"Well, we've yet to see whether we understand or not," Ganya
muttered mysteriously, "only all the same I wouldn't want her to find out about the old man. I thought the prince would keep it to himself and not tell. He kept Lebedev from telling, and he didn't want to tell me everything either, when I badgered him . . ."
"So you can see for yourself that everything's known already even without him. But what is it to you now? What is there to hope for? And if there were any hope left, it would only give you a look of suffering in her eyes."
"Well, in the face of a scandal even she would turn coward, despite all her love of novels. Everything up to a certain limit, and everybody up to a certain limit—you're all the same."
"Aglaya would turn coward?" Varya flared up, looking contemptuously at her brother. "You really have a mean little soul, though! None of you is worth anything. She may be funny and eccentric, but she's a thousand times nobler than any of us."
"Well, never mind, never mind, don't be angry," Ganya again muttered smugly.
"I'm only sorry for mother," Varya went on. "I'm afraid this story with father may get to her, oh, I'm afraid!"
"And it surely has," Ganya observed.
Varya got up to go upstairs to Nina Alexandrovna, but stopped and looked intently at her brother.
"Who could have told her?"
"Ippolit, it must be. I suppose he considered it his prime pleasure to report it to mother, as soon as he moved in with us."
"But how does he know, pray tell? The prince and Lebedev decided not to tell anyone, even Kolya doesn't know."
"Ippolit? He found it out himself. You can't imagine what a cunning creature he is; what a gossip he is; what a nose he's got for smelling out everything bad, everything scandalous. Well, believe it or not, but I'm convinced that he's already got Aglaya in his hands! And if he hasn't, he will. Rogozhin has also entered into relations with him. How does the prince not notice it! And how he wants to do me a bad turn now! He considers me his personal enemy, I saw through him long ago, and why, what is it to him, he'll die anyway—I can't understand it! But I'll fool him; I'll do him a bad turn, and not he me, you'll see."
"Why did you lure him here, then, if you hate him so much? And is it worth it to do him a bad turn?"
"It was you who advised me to lure him here."
"I thought he'd be useful; and do you know that he has now
fallen in love with Aglaya himself and has written to her? They questioned me . . . it's just possible that he's written to Lizaveta Prokofyevna, too."
"He's no danger in that sense!" Ganya said with a spiteful laugh. "However, there's probably something else in it. He may very well be in love, because he's a boy! But... he wouldn't write anonymous letters to the old lady. He's such a spiteful, worthless, self-satisfied mediocrity! . . . I'm convinced, I know for certain, that he represented me to her as an intriguer, and began with that. I confess that like a fool I let things slip to him at first; I thought he'd take up my interests just to be revenged on the prince; he's such a cunning creature! Oh, now I've seen through him completely. And the theft he heard about from his own mother, the captain's widow. If the old man ventured to do that, it was for her sake. Suddenly, out of the blue, he tells me that 'the general' has promised his mother four hundred roubles, and he does it just like that, out of the blue, without any ceremony. Then I understood everything. And he just peeks into my eyes with some kind of relish; he probably also told mother solely for the pleasure of breaking her heart. And why doesn't he die, pray tell? He promised to die in three weeks, but he's even grown fatter here! He doesn't cough any more; yesterday evening he said himself that he hadn't coughed up blood for two days."
"Throw him out."
"I don't hate him, I despise him," Ganya said proudly. "Well, yes, yes, I do hate him, I do!" he suddenly cried with extraordinary fury. "And I'll say it right to his face, even when he's about to die, on his pillow! If you'd only read his 'Confession'—God, what naivety of impudence! It's Lieutenant Pirogov, it's Nozdryov 5in a tragedy, and above all—a little brat! Oh, with what relish I'd have given him a whipping then, precisely to astonish him. He's taking revenge on everybody now, because it didn't come off then . . . But what's that? More noise there? No, what is it, finally? I won't put up with it, finally! Ptitsyn!" he shouted to Ptitsyn, who was coming into the room. "What is this, what are things here coming to, finally? It's . . . it's . . ."
But the noise was quickly approaching, the door was suddenly flung open, and old man Ivolgin, in wrath, purple, shaken, beside himself, also fell upon Ptitsyn. The old man was followed by Nina Alexandrovna, Kolya, and, last of all, Ippolit.
II
It was already five days since Ippolit had moved to the Ptitsyns' house. It had happened somehow naturally, without any special words or any falling-out between him and the prince; not only had they not quarreled, but it seemed they had even parted friends. Gavrila Ardalionovich, so hostile to Ippolit on that earlier evening, had come to see him himself, though only three days after the event, probably guided by some sudden thought. For some reason Rogozhin also began to visit the sick boy. At first it seemed to the prince that it would even be better for the "poor boy" if he moved out of his house. But at the time of moving, Ippolit kept saying that he was moving to Ptitsyn's, "who had been so kind as to give him a corner," and, as if on purpose, never once said that he was moving to Ganya's, though it was Ganya who had insisted that he be taken into the house. Ganya noticed it then and touchily laid it up in his heart.
He was right when he said to his sister that the sick boy had improved. Indeed, Ippolit felt slightly better than before, which could be noticed from the first glance at him. He came into the room unhurriedly, after everyone else, with a mocking and unkindly smile. Nina Alexandrovna came in very frightened. (She had changed greatly during these six months, had grown thinner; having married off her daughter and moved to live with her, she had almost ceased to interfere externally in her children's affairs.) Kolya was preoccupied and as if perplexed; there was much that he did not understand in "the general's madness," as he put it, not knowing, of course, the main reasons for this new turmoil in the house. But it was clear to him that his father was quarreling so much, everywhere and always, and had suddenly changed so much, that it was as if he were quite a different man than before. It also worried him that in the last three days the old man had even stopped drinking entirely. He knew that he had broken and even quarreled with Lebedev and the prince. Kolya had just come home with a bottle of vodka, which he had purchased with his own money.
"Really, mother," he had assured Nina Alexandrovna while still upstairs, "really, it's better to let him have a drink. He hasn't touched a drop in three days now; from anguish, it means. Really, it's better! I used to bring it to him in debtors' prison . . ."
The general flung the door wide open and stood on the sill as if trembling with indignation.