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

when it fails.) By that stupidity I only wanted to put myself into an independent position, to take the first step, to obtain means, and then everything would have been smoothed over by benefits immeasurable in comparison.⁠ ⁠… But I⁠ ⁠… I couldn’t carry out even the first step, because I am contemptible, that’s what’s the matter! And yet I won’t look at it as you do. If I had succeeded I should have been crowned with glory, but now I’m trapped.”

“But that’s not so, not so! Brother, what are you saying?”

“Ah, it’s not picturesque, not aesthetically attractive! I fail to understand why bombarding people by regular siege is more honourable. The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. I’ve never, never recognised this more clearly than now, and I am further than ever from seeing that what I did was a crime. I’ve never, never been stronger and more convinced than now.”

The colour had rushed into his pale exhausted face, but as he uttered his last explanation, he happened to meet Dounia’s eyes and he saw such anguish in them that he could not help being checked. He felt that he had, anyway, made these two poor women miserable, that he was, anyway, the cause⁠ ⁠…

“Dounia darling, if I am guilty forgive me (though I cannot be forgiven if I am guilty). Goodbye! We won’t dispute. It’s time, high time to go. Don’t follow me, I beseech you, I have somewhere else to go.⁠ ⁠… But you go at once and sit with mother. I entreat you to! It’s my last request of you. Don’t leave her at all; I left her in a state of anxiety, that she is not fit to bear; she will die or go out of her mind. Be with her! Razumihin will be with you. I’ve been talking to him.⁠ ⁠… Don’t cry about me: I’ll try to be honest and manly all my life, even if I am a murderer. Perhaps I shall some day make a name. I won’t disgrace you, you will see; I’ll still show.⁠ ⁠… Now goodbye for the present,” he concluded hurriedly, noticing again a strange expression in Dounia’s eyes at his last words and promises. “Why are you crying? Don’t cry, don’t cry: we are not parting forever! Ah, yes! Wait a minute, I’d forgotten!”

He went to the table, took up a thick dusty book, opened it and took from between the pages a little watercolour portrait on ivory. It was the portrait of his landlady’s daughter, who had died of fever, that strange girl who had wanted to be a nun. For a minute he gazed at the delicate expressive face of his betrothed, kissed the portrait and gave it to Dounia.

“I used to talk a great deal about it to her, only to her,” he said thoughtfully. “To her heart I confided much of what has since been so hideously realised. Don’t be uneasy,” he returned to Dounia, “she was as much opposed to it as you, and I am glad that she is gone. The great point is that everything now is going to be different, is going to be broken in two,” he cried, suddenly returning to his dejection. “Everything, everything, and am I prepared for it? Do I want it myself? They say it is necessary for me to suffer! What’s the object of these senseless sufferings? shall I know any better what they are for, when I am crushed by hardships and idiocy, and weak as an old man after twenty years’ penal servitude? And what shall I have to live for then? Why am I consenting to that life now? Oh, I knew I was contemptible when I stood looking at the Neva at daybreak today!”

At last they both went out. It was hard for Dounia, but she loved him. She walked away, but after going fifty paces she turned round to look at him again. He was still in sight. At the corner he too turned and for the last time their eyes met; but noticing that she was looking at him, he motioned her away with impatience and even vexation, and turned the corner abruptly.

“I am wicked, I see that,” he thought to himself, feeling ashamed a moment later of his angry gesture to Dounia. “But why are they so fond of me if I don’t deserve it? Oh, if only I were alone and no one loved me and I too had never loved anyone! Nothing of all this would have happened. But I wonder shall I in those fifteen or twenty years grow so meek that I shall humble myself before people and whimper at every word that I am a criminal? Yes, that’s it, that’s it, that’s what they are sending me there for, that’s what they want. Look at them running to and fro about the streets, every one of them a scoundrel and a criminal at heart and, worse still, an idiot. But try to get me off and they’d be wild with righteous indignation. Oh, how I hate them all!”

He fell to musing by what process it could come to pass, that he could be humbled before all of them, indiscriminately⁠—humbled by conviction. And yet why not? It must be so. Would not twenty years of continual bondage crush him utterly? Water wears out a stone. And why, why should he live after that? Why should he go now when he knew that it would be so? It was the hundredth time perhaps that he had asked himself that question since the previous evening, but still he went.

VIII

When he went into Sonia’s room, it was already getting dark. All day Sonia had been waiting for him in terrible anxiety. Dounia had been waiting with her. She had come to her that morning, remembering Svidrigaïlov’s words that Sonia knew. We will not describe the conversation and tears of the two girls, and how friendly they became. Dounia gained one comfort at least