Most Interesting Stories of All Nations Part 10

Only then, as she was leaving the room, did Anna Iurievna bethink her of the strange words that had fallen on her ears: "The will!

In his hands! Take it!" And repeating them questioningly to herself, she walked slowly back toward the room in which lay her father's body.

But she was even more occupied with her own thoughts. She no longer felt in her heart the bitter resentment toward Olga Vseslavovna that had filled it yesterday. She was conscious of a feeling of sorrow for the helpless woman, of compa.s.sion for her empty, shallow life, the fruit of an empty, shallow heart. And she was wondering why such empty, joyless lives should exist in a world where there was such deep happiness and joy.

She came over to her father's coffin, close to which the deacon was still droning out his liturgy, and stood beside the dead body, looking down at the strong, quiet face, and vividly recalling her dream of the night before. Her eyes rested on the many stars and medals on his breast, and on his hands, quietly clasped in death.

Then suddenly, and quite mechanically, Olga Vseslavovna's cry, as she returned to consciousness, came back into her mind:

"The will! In his hands! Take it!" And bending down, she noted for the first time something white beneath the muslin canopy. As she scrutinized it wonderingly, she was conscious of an humble, apologetic voice murmuring something at her elbow:

"Forgive me, Anna Iurievna. I humbly beg you, forgive me! It was I ... in the night ... the flowers fell ... I was putting them back ... fixing the head of your sainted papa... . It was under his head, the paper ... I thought he wanted to keep it... . I put it in his hands, to be safe! ... Forgive me, Anna Iurievna, if I have done any harm."

It was the deacon, still oppressed by a feeling of guilt. Anna Iurievna turned to him, and then turned back again, to her father's body, to the white object shining under the muslin canopy. And once more Olga Vseslavovna's words came into her mind:

"The will! In his hands! Take it!"

Gently raising the canopy, she softly drew the paper from beneath the general's clasped hands, and unfolded it. She read no more than the opening words, but she had read enough to realize that it was, indeed, her father's will.

Feodor Mikhailovitch Dostoyevsky

Crime and Punishment*

* (At the risk of shocking the reader, it has been decided that the real permanent detective stories of the world were ill represented without Dostoyevsky's terrible tale of what might be called "self- detection." If to sensitive readers the story seems so real as to be hideous, it is well to recall that Dostoyevsky in 1849 underwent the agony of sentence to death as a revolutionist. Although the sentence was commuted to hard labor in Siberia, and although six years later he was freed and again took up his writing, his mind never rose from beneath the weight of horror and hopelessness that hangs over offenders against the Great White Czar. Dostoyevsky, sentenced as a criminal, herded with criminals, really BECAME a criminal in literary imagination. Add to this a minute observation, a marvelous memory, ardent political convictions--and we can understand why the story here, with others of his, is taken as a scientific text by criminologists.--EDITOR.)

One sultry evening early in July a young man emerged from the small furnished lodging he occupied in a large five-storied house in the Pereoulok S----, and turned slowly, with an air of indecision, toward the K---- bridge. He was fortunate enough not to meet his landlady on the stairs. She occupied the floor beneath him, and her kitchen, with its usually open door, was entered from the staircase. Thus, whenever the young man went out, he found himself obliged to pa.s.s under the enemy's fire, which always produced a morbid terror, humiliating him and making him knit his brows. He owed her some money and felt afraid of encountering her.

It was not that he had been terrified or crushed by misfortune, but that for some time past he had fallen into a state of nervous depression akin to hypochondria. He had withdrawn from society and shut himself up, till he was ready to shun, not merely his landlady, but every human face. Poverty had once weighed him down, though, of late, he had lost his sensitiveness on that score. He had given up all his daily occupations. In his heart of hearts he laughed scornfully at his landlady and the extremities to which she might proceed. Still, to be waylaid on the stairs, to have to listen to all her jargon, hear her demands, threats, and complaints, and have to make excuses and subterfuges in return--no, he preferred to steal down without attracting notice. On this occasion, however, when he had gained the street, he felt surprised himself at this dread of meeting the woman to whom he was in debt.

"Why should I be alarmed by these trifles when I am contemplating such a desperate deed?" thought he, and he gave a strange smile.

