Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (405 page)

“Oh, leave off, you’ve got up a tragedy!” cried Ganya. “If you didn’t put us to shame all over the town, it would be better.”

“What, I put you to shame, milksop, you? I can only do you credit, I can’t dishonour you!”

He began shouting, and they could not restrain him, but Gavril Ardalionovitch could not control himself either.

“You talk about honour!” he shouted angrily.

“What do you say?” thundered the general, turning pale and taking a step towards him.

“That I need only open my mouth to . . .” Ganya roared suddenly, and broke off.

They stood facing one another, both excessively agitated, especially Ganya.

“Ganya, what are you about!” cried Nina Alexandrovna, rushing to restrain her son.

“How senseless it is of you all,” Varya snapped out in indignation. “Be quiet, mother,” she said, taking hold of her.

“Only for mother’s sake, I spare him,” Ganya brought out tragically.

“Speak!” roared the general in a perfect frenzy. “Speak, on pain of your father’s curse! Speak! ...”

“As though I were frightened of your curse! And whose fault is it that you’ve been like a madman for the last eight days? Eight days, you see I keep a reckoning. Mind you don’t drive me too far. I’ll tell everything. . . . Why did you go stumping off to the Epanchins’ yesterday? And you call yourself an old man, grey haired, the father of a family! He’s a pretty one!”

“Shut up, Ganya!” shouted Kolya. “Shut up, you fool!”

“But how have I, how have I insulted him?” Ippolit persisted, but still in the same jeering voice. “Why did he call me a screw, you heard him? He came pestering me; he was here just now, talking of some Captain Eropyegov. I don’t desire your company at all, general, I’ve always avoided it, as you know yourself. I have nothing to do with Captain Eropyegov, you will admit. I didn’t come here for the sake of Captain Eropyegov. I simply expressed my opinion that this Captain Eropyegov may possibly never have existed. He raised the devil.”

“He certainly never has existed,” Ganya rapped out.

But the general stood looking stupefied, and gazed blankly about him. His son’s words had impressed him by their extraordinary openness. For the first instant he could not even find words. And at last, only when Ippolit burst out laughing in response to Ganya and cried out: “There, did you hear, your own son, too, says there was no such person as Captain Eropyegov,” the old man muttered, completely disconcerted:

“Kapiton Eropyegov, not Captain . . . Kapiton . . . the retired Lieutenant-Colonel Eropyegov . . . Kapiton.”

“And there was never a Kapiton, either,” cried Ganya, thoroughly exasperated.

“Why. . . wasn’t there?” muttered the general, and a flush overspread his whole face.

“Oh, leave off!” Ptitsyn and Varya tried to repress them.

“Hold your tongue, Ganya!” Kolya shouted again.

But this intercession seemed to bring the general to himself.

“How can you say there wasn’t? Why didn’t he exist?” he flew out menacingly at his son.

“Oh, because there wasn’t. There wasn’t and that’s all, and there couldn’t be! So there. Leave me alone, I tell you.”

“And this is my son ... my own son, whom I. . . . Oh, Heavens! ... No such person as Eropyegov, Eroshka Eropyegov!”

“There you are, now he’s Eroshka, before he was Kapitoshka!” put in Ippolit.

“Kapitoshka, sir, Kapitoshka, not Eroshka. Kapiton, Kapiton Alexeyevitch, I mean, Kapiton. . . . Lieutenant-Colonel on half-pay... he was married to Marya ... to Marya . . . Petrovna. Su . . . su . . . a friend and comrade . . . Sutogov . . . from the time of the cadets! For his sake I shed ... I screened . . . killed. No such person as Kapitoshka Eropyegov! No such person!” the general shouted wildly, yet it miqht be assumed that what he was shoutinq about was not what really mattered. Another time he would, of course, have put up with something far more insulting than the assertion of Kapiton Eropyegov’s absolute non-existence. He would have shouted, made a fuss, been moved to frenzy, but yet, in the end, he would have gone upstairs to bed. But now, such is the fantastic strangeness of the human heart, it happened that a slight, such as the doubt about Eropyegov, was the last drop in his cup. The old man turned crimson, raised his arms and shouted:

“Enough! My curse! . .. Out of this house! Nikolay, bring me my bag ... I am going ... away!”

He went out in haste and extreme wrath. Nina Alexandrovna, Kolya and Ptitsyn rushed after him.

