We must add that for some time there was rather an unpleasant feeling in the house. There was a sense of oppression, of strain, of some unspoken dissension; every one wore a frown. The general was busy day and night, absorbed in his work. His household hardly got a glimpse of him; he had rarely been seen more active and occupied, especially in his official work. As for the young ladies, no word was spoken by them openly. Perhaps even when they were alone together, very little was said. They were proud, haughty girls and reserved even with one another, though they understood each other not only at a word but at a glance, so that sometimes there was no need to say much.
There was only one conclusion that might have been drawn by a disinterested observer, if there had happened to be such a one — namely, that to judge from the above-mentioned facts, few as they were, Myshkin had succeeded in making a marked impression on the Epanchin family, though he had only been once among them, and then for a short time. Perhaps the feeling he had inspired was simply curiosity aroused by certain eccentric adventures of Myshkin’s. However that might be, the impression remained.
Little by little, the rumours that had circulated about the town were lost in the darkness of uncertainty. A story was told indeed of some little prince who was a simpleton (no one could be sure of his name), who had suddenly come into a vast fortune and married a Frenchwoman, a notorious dancer of the cancan from the Chateau-de-Fleurs in Paris. But others declared that it was a general who had come in for a fortune, and that the man who had married the notorious French cancan dancer was a young Russian merchant of untold wealth, and that at his wedding, from pure bravado, he had when drunk burnt in a candle lottery tickets to the value of seven hundred thousand roubles. But all these rumours soon died away, a result to which circumstances greatly contributed. All Rogozhin’s followers, for instance, many of whom might have had something to say, had all gone in his wake to Moscow, a week after an awful orgy at the Ekaterinhof Vauxhall, in which Nastasya Filippovna took part. The few persons who were interested in the subject learnt from certain reports that Nastasya Filippovna had run off and disappeared the day after this orgy, and she seems to have been traced to Moscow; so that Rogozhin’s departure to Moscow seemed to fall in with this rumour.
There were rumours too with regard to Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, who was also pretty well known in his own circle. But something happened to him which quickly softened and in the end completely stopped all unpleasant stories about him: he fell seriously ill and unable to go to his office, much less into society. He recovered after a month’s illness, but for some reason resigned his position in the office of the joint stock company and was replaced by another man. He had not once been to the Epanchins’ house either; so another clerk undertook the duties of secretary to the general. Gavril Ardalionovitch’s enemies might have assumed that he was so crestfallen at all that had happened to him as to be ashamed to go out into the street; but he was really ill, and sank into a state of hypochondria; he grew moody and irritable. Varvara Ardalionovna was married to Ptitsyn that winter. All who knew them put the marriage down to the fact that Ganya was unwilling to return to his duties, and was not only unable to keep his family, but was even in need of assistance and almost of care himself.
It may be observed in parenthesis that no mention was made in the Epanchin family of Gavril Ardalionovitch either, as though such a man had never been seen in their house, nor had indeed existed in the world at all. “Vfet meantime everyone in the family learnt — and very shortly indeed — one remarkable fact concerning him. On the fatal night after his unpleasant experience with Nastasya Filippovna, Ganya did not go to bed on returning home, but awaited Myshkin’s return with feverish impatience. Myshkin, who had gone to Ekaterinhof, came home at six o’clock next morning. Then Ganya went into his room and laid on the table before him the roll of scorched notes presented to him by Nastasya Filippovna while he lay fainting. He begged Myshkin to give this present back to her at the first opportunity. When Ganya went into Myshkin’s room, he was in a hostile and almost desperate mood; but some words must have been exchanged between them, after which Ganya stayed two hours with Myshkin, sobbing bitterly all the time. They parted on affectionate terms.
This story, which reached the Epanchins, turned out to be perfectly correct. It was strange, of course, that such facts could so soon come out and be generally known; all that had happened at Nastasya Filippovna’s, for instance, became known at the Epanchins’ almost the next day, and fairly accurately. As for the facts concerning Gavril Ardalionovitch, it might have been supposed that they had been carried to the Epanchins’ by Varvara Ardalionovna, who suddenly became a frequent visitor and an intimate friend of the girls, to the great astonishment of Lizaveta Prokofyevna. But though Varvara Ardalionovna thought fit for some reason to make such friends with the Epanchins, yet she certainly would not have talked to them about her brother. She too was rather a proud woman in her own way, although she did seek the intimacy of people who had almost turned her brother out. She had been acquainted with the Epanchin girls before, but she had seen them rarely. She hardly ever showed herself in the drawing-room even now, however, and went in, or rather slipped in, by the back staircase. Lizaveta Prokofyevna had never cared for her and did not care for her now, though she had a great respect for her mother, Nina Alexandrovna. She wondered, was angry, and put down their intimacy with Varya to the whims and self-will of her daughters, who “did not know what to think of to oppose her.” But Varya continued to visit them, both before and after her marriage.
A month after Myshkin’s departure, however, Madame Epanchin received a letter from old Princess Byelokonsky, who had gone a fortnight before to Moscow to stay with her eldest married daughter, and this letter had a marked effect upon her, though she said nothing of it to her daughters or to Ivan Fyodorovitch, but from various signs it was evident to them that she was much excited, even agitated, by it. She began talking rather strangely to her daughters and always of such extraordinary subjects; she was evidently longing to open her heart, but for some reason restrained herself. She was affectionate to every one on the day she received the letter, she even kissed Adelaida and Aglaia; she owned herself in fault in regard to them, but they could not make out how. She even became indulgent to Ivan Fyodorovitch, who had been in her bad books for the past month. Next day, of course, she was extremely angry at her own sentimentality, and managed to quarrel with every one before dinner, but the horizon cleared again towards the evening. For a whole week she continued to be in a fairly good humour, which had not been the case for a long time past.
But a week later a second letter came from Princess Byelokonsky, and this time Madame Epanchin made up her mind to speak out. She announced solemnly that “old Byelokonsky” (she never called the princess anything else when she spoke of her behind her back) gave her comforting news about that . . . “queer fellow, that prince, you know.” The old lady had traced him in Moscow, had inquired about him, and had found out something very good. Myshkin had been to see her himself at last, and had made an extremely good impression on her, as was evident from the fact that she invited him to come and see her every afternoon between one and two. “He has been hanging about there every day, and she is not sick of him yet,” Madame Epanchin concluded, adding that through “the old woman” the prince had been received in two or three good families. “It’s a good thing that he doesn’t stick at home and isn’t shy like a noodle.”
The girls to whom all this was imparted noticed at once that their mamma was concealing a great deal in the letter. Perhaps they learnt this from Varvara Ardalionovna, who might and probably did know everything Ptitsyn knew about Myshkin and his stay in Moscow. And Ptitsyn was in a position to know more than anyone else. But he was an exceedingly silent man in regard to