"Ah, well, man holds the remedy in his own hands, and lets everything go its own way, simply through cowardice--that is an axiom. I should like to know what people fear most:--whatever is contrary to their usual habits, I imagine. But I am talking too much. I talk and so I do nothing, though I might just as well say, I do nothing and so I talk. I have acquired this habit of chattering during the last month, while I have been lying for days together in a corner, feeding my mind on trifles. Come, why am I taking this walk now? Am I capable of THAT? Can THAT really be serious? Not in the least. These are mere chimeras, idle fancies that flit across my brain!

The heat in the streets was stifling. The crowd, the sight of lime, bricks, scaffolding, and the peculiar odor so familiar to the nostrils of the inhabitant of St. Petersburg who has no means of escaping to the country for the summer, all contributed to irritate the young man's already excited nerves. The reeking fumes of the dram shops, so numerous in this part of the city, and the tipsy men to be seen at every point, although it was no holiday, completed the repulsive character of the scene. Our hero's refined features betrayed, for a moment, an expression of bitter disgust. We may observe casually that he was not dest.i.tute of personal attractions; he was above middle height, with a slender and well-proportioned figure, and he had dark auburn hair and fine dark eyes. In a little while he sank into a deep reverie, or rather into a sort of mental torpor. He walked on without noticing, or trying to notice, his surroundings. Occasionally he muttered a few words to himself; as if, as he himself had just perceived, this had become his habit.

At this moment it dawned upon him that his ideas were becoming confused and that he was very feeble; he had eaten nothing worth mentioning for the last two days.

His dress was so miserable that anyone else might have scrupled to go out in such rags during the daytime. This quarter of the city, indeed, was not particular as to dress. In the neighborhood of the Cyennaza or Haymarket, in those streets in the heart of St.

Petersburg, occupied by the artisan cla.s.ses, no vagaries in costume call forth the least surprise. Besides the young man's fierce disdain had reached such a pitch, that, notwithstanding his extreme sensitiveness, he felt no shame at exhibiting his tattered garments in the street. He would have felt differently had he come across anyone he knew, any of the old friends whom he usually avoided.

Yet he stopped short on hearing the attention of pa.s.sers-by directed to him by the thick voice of a tipsy man shouting: "Eh, look at the German hatter!" The exclamation came from an individual who, for some unknown reason, was being jolted away in a great wagon. The young man s.n.a.t.c.hed off his hat and began to examine it. It was a high-crowned hat that had been originally bought at Zimmermann's, but had become worn and rusty, was covered with dents and stains, slit and short of a brim, a frightful object in short. Yet its owner, far from feeling his vanity wounded, was suffering rather from anxiety than humiliation.

"I suspected this," muttered he, uneasily, "I foresaw it. That's the worst of it! Some wretched trifle like this might spoil it all. Yes, this hat is certainly too remarkable; it looks so ridiculous. I must get a cap to suit my rags; any old thing would be better than this horror. Hats like these are not worn; this one would be noticeable a verst* off; it would be remembered; people would think of it again some time after, and it might furnish a clew. I must attract as little attention as possible just now.

Trifles become important, everything hinges on them."

* 1,000 yards.

He had not far to go; he knew the exact distance between his lodging and present destination--just seven hundred and thirty paces. He had counted them when his plan only floated through his brain like a vague dream. At that time, he himself would not have believed it capable of realization; he merely dallied in fancy with a chimera which was both terrible and seductive. But a month had elapsed, and he had already begun to view it in a different light.

Although he reproached himself throughout his soliloquies with irresolution and a want of energy, he had accustomed himself, little by little, and, indeed, in spite of himself, to consider the realization of his dream a possibility, though he doubted his own resolution. He was but just now rehearsing his enterprise, and his agitation was increasing at every step.

