The Brothers Karamazov
unworthy, perhaps, or fickle man. There was one man—one, an officer
too, we loved him, we sacrificed everything to him. That was long ago,
five years ago, and he has forgotten us, he has married. Now he is a
widower, he has written, he is coming here, and, do you know, we’ve
loved him, none but him, all this time, and we’ve loved him all our
life! He will come, and Grushenka will be happy again. For the last
five years she’s been wretched. But who can reproach her, who can boast
of her favor? Only that bedridden old merchant, but he is more like her
father, her friend, her protector. He found her then in despair, in
agony, deserted by the man she loved. She was ready to drown herself
then, but the old merchant saved her—saved her!”
“You defend me very kindly, dear young lady. You are in a great hurry
about everything,” Grushenka drawled again.
“Defend you! Is it for me to defend you? Should I dare to defend you?
Grushenka, angel, give me your hand. Look at that charming soft little
hand, Alexey Fyodorovitch! Look at it! It has brought me happiness and
has lifted me up, and I’m going to kiss it, outside and inside, here,
here, here!”
And three times she kissed the certainly charming, though rather fat,
hand of Grushenka in a sort of rapture. She held out her hand with a
charming musical, nervous little laugh, watched the “sweet young lady,”
and obviously liked having her hand kissed.
“Perhaps there’s rather too much rapture,” thought Alyosha. He blushed.
He felt a peculiar uneasiness at heart the whole time.
“You won’t make me blush, dear young lady, kissing my hand like this
before Alexey Fyodorovitch.”
“Do you think I meant to make you blush?” said Katerina Ivanovna,
somewhat surprised. “Ah, my dear, how little you understand me!”
“Yes, and you too perhaps quite misunderstand me, dear young lady.
Maybe I’m not so good as I seem to you. I’ve a bad heart; I will have
my own way. I fascinated poor Dmitri Fyodorovitch that day simply for
fun.”
“But now you’ll save him. You’ve given me your word. You’ll explain it
all to him. You’ll break to him that you have long loved another man,
who is now offering you his hand.”
“Oh, no! I didn’t give you my word to do that. It was you kept talking
about that. I didn’t give you my word.”
“Then I didn’t quite understand you,” said Katerina Ivanovna slowly,
turning a little pale. “You promised—”
“Oh, no, angel lady, I’ve promised nothing,” Grushenka interrupted
softly and evenly, still with the same gay and simple expression. “You
see at once, dear young lady, what a willful wretch I am compared with
you. If I want to do a thing I do it. I may have made you some promise
just now. But now again I’m thinking: I may take to Mitya again. I
liked him very much once—liked him for almost a whole hour. Now maybe I
shall go and tell him to stay with me from this day forward. You see,
I’m so changeable.”
“Just now you said—something quite different,” Katerina Ivanovna
whispered faintly.
“Ah, just now! But, you know. I’m such a soft-hearted, silly creature.
Only think what he’s gone through on my account! What if when I go home
I feel sorry for him? What then?”
“I never expected—”
“Ah, young lady, how good and generous you are compared with me! Now
perhaps you won’t care for a silly creature like me, now you know my
character. Give me your sweet little hand, angelic lady,” she said
tenderly, and with a sort of reverence took Katerina Ivanovna’s hand.
“Here, dear young lady, I’ll take your hand and kiss it as you did
mine. You kissed mine three times, but I ought to kiss yours three
hundred times to be even with you. Well, but let that pass. And then it
shall be as God wills. Perhaps I shall be your slave entirely and want
to do your bidding like a slave. Let it be as God wills, without any
agreements and promises. What a sweet hand—what a sweet hand you have!
You sweet young lady, you incredible beauty!”
She slowly raised the hands to her lips, with the strange object indeed
of “being even” with her in kisses.
Katerina Ivanovna did not take her hand away. She listened with timid
hope to the last words, though Grushenka’s promise to do her bidding
like a slave was very strangely expressed. She looked intently into her
eyes; she still saw in those eyes the same simple-hearted, confiding
expression, the same bright gayety.
“She’s perhaps too naïve,” thought Katerina Ivanovna, with a gleam of
hope.
Grushenka meanwhile seemed enthusiastic over the “sweet hand.” She
raised it deliberately to her lips. But she held it for two or three
minutes near her lips, as though reconsidering something.
“Do you know, angel lady,” she suddenly drawled in an even more soft
and sugary voice, “do you know, after all, I think I won’t kiss your
hand?” And she laughed a little merry laugh.
“As you please. What’s the matter with you?” said Katerina Ivanovna,
starting suddenly.
“So that you may be left to remember that you kissed my hand, but I
didn’t kiss yours.”
There was a sudden gleam in her eyes. She looked with awful intentness
at Katerina Ivanovna.
“Insolent creature!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, as though suddenly
grasping something. She flushed all over and leapt up from her seat.
Grushenka too got up, but without haste.
“So I shall tell Mitya how you kissed my hand, but I didn’t kiss yours
at all. And how he will laugh!”
“Vile slut! Go away!”
“Ah, for shame, young lady! Ah, for shame! That’s unbecoming for you,
dear young lady, a word like that.”
“Go away! You’re a creature for sale!” screamed Katerina Ivanovna.
Every feature was working in her utterly distorted face.
“For sale indeed! You used to visit gentlemen in the dusk for money
once; you brought your beauty for sale. You see, I know.”
Katerina Ivanovna shrieked, and would have rushed at her, but Alyosha
held her with all his strength.
“Not a step, not a word! Don’t speak, don’t answer her. She’ll go
away—she’ll go at once.”
