At the beginning of our narrative we mentioned that the Epanchin family enjoyed the sincere esteem of all. Even General Epanchin, although a man of obscure origin, was received everywhere and treated with respect. He did, in fact, deserve respect — in the first place, as a man of wealth and of some standing, and secondly, as a very decent fellow, though by no means of great intellect. But a certain dullness of mind seems an almost necessary qualification, if not for every public man, at least for every one seriously engaged in making money. Finally, General Epanchin had good manners, was modest, knew how to hold his tongue, and yet would not allow himself to be trampled upon, not simply because he was a general, but also because he was an honest and honourable man. As for his wife, she was, as we have explained already, of good family, though that is not a matter of great consideration among us, unless there are powerful friends as well. But she had acquired a circle of such friends; she was respected, and in the end loved by persons of such consequence that it was natural that every one should follow their example in respecting and receiving her. There could be no doubt that her anxieties about her family were groundless; there was very little cause for them and they were ridiculously exaggerated. But if you have a wart on the forehead or on the nose, you always fancy that no one has anything else to do in the world than stare at your wart, make fun of it, and despise you for it, even though you have discovered America. No doubt Lizaveta Prokofyevna was generally considered “eccentric,” yet there could be no question about her being esteemed; but she came at last to cease to believe in that esteem, and the whole trouble lay in that. Looking at her daughters, she was fretted by the suspicion that she was continually ruining their prospects, that she was ridiculous, insupportable, and did not know how to behave, for which, of course, she was always blaming her daughters and her husband, and quarrelling with them all day long, though she loved them with a self-sacrificing and almost passionate affection.
What worried her most of all was the suspicion that her daughters were becoming just as eccentric as she was and that qirls in society were not and ought not to be like them. “They are growing into nihilists, that’s what it comes to!” she repeated to herself every minute. For the last year, and especially of late, this melancholy notion had grown more and more fixed in her mind. “To begin with, why don’t they get married?” she kept asking herself. “To torment their mother — they make that the object of their existence; and it all comes from these new ideas, these cursed women’s rights! Didn’t Aglaia take it into her head six months ago to cut off her magnificent hair? (Heavens, even I hadn’t hair like that when I was young!) She had the scissors in her hand; I had to go down on my knees to her! . . . Well, she did it out of spite, no doubt, to torment her mother, for she is a spiteful, self-willed, spoiled girl, and above all spiteful, spiteful, spiteful! But didn’t that fat Alexandra mean to follow her example and try to cut off her fleece, and not from spite, not from caprice, but in all simplicity, like a fool, because Aglaia persuaded her that without hair she would sleep better and be free from headache? And the numbers and numbers of suitors they have had in these last five years! And there really were nice men,
first-rate men, among them! What are they waiting for? Why don’t they get married? Simply to annoy their mother — there’s no other reason for it, none whatever!”
At last the sun seemed to be dawning even for her maternal heart; at least one daughter, at least Adelaida, would be settled. “There’s one off our hands,” said Madame Epanchin, when she had occasion to refer to the event aloud (in her thoughts she expressed herself with far greater tenderness). And how well, how suitably, the whole thing had come about! Even in society, it was talked of with respect. He was a distinguished man, a prince, a man of fortune, and a nice man, and, what’s more, it was a marriage of inclination. What could be better? But she had always been less anxious about Adelaida than about the other two, though her artistic proclivities sometimes gravely troubled the mother’s apprehensive heart. “But she is of a cheerful disposition and has plenty of sense, too — she’s a girl that will always fall on her legs,” was her consoling reflection. She was more afraid for Aglaia than for any of them. About the eldest girl, Alexandra, her mother could not make up her mind whether to be afraid or not. Sometimes she fancied the girl was “utterly hopeless.”
“She is twenty-five, so she will be an old maid; and with her looks!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna positively shed tears at night thinking of her, while Alexandra herself lay sleeping tranquilly. “What is one to make of her? Is she a nihilist or simply a fool?” That she was not a fool even Lizaveta Prokofyevna had no doubt; she had the greatest respect for Alexandra’s judgment and was fond of asking her advice. But that she was “a wet hen” she did not doubt for a moment; “so calm that there’s no making her out. Though wet hens are not calm — foo, lam quite muddled over them!”
Lizaveta Prokofyevna had an inexplicable feeling of sympathy and commiseration for Alexandra — more, in fact, than for Aglaia, whom she idolised. But the bitter sallies (in which her maternal solicitude and sympathy chiefly showed itself), her taunts and names, such as “wet hen,” only amused Alexandra. It came to such a pass that at times the most trivial matters made Madame Epanchin dreadfully angry and drove her to perfect frenzy. Alexandra, for instance, was fond of sleeping late and had a great many dreams; but her dreams were always marked by an extraordinary ineptitude and innocence — they might have been the dreams of a child of seven. And the very innocence of her dreams became a source of irritation to her mother. Once Alexandra dreamed of nine hens, and it had been the cause of a regular quarrel between her and her mother — why it would be difficult to explain. Once, and once only, she had succeeded in dreaming of something that might be called original — she dreamed of a monk who was all alone in a dark room into which she was afraid to go. The dream was at once reported with triumph to their mother by her two laughing sisters; but their mother was angry again and called them all three a set of fools.
