Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky [best books to read for women TXT] 📗

I have known Rodion for a year and a half; he is morose, gloomy, proud and haughty, and of late—and perhaps for a long time before—he has been suspicious and fanciful. He has a noble nature and a kind heart. He does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open 386 of 967

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his heart freely. Sometimes, though, he is not at all morbid, but simply cold and inhumanly callous; it’s as though he were alternating between two characters.

Sometimes he is fearfully reserved! He says he is so busy that everything is a hindrance, and yet he lies in bed doing nothing. He doesn’t jeer at things, not because he hasn’t the wit, but as though he hadn’t time to waste on such trifles. He never listens to what is said to him. He is never interested in what interests other people at any given moment. He thinks very highly of himself and perhaps he is right. Well, what more? I think your arrival will have a most beneficial influence upon him.’

‘God grant it may,’ cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna, distressed by Razumihin’s account of her Rodya.

And Razumihin ventured to look more boldly at

Avdotya Romanovna at last. He glanced at her often while he was talking, but only for a moment and looked away again at once. Avdotya Romanovna sat at the table, listening attentively, then got up again and began walking to and fro with her arms folded and her lips compressed, occasionally putting in a question, without stopping her walk. She had the same habit of not listening to what was said. She was wearing a dress of thin dark stuff and she had a white transparent scarf round her neck. Razumihin soon 387 of 967

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detected signs of extreme poverty in their belongings. Had Avdotya Romanovna been dressed like a queen, he felt that he would not be afraid of her, but perhaps just because she was poorly dressed and that he noticed all the misery of her surroundings, his heart was filled with dread and he began to be afraid of every word he uttered, every gesture he made, which was very trying for a man who already felt diffident.

‘You’ve told us a great deal that is interesting about my brother’s character … and have told it impartially. I am glad. I thought that you were too uncritically devoted to him,’ observed Avdotya Romanovna with a smile. ‘I think you are right that he needs a woman’s care,’ she added thoughtfully.

‘I didn’t say so; but I daresay you are right, only …’

‘What?’

‘He loves no one and perhaps he never will,’

Razumihin declared decisively.

‘You mean he is not capable of love?’

‘Do you know, Avdotya Romanovna, you are awfully like your brother, in everything, indeed!’ he blurted out suddenly to his own surprise, but remembering at once what he had just before said of her brother, he turned as red as a crab and was overcome with confusion. Avdotya 388 of 967

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Romanovna couldn’t help laughing when she looked at him.

‘You may both be mistaken about Rodya,’ Pulcheria Alexandrovna remarked, slightly piqued. ‘I am not talking of our present difficulty, Dounia. What Pyotr Petrovitch writes in this letter and what you and I have supposed may be mistaken, but you can’t imagine, Dmitri Prokofitch, how moody and, so to say, capricious he is. I never could depend on what he would do when he was only fifteen.

And I am sure that he might do something now that nobody else would think of doing … Well, for instance, do you know how a year and a half ago he astounded me and gave me a shock that nearly killed me, when he had the idea of marrying that girl—what was her name—his landlady’s daughter?’

‘Did you hear about that affair?’ asked Avdotya Romanovna.

‘Do you suppose——’ Pulcheria Alexandrovna

continued warmly. ‘Do you suppose that my tears, my entreaties, my illness, my possible death from grief, our poverty would have made him pause? No, he would calmly have disregarded all obstacles. And yet it isn’t that he doesn’t love us!’

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‘He has never spoken a word of that affair to me,’

Razumihin answered cautiously. ‘But I did hear something from Praskovya Pavlovna herself, though she is by no means a gossip. And what I heard certainly was rather strange.’

‘And what did you hear?’ both the ladies asked at once.

‘Well, nothing very special. I only learned that the marriage, which only failed to take place through the girl’s death, was not at all to Praskovya Pavlovna’s liking. They say, too, the girl was not at all pretty, in fact I am told positively ugly … and such an invalid … and queer. But she seems to have had some good qualities. She must have had some good qualities or it’s quite inexplicable…. She had no money either and he wouldn’t have considered her money…. But it’s always difficult to judge in such matters.’

‘I am sure she was a good girl,’ Avdotya Romanovna observed briefly.

‘God forgive me, I simply rejoiced at her death.

Though I don’t know which of them would have caused most misery to the other—he to her or she to him,’

Pulcheria Alexandrovna concluded. Then she began tentatively questioning him about the scene on the previous day with Luzhin, hesitating and continually 390 of 967

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glancing at Dounia, obviously to the latter’s annoyance.

This incident more than all the rest evidently caused her uneasiness, even consternation. Razumihin described it in detail again, but this time he added his own conclusions: he openly blamed Raskolnikov for intentionally insulting Pyotr Petrovitch, not seeking to excuse him on the score of his illness.

‘He had planned it before his illness,’ he added.

‘I think so, too,’ Pulcheria Alexandrovna agreed with a dejected air. But she was very much surprised at hearing Razumihin express himself so carefully and even with a certain respect about Pyotr Petrovitch. Avdotya Romanovna, too, was struck by it.

‘So this is your opinion of Pyotr Petrovitch?’ Pulcheria Alexandrovna could not resist asking.