At that instant Katerina Ivanovna’s two aunts ran in at her cry, and
with them a maid-servant. All hurried to her.
“I will go away,” said Grushenka, taking up her mantle from the sofa.
“Alyosha, darling, see me home!”
“Go away—go away, make haste!” cried Alyosha, clasping his hands
imploringly.
“Dear little Alyosha, see me home! I’ve got a pretty little story to
tell you on the way. I got up this scene for your benefit, Alyosha. See
me home, dear, you’ll be glad of it afterwards.”
Alyosha turned away, wringing his hands. Grushenka ran out of the
house, laughing musically.
Katerina Ivanovna went into a fit of hysterics. She sobbed, and was
shaken with convulsions. Every one fussed round her.
“I warned you,” said the elder of her aunts. “I tried to prevent your
doing this. You’re too impulsive. How could you do such a thing? You
don’t know these creatures, and they say she’s worse than any of them.
You are too self-willed.”
“She’s a tigress!” yelled Katerina Ivanovna. “Why did you hold me,
Alexey Fyodorovitch? I’d have beaten her—beaten her!”
She could not control herself before Alyosha; perhaps she did not care
to, indeed.
“She ought to be flogged in public on a scaffold!”
Alyosha withdrew towards the door.
“But, my God!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, clasping her hands. “He! He! He
could be so dishonorable, so inhuman! Why, he told that creature what
happened on that fatal, accursed day! ‘You brought your beauty for
sale, dear young lady.’ She knows it! Your brother’s a scoundrel,
Alexey Fyodorovitch.”
Alyosha wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find a word. His heart
ached.
“Go away, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It’s shameful, it’s awful for me!
To-morrow, I beg you on my knees, come to-morrow. Don’t condemn me.
Forgive me. I don’t know what I shall do with myself now!”
Alyosha walked out into the street reeling. He could have wept as she
did. Suddenly he was overtaken by the maid.
“The young lady forgot to give you this letter from Madame Hohlakov;
it’s been left with us since dinner-time.”
Alyosha took the little pink envelope mechanically and put it, almost
unconsciously, into his pocket.
Chapter XI.
Another Reputation Ruined
It was not much more than three-quarters of a mile from the town to the
monastery. Alyosha walked quickly along the road, at that hour
deserted. It was almost night, and too dark to see anything clearly at
thirty paces ahead. There were cross-roads half-way. A figure came into
sight under a solitary willow at the cross-roads. As soon as Alyosha
reached the cross-roads the figure moved out and rushed at him,
shouting savagely:
“Your money or your life!”
“So it’s you, Mitya,” cried Alyosha, in surprise, violently startled
however.
“Ha ha ha! You didn’t expect me? I wondered where to wait for you. By
her house? There are three ways from it, and I might have missed you.
At last I thought of waiting here, for you had to pass here, there’s no
other way to the monastery. Come, tell me the truth. Crush me like a
beetle. But what’s the matter?”
“Nothing, brother—it’s the fright you gave me. Oh, Dmitri! Father’s
blood just now.” (Alyosha began to cry, he had been on the verge of
tears for a long time, and now something seemed to snap in his soul.)
“You almost killed him—cursed him—and now—here—you’re making
jokes—‘Your money or your life!’”
“Well, what of that? It’s not seemly—is that it? Not suitable in my
position?”
“No—I only—”
“Stay. Look at the night. You see what a dark night, what clouds, what
a wind has risen. I hid here under the willow waiting for you. And as
God’s above, I suddenly thought, why go on in misery any longer, what
is there to wait for? Here I have a willow, a handkerchief, a shirt, I
can twist them into a rope in a minute, and braces besides, and why go
on burdening the earth, dishonoring it with my vile presence? And then
I heard you coming—Heavens, it was as though something flew down to me
suddenly. So there is a man, then, whom I love. Here he is, that man,
my dear little brother, whom I love more than any one in the world, the
only one I love in the world. And I loved you so much, so much at that
moment that I thought, ‘I’ll fall on his neck at once.’ Then a stupid
idea struck me, to have a joke with you and scare you. I shouted, like
a fool, ‘Your money!’ Forgive my foolery—it was only nonsense, and
there’s nothing unseemly in my soul.... Damn it all, tell me what’s
happened. What did she say? Strike me, crush me, don’t spare me! Was
she furious?”
“No, not that.... There was nothing like that, Mitya. There—I found
them both there.”
“Both? Whom?”
“Grushenka at Katerina Ivanovna’s.”
Dmitri was struck dumb.
“Impossible!” he cried. “You’re raving! Grushenka with her?”
Alyosha described all that had happened from the moment he went in to
Katerina Ivanovna’s. He was ten minutes telling his story. He can’t be
said to have told it fluently and consecutively, but he seemed to make
it clear, not omitting any word or action of significance, and vividly
describing, often in one word, his own sensations. Dmitri listened in
silence, gazing at him with a terrible fixed stare, but it was clear to
Alyosha that he understood it all, and had grasped every point. But as
the story went on, his face became not merely gloomy, but menacing. He
scowled, he clenched his teeth, and his fixed stare became still more
rigid, more concentrated, more terrible, when suddenly, with incredible
rapidity, his wrathful, savage face changed, his tightly compressed
lips parted, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch broke into uncontrolled,
spontaneous laughter. He literally shook with laughter. For a long time
he could not speak.
“So she wouldn’t kiss her hand! So she didn’t kiss it; so she ran
away!” he kept exclaiming with hysterical delight; insolent delight it