“Well, what have you done now!” Varya said to her brother. “He’ll be off there again most likely. The disgrace of it!”

“He shouldn’t steal,” cried Ganya, almost spluttering with anger. Suddenly his eyes met Ippolit’s. Ganya positively shook. “As for you, sir,” he shouted, “you ought to remember, anyway, that you’re in another person’s house and . . . enjoying his hospitality, and not to irritate an old man who has obviously gone out of his mind.”

Ippolit too felt a qualm, but he instantly controlled himself.

“I don’t quite agree with you that your papa has gone out of his mind,” he answered calmly, “on the contrary, it seems to me that he has had more sense of late, really; don’t you think so? He has become so cautious, suspicious. He pries into everything, weighs every word. He began talking to me about that Kapitoshka with an object, you know. Only fancy, he wanted to lead me on to ...”

“Ai’e, what the devil do I care what he wanted to lead you on to? I beg you not to try your shifty dodges on me, sir,” shrieked Ganya. “If you, too, know the real cause why the old man is in such a state (and you’ve been spying here these five days to such a degree that you certainly do know) you ought not to have irritated ... the unhappy man, and worried my mother by exaggerating the matter; for it’s all nonsense, simply a drunken freak, nothing more, not proved either, and I don’t think it’s worth a thought... but you must sting and spy because you .. . you are .

“A screw!” laughed Ippolit.

“Because you are an abject creature, because you worried people for half an hour, thinking to frighten them by shooting yourself with an unloaded pistol, making such a shameful exhibition of yourself, you walking mass of jaundiced spite who can’t even commit suicide without making a mess of it! I have given you hospitality, you’ve grown fat, you’ve left off coughing, and you repay it...”

“Allow me, two words only; I am in Varvara Ardalionovna’s house, not yours, and I imagine indeed that you yourself are enjoying the hospitality of Mr. Ptitsyn. Four days ago I begged my mother to find lodgings for me in Pavlovsk and to move here herself, because I certainly feel better here, though I have not grown fat at all and am still coughing. Mother let me know yesterday evening that the lodging was ready, and I hasten to inform you on my side, that thanking your mother and sister for their kindness, I will move there to-day, as I decided to do last night. Excuse me, I interrupted you, I believe you wanted to say a great deal more.”

“Oh, if that’s so,” said Ganya, quivering.

“If that’s so, allow me to sit down,” added Ippolit, seating himself with perfect composure in the chair where the general had been sitting. “After all I am ill, you know; well, now I’m ready to listen to you, especially as this is our last conversation, perhaps indeed our last meeting.”

Ganya suddenly felt ashamed.

“You may be sure I won’t demean myself by settling accounts with you,” said he, “and if you ...”

“You need not be so lofty,” interrupted Ippolit, “on the very first day of my coming here, I vowed I would not deny myself the satisfaction of paying off all scores with you, and in the most thoroughgoing way, when we came to part. I intend to do this now, but after you, of course.”

“I beg you to leave the room.”

“You’d better speak. You’ll only regret not having had it out, you know.”

“Leave off, Ippolit, it’s all so horribly undignified; do me the favour to be quiet,” said Varya.

“Only to oblige a lady,” laughed Ippolit, getting up. “Certainly, Varvara Ardalionovna, for you I am ready to cut it short, but only that, for some explanation between me and your brother is absolutely essential, and nothing would induce me to go away leaving a misunderstandinq.”

“In plain words you’re a scandalmonger,” screamed Ganya, “and so you won’t go away without a scandal.”

“There, you see,” Ippolit observed coolly, “you’re at it again, already. \bu certainly will regret not speaking out. Once more I make way for you. I await your words.”

Gavril Ardalionovitch looked at him contemptuously, without speaking.

“You won’t speak. You mean to keep up your part — please yourself. On my side I will be as brief as possible. Two or three times to-day I have been reproached with accepting your hospitality. That’s unfair. By inviting me to stay with you, you tried to entrap me yourself, you reckoned I should want to payout the prince. \bu heard, besides, that Aglaia Ivanova had shown sympathy for me and read my confession. Supposing for some reason that I was ready to devote myself altogether to your interests, you hoped that you might get help from me. I won’t explain more in detail! I do not demand assurances or confessions from you either; enough that I leave you to your conscience, and that now we thoroughly understand each other.”

