“Something must be done. I am going away, and you will not administer the estate, so some arrangement must be made.”
“And is that your reason for going? I thought you were now going to take over the management of your estate. You have done enough gadding about. Why not marry and settle here?”
She was visibly struggling with herself. It had never entered her head to give up the administration; she would not have known what to do with herself. Her idea had been to alarm Raisky, and he was taking her seriously.
“What is to be done?” she said. “I will see after the estate as long as I have the strength to do so. How else should you live, you strange creature?”
“I receive two thousand roubles from my other estate, and that is a sufficient income. I want to work, to draw, to write, to travel for a little; and for that purpose I might mortgage or sell the other estate.”
“God bless you, Borushka, what next? Are you so near beggary? You talk of drawing, writing, alienating your land; next it will be giving lessons or school teaching. Instead of arriving with four horses and a travelling carriage you sneak in, without a servant, in a miserable _kibitka_, you, a Raisky. Look at the old house, at the portraits of your ancestors, and take shame to yourself. Shame, Borushka! How splendid it would have been if you had come epauletted like Sergei Ivanovich, and had married a wife with a dowry of three thousand souls.”
“Why laugh? I am speaking seriously when I tell you what a joy it would have been for your Grandmother. Then you would have wanted the lace and the silver, and not be flinging it away.”
“But as I am not marrying, I don’t need these things. Therefore it is settled that Veroshka and Marfinka shall have them.”
“It is final. And it is further settled that if you do not like this arrangement, everything passes into the hands of strangers. You have my word for it.”
“Your word for it,” cried his aunt. “You are a lost man. Where have you lived, and what have you done. Tell me, for Heaven’s sake, what your purpose in life is, and what you really are?”
“What I am, Grandmother? The unhappiest of men!” He leaned his head back on the cushion as he spoke.
“Never say such a thing,” she interrupted. “Fate hears and exacts the penalty, and you will one day be unhappy. Either be content or feign content.”