The Brothers Karamazov
contempt for me if I take it, eh?”
“No, no, on my salvation I swear I shan’t! And no one will ever know
but me—I, you and she, and one other lady, her great friend.”
“Never mind the lady! Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, at a moment like
this you must listen, for you can’t understand what these two hundred
roubles mean to me now.” The poor fellow went on rising gradually into
a sort of incoherent, almost wild enthusiasm. He was thrown off his
balance and talked extremely fast, as though afraid he would not be
allowed to say all he had to say.
“Besides its being honestly acquired from a ‘sister,’ so highly
respected and revered, do you know that now I can look after mamma and
Nina, my hunchback angel daughter? Doctor Herzenstube came to me in the
kindness of his heart and was examining them both for a whole hour. ‘I
can make nothing of it,’ said he, but he prescribed a mineral water
which is kept at a chemist’s here. He said it would be sure to do her
good, and he ordered baths, too, with some medicine in them. The
mineral water costs thirty copecks, and she’d need to drink forty
bottles perhaps; so I took the prescription and laid it on the shelf
under the ikons, and there it lies. And he ordered hot baths for Nina
with something dissolved in them, morning and evening. But how can we
carry out such a cure in our mansion, without servants, without help,
without a bath, and without water? Nina is rheumatic all over, I don’t
think I told you that. All her right side aches at night, she is in
agony, and, would you believe it, the angel bears it without groaning
for fear of waking us. We eat what we can get, and she’ll only take the
leavings, what you’d scarcely give to a dog. ‘I am not worth it, I am
taking it from you, I am a burden on you,’ that’s what her angel eyes
try to express. We wait on her, but she doesn’t like it. ‘I am a
useless cripple, no good to any one.’ As though she were not worth it,
when she is the saving of all of us with her angelic sweetness. Without
her, without her gentle word it would be hell among us! She softens
even Varvara. And don’t judge Varvara harshly either, she is an angel
too, she, too, has suffered wrong. She came to us for the summer, and
she brought sixteen roubles she had earned by lessons and saved up, to
go back with to Petersburg in September, that is now. But we took her
money and lived on it, so now she has nothing to go back with. Though
indeed she couldn’t go back, for she has to work for us like a slave.
She is like an overdriven horse with all of us on her back. She waits
on us all, mends and washes, sweeps the floor, puts mamma to bed. And
mamma is capricious and tearful and insane! And now I can get a servant
with this money, you understand, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I can get
medicines for the dear creatures, I can send my student to Petersburg,
I can buy beef, I can feed them properly. Good Lord, but it’s a dream!”
Alyosha was delighted that he had brought him such happiness and that
the poor fellow had consented to be made happy.
“Stay, Alexey Fyodorovitch, stay,” the captain began to talk with
frenzied rapidity, carried away by a new day-dream. “Do you know that
Ilusha and I will perhaps really carry out our dream. We will buy a
horse and cart, a black horse, he insists on its being black, and we
will set off as we pretended the other day. I have an old friend, a
lawyer in K. province, and I heard through a trustworthy man that if I
were to go he’d give me a place as clerk in his office, so, who knows,
maybe he would. So I’d just put mamma and Nina in the cart, and Ilusha
could drive, and I’d walk, I’d walk.... Why, if I only succeed in
getting one debt paid that’s owing me, I should have perhaps enough for
that too!”
“There would be enough!” cried Alyosha. “Katerina Ivanovna will send
you as much more as you need, and you know, I have money too, take what
you want, as you would from a brother, from a friend, you can give it
back later.... (You’ll get rich, you’ll get rich!) And you know you
couldn’t have a better idea than to move to another province! It would
be the saving of you, especially of your boy—and you ought to go
quickly, before the winter, before the cold. You must write to us when
you are there, and we will always be brothers.... No, it’s not a
dream!”
Alyosha could have hugged him, he was so pleased. But glancing at him
he stopped short. The man was standing with his neck outstretched and
his lips protruding, with a pale and frenzied face. His lips were
moving as though trying to articulate something; no sound came, but
still his lips moved. It was uncanny.
“What is it?” asked Alyosha, startled.
“Alexey Fyodorovitch ... I ... you,” muttered the captain, faltering,
looking at him with a strange, wild, fixed stare, and an air of
desperate resolution. At the same time there was a sort of grin on his
lips. “I ... you, sir ... wouldn’t you like me to show you a little
trick I know?” he murmured, suddenly, in a firm rapid whisper, his
voice no longer faltering.
“What trick?”
“A pretty trick,” whispered the captain. His mouth was twisted on the
left side, his left eye was screwed up. He still stared at Alyosha.
“What is the matter? What trick?” Alyosha cried, now thoroughly
alarmed.
“Why, look,” squealed the captain suddenly, and showing him the two
notes which he had been holding by one corner between his thumb and
forefinger during the conversation, he crumpled them up savagely and
squeezed them tight in his right hand. “Do you see, do you see?” he
shrieked, pale and infuriated. And suddenly flinging up his hand, he
threw the crumpled notes on the sand. “Do you see?” he shrieked again,
pointing to them. “Look there!”