“Hm! she is as calm as a fool and a regular wet hen; there’s no waking her up; and yet she is sad, she looks quite sad sometimes! What is she grieving over? What is it?” Sometimes she put that question to her husband, and, as usual, she asked it hysterically, threateningly, expecting an immediate reply. Ivan Fyodorovitch said “Hm,” frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and with a despairing gesture delivered himself to the dictum:
“She needs a husband.”
“Only God grant her one unlike you, Ivan Fyodorovitch!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna burst out like a bomb at last, “unlike you in his thoughts and judgments, Ivan Fyodorovitch. Not a churlish churl like you, Ivan Fyodorovitch....”
Ivan Fyodorovitch promptly made his escape, and Lizaveta Prokofyevna calmed down after her “explosion.” The same evening, of course, she would invariably be particularly attentive, gentle, affectionate to her husband, “the churlish churl,” Ivan Fyodorovitch, to her kind, dear, and adored Ivan Fyodorovitch, for she had been fond of him and even in love with him all her life — a fact of which he was well aware himself, and he had a boundless respect for her.
But her actual and continual anxiety was Aglaia.
“She is exactly, exactly like me, the very picture of me in every respect,” the mother used to say to herself. “Self-willed, horrid little imp! Nihilist, eccentric, mad and spiteful, spiteful, spiteful! Good Lord, how unhappy she will be!”
But, as we have said already, a spell of sunshine had softened and lighted up everything for a moment. For almost a whole month Lizaveta Prokofyevna had a complete respite from her anxieties. Adelaida’s approaching marriage made people in society talk about Aglaia too, and Aglaia’s manner had been so good, so even, so clever, so enchanting; rather proud, but that suited her so well! She had been so affectionate, so gracious to her mother all that month! (“It’s true it was necessary to be very, very careful about Yevgeny Pavlovitch, to get to the bottom of him, and Aglaia doesn’t seem to favour him much more than the rest.”) Anyway, she had sudd
enly become such a delightful girl; and how handsome she was — mercy on us, how handsome! She grew more beautiful day by day. And here ...
And here this wretched little prince, this miserable little idiot, had hardly made his appearance and everything was in a turmoil again, everything in the house was topsy-turvy.
What had happened, though?
Nothing would have happened to other people, that was certain. But it was Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s peculiarity that in the combinations and concatenations of the most ordinary things she managed to see, through her ever-present anxiety,
something which alarmed her at times till it made her ill and inspired in her a terror absolutely exaggerated and inexplicable, and for that reason all the harder to bear. What must have been her feelings when suddenly now, through the tangle of absurd and groundless worries, something actually became apparent that really seemed important — something that might in all seriousness call for anxiety, hesitation, and suspicion!
“And the insolence of writing me that accursed anonymous letter about that hussy, that she is in communication with Aglaia,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna was thinking all the way home, as she drew Myshkin along, and afterwards, as she made him sit down at the round table about which all the family was assembled. “How did they dare to think of such a thing! I should die of shame if I believed a syllable of it, or if I were to show Aglaia that letter. It’s making a laughing-stock of us, of the Epanchins! And it’s all Ivan Fyodorovitch’s fault; it’s all your fault, Ivan Fyodorovitch! Ah, why didn’t we spend the summer at Yelagin Island? I said we ought to have gone to “Vfelagin. It may be that horrid Varya wrote the letter, or perhaps . . . it’s all Ivan Fvodorovitch’s fault, it’s all his fault! It’s for his benefit that hussy got this up, as a souvenir of their former relations, to make him look a fool, just as she made fun of him as a fool before and led him by the nose when he used to be taking her pearls. . . . And yet the long and short of it is that we all are brought into it; your daughters are brought into it, Ivan Fyodorovitch — young girls, young ladies, young ladies moving in the best society, marriageable girls; they were there, they were standing by, they heard it all, and they were dragged into the scene with those nasty boys too. “Vbu may congratulate yourself, they were there too and heard it! I won’t forgive, I won’t forgive, I’ll never forgive this wretched little prince! And why has Aglaia been hysterical for the last three days? Why is it she has been on the point of quarrelling with her sisters, even with Alexandra, whose hands she always kisses as though she were her mother she has such a respect for her? Why has she behaved so enigmatically with every one for the last three days? What has Gavril Ivolgin to do with it? Why is it that she praised Ivolgin to-day and yesterday too, and burst out crying? Why is it that that cursed ‘poor knight’ is mentioned in that anonymous letter, and she never even showed her sisters the prince’s letter? And why . . . what, what induced me to run to him like a cat in a fit and to drag him here with me! Mercy on us, I must have taken leave of my senses to do this! To talk to a young man about my daughter’s secrets . . . and about secrets that almost concern him! Good heavens, it’s a blessing he is an idiot and . .. and ... a friend of the family. But it is possible Aglaia is fascinated by such a queer fish! Heavens, what am I babbling! Tfoo! We are a set of originals . . . they ought to put us all in a glass case — me especially — and exhibit us at two-pence a head. I shall never forgive you this, Ivan Fyodorovitch, never! And why is it she doesn’t make fun of him now? She declared she’d make fun of him and now she doesn’t! There she is, gazing at him, all eyes; she doesn’t speak, she doesn’t go away, she stands there, yet she told him not to come herself. ... He sits there quite pale. And that confounded chatterbox, Yevgeny Pavlovitch, keeps the whole conversation to himself. How he does run on! — doesn’t let one get a word in edgeways. I could have found out everything at once, if I could only turn the conversation on it....”
