Most Interesting Stories of All Nations Part 18

"Thirty kopecks, sir," replied the man.

"There you are, and twenty for yourself. Look, what a lot of money!" turning to Zametoff and thrusting forth his shaking hand filled with the twenty-five rubles, red and blue notes. "Whence comes all this? Where did I obtain these new clothes from? You know I had none. You have asked the landlady, I suppose? Well, no matter!--Enough! Adieu, most affectionately."

He went out, shaking from some savage hysterical emotion, a mixture of delight, gloom, and weariness. His face was drawn as if he had just recovered from a fit; and, as his agitation of mind increased, so did his weakness.

Meanwhile, Zametoff remained in the restaurant where Raskolnikoff had left him, deeply buried in thought, considering the different points Raskolnikoff had placed before him.

His heart was empty and depressed, and he strove again to drive off thought. No feeling of anguish came, neither was there any trace of that fierce energy which moved him when he left the house to "put an end to it all."

"What will be the end of it? The result lies in my own will. What kind of end? Ah, we are all alike, and accept the bit of ground for our feet and live. Must this be the end? Shall I say the word or not? Oh, how weary I feel! Oh, to lie down or sit anywhere!

How foolish it is to strive against my illness! Bah! What thoughts run through my brain!" Thus he meditated as he went drowsily along the banks of the ca.n.a.l, until, turning to the right and then to the left, he reached the office building. He stopped short, however, and, turning down a lane, went on past two other streets, with no fixed purpose, simply, no doubt, to give himself a few moments longer for reflection. He went on, his eyes fixed on the ground, until all of a sudden he started, as if some one had whispered in his ear. Raising his eyes he saw that he stood before THE HOUSE, at its very gates.

Quick as lightning, an idea rushed into his head, and he marched through the yard and made his way up the well-known staircase to the fourth story. It was, as usual, very dark, and as he reached each landing he peered almost with caution. There was the room newly painted, where Dmitri and Mikola had worked. He reached the fourth landing and he paused before the murdered woman's room in doubt. The door was wide open and he could hear voices within; this he had not antic.i.p.ated. However, after wavering a little, he went straight in. The room was being done up, and in it were some workmen. This astonished him--indeed, it would seem he had expected to find everything as he had left it, even to the dead bodies lying on the floor. But to see the place with bare walls and bereft of furniture was very strange! He walked up to the windows and sat on the sill. One of the workmen now saw him and cried:

"What do you want here?"

Instead of replying, Raskolnikoff walked to the outer door and, standing outside, began to pull at the bell. Yes, that was the bell, with its harsh sound. He pulled again and again three times, and remained there listening and thinking.

"What is it you want?" again cried the workman as he went out to Raskolnikoff.

"I wish to hire some rooms. I came to look at these."

"People don't take lodgings in the night. Why don't you apply to the porter?"

"The floor has been washed. Are you going to paint it?" remarked Raskolnikoff. "Where is the blood?"

"What blood?"

"The old woman's and her sister's. There was quite a pool."

"Who are you?" cried the workman uneasily.

"I am Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikoff, ex-student. I live at the house Schilla, in a lane not far from here, No. 14. Ask the porter there--he knows me," Raskolnikoff replied indifferently, without turning to his questioner.

"What were you doing in those rooms?"

"Looking at them."

"What for? Come, out you go then, if you won't explain yourself,"

suddenly shouted the porter, a huge fellow in a smock frock, with a large bunch of keys round his waist; and he caught Raskolnikoff by the shoulder and pitched him into the street. The latter lurched forward, but recovered himself, and, giving one look at the spectators, went quietly away.

"What shall I do now?" thought Raskolnikoff. He was standing on the bridge, near a crossing, and was looking around him as if expecting some one to speak. But no one spoke, and all was dark and dull, and dead--at least to him, and him alone.

A few days later, Raskolnikoff heard from his friend Razoumikhin that those who had borrowed money from Alena Ivanovna were going to the police office to redeem their pledges. He went with Razoumikhin to the office where they were received by Porphyrius Petrovitch, the examining magistrate, who seemed to have expected them.

"You have been expecting this visit? But how did you know that he had pledged anything with Alena Ivanovna?" cried Razoumikhin.

Porphyrius Petrovitch, without any further reply, said to Raskolnikoff: "Your things, a ring and a watch, were at her place, wrapped up in a piece of paper, and on this paper your name was legibly written in pencil, with the date of the day she had received these things from you."

"What a memory you must have got!" said Raskolnikoff, with a forced smile, doing his best to look the magistrate unflinchingly in the face. However, he could not help adding: "I say so, because, as the owners of the pledged articles are no doubt very numerous, you must, I should fancy, have some difficulty in remembering them all; but I see, on the contrary, that you do nothing of the kind. (Oh!

fool! why add that?)"

"But they have nearly all of them come here; you alone had not done so," answered Porphyrius, with an almost imperceptible sneer.

