I looked: it was an article by “Copyist.” He neither directly abused me nor praised me, and I was very glad. But “Copyist,” said among other things that my works generally “smelt of sweat”; that is, that I so sweated and struggled over them, so worked them up and worked them over, that the result was mawkish.
The publisher and I laughed. I informed him that my last story had been written in two nights, and that I had now written three and a half signatures in two days and two nights, and if only “Copyist,” who blamed me for the excessive laboriousness and solid deliberation of my work, knew that!
“It’s your own fault though, Ivan Petrovitch,” said he. “Why do you get so behindhand with your work that you have to sit up at night?”
Alexandr Petrovitch is a most charming person, of course, though he has one particular weakness — that is, boasting of his literary judgement, especially before those whom he suspects of knowing him through and through. But I had no desire to discuss literature with him; I took the money and picked up my hat. Alexandr Petrovitch was going to his villa on the Island, and hearing that I, too, was bound for Vassilyevsky, he amiably offered to take me in his carriage.
“I’ve got a new carriage,” he said, “you’ve not seen it. It’s very nice.”
We set off. The carriage was certainly delightful, and in the early days of his possession of it Alexandr Petrovitch took particular pleasure in driving his friends in it and even felt a spiritual craving to do so.
In the carriage Alexandr Petrovitch several times fell to criticizing contemporary literature again. He was quite at his ease with me, and calmly enunciated various second-hand opinions which he had heard a day or two before from literary people whom he believed in and whose ideas he respected. This led him sometimes to repeat very extraordinary notions. It sometimes happened, too, that he got an idea wrong or misapplied it, so that he made nonsense of it. I sat listening in silence, marvelling at the versatility and whimsicality of the passions of mankind. “Here’s a man,” I thought to myself, “who might make money and has made it; but no, he must have fame too, literary fame, the fame of a leading publisher, a critic!”
At the actual moment he was trying to expound minutely a literary theory which he had heard three days before from me myself, which he had argued against then, though now he was giving it out as his own. But such forgetfulness is a frequent phenomenon in Alexandr Petrovitch, and he is famous for this innocent weakness among all who know him. How happy he was then, holding forth in his own carriage, how satisfied with his lot, how benign! He was maintaining a highly cultured, literary conversation, even his soft, decorous bass had the note of culture. Little by little he drifted into liberalism, and then passed to the mildly sceptical proposition that no honesty or modesty was possible in our literature, or indeed in any other, that there could be nothing but “slashing at one another,” especially where the system of signed articles was prevalent. I reflected to myself that Alexandr Petrovitch was inclined to regard every honest and sincere writer as a simpleton, if not a fool, on account of is very sincerity and honesty. No doubt such an opinion was the direct result of his extreme guilelessness.
But I had left off listening to him. When we reached Vassilyevsky Island he let me get out of the carriage, and I ran to my friends. Now I had reached Thirteenth Street; here was their little house. Seeing me Anna Andreyevna shook her finger at me, waved her hand, and said “Ssh!” to me, to be quiet.
“Nellie’s only just fallen asleep, poor little thing!” she whispered to me hurriedly. “For mercy’s sake, don’t wake her! But she’s very worn, poor darling! We’re very anxious about her. The doctor says it’s nothing for the time, One can get nothing out of your doctor. And isn’t it a shame of you, Ivan Petrovitch! We’ve been expecting you! We expected you to dinner…. You’ve not been here for two days!”
“But I told you the day before yesterday that I shouldn’t be here for two days,” I whispered to Anna Andreyevna. “I had to finish my work….”
“But you know you promised to be here to dinner to-day! Why didn’t you come? Nellie got up on purpose, the little angel! — and we put her in the easy-chair, and carried her in to dinner. ‘I want to wait for Vanya with you,’ she said; but our Vanya never came. Why, it’ll soon be six o’clock! Where have you been gadding, you sinner? She was so upset that I didn’t know how to appease her…. Happily, she’s gone to sleep, poor darling. And here’s Nikolay Sergeyitch gone to town, too (he’ll be back to tea). I’m fretting all alone…. A post has turned up for him, Ivan Petrovitch; only when I think it’s in Perm it sends a cold chill to my heart….”
“And where’s Natasha?”
“In the garden, the darling! Go to her…. There’s something wrong with her, too…. I can’t make her out…. Oh, Ivan Petrovitch, my heart’s very heavy! She declares she’s cheerful and content, but I don’t believe her. Go to her, Vanya, and tell me quietly what’s the matter with her…. Do you hear?”
But I was no longer listening to Anna Andreyevna. I was running to the garden. The little garden belonged to the house. It was twenty-five paces long and as much in breadth, and it was all overgrown with green. There were three old spreading trees, a few young birch-trees, a few bushes of lilac and of honeysuckle; there was a patch of raspberries in the corner, two beds of strawberries, and two narrow, winding paths crossing the garden both ways. The old man declared with delight that it would soon grow mushrooms. The great thing was that Nellie was fond of the garden and she was often carried out in the easy-chair on to the garden path. Nellie was by now the idol of the house.
But now I came upon Natasha. She met me joyfully, holding out her hands. How thin she was, how pale! She, too, had only just recovered from an illness.
“Have you quite finished, Vanya?” she asked me.
“Quite, quite! And I am free for the whole evening.”
“Well, thank God! Did you hurry? Have you spoilt it?”
“What could I do? It’s all right, though. My nerves get strung up to a peculiar tension by working at such a strain; I imagine more clearly, I feel more vividly and deeply, and even my style is more under my control, so that work done under pressure always turns out better. It’s all right….”
“Ah, Vanya, Vanya! …”
I had noticed that of late Natasha had been keeping a jealous and devoted watch over my literary success and reputation. She read over everything I had published in the last year, was constantly asking me about my plans for the future, was interested in every criticism, was angry at some; and was desperately anxious that I should take a high place in the literary world. Her desire was expressed so strongly and insistently that I was positively astonished at her feeling.
“You’ll simply write yourself out, Vanya,” she said to me. “You’re overstraining yourself, and you’ll write yourself out; and what’s more, you’re ruining your health. S. now only writes a novel a year, and
N. has only written one novel in ten years. See how polished, how finished, their work is. You won’t find one oversight.”
“Yes, but they are prosperous and don’t write up to time; while I’m a hack. But that’s no matter! Let’s drop that, my dear. Well, is there no news?”
“A great deal. In the first place a letter from him.”
“Again?” I
“Yes, again.”
And she gave me a letter from Alyosha. It was the third she had had since their separation. The first was written from Moscow, and seemed to be written in a kind of frenzy. He informed her that things had turned out so that it was impossible for him to come from Moscow to Petersburg, as they had planned at parting. In the second letter he announced that he was coming to us in a few days to hasten his marriage to Natasha,