all the more stuck up. The gate is not good enough for him, he must pull the wall down!’ Why are you sitting there like that? \bu don’t look yourself.”
“I look as I always do,” Varya answered with displeasure.
Ganya looked at her more carefully.
“Have you been there?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes.”
“Stay, shouting again! What a disgrace, and at such a time too!”
“What sort of time? It’s no such special time.”
Ganya looked more intently than ever at his sister.
“Have you found out something more?” he asked.
“Nothing unexpected, anyway. I found out that it’s all a fact. My husband was nearer the truth than either of us; it’s turned out just as he predicted from the beginning. Where is he?”
“Not at home? What’s turned out?”
“The prince is formally betrothed to her. The thing is settled. The elder girls told me. Aglaia consents; they have even left off keeping it dark. (There’s always been so much mystery till now.) Adelaida’s wedding will be put off again so that the two weddings may be on one day. Such a romantic notion! Quite poetical! You’d better be writing a poem for the occasion than running about the room to no purpose. Princess Byelokonsky will be there this evening; she’s come in the nick of time; there are to be visitors. He is to be presented to the Princess Byelokonsky, though she knows him already. I believe the engagement will be publicly announced. They are only afraid he may let something drop or break something when he walks into the drawing-room, or else flop down himself; it’s quite in his line.”
Ganya listened very attentively, but to his sister’s surprise this news, which ought to have overwhelmed him, seemed to have by no means an overwhelming effect on him.
“Well, that was clear,” he said after a moment’s thought. “So it’s the end,” he added, with a strange smile, glancing slyly into his sister’s face and still walking up and down the room, but much more quietly.
“It’s a good thing you take it like a philosopher. I am glad, really,” said Varya.
“Yes, it’s a load off one’s mind; off yours, anyway.”
“I think I’ve served you sincerely without criticising or annoying you. I didn’t ask you what sort of happiness you expected with Aglaia.”
“Why, was I expecting . . . happiness from Aglaia?”
“Oh, please don’t discuss it philosophically! Of course you were. It’s all over and there’s nothing more for us to do. We’ve been fools. I must own I could never take the thing quite seriously. It was simply on the off-chance that I took it up. I was reckoning on her ridiculous character, and my chief object was to please you. It was ten to one it would come to nothing. I don’t know to this day what you have been hoping for.”
“Now your husband and you will be trying to make me get a job; you’ll give me lectures on perseverance and strength of will, and not despising small profits, and all the rest of it. I know it by heart,” laughed Ganya.
“He has something new in his mind,” Varya thought to herself.
“How are they taking it? Are they pleased, the father and mother?” Ganya asked suddenly.
“N-no, I think not. However, you can judge for yourself. Ivan Fyodorovitch is pleased. The mother is uneasy; she’s always viewed him with dislike as a suitor, we know that.”
“I don’t mean that. He is an impossible suitor, unthinkable, that’s evident. I was talking about their attitude now. What’s their line now? Has she given her formal consent?”
“She hasn’t so far said no, that’s all; but that’s all one could expect from her. You know how insanely shy and bashful she still is. When she was a child she would creep into a cupboard and sit there for two or three hours, simply to escape seeing visitors. Though she has grown such a maypole, she is just the same now. \bu know, I believe there really is something in it, even on her side. They say she is laughing at the prince from morning till night, so as to hide her feelings; but she must manage to say something on the sly to him every day, for he looks as though he were in heaven, he is beaming. He is fearfully funny, they say. I heard it from them. I fancied too that they laughed at me to my face, the elder girls.”
Ganva at last beqan to frown; perhaps Varva went on enlarging on the subject on purpose to get at his real view. But they heard a shout again upstairs.
“I’ll turn him out!” Ganya fairly roared, as though glad to vent his annoyance.
“And then he will go disgracing us everywhere, as he did yesterday.”
“Yesterday? What do you mean? Why, did he . . .” Ganya seemed dreadfully alarmed all of a sudden.
“Oh dear, didn’t you know?” Varya pulled herself up.