‘I can have no other opinion of your daughter’s future husband,’ Razumihin answered firmly and with warmth,

‘and I don’t say it simply from vulgar politeness, but because … simply because Avdotya Romanovna has of her own free will deigned to accept this man. If I spoke so rudely of him last night, it was because I was disgustingly drunk and … mad besides; yes, mad, crazy, I lost my head completely … and this morning I am ashamed of it.’

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He crimsoned and ceased speaking. Avdotya

Romanovna flushed, but did not break the silence. She had not uttered a word from the moment they began to speak of Luzhin.

Without her support Pulcheria Alexandrovna obviously did not know what to do. At last, faltering and continually glancing at her daughter, she confessed that she was exceedingly worried by one circumstance.

‘You see, Dmitri Prokofitch,’ she began. ‘I’ll be perfectly open with Dmitri Prokofitch, Dounia?’

‘Of course, mother,’ said Avdotya Romanovna

emphatically.

‘This is what it is,’ she began in haste, as though the permission to speak of her trouble lifted a weight off her mind. ‘Very early this morning we got a note from Pyotr Petrovitch in reply to our letter announcing our arrival.

He promised to meet us at the station, you know; instead of that he sent a servant to bring us the address of these lodgings and to show us the way; and he sent a message that he would be here himself this morning. But this morning this note came from him. You’d better read it yourself; there is one point in it which worries me very much … you will soon see what that is, and … tell me your candid opinion, Dmitri Prokofitch! You know 392 of 967

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Rodya’s character better than anyone and no one can advise us better than you can. Dounia, I must tell you, made her decision at once, but I still don’t feel sure how to act and I … I’ve been waiting for your opinion.’

Razumihin opened the note which was dated the

previous evening and read as follows:

"Dear Madam, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, I

have the honour to inform you that owing

to unforeseen obstacles I was rendered

unable to meet you at the railway station; I

sent a very competent person with the

same object in view. I likewise shall be

deprived of the honour of an interview

with you to-morrow morning by business

in the Senate that does not admit of delay,

and also that I may not intrude on your

family circle while you are meeting your

son, and Avdotya Romanovna her brother.

I shall have the honour of visiting you and

paying you my respects at your lodgings

not later than to-morrow evening at eight

o’clock precisely, and herewith I venture to

present my earnest and, I may add,

imperative request that Rodion

Romanovitch may not be present at our

interview—as he offered me a gross and

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unprecedented affront on the occasion of

my visit to him in his illness yesterday, and, moreover, since I desire from you

personally an indispensable and

circumstantial explanation upon a certain

point, in regard to which I wish to learn

your own interpretation. I have the honour

to inform you, in anticipation, that if, in

spite of my request, I meet Rodion

Romanovitch, I shall be compelled to

withdraw immediately and then you have

only yourself to blame. I write on the

assumption that Rodion Romanovitch

who appeared so ill at my visit, suddenly

recovered two hours later and so, being

able to leave the house, may visit you also.

I was confirmed in that belief by the

testimony of my own eyes in the lodging of

a drunken man who was run over and has

since died, to whose daughter, a young

woman of notorious behaviour, he gave

twenty-five roubles on the pretext of the

funeral, which gravely surprised me

knowing what pains you were at to raise

that sum. Herewith expressing my special

respect to your estimable daughter,

Avdotya Romanovna, I beg you to accept

the respectful homage of

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‘Your humble servant,

‘P. LUZHIN.’

‘What am I to do now, Dmitri Prokofitch?’ began Pulcheria Alexandrovna, almost weeping. ‘How can I ask Rodya not to come? Yesterday he insisted so earnestly on our refusing Pyotr Petrovitch and now we are ordered not to receive Rodya! He will come on purpose if he knows, and … what will happen then?’

‘Act on Avdotya Romanovna’s decision,’ Razumihin answered calmly at once.

‘Oh, dear me! She says … goodness knows what she says, she doesn’t explain her object! She says that it would be best, at least, not that it would be best, but that it’s absolutely necessary that Rodya should make a point of being here at eight o’clock and that they must meet…. I didn’t want even to show him the letter, but to prevent him from coming by some stratagem with your help …

because he is so irritable…. Besides I don’t understand about that drunkard who died and that daughter, and how he could have given the daughter all the money … which

…’

‘Which cost you such sacrifice, mother,’ put in Avdotya Romanovna.

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‘He was not himself yesterday,’ Razumihin said thoughtfully, ‘if you only knew what he was up to in a restaurant yesterday, though there was sense in it too….

Hm! He did say something, as we were going home yesterday evening, about a dead man and a girl, but I didn’t understand a word…. But last night, I myself …’

‘The best thing, mother, will be for us to go to him ourselves and there I assure you we shall see at once what’s to be done. Besides, it’s getting late—good heavens, it’s past ten,’ she cried looking at a splendid gold enamelled watch which hung round her neck on a thin Venetian chain, and looked entirely out of keeping with the rest of her dress. ‘A present from her fiancé ’ thought Razumihin.

‘We must start, Dounia, we must start,’ her mother cried in a flutter. ‘He will be thinking we are still angry after yesterday, from our