The Brothers Karamazov
word. Vrublevsky swung out after him, and Mitya followed, confused and
crestfallen. He was afraid of Grushenka, afraid that the _pan_ would at
once raise an outcry. And so indeed he did. The Pole walked into the
room and threw himself in a theatrical attitude before Grushenka.
“_Pani_ Agrippina, I have received a mortal insult!” he exclaimed. But
Grushenka suddenly lost all patience, as though they had wounded her in
the tenderest spot.
“Speak Russian! Speak Russian!” she cried, “not another word of Polish!
You used to talk Russian. You can’t have forgotten it in five years.”
She was red with passion.
“_Pani_ Agrippina—”
“My name’s Agrafena, Grushenka, speak Russian or I won’t listen!”
The Pole gasped with offended dignity, and quickly and pompously
delivered himself in broken Russian:
“_Pani_ Agrafena, I came here to forget the past and forgive it, to
forget all that has happened till to-day—”
“Forgive? Came here to forgive me?” Grushenka cut him short, jumping up
from her seat.
“Just so, _pani_, I’m not pusillanimous, I’m magnanimous. But I was
astounded when I saw your lovers. Pan Mitya offered me three thousand,
in the other room to depart. I spat in the _pan’s_ face.”
“What? He offered you money for me?” cried Grushenka, hysterically. “Is
it true, Mitya? How dare you? Am I for sale?”
“_Panie, panie!_” yelled Mitya, “she’s pure and shining, and I have
never been her lover! That’s a lie....”
“How dare you defend me to him?” shrieked Grushenka. “It wasn’t virtue
kept me pure, and it wasn’t that I was afraid of Kuzma, but that I
might hold up my head when I met him, and tell him he’s a scoundrel.
And he did actually refuse the money?”
“He took it! He took it!” cried Mitya; “only he wanted to get the whole
three thousand at once, and I could only give him seven hundred
straight off.”
“I see: he heard I had money, and came here to marry me!”
“_Pani_ Agrippina!” cried the little Pole. “I’m—a knight, I’m—a
nobleman, and not a _lajdak_. I came here to make you my wife and I
find you a different woman, perverse and shameless.”
“Oh, go back where you came from! I’ll tell them to turn you out and
you’ll be turned out,” cried Grushenka, furious. “I’ve been a fool, a
fool, to have been miserable these five years! And it wasn’t for his
sake, it was my anger made me miserable. And this isn’t he at all! Was
he like this? It might be his father! Where did you get your wig from?
He was a falcon, but this is a gander. He used to laugh and sing to
me.... And I’ve been crying for five years, damned fool, abject,
shameless I was!”
She sank back in her low chair and hid her face in her hands. At that
instant the chorus of Mokroe began singing in the room on