His heart sank, and his limbs trembled nervously, as he came to an immense pile of building facing the ca.n.a.l on one side and the street on the other. This block was divided into a host of small tenements, tenanted by all sorts of trades. People were swarming in and out through the two doors. There were three or four dvorniks* belonging to the house, but the young man, to his great satisfaction, came across none of them, and, escaping notice as he entered, mounted at once the stairs on the right hand. He had already made acquaintance with this dark and narrow staircase, and its obscurity was grateful to him; it was gloomy enough to hide him from prying eyes. "If I feel so timid now, what will it be when I come to put my plan into execution?" thought he, as he reached the fourth floor. Here he found the pa.s.sage blocked; some military porters were removing the furniture from a tenement recently occupied, as the young man knew, by a German official and his family. "Thanks to the departure of this German, for some time to come there will be no one on this landing but the old woman. It is as well to know this, at any rate," thought he to himself, as he rang the old woman's bell. It gave a faint sound, as if it were made of tin instead of copper. In houses of this sort, the smaller lodgings generally have such bells.

* Janitors.

He had forgotten this; the peculiar tinkling sound seemed to recall something to his memory, for he gave a shiver--his nerves were very weak. In another moment the door was opened part way, and the occupant of the rooms stood examining her visitor through the opening with evident suspicion, her small eyes glimmering through the darkness like luminous points. But when she saw the people on the landing, she seemed rea.s.sured, and flung the door open. The young man entered a gloomy antechamber, divided by a part.i.tion, behind which was a small kitchen. The old woman stood silently in front of him, eyeing him keenly. She was a thin little creature of sixty, with a small sharp nose, and eyes sparkling with malice.

Her head was uncovered, and her grizzled locks shone with grease.

A strip of flannel was wound round her long thin neck, and, in spite of the heat, she wore a shabby yellow fur tippet on her shoulders. She coughed incessantly. The young man was probably eyeing her strangely, for the look of mistrust suddenly reappeared on her face.

"The Student Raskolnikoff. I called on you a month ago," said the visitor, hurriedly, with a slight bow. He had suddenly remembered that he must make himself more agreeable.

"I remember, batuchka, I remember it well," returned the old woman, still fixing her eyes on him suspiciously.

"Well, then, look here. I have come again on a similar errand,"

continued Raskolnikoff, somewhat surprised and uneasy at being received with so much distrust. "After all, this may be her usual manner, though I did not notice it before," thought he, unpleasantly impressed.

The old woman remained silent a while, and seemed to reflect.

Then, pointing to the door of the inner room, she drew back for her visitor to pa.s.s, and said, "Come in, batuchka."*

* "Little father."

The small room into which the young man was ushered was papered with yellow; there were geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, and the setting sun shed a flood of light on the interior.

"The sun will shine on it just the same THEN!" said Raskolnikoff all at once to himself, as he glanced rapidly round to take in the various objects and engrave them on his memory. The room, however, contained nothing remarkable. The yellow wood furniture was all very old. A couch with a shelving back, opposite which stood an oval table, a toilet-table with a pier gla.s.s attached, chairs lining the walls, and two or three poor prints representing German girls with birds in their hands, completed the inventory. A lamp was burning in one corner in front of a small image. The floor and furniture were clean and well polished. "Elizabeth attends to that," thought the young man. It would have been difficult to find a speck of dust on anything. "It is only in the houses of these dreadful old widows that such order is to be seen," continued Raskolnikoff to himself, looking with curiosity at the chintz curtain overhanging the door which led into a second small room, in which he had never set foot; it contained the old woman's bed and chest of drawers. The apartment consisted of these two rooms.

"What is it you want?" asked the mistress of the house dryly; she had followed her visitor in, and planted herself in front of him to examine him more closely.

"I have come to p.a.w.n something, that is all!" With this he drew from his pocket a flat old silver watch. A globe was engraved inside the lid, and the chain was of steel.

"But you have not repaid the sum I lent you before. It was due two days ago."

"I will pay you the interest for another month; have a little patience."

"I may have patience or I may sell your pledge at once, batuchka, just whichever I like."

"What will you give me on this watch, Alena Ivanovna?"

"That is a wretched thing, batuchka, worth a mere nothing. Last time I lent you two small notes on your ring, when I could have bought a new one at the jeweler's for a ruble and a half."

"Give me four rubles, and I will redeem it; it belonged to my father. I expect some money soon."

"A ruble and a half! and I shall take the interest in advance."

"A ruble and a half!" protested the young man.