Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

it strange and wondered why she had seen at once that there was no doubt. She could not have said, for instance, that she had foreseen something of the sort⁠—and yet now, as soon as he told her, she suddenly fancied that she had really foreseen this very thing.

“Stop, Sonia, enough! don’t torture me,” he begged her miserably.

It was not at all, not at all like this he had thought of telling her, but this is how it happened.

She jumped up, seeming not to know what she was doing, and, wringing her hands, walked into the middle of the room; but quickly went back and sat down again beside him, her shoulder almost touching his. All of a sudden she started as though she had been stabbed, uttered a cry and fell on her knees before him, she did not know why.

“What have you done⁠—what have you done to yourself?” she said in despair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her arms round him, and held him tightly.

Raskolnikov drew back and looked at her with a mournful smile.

“You are a strange girl, Sonia⁠—you kiss me and hug me when I tell you about that.⁠ ⁠… You don’t think what you are doing.”

“There is no one⁠—no one in the whole world now so unhappy as you!” she cried in a frenzy, not hearing what he said, and she suddenly broke into violent hysterical weeping.

A feeling long unfamiliar to him flooded his heart and softened it at once. He did not struggle against it. Two tears started into his eyes and hung on his eyelashes.

“Then you won’t leave me, Sonia?” he said, looking at her almost with hope.

“No, no, never, nowhere!” cried Sonia. “I will follow you, I will follow you everywhere. Oh, my God! Oh, how miserable I am!⁠ ⁠… Why, why didn’t I know you before! Why didn’t you come before? Oh, dear!”

“Here I have come.”

“Yes, now! What’s to be done now?⁠ ⁠… Together, together!” she repeated as it were unconsciously, and she hugged him again. “I’ll follow you to Siberia!”

He recoiled at this, and the same hostile, almost haughty smile came to his lips.

“Perhaps I don’t want to go to Siberia yet, Sonia,” he said.

Sonia looked at him quickly.

Again after her first passionate, agonising sympathy for the unhappy man the terrible idea of the murder overwhelmed her. In his changed tone she seemed to hear the murderer speaking. She looked at him bewildered. She knew nothing as yet, why, how, with what object it had been. Now all these questions rushed at once into her mind. And again she could not believe it: “He, he is a murderer! Could it be true?”

“What’s the meaning of it? Where am I?” she said in complete bewilderment, as though still unable to recover herself. “How could you, you, a man like you.⁠ ⁠… How could you bring yourself to it?⁠ ⁠… What does it mean?”

“Oh, well⁠—to plunder. Leave off, Sonia,” he answered wearily, almost with vexation.

Sonia stood as though struck dumb, but suddenly she cried:

“You were hungry! It was⁠ ⁠… to help your mother? Yes?”

“No, Sonia, no,” he muttered, turning away and hanging his head. “I was not so hungry.⁠ ⁠… I certainly did want to help my mother, but⁠ ⁠… that’s not the real thing either.⁠ ⁠… Don’t torture me, Sonia.”

Sonia clasped her hands.

“Could it, could it all be true? Good God, what a truth! Who could believe it? And how could you give away your last farthing and yet rob and murder! Ah,” she cried suddenly, “that money you gave Katerina Ivanovna⁠ ⁠… that money.⁠ ⁠… Can that money⁠ ⁠…”

“No, Sonia,” he broke in hurriedly, “that money was not it. Don’t worry yourself! That money my mother sent me and it came when I was ill, the day I gave it to you.⁠ ⁠… Razumihin saw it⁠ ⁠… he received it for me.⁠ ⁠… That money was mine⁠—my own.”

Sonia listened to him in bewilderment and did her utmost to comprehend.

“And that money.⁠ ⁠… I don’t even know really whether there was any money,” he added softly, as though reflecting. “I took a purse off her neck, made of chamois leather⁠ ⁠… a purse stuffed full of something⁠ ⁠… but I didn’t look in it; I suppose I hadn’t time.⁠ ⁠… And the things⁠—chains and trinkets⁠—I buried under a stone with the purse next morning in a yard off the V⁠⸺ Prospect. They are all there now.⁠ ⁠…”

Sonia strained every nerve to listen.

“Then why⁠ ⁠… why, you said you did it to rob, but you took nothing?” she asked quickly, catching at a straw.

“I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… I haven’t yet decided whether to take that money or not,” he said, musing again; and, seeming to wake up with a start, he gave a brief ironical smile. “Ach, what silly stuff I am talking, eh?”

The thought flashed through Sonia’s mind, wasn’t he mad? But she dismissed it at once. “No, it was something else.” She could make nothing of it, nothing.

“Do you know, Sonia,” he said suddenly with conviction, “let me tell you: if I’d simply killed because I was hungry,” laying stress on every word and looking enigmatically but sincerely at her, “I should be happy now. You must believe that! What would it matter to you,” he cried a moment later with a sort of despair, “what would it matter to you if I were to confess that I did wrong? What do you gain by such a stupid triumph over me? Ah, Sonia, was it for that I’ve come to you today?”

Again Sonia tried to say something, but did not speak.

“I asked you to go with me yesterday because you are all I have left.”

“Go where?” asked Sonia timidly.

“Not to steal and not to murder, don’t be anxious,” he smiled bitterly. “We are so different.⁠ ⁠… And you know, Sonia, it’s only now, only this moment that I understand where I asked you to go with me yesterday! Yesterday when I said it I did not know where. I asked you for one thing, I came to you for one thing⁠—not to leave me. You won’t leave me,