“Goodness knows what you make out of the most ordinary things!” cried Varya.

“I told you: he’s a scandalmonger and a nasty schoolboy,” said Ganya.

“Allow me, Varvara Ardalionovna, I’ll go on. The prince, of course, I can neither like nor respect; but he is certainly a kind man, though . . . rather ridiculous. But I’ve certainly no reason to hate him; I didn’t let on when your brother tried to set me against the prince; I was looking forward to having a laugh at him afterwards. I knew that your brother would make a blunder and give himself away to me shockingly. And so it has turned out... I am ready to spare him now, simply out of respect for you, Varvara Ardalionovna. But since I have made it clear that it is not so easy to catch me, I’ll explain why I was so anxious to make your brother look a fool. You must know that I’ve done it because I hate him, I confess it openly. When I die (for I am dying even if I have grown fatter as you say), when I die, I feel I shall go to paradise with my heart incomparably more at ease, if I succeed in making a fool of one at least of the class of people who have persecuted me all my life, whom I have hated all my life, and of which your excellent brother is a conspicuous example. I hate you, Gavril Ardalionovitch, simply because — this will perhaps seem marvellous to you — simply because you are the type, the incarnation, the acme of the most insolent and self-satisfied, the most vulgar and loathsome commonplaceness. \burs is the commonplaceness of pomposity, of self-satisfaction and Olympian serenity. You are the most ordinary of the ordinary! Not the smallest idea of your own will ever take shape in your heart or your mind. But you are infinitely envious; you are firmly persuaded that you are a great genius; but yet doubt does visit you sometimes at black moments, and you grow spiteful and envious. Oh, there are still black spots on your horizon; they will pass when you become quite stupid, and that’s not far off; but a long and chequered path lies before you! I can’t call it a cheerful one and I’m glad of it. In the first place I predict that you won’t gain a certain lady...”

“Oh, this is unbearable!” cried Varya. “Will you leave off, you horrid, spiteful creature?”

Ganya turned white, quivered and kept silent. Ippolit stopped, looked intentlvand with relish at him,

turned his eyes to Varya, bowed and went out, without adding another word.

Gavril Ardalionovitch might with justice have complained of his lot and of his ill-success. For some time Varya did not venture to speak to him, she did not even glance at him as he paced to and fro before her with long strides; at last he walked away to the window and stood with his back to her. Varya thought of the Russian proverb about “a knife that cuts both ways.” A noise began again overhead.

“Are you going?” Ganya asked suddenly, hearing her get up from her seat. “Wait a bit. Look at this.”

He went up and threw on the chair before her a piece of paperfolded into the shape of a tiny note.

“Good heavens!” cried Varya, clasping her hands.

There were just seven lines in the note:

“Gavril Ardalionovitch! As I am convinced of your friendly feeling for me I venture to ask your advice in a matter of great importance to me. I should like to meet you to-morrow morning at seven o’clock at the green seat. It’s not far from our villa. Varvara Ardalionovna who must accompany you knows the place well. A.E.”

“Good heavens, what will she do next?” Varvara Ardalionovna flung up her hands.

Little as Ganya was inclined to be boastful at that moment, he could not help showing his triumph, especially after Ippolit’s humiliating predictions. A self-satisfied smile lit up his face, and Varya, too, beamed all over with delight.

“And that on the very day when her betrothal is to be announced! Well, there’s no knowing what she’ll do next!”

“What do you think? What does she mean to speak about to-morrow?” asked Ganya.

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that she wants to see you for the first time after six months. Listen to me, Ganya, whatever’s happened, whatever turn it takes, I tell you it’s important! It’s tremendously important! Don’t swagger, don’t make another blunder, and don’t be faint-hearted either, mind that. She must have guessed why I’ve been trudging off there for the last six months? And fancy, she didn’t say a word to me to-day, she made no sign. I’ve been to them on the sly, you know. The old woman did not know I was there, or maybe she’d have sent me packing. I risked it for your sake, to find out at all costs....”

Again there was shouting and uproar overhead. Several persons were coming downstairs.

“This mustn’t be allowed now on any account!” cried Varya, flurried and alarmed. “Not a shadow of a scandal! Go, ask his forgiveness!”

But the head of the family was already in the street. Kolya was dragging his bag after him. Nina Alexandrovna was standing on the steps, crying; she would have run after him, but Ptitsyn held her back.