And with wild fury he began trampling them under his heel, gasping and
exclaiming as he did so:
“So much for your money! So much for your money! So much for your
money! So much for your money!”
Suddenly he darted back and drew himself up before Alyosha, and his
whole figure expressed unutterable pride.
“Tell those who sent you that the wisp of tow does not sell his honor,”
he cried, raising his arm in the air. Then he turned quickly and began
to run; but he had not run five steps before he turned completely round
and kissed his hand to Alyosha. He ran another five paces and then
turned round for the last time. This time his face was not contorted
with laughter, but quivering all over with tears. In a tearful,
faltering, sobbing voice he cried:
“What should I say to my boy if I took money from you for our shame?”
And then he ran on without turning. Alyosha looked after him,
inexpressibly grieved. Oh, he saw that till the very last moment the
man had not known he would crumple up and fling away the notes. He did
not turn back. Alyosha knew he would not. He would not follow him and
call him back, he knew why. When he was out of sight, Alyosha picked up
the two notes. They were very much crushed and crumpled, and had been
pressed into the sand, but were uninjured and even rustled like new
ones when Alyosha unfolded them and smoothed them out. After smoothing
them out, he folded them up, put them in his pocket and went to
Katerina Ivanovna to report on the success of her commission.
Book V. Pro And Contra
Chapter I.
The Engagement
Madame Hohlakov was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was flustered;
something important had happened. Katerina Ivanovna’s hysterics had
ended in a fainting fit, and then “a terrible, awful weakness had
followed, she lay with her eyes turned up and was delirious. Now she
was in a fever. They had sent for Herzenstube; they had sent for the
aunts. The aunts were already here, but Herzenstube had not yet come.
They were all sitting in her room, waiting. She was unconscious now,
and what if it turned to brain fever!”
Madame Hohlakov looked gravely alarmed. “This is serious, serious,” she
added at every word, as though nothing that had happened to her before
had been serious. Alyosha listened with distress, and was beginning to
describe his adventures, but she interrupted him at the first words.
She had not time to listen. She begged him to sit with Lise and wait
for her there.
“Lise,” she whispered almost in his ear, “Lise has greatly surprised me
just now, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch. She touched me, too, and so my
heart forgives her everything. Only fancy, as soon as you had gone, she
began to be truly remorseful for having laughed at you to-day and
yesterday, though she was not laughing at you, but only joking. But she
was seriously sorry for it, almost ready to cry, so that I was quite
surprised. She has never been really sorry for laughing at me, but has
only made a joke of it. And you know she is laughing at me every
minute. But this time she was in earnest. She thinks a great deal of
your opinion, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and don’t take offense or be wounded
by her if you can help it. I am never hard upon her, for she’s such a
clever little thing. Would you believe it? She said just now that you
were a friend of her childhood, ‘the greatest friend of her
childhood’—just think of that—‘greatest friend’—and what about me? She
has very strong feelings and memories, and, what’s more, she uses these
phrases, most unexpected words, which come out all of a sudden when you
least expect them. She spoke lately about a pine-tree, for instance:
there used to be a pine-tree standing in our garden in her early
childhood. Very likely it’s standing there still; so there’s no need to
speak in the past tense. Pine-trees are not like people, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, they don’t change quickly. ‘Mamma,’ she said, ‘I remember
this pine-tree as in a dream,’ only she said something so original
about it that I can’t repeat it. Besides, I’ve forgotten it. Well,
good-by! I am so worried I feel I shall go out of my mind. Ah! Alexey
Fyodorovitch, I’ve been out of my mind twice in my life. Go to Lise,
cheer her up, as you always can so charmingly. Lise,” she cried, going
to her door, “here I’ve brought you Alexey Fyodorovitch, whom you
insulted so. He is not at all angry, I assure you; on the contrary, he
is surprised that you could suppose so.”
“_Merci, maman._ Come in, Alexey Fyodorovitch.”
Alyosha went in. Lise looked rather embarrassed, and at once flushed
crimson. She was evidently ashamed of something, and, as people always
do in such cases, she began immediately talking of other things, as
though they were of absorbing interest to her at the moment.
“Mamma has just told me all about the two hundred roubles, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, and your taking them to that poor officer ... and she
told me all the awful story of how he had been insulted ... and you
know, although mamma muddles things ... she always rushes from one
thing to another ... I cried when I heard. Well, did you give him the
money and how is that poor man getting on?”
“The fact is I didn’t give it to him, and it’s a long story,” answered
Alyosha, as though he, too, could think of nothing but his regret at
having failed, yet Lise saw perfectly well that he, too, looked away,
and that he, too, was trying to talk of other things.
Alyosha sat down to the table and began to tell his story, but at the
first words he lost his embarrassment and gained the whole of Lise’s
attention as well. He spoke with deep feeling, under the influence of
the strong impression he had just received, and he succeeded in telling
his story well and circumstantially. In old days in Moscow he had been
fond of coming to Lise and describing to her what had just happened to
him, what he had read, or what he remembered of his childhood.
Sometimes they had made day-dreams and woven whole romances
together—generally cheerful and amusing ones. Now they both felt
suddenly transported to the old days in Moscow, two years before. Lise