Myshkin really was almost pale, as he sat at the round table, and he seemed to be at the same time in a state of great uneasiness, and at moments in a rapture that flooded his soul, though he could not comprehend it himself. Oh, how he feared to glance towards the corner from which two dark eyes were intently watching him, and at the same time how his heart throbbed with delight that he was sitting among them again, that he would hear her familiar voice — after what she had written to him! Heavens, what would she say to him now! He had not uttered one word yet, and he listened with strained attention to the “running on” of Yevgeny Pavlovitch, who had rarely been in such a happy and excited mood as that evening. Myshkin listened to him, but for a long time scarcely took in a word of what he was saying. Except Ivan Fyodorovitch, who had not yet returned from Petersburg, all the family was assembled. Prince S. was there too. They seemed to be meaning in a little time to go and listen to the band before tea. The conversation had evidently begun before Myshkin arrived. A little later Kolya made his appearance on the verandah. “So he is received here as before,” Myshkin thought to himself.
The Epanchins’ villa was a luxurious one, built as a Swiss chalet and was picturesquely covered with flowering creepers. It was surrounded on all sides by a small but charming flower garden. They all sat on the verandah as at Myshkin’s, only the verandah was rather wider and more sumptuous.
The subject of the conversation appeared to be to the taste of few of the party. It had apparently arisen out of a heated argument, and no doubt every one would have been glad to change the subject. But “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch seemed to persist all the more obstinately, regardless of the impression he was making; Myshkin’s arrival seemed to make him even more eager. Lizaveta Prokofyevna frowned, though she did not quite understand it. Aglaia, who was sitting on one side, almost in a corner, remained listening, obstinately si lent.
“Allow me,” Yevgeny Pavlovitch was protesting warmly. “I say nothing against Liberalism. Liberalism is not a sin; it is an essential part of the whole, which without it would drop to pieces or perish; Liberalism has just as much right to exist as the most judicious Conservatism. But I am attacking Russian Liberalism, and I repeat aqain I attack it just for the reason that the Russian Liberal is not a Russian Liberal, but an un-Russian Liberal. Show me a Russian Liberal and I’ll kiss him in front of you all.”
“That is, if he cares to kiss you,” said Alexandra, who was exceptionally excited, so much so that her cheeks were redder than usual.
“There,” thought Lizaveta Prokofyevna to herself, “she goes on sleeping and eating, and you can’t rouse her, and then suddenly, once a year, she pops up and begins talking in such a way that one can only gape at her.”
Myshkin momentarily noticed that Alexandra seemed particularly to dislike Yevgeny Pavlovitch’s talking too light-heartedly; he was talking about a serious subject, and seemed to be hot about it, and at the same time he seemed to be making a joke of it.
“I was maintaining just now, just before you came in, prince,”
“Vfevgeny Pavlovitch went on, “that Liberals so far have come only from two classes of society — from the old land-owning class, that’s now a thing of the past, and from clerical families. And as those two classes have become regular castes,
something quite apart from the nation, and more and more so from generation to generation, so everything they have done and are doing is absolutely non-national.”
“What? So everything that has been done is un-Russian?” protested Prince S.
“Non-national; though it’s Russian, it’s not national. The Liberals among us are not Russian, and the Conservatives are not Russian either, any of them. . . . And you may be sure that the nation will accept nothing of what has been done by landowners and divinity students, either now or later.
“Well, that’s too much! How can you maintain such a paradox, that is, if you are speaking in earnest. I must protest against such wild statements about the Russian landowner; you are a Russian landowner yourself,” Prince S. objected warmly.
“But I didn’t speak of th
e Russian landowner in the sense in which you are taking it. It’s the most respectable class, if only because I belong to it; especially now, since it has ceased to be a caste. . .
“Do you mean to say there has been nothing national in literature?” Alexandra interposed.
“I am not an authority on literature, but even Russian literature is in my opinion not Russian at all, unless perhaps Lomonosov, Pushkin, and Gogol are national.”
“That’s not bad, to begin with; and besides, one of those was a peasant and the other two were landowners,” said Adelaida, laughing.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 304