“What! Surely it isn’t true that he has been there?” cried Ganya, flushing crimson with shame and anger. “Good heavens! why you’ve come from there! Have you heard something about it? Has the old man been there? Has he, or not?”
And Ganya rushed to the door. Varya flew to him and clutched him with both hands.
“What are you about? Where are you going?” she said. “If you let him out now, he will do more harm than ever; he will go to everyone.”
“What did he do there? What did he say?”
“Well, they couldn’t tell me themselves, they hadn’t understood it; he only frightened them all. He went to see Ivan Fyodorovitch; he was out. He asked to see Lizaveta Prokofyevna. First he asked her about a post — wanted to get a job; and then he began complaining of us, of me, of my husband, of you especially…. He talked a lot of stuff.”
“You couldn’t find out what?” Ganya was quivering hysterically.
“How could I? He scarcely knew what he was saying himself; and perhaps they did not tell me everything.”
Ganya clutched at his head and ran to the window. Varya sat down at the other window.
“Aglaia is an absurd creature,” she observed suddenly. “She stopped me and said ‘Please give your parents my special respects. I shall certainly have an opportunity of seeing your father one of these days.’ And she said that so seriously; it was awfully queer….”
“Not in derision? Not in derision?”
“That’s just it, it wasn’t. That is what was so queer.”
“Does she know about the old man, or not, what do you think?”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that they don’t know in the family. But you’ve given me an idea: Aglaia perhaps does know. She is the only one who does know perhaps, for her sisters were surprised too when she sent her greeting to father so seriously. And why to him particularly? If she does know, the prince must have told her.”
“It’s not difficult to guess who told her! A thief! It’s the last straw. A thief in our family, ‘the head of the house’!”
“That’s nonsense!” cried Varya, losing patience. “A drunken prank, that’s all. And who made up the story? Lebedyev, the prince . . . they are a nice lot themselves; they are wise people! Don’t believe a word of it.”
“The old man is a thief and a drunkard,” Ganya went on bitterly, “I am a beggar, my sister’s husband is a moneylender — an alluring prospect for Aglaia! A lovely state of things and no mistake!”
“That sister’s husband who is a moneylender is . .
“Keeping me, you mean? Don’t mince matters, please.”
“Why are you so cross?” said Varya, restraining herself. “\bu are a regular schoolboy, you don’t understand anything. “Vbu think all this might injure you in Aglaia’s eyes? “Vbu don’t know her. She’d refuse the most eligible suitor and run off delighted with some student to starve in a garret — that’s her dream! “Vbu’ve never been able to understand how interesting you would have become in her eyes, if you had been able to bear our surroundings with pride and fortitude. The prince has hooked her, in the first place, because he wasn’t fishing for her; and secondly, because he is looked upon by every one as an idiot. The very fact that she is upsetting her family about him is a joy to her. Ah, you don’t understand!”
“Well, we shall see whether I understand or not,” Ganya muttered enigmatically. “Still, I shouldn’t like her to know about the old man. I thought Myshkin would have been able to hold his tongue. He made Lebedyev keep quiet; he didn’t want to speak out to me when I insisted on knowing.”
“So you see that, apart from him, it has leaked out. And what does it matter to you now? What are you hoping for? And even if you had any hope left, it would only make her look on you as a martyr.”
“Well, even she would be a coward about a scandal, in spite of all her romantic notions. It’s all up to a certain point, and every one draws the line somewhere. You are all alike.”
“Aglaia would be a coward?” Varya fired up, looking contemptuously at her brother. “\bu’ve got a mean little soul! You are all a worthless lot. She may be absurd and eccentric, but she is a thousand times more generous than any of us.”
“Well, never mind, never mind, don’t be cross,” Ganya murmured again complacently.
“I am sorry for mother, that’s all,” Varya went on. “I am so afraid this scandal about father may reach her ears. Ach! I am afraid it will!”
“No doubt it has reached her,” observed Ganya.
Varya had risen to go upstairs to Nina Alexandrovna,