I won’t let you be insulted,” whispered Alyosha, disconcerted but not overwhelmed.
The door opened, and Prince Valkovsky in his own person appeared on the threshold.
Chapter II
HE took us all in in a rapid attentive glance.
It was impossible to guess from this glance whether he had come as a friend or as an enemy.
But I will describe his appearance minutely.
He struck me particularly that evening.
I had seen him before.
He was a man of fortyfive, not more, with regular and strikingly handsome features, the expression of which varied according to circumstances; but it changed abruptly, completely, with extraordinary rapidity, passing from the most agreeable to the most surly or displeased expression, as though some spring were suddenly touched.
The regular oval of his rather swarthy face, his superb teeth, his small, rather thin, beautifully chiselled lips, his rather long straight nose, his high forehead, on which no wrinkle could be discerned, his rather large grey eyes, made him handsome, and yet his face did not make a pleasant impression.
The face repelled because its expression was not spontaneous, but always, as it were, artificial, deliberate, borrowed, and a blind conviction grew upon one that one would never read his real expression.
Looking more carefully one began to suspect behind the invariable mask something spiteful, cunning, and intensely egoistic.
One’s attention was particularly caught by his fine eyes, which were grey and franklooking.
They were not completely under the control of his will, like his other features.
He might want to look mild and friendly, but the light in his eyes was as it were twofold, and together with the mild friendly radiance there were flashes that were cruel, mistrustful, searching and spiteful.... He was rather tall, elegantly, rather slimly built, and looked strikingly young for his age.
His soft dark brown hair had scarcely yet begun to turn grey.
His ears, his hands, his feet were remarkably fine.
It was preeminently the beauty of race.
He was dressed with refined elegance and freshness but with some affectation of youth, which suited him, however.
He looked like Alyosha’s elder brother.
At any rate no one would have taken him for the father of so grownup a son.
He went straight up to Natasha and said, looking at her firmly:
“My calling upon you at such an hour, and unannounced, is strange, and against all accepted rules. But I trust that you will believe I can at least recognize the eccentricity of my behaviour.
I know, too, with whom I have to deal; I know that you are penetrating and magnanimous.
Only give me ten minutes, and I trust that you will understand me and justify it.”
He said all this courteously but with force, and, as it were, emphasis.
“Sit down,” said Natasha, still unable to shake off her confusion and some alarm.
He made a slight bow and sat down.
“First of all allow me to say a couple of words to him,” he said, indicating his son.
“As soon as you had gone away, Alyosha, without waiting for me or even taking leave of us, the countess was informed that Katerina Fyodorovna was ill.
She was hastening to her, but Katerina Fyodorovna herself suddenly came in distressed and violently agitated.
She told us, forthwith, that she could not marry you.
She said, too, that she was going into a nunnery, that you had asked for her help, and had told her that you loved Natalya Nikolaevna. This extraordinary declaration on the part of Katerina Fyodorovna, especially at such a moment, was of course provoked by the extreme strangeness of your explanation with her.
She was almost beside herself; you can understand hole shocked and alarmed I was.
As I drove past just now I noticed a light in your window,” he went on, addressing Natasha, “then an idea which had been haunting me for a long time gained such possession of me that I could not resist my first impulse, and came in to see you.
With what object?
I will tell you directly, but I beg you beforehand not to be surprised at a certain abruptness in my explanation, It is all so sudden. . .”
“I hope I shall understand and appreciate what you are going to say, as I ought,” answered Natasha, faltering.
The prince scrutinized her intently as though he were in a hurry to understand her through and through in one minute.
“I am relying on your penetration too,” he went on, “and I have ventured to come to you now just because I knew with whom I should have to deal.
I have known you for a long time now, although I was at one time so unfair to you and did you injustice.
Listen. You know that between me and your father there are disagreements of long standing.
I don’t justify myself; perhaps I have been more to blame in my treatment of him than I had supposed till now.
But if so I was myself deceived.
I am suspicious, and I recognize it.
I am disposed to suspect evil rather than good: an unhappy trait, characteristic of a cold heart.
But it is not my habit to conceal my failings.
I believed in the past all that was said against you, and when you left your parents I was terrorstricken for Alyosha.
But then I did not know you.
The information I have gathered little by little has completely reassured me.