… could not, should not have been in my hands. In his anxiety over me, he has exaggerated the danger!… But I do not justify myself,” I added quickly, noticing a sarcastic smile on his lips. “It is all my fault. The temptation was too great for me, and having once done wrong, I was ashamed to confess what I had done…. That’s all, almost all that has passed between us.”
“Oho, how smart,” Pyotr Alexandrovitch whispered beside me.
Alexandra Mihalovna listened to me intently; but there was an unmistakable shade of mistrustfulness on her face. She kept looking first at me, then at her husband. A silence followed. I could hardly breathe. She let her head fall on her bosom and hid her face in her hands, considering and evidently weighing every word I had uttered. At last she raised her head and looked at me intently.
“Nyetochka, my child,” she said, “I know you cannot He. Was this everything that happened, absolutely all?”
“Yes, all,” I answered.
“Was that all?” she asked, addressing her husband.
“Yes,” he answered with an effort, “all!”
I heaved a sigh.
“On your word of honour, Nyetochka?”
“Yes,” I answered without faltering.
But I could not refrain from glancing at Pyotr Alexandrovitch. He laughed as he heard my answer. I flushed hotly, and my confusion did not escape poor Alexandra Mihalovna. There was a look of overwhelming agonising misery in her face.
“That’s enough,” she said mournfully. “I believe you. I cannot but believe you.”
“I think such a confession is sufficient,” said Pyotr Alexandrovitch. “You have heard! What would you have me think?”
Alexandra Mihalovna made no answer. The scene became more and more unbearable.
“I will look through all the books tomorrow,” Pyotr Alexandrovitch went on. “I don’t know what else there was there; but…”
“But what book was she reading?” asked Alexandra Mihalovna.
“What book? Answer,” he said, addressing me. “You can explain things better than I can,” he said, with a hidden irony.
I was confused, and could not say a word. Alexandra Mihalovna blushed and dropped her eyes. A long pause followed Pyotr Alexandrovitch. walked up and down the room in vexation.
“I don’t know what has passed between you,” Alexandra Mihalovna began at last, timidly articulating each word; “but if that was all,” she went on, trying to put a special significance into her voice, though she was embarrassed by her husband’s fixed stare and trying not to look at him, “if that was all, I don’t know what we all have to be so unhappy and despairing about. I am most to blame, I alone, and it troubles me very much. I have neglected her education, and I ought to answer for it all. She must forgive me, and I cannot and dare not blame her. But, again, what is there to be so desperate about? The danger is over. Look at her,” she went on, speaking with more and more feeling, and casting a searching glance at her husband, “look at her, has her indiscretion left any trace on her? Do you suppose I don’t know her, my child, my darling daughter? Don’t I know that her heart is pure and noble, that in that pretty little head,” she went on, drawing me towards her and fondling me, “there is clear, candid intelligence and a conscience that fears deceit…. Enough of this, my dear! Let us drop it! Surely something else is underlying our distress; perhaps it was only a passing shadow of antagonism. But we will drive it away by love, by goodwill, and let us put away our perplexities. Perhaps there is a good deal that has not been spoken out between us, and I blame myself most. I was first reserved with you, I was the first to be suspicious — goodness knows of what, and my sick brain is to blame for it…. But since we have been open to some extent, you must both forgive me because… because indeed there was no great sin in what I suspected….”
As she said this she glanced shyly, with a flush on her cheek, at her husband, and anxiously awaited his words. As he heard her a sarcastic smile came on to his lips. He left off walking about and stopped directly facing her, with his hands behind his back. He seemed to be scrutinising her confusion, watched it, revelled in it; feeling his eyes fixed upon her, she was overwhelmed with confusion. He waited a moment as though he expected something more. At last he cut short the uncomfortable scene by a soft, prolonged, malignant laugh.
“I am sorry for you, poor woman!” he said at last gravely and bitterly, leaving off smiling. “You have taken up an attitude which you cannot keep up. What did you want? You wanted to incite me to answer, to rouse me by fresh suspicions, or rather by the old suspicion which you have failed to conceal in your words. The implication of your words, that there is no need to be angry with her, that she is good even after reading immoral books, the morality of which — I am saying what I think — seems already to have borne fruits, that you will answer for her yourself; wasn’t that it? Well, in explaining that, you hint at something else; you imagine that my suspiciousness and my persecution arise from some other feeling. You even hinted to me yesterday — please do not stop me, I like to speak straight out — you even hinted yesterday that in some people (I remember that you observed that such people were most frequently steady, severe, straightforward, clever, strong, and God knows what other qualities you did not bestow on them in your generosity), that in some people, I repeat, love (and God knows why you imagined such a thing) cannot show itself except harshly, hotly, sternly, often in the form of suspicions and persecutions. I don’t quite remember whether that was just what you said yesterday… please don’t stop me. I know your protégée well: she can hear all, all, I repeat for the hundredth time, all. You are deceived. But I do not know why it pleases you to insist on my being just such a man. God knows why you want to dress me up like a tomfool. It is out of the question, at my age, to be in love with this young girl; moreover, let me tell you, madam, I know my duty, and however generously you may excuse me, I shall say as before, that crime will always remain crime, that sin will always be sin, shameful, abominable, dishonourable, to whatever height of grandeur you raise the vicious feeling! But enough, enough, and let me hear no more of these abominations!”
Alexandra Mihalovna was crying.
