PELAGÉYA EGÓROVNA. He's going off again, you see; he's going off there to that friend of his—what's his name?
MÍTYA. To Afrikán Savvich?
PELAGÉYA EGÓROVNA. Yes, yes! He's quite gone on him! Lord forgive him!
MÍTYA. Take a seat, Pelagéya Egórovna. [Fetches a chair.
PELAGÉYA EGÓROVNA. Oh, I have no time. Well, yes, I'll sit down a bit. [Sits down] Now just think, what a misfortune! Really, they've become such friends that it beats everything! Yes, that's what it's come to! And why? What's the use of it all? Tell me that, pray. Isn't Afrikán Savvich a coarse, drunken fellow? Isn't he?
MÍTYA. Perhaps Gordéy Kárpych has some business with Afrikán Savvich.
PELAGÉYA EGÓROVNA. What sort of business! He has no business at all. You see Afrikán Savvich is always drinking with that Englishman. He has an Englishman as director of his factory, and they drink together! But he's no fit company for my husband. But can you reason with him? Just think how proud he is! He says to me: "There isn't a soul here to speak to; all," he says, "are rabble, all, you see, are just so many peasants, and they live like peasants. But that man, you see, is from Moscow—lives mostly in Moscow—and he's rich." And whatever has happened to him? Well, you see, it was all of a sudden, my dear boy, all of a sudden! He used to have so much sense. Well, we lived, of course not luxuriously, but all the same pretty fairly decently; and then last year he went for a trip, and he caught it from some one. He caught it, he caught it, they have told me so—caught all these tricks. Now he doesn't care for any of our Russian ways. He keeps harping on this: "I want to be up to date, I want to be in the fashion. Yes, yes! Put on a cap," he says! What an idea to get! Am I going to try to charm any one in my old age and make myself look lovely? Bah! You just try to do anything with him. He never drank before—really he didn't—but now he drinks with this Afrikán. It must be that drink has turned his brain [points to her head] and muddled him…. [Silence] I think now that the devil has got hold of him! Why can't he have some sense! If he were a young fellow! For a young fellow to dress up and all that is all right; but you see he's nearly sixty, my dear, nearly sixty! Really! "Your fashionable up-to-date things," says I, "change every day; our Russian things have lived from time immemorial! The old folks weren't any stupider than we." But can you reason with him, my dear, with his violent character?
MÍTYA. What is there to say? He's a harsh man.
PELAGÉYA EGÓROVNA. Lyubóv is just at the right age now; we ought to be settling her, but he keeps dinning it in: "There's no one her equal, no! no!" But there is! But he says there isn't. How hard all this is for a mother's heart.
MÍTYA. Perhaps Gordéy Kárpych wishes to marry Lyubóv Gordéyevna in Moscow.