"Same as ever?"
"As ever, hah!" exclaimed Ganya. "As ever! No, the devil knows what's going on here now, and not as ever! The old man's getting rabid . . . mother's howling ... By God, Varya, say what you will, I'll throw him out of the house or ... or leave myself," he added, probably recalling that he really could not throw people out of a house that was not his.
"You must be tolerant," Varya murmured.
"Tolerant of what? Of whom?" Ganya flared up. "Of his abominations? No, say what you will, it's impossible like this! Impossible, impossible, impossible! And such a manner: he's to blame and yet he swaggers even more! 'If it won't fit through the gate, knock the fence down! . . .' Why are you sitting there like that? You don't look yourself!"
"I look as I look," Varya answered with displeasure.
Ganya studied her more intently.
"You've been there?" he asked suddenly.
"Yes."
"Wait, they're shouting again! What a shame, and at such a time!"
"Why such a time? It's no special time."
Ganya looked still more intently at his sister.
"Did you find out anything?" he asked.
"Nothing unexpected, at least. I found out that it's all true. My husband was more right than either of us; he predicted it from the very beginning, and so it's turned out. Where is he?" "Not at home. What's turned out?"
"The prince is formally her fiancé, the matter's settled. The older
girls told me. Aglaya has agreed; they've even stopped hiding it. (It was all so mysterious there till now.) Adelaida's wedding will be postponed again, so as to celebrate both weddings together, on the same day—how poetic! Like verse! Why don't you go and write some verses for the nuptials instead of running up and down the room for nothing? Tonight they'll be having old Belokonsky; she arrived just in time; there will be guests. He'll be introduced to Belokonsky, though he's already met her; it seems they're going to announce it publicly. They're only afraid he'll drop and break something as he comes into the room in front of the guests, or just fall down himself; that would be like him."
Ganya listened very attentively, but, to his sister's surprise, this striking news did not seem to make any striking effect on him.
"Well, that was clear," he said after some thought, "so, it's over!" he added with a strange smile, peeking slyly into his sister's face and still pacing up and down the room, but much more slowly now.
"It's good that you can take it philosophically; I'm truly glad," said Varya.
"It's off our backs; off yours, at least."
"I believe I served you sincerely, without arguing and pestering; I never asked you what sort of happiness you wanted to look for with Aglaya."
"But was I . . . looking for happiness with Aglaya?"
"Well, kindly don't go getting into philosophy! Of course you were. It's over, and enough for us—two fools. I must confess to you, I never could look seriously on this affair; I took it up 'just in case,' counting on her funny character, and above all to humor you; there was a ninety percent chance it would be a flop. Even now I don't know myself what you were after."
"Now you and your husband will start urging me to get a job; give me lectures on persistence and willpower, on not scorning small things, and so on—I know it by heart," Ganya laughed loudly.
"There's something new on his mind!" thought Varya.
"So, what—are they glad there, the parents?" Ganya asked suddenly.
"N-no, it seems not. However, you can judge for yourself; Ivan Fyodorovich is pleased; the mother's afraid; before, too, she loathed seeing him as a suitor; you know why."
"That's not what I mean; the suitor is impossible and
unthinkable, that's clear. I'm asking about now, how are things there now? Has she formally accepted him?"
"She hasn't said 'no' yet—that's all, but then it couldn't be otherwise with her. You know how preposterously shy and modest she's been all along: as a child she used to get into the wardrobe and sit there for two or three hours, only so as not to come out to the guests; she's grown into such a big thing, but it's the same now. You know, for some reason I think there's actually something serious in it, even on her part. They say she keeps laughing her head off at the prince, from morning till night, so as not to let anything show, but she must certainly manage to say something to him on the quiet every day, because he looks as though he's walking on air, beaming . . . They say he's terribly funny. I heard it from them. It also seemed to me that they were laughing in my face—the older ones, I mean."
Ganya finally started to scowl; maybe Varya had deliberately gone deeper into the subject in order to penetrate to his real thoughts. But again a shout came from upstairs.
"I'll throw him out!" Ganya simply roared, as if glad to vent his vexation.
"And then he'll go and disgrace us again everywhere, like yesterday."
"How—like yesterday? What do you mean like yesterday? Did he . . ." Ganya suddenly became terribly alarmed.
"Ah, my God, don't you know?" Varya recollected herself.
"How ... so it's really true that he was there?" Ganya exclaimed, flushing with shame and fury. "My God, you were just there! Did you find anything out? Was the old man there? Was he or wasn't he?"
And Ganya rushed to the door; Varya dashed to him and seized him with both arms.
"What is it? Where are you going?" she said. "If you let him out now, he'll do something worse, he'll go to everybody! . . ."
"What did he do there? What did he say?"
"They weren't able to tell and didn't understand themselves; he just frightened them all. He came to see Ivan Fyodorovich—he wasn't there; he demanded to see Lizaveta Prokofyevna. First he asked her for a job, to enter the service, then he started complaining about me, my husband, and you especially . . . said all kinds of things."
"You couldn't find out?" Ganya was trembling as if in hysterics.
"Oh, come now! He himself barely understood what he was saying, and maybe they didn't tell me all of it."
Ganya clutched his head and ran to the window; Varya sat down by the other window.
"Aglaya's funny," she suddenly observed, "she stops me and says: 'Convey my particular personal respects to your parents; one of these days I shall probably find an occasion to see your father.' And she says it so seriously. It's terribly odd . . ."
"Not mockingly? Not mockingly?"
"Precisely not; that's the odd thing."
"Does she know about the old man or doesn't she, what do you think?"
"It's not known to them in the house, I have no doubt of that; but you've given me an idea: maybe Aglaya does know. She alone knows, because the sisters were also surprised that she sent her greetings to father so seriously. Why on earth precisely to him? If she knows, then it's the prince who told her!"
"It takes no cleverness to find out who told her! A thief! Just what we needed. A thief in our family, 'the head of the family'!"
"Oh, nonsense!" cried Varya, becoming quite angry. "A drunken incident, nothing more. And who came up with it? Lebedev, the prince . . . fine ones they are; palatial minds. I don't care a whit about it."
"The old man's a thief and a drunkard," Ganya went on biliously, "I'm a pauper, my sister's husband is a usurer—Aglaya had something to covet! Pretty, I must say!"
"That sister's husband, the usurer, is your ..."
"Feeder, is that it? Kindly don't mince words."
"Why are you angry?" Varya recollected herself. "You don't understand anything, just like a schoolboy. Do you think all that could harm you in Aglaya's eyes? You don't know her character; she'd turn her back on the foremost suitor, but she'd be pleased to run to some student in a garret and starve to death—that's her dream! You've never been able to understand how interesting you'd become in her eyes if you could endure our circumstances with firmness and pride. The prince caught her on his hook, first of all, because he never tried to catch her and, second, because in everybody's eyes he's an idiot. This one thing alone, that she'll muddle up the whole family because of him—that's what she likes now. Ah, none of you understands anything!"