“At last I have managed to get in. Why do you tie up the bell?” she said good-humouredly, giving her hand to Ganya, who rushed to meet her. “Why do you look so upset? Introduce me, please.”
Ganya, utterly disconcerted, introduced her first to Varya, and the two women exchanged strange looks before holding out their hands to each other. Nastasya Filippovna, however, laughed and masked her feelings with a show of good-humour; but Varya did not care to mask hers, and looked at her with gloomy intensity. Her countenance showed no trace even of the smile required by simple politeness. Ganya was aghast; it was useless to entreat, and there was no time indeed, and he flung at Varya such a menacing glance that she saw from it what the moment meant to her brother. She seemed to make up her mind to give in to him, and faintly smiled at Nastasya Filippovna. (All of the family were still very fond of one another.) The position was somewhat improved by Nina Alexandrovna, whom Ganya, helplessly confused, introduced after his sister. He even made the introduction to Nastasya Filippovna instead of to his mother. But no sooner had Nina Alexandrovna begun to speak of the “great pleasure,” &c. when Nastasya Filippovna, paying no attention to her, turned hurriedly to Ganya and, sitting down, without waiting to be asked, on a little sofa in the corner by the window, she cried out:
“Where’s your study? And . . . where are the lodgers? You take lodgers, don’t you?”
Ganya flushed horribly and was stammering some answer, but Nastasya Filippovna added at once:
“Wherever do you keep lodgers here? \bu’ve no study even. Does it pay?” she asked, suddenly addressinq Nina Alexandrovna.
“It’s rather troublesome,” the latter replied. “Of course it must pay to some extent, but we’ve only just But Nastasya Filippovna was not listening again: she stared at Ganya, laughed, and shouted to him:
“What do you look like! My goodness! what do you look like at this minute!”
Her laughter lasted several minutes, and Ganya’s face certainly was terribly distorted. His stupefaction, his comic crestfallen confusion had suddenly left him. But he turned fearfully pale, his lips worked convulsively. He bent a silent, intent and evil look on the face of his visitor, who still went on laughing.
There was another observer who had scarcely recovered from his amazement at the sight of Nastasya Filippovna; but though he stood dumbfounded in the same place by the drawing-room door, yet he noticed Ganya’s pallor and the ominous change in his face. That observer was Myshkin. Almost frightened, he instinctively stepped forward.
“Drink some water,” he murmured to Ganya, “and don’t look like that.”
It was evident that he spoke on the impulse of the moment, without ulterior motive or intention. But his words produced an extraordinary effect. All Ganya’s spite seemed suddenly turned against him. He seized him by the shoulder and looked at him in silence with hatred and resentment, as though unable to utter a word. It caused a general commotion; Nina Alexandrovna even uttered a faint cry. Ptitsyn stepped forward uneasily; Kolya and Ferdyshtchenko, who were coming in at the door, stopped short in amazement. Only Varya still looked sullen, yet she was watching intently. She did not sit down, but stood beside her mother with her arms folded across her bosom.
But Ganya checked himself at once, almost at the first moment, and laughed nervously. He regained his self-possession completely.
“Why, are you a doctor, prince?” he cried as simply and good-humouredly as he could. “He positively frightened me. Nastasya Filippovna, may I introduce? This is a rare personality, though I’ve only known him since the morning.”
Nastasya Filippovna looked at Myshkin in astonishment.
“Prince? He is a prince? Only fancy, I took him for the footman just now and sent him in to announce me! Ha, ha, ha!”
“No harm done — no harm done,” put in Ferdyshtchenko, going up to her quickly, relieved that they had begun to laugh. “No harm: se non e vero”
“And I was almost swearing at you, prince! Forgive me, please. Ferdyshtchenko, how do you come to be here at such an hour? I did not expect to meet you here, anyway. Who? What prince? Myshkin?” she questioned Ganya, who, still holding Myshkin by the shoulder, had by now introduced him.
“Our boarder,” repeated Ganya.
It was obvious that they presented him and almost thrust him upon Nastasya Filippovna as a curiosity, as a means of escape from a false position. Myshkin distinctly caught the word “idiot” pronounced behind his back, probably by Ferdyshtchenko, as though in explanation to Nastasya Filippovna.
“Tell me, why didn’t you undeceive me just now when I made such a dreadful mistake about you?” Nastasya Filippovna went on, scanning Myshkin from head to foot in a most unceremonious fashion.
She waited with impatience for an answer, as though she were sure the answer would be so stupid as to make them laugh.
“I was surprised at seeing you so suddenly,” Myshkin muttered.
“And how did you know it was I? Where have you seen me before? But how is it? Really, it seems as though I had seen him somewhere. And tell me why were you so astonished just now? What is there so amazing about me?”
“Come now, come,” Ferdyshtchenko went on, simpering. “Come now! Oh Lord, the things I’d say in answer to such a question! Come! .. . We shall think you are a duffer next, prince!”
“I should say them too in your place,” said Myshkin, laughing, to Ferdyshtchenko. “I was very much struck to-day by your portrait,” he went on, addressing Nastasya Filippovna. “Then I talked to the Epanchins about you; and early this morning in the train, before I reached Petersburg, Parfyon Rogozhin told me a great deal about you. . . . And at the very minute I opened the door to you, I was thinking about you too, and then suddenly you appeared.”
“And how did you recognise that it was I?”
“From the photograph, and …”
“And what?”
“And you were just as I had imagined you. … I feel as though I had seen you somewhere too.”
“Where — where?”
“I feel as though I had seen your eyes somewhere . . . but that’s impossible. That’s nonsense. . . . I’ve never been here before. Perhaps in a dream….”
“Bravo, prince!” cried Ferdyshtchenko. “Yes, I take back my ‘se non e vera! But it’s all his innocence,” he added regretfully.
Myshkin had uttered his few sentences in an uneasy voice, often stopping to take breath. Everything about him suggested strong emotion. Nastasya Filippovna looked at him with interest, but she was not laughing now.
At that moment a new voice, speaking loudly behind the group that stood close round Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna, seemed to cleave a way through the company and part it in two. Facing Nastasya Filippovna stood the head of the family, General Ivolqin himself. He wore an eveninq coat and had a clean shirt-front; his moustaches were dyed.
This was more than Ganya could endure.
Ambitious and vain to a hyper-sensitive, morbid degree, he had been seeking for the last two months for any sort of means by which he could build up a more presentable and gentlemanly mode of life. Yet he felt himself without experience, and perhaps likely to go astray in the path he had chosen. At home, where he was a despot, he had taken up in despair an attitude of complete cynicism; but he dared not maintain his position before Nastasya Filippovna, who had held him in suspense till the last minute and ruthlessly kept the upper hand of him. “The impatient beggar,” as Nastasya Filippovna had called him, so he had been told, had sworn by every oath that he would make her pay bitterly for it afterwards. Yet at the same time he had sometimes dreamed like a child of reconciling all incongruities. Now, after all that, he had to drink this bitter cup too, at such a moment above all! One more unforeseen torture — most terrible of all for a vain man — the agony of blushing for his own kindred, in his own house, had fallen to his lot.
“Is the reward itself worth it?” flashed through Ganya’s mind at that moment.
At that instant there was happening what had been his nightmare for those two months, what had frozen him with horror and made him burn with shame: the meeting had come at last between his father and Nastasya Filippovna. He had sometimes tormented himself by trying to imagine the general at the wedding, but he never could fill in the agonising picture and made haste to put it out of his mind. Perhaps he exaggerated his misfortune out of all proportion. But that is always the way with vain people. In the course of those two months he had considered the matter thoroughly and had decided at all costs to suppress his parent for a time at least and to get him, if necessary, out of Petersburg, with or without his mother’s consent. Ten minutes earlier, when Nastasya Filippovna made her entrance, he was so taken aback, so dumbfounded, that he forgot the possibility of Ardalion Alexandrovitch’s appearance on the scene and had taken no steps to prevent it. And behold, here was the general before them all, and solemnly got up for the occasion too in a dress-coat, at the very moment when Nastasya Filippovna was “only seeking some pretext to cover him and his family with ridicule” (of that he felt convinced). Indeed, what could