"I happened to be rather unwell."

"So I heard. I have been told that you have been in great pain.

Even now you are pale."

"Not at all. I am not pale. On the contrary, I am very well!"

answered Raskolnikoff in a tone of voice which had all at once become brutal and violent. He felt rising within him uncontrollable anger. "Anger will make me say some foolish thing,"

he thought. "But why do they exasperate me?"

"He was rather unwell! A pretty expression, to be sure!" exclaimed Razoumikhin. "The fact is that up to yesterday he has been almost unconscious. Would you believe it, Porphyrius? Yesterday, when he could hardly stand upright, he seized the moment when we had just left him, to dress, to be off by stealth, and to go loafing about, Heaven only knows where, till midnight, being, all the time, in a completely raving condition. Can you imagine such a thing? It is a most remarkable case!"

"Indeed! In a completely raving state?" remarked Porphyrius, with the toss of the head peculiar to Russian rustics.

"Absurd! Don't you believe a word of it! Besides, I need not urge you to that effect--of course you are convinced," observed Raskolnikoff, beside himself with pa.s.sion. But Porphyrius Petrovitch did not seem to hear these singular words.

"How could you have gone out if you had not been delirious?" asked Razoumikhin, getting angry in his turn. "Why have gone out at all?

What was the object of it? And, above all, to go in that secret manner? Come, now, make a clean breast of it--you know you were out of your mind, were you not? Now that danger is gone by, I tell you so to your face."

"I had been very much annoyed yesterday," said Raskolnikoff, addressing the magistrate, with more or less of insolence in his smile, "and, wis.h.i.+ng to get rid of them, I went out to hire lodgings where I could be sure of privacy, to effect which I had taken a certain amount of money. Mr. Zametoff saw what I had by me, and perhaps he can say whether I was in my right senses yesterday or whether I was delirious? Perhaps he will judge as to our quarrel." Nothing would have pleased him better than there and then to have strangled that gentleman, whose taciturnity and equivocal facial expression irritated him.

"In my opinion, you were talking very sensibly and even with considerable shrewdness; only I thought you too irritable,"

observed Zametoff off-handedly.

"Do let us have some tea! We are as dry as fishes!" exclaimed Razoumikhin.

"Good idea! But perhaps you would like something more substantial before tea, would you?"

"Look alive, then!"

Porphyrius Petrovitch went out to order tea. All kinds of thoughts were at work in Raskolnikoff's brain. He was excited. "They don't even take pains to dissemble; they certainly don't mince matters as far as I am concerned: that is something, at all events! Since Porphyrius knew next to nothing about me, why on earth should he have spoken with Nicodemus Thomich Zametoff at all? They even scorn to deny that they are on my track, almost like a pack of hounds! They certainly speak out plainly enough!" he said, trembling with rage. "Well, do so, as bluntly as you like, but don't play with me as the cat would with the mouse! That's not quite civil, Porphyrius Petrovitch; I won't quite allow that yet!

I'll make a stand and tell you some plain truths to your faces, and then you shall find out my real opinion about you!" He had some difficulty in breathing. "But supposing that all this is pure fancy?--a kind of mirage? Suppose I had misunderstood? Let me try and keep up my nasty part, and not commit myself, like the fool, by blind anger! Ought I to give them credit for intentions they have not? Their words are, in themselves, not very extraordinary ones-- so much must be allowed; but a double meaning may lurk beneath them. Why did Porphyrius, in speaking of the old woman, simply say 'At her place?' Why did Zametoff observe that I had spoken very sensibly? Why their peculiar manner?--yes, it is this manner of theirs. How is it possible that all this cannot have struck Razoumikhin? The b.o.o.by never notices anything! But I seem to be feverish again! Did Porphyrius give me a kind of wink just now, or was I deceived in some way? The idea is absurd! Why should he wink at me? Perhaps they intend to upset my nervous organization, and, by so doing, drive me to extremes! Either the whole thing is a phantasmagoria, or--they know!"

These thoughts flashed through his mind with the rapidity of lightning. Porphyrius Petrovitch came back a moment afterwards.

He seemed in a very good temper. "When I left your place yesterday, old fellow, I was really not well," he commenced, addressing Razoumikhin with a cheeriness which was only just becoming apparent, "but that is all gone now."

"Did you find the evening a pleasant one? I left you in the thick of the fun; who came off best?"

"n.o.body, of course. They caviled to their heart's content over their old arguments."

"Fancy, Rodia, the discussion last evening turned on the question: 'Does crime exist? Yes, or No.' And the nonsense they talked on the subject!"

"What is there extraordinary in the query? It is the social question without the charm of novelty," answered Raskolnikoff abruptly.

"Talking of crime," said Porphyrius Petrovitch, speaking to Raskolnikoff, "I remember a production of yours which greatly interested me. I am speaking about your article ON CRIME. I don't very well remember the t.i.tle. I was delighted in reading it two months ago in the Periodical Word."