"That makes no difference, the main thing is that she wishes to see you for the first time after six months. Listen to me, Ganya: whatever there is to it, however it turns out, know that this is important!It's all too important! Don't swagger again, don't miss the mark again, but watch out you don't turn coward either! Could she have failed to grasp why I dragged myself there for half a year? And imagine: she didn't say a word to me today, didn't show a thing. I sneaked in to see them, the old woman didn't know I was sitting with them, otherwise she might have chased me out. I risked that for you, to find out at all costs ..."
Shouting and noise again came from overhead; several people were going down the stairs.
"Don't allow it now for anything!" Varya cried, frightened and all aflutter. "There mustn't be even the shadow of a scandal! Go and apologize!"
But the father of the family was already in the street. Kolya lugged his bag after him. Nina Alexandrovna stood on the porch and wept; she was about to run after him, but Ptitsyn held her back.
"You'll only egg him on more that way," he said to her. "He has nowhere to go, they'll bring him back in half an hour, I've already discussed it with Kolya; let him play the fool a little."
"What are you showing off for, where are you going!" Ganya shouted out the window. "You've got nowhere to go!"
"Come back, papa!" cried Varya. "The neighbors can hear."
The general stopped, turned around, stretched out his arm, and exclaimed:
"My curse upon this house!"
"And inevitably in a theatrical tone!" Ganya muttered, noisily shutting the window.
The neighbors were indeed listening. Varya rushed from the room.
When Varya was gone, Ganya took the note from the table, kissed it, clucked his tongue, and performed an entrechat.
III
At any other time the commotion with the general would have come to nothing. Before, too, there had been occasions of unexpected whimsicality of the same sort with him, though rather seldom, because generally speaking he was a very mild man and of almost kindly inclinations. A hundred times, perhaps, he had taken up the struggle with the disorder that had come over him in recent years. He would suddenly remember that he was the "father of the family," make peace with his wife, weep sincerely. He respected Nina Alexandrovna to the point of adoration for having silently forgiven him so much and loved him even in his clownishness and humiliation. But his magnanimous struggle with disorder usually did not last long; the general was also all too "impulsive" a man, though in his own way; he usually could not bear a repentant and idle life in his family and ended by rebelling;
he would fall into a fit of passion, perhaps reproaching himself for it at the same moment, but unable to control himself: he would quarrel, begin talking floridly and grandiloquently, demand a disproportionate and impossible respect for himself, and in the end disappear from the house, sometimes even for a long time. For the last two years, he had known about the affairs of his family only in general or by hearsay; he had stopped going into more detail, feeling not the slightest call for it.
But this time something unusual manifested itself in the "commotion with the general": everyone seemed to know about something and everyone seemed afraid to speak about something. The general had "formally" appeared in the family, that is, to Nina Alexandrovna, only three days ago, but somehow not humbly and not with repentance, as had always happened in his previous "appearances," but on the contrary—with extraordinary irritability. He was garrulous, agitated, talked heatedly with everyone he met, as if falling upon the person, but it was all about such diverse and unexpected subjects that it was in no way possible to get at what, in essence, he was now so worried about. At moments he was merry, but more often brooding, though he himself did not know about what; he would suddenly begin talking about something— the Epanchins, or the prince and Lebedev—and would suddenly break off and stop talking altogether, and respond to further questions only with a dull smile, though without even noticing that he had been asked something and had merely smiled. He had spent the last night moaning and groaning, and had worn out Nina Alexandrovna, who for some reason kept heating poultices for him all night; towards morning he had suddenly fallen asleep, slept for four hours, and woke up in a most violent and disorderly fit of hypochondria, which had ended in a quarrel with Ippolit and the "curse upon this house." It had also been noticed that during those three days he was constantly having the most violent fits of ambition, and consequently of extraordinary touchiness. But Kolya insisted, reassuring his mother, that it was all the longing for a drink, and perhaps also for Lebedev, with whom the general had become extraordinarily friendly in recent days. But three days ago he had suddenly quarreled with Lebedev and parted from him in a terrible rage; there had even been some sort of scene with the prince. Kolya had asked the prince for an explanation, and had finally begun to suspect that he, too, had something that he was apparently unwilling to tell him. If, as Ganya quite plausibly
supposed, there had been some special conversation between Ippolit and Nina Alexandrovna, then it was odd that this wicked gentleman, whom Ganya so directly called a gossip, had denied himself the pleasure of enlightening Kolya in the same way. It may well be that he was not such a wicked "little brat," as Ganya had described him, talking with his sister, but was wicked in some other way; and he had hardly informed Nina Alexandrovna of some observation of his solely in order to "break her heart." Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest. Sometimes it is best for the narrator to limit himself to a simple account of events. So we shall do in our further clarification of the present catastrophe with the general; for, in spite of all our efforts, we find ourselves in the decided necessity of giving a bit more attention and space to this secondary character of our story than we had hitherto intended.
The events followed one another in this order:
When Lebedev, after his journey to Petersburg in search of Ferdyshchenko, returned that same day, together with the general, he did not tell the prince anything in particular. If at that time the prince had not been so distracted and taken up with other impressions important for him, he might soon have noticed that for the following two days Lebedev not only did not offer him any explanations but even, on the contrary, seemed to avoid meeting him. Paying attention to that at last, the prince wondered why, during those two days, when he had chanced to meet Lebedev, he remembered him not otherwise than in the most radiant spirits, and almost always together with the general. The two friends never parted for a moment now. Occasionally the prince heard loud and rapid conversation, guffawing, merry argument, coming to him from upstairs; once even, very late in the evening, suddenly and unexpectedly, the sounds of a military-bacchic song reached him, and he immediately recognized the general's hoarse bass. But the resounding song did not come off and suddenly died out. Then, for about an hour more, a very animated and, by all tokens, drunken conversation went on. One could guess that the merrymaking friends upstairs kept embracing, and one of them finally wept. Then suddenly a violent quarrel ensued, which also died out quickly and soon. All this while Kolya was in a somehow especially preoccupied mood. The prince was most often away from home and sometimes came back very late; he was always told that Kolya had