A rumor also went around concerning Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin himself, who was also quite well known in his circle. But with him, too, a circumstance occurred which soon quickly cooled and ultimately stopped entirely all unkind stories concerning him: he became very ill and was unable to appear not only anywhere in society but also at his work. After a month of illness, he recovered,
but for some reason gave up his job in the stock company, and his place was taken by someone else. He also did not appear even once in General Epanchin's house, so that the general, too, had to hire another clerk. Gavrila Ardalionovich's enemies might have supposed that he was so embarrassed by everything that had happened to him that he was even ashamed to go out; but he was indeed a bit unwell; he even fell into hypochondria, became pensive, irritable. That same winter Varvara Ardalionovna married Ptitsyn; everybody who knew them ascribed this marriage directly to the circumstance that Ganya refused to go back to work and not only stopped supporting his family but even began to need help and almost to be looked after himself.
Let us note parenthetically that Gavrila Ardalionovich was never even mentioned in the Epanchins' house—as if there had been no such person in the world, let alone in their house. And yet they all learned (and even quite soon) a very remarkable circumstance about him, namely: on that same night that was so fatal for him, after the unpleasant adventure at Nastasya Filippovna's, Ganya, having returned home, did not go to bed, but began waiting with feverish impatience for the prince to come back. The prince, who had gone to Ekaterinhof, came back after five in the morning. Then Ganya went to his room and placed before him on the table the charred packet of money, given to him by Nastasya Filippovna while he lay in a swoon. He insistently begged the prince to return this gift to Nastasya Filippovna at the first opportunity. When Ganya entered the prince's room, he was in a hostile and nearly desperate mood; but it seemed some words were exchanged between him and the prince, after which Ganya sat with him for two hours and spent the whole time weeping bitterly. The two parted on friendly terms.
This news, which reached all the Epanchins, was, as later events confirmed, perfectly accurate. Of course, it was strange that news of this sort could travel and become known so quickly; for instance, everything that had happened at Nastasya Filippovna's became known at the Epanchins' almost the next day and even in quite accurate detail. Concerning the news about Gavrila Ardalionovich, it might be supposed that it was brought to the Epanchins by Varvara Ardalionovna, who somehow suddenly appeared among the Epanchin girls and very soon was even on a very intimate footing with them, which for Lizaveta Prokofyevna was extremely surprising. But though Varvara Ardalionovna for some reason found it necessary to become so close with the Epanchins, she
surely would not have talked with them about her brother. She, too, was a very proud woman, in her own way, despite the fact that she had struck up a friendship there, where her brother had almost been thrown out. Before then, though she had been acquainted with the Epanchin girls, she had seen them rarely. Even now, however, she almost never appeared in the drawing room, and came in, or rather, dropped in, by the back door. Lizaveta Prokofyevna had never been disposed towards her, either before or now, though she greatly respected Nina Alexandrovna, Varvara Arda-lionovna's mother. She was astonished, became angry, ascribed the acquaintance with Varya to the capricious and power-loving character of her daughters, who "invent all kinds of things just to be contrary to her," yet Varvara Ardalionovna went on visiting them all the same, both before and after her marriage.
But a month passed after the prince's departure, and Mrs. Epanchin received a letter from the old Princess Belokonsky, who had left for Moscow some two weeks earlier to stay with her married elder daughter, and this letter produced a visible effect on her. Though she said nothing about what was in it either to her daughters or to Ivan Fyodorovich, the family noticed by many signs that she was somehow especially agitated, even excited. She kept starting somehow especially strange conversations with her daughters, and all on such extraordinary subjects; she obviously wanted to speak her mind, but for some reason she held back. The day she received the letter, she was nice to everyone, even kissed Aglaya and Adelaida, confessed something particular to them, but precisely what they could not tell. She suddenly became indulgent even to Ivan Fyodorovich, whom she had kept in disgrace for a whole month. Naturally, the next day she became extremely angry over her sentimentality of the day before and by dinnertime managed to quarrel with everyone, but towards evening the horizon cleared again. Generally, for the whole week she continued to be in very bright spirits, something that had not happened for a long time.
But after another week, another letter came from Princess Belokonsky, and this time Mrs. Epanchin decided to speak out. She solemnly announced that "old Belokonsky" (she never referred to the princess otherwise, when speaking in her absence) had told her some very comforting news about this . . . "odd bird, well, that is, about this prince!" The old woman had sought him out in Moscow, made inquiries about him, and learned something very good; the
prince had finally called on her in person and made an almost extraordinary impression on her. "That's clear from the fact that she invited him to come every day from one till two, and the man drags himself there every day, and she's still not sick of him," Mrs. Epanchin concluded, adding that through "the old woman" the prince was now received in two or three good houses. "It's good that he doesn't sit in his corner feeling bashful like a fool." The girls, to whom all this was imparted, noticed at once that their dear mama had concealed a great deal of her letter from them. They might have known it from Varvara Ardalionovna, who could and certainly did know everything that Ptitsyn knew about the prince and his stay in Moscow. And Ptitsyn might have been even better informed than anyone else. But he was a man of extreme reticence in business matters, though he certainly shared things with Varya. Mrs. Epanchin at once began to dislike Varvara Ardalionovna still more for it.
But be that as it may, the ice was broken, and it suddenly became possible to talk openly about the prince. Besides that, the extraordinary impression and the exceedingly great interest that the prince had aroused and left behind him in the Epanchins' house once more clearly showed itself. Mrs. Epanchin even marveled at the impression made on her daughters by the news from Moscow. And the daughters also marveled at their mother, who had so solemnly announced to them that it was "the chiefest feature of her life to be constantly mistaken about people," and at the same time had recommended the prince to the attention of the "powerful" old Princess Belokonsky in Moscow, having, of course, to beg for her attention in the name of Christ and God, because on certain occasions the "old woman" was hard to get going.
But once the ice was broken and a fresh wind blew, the general also hastened to speak his mind. It turned out that he, too, was extraordinarily interested. He informed them, however, only of "the business side of the subject." It turned out that, in the interests of the prince, he had charged a couple of gentlemen, highly reliable and of a certain sort of influence in Moscow, to keep an eye on him and especially on his guide Salazkin. Everything that had been said about the inheritance, "about the fact of the inheritance, so to speak," turned out to be true, but the inheritance itself turned out in the end to be by no means as significant as had originally been spread about. The fortune was half entangled; there turned out to be debts; there turned out to be some sort of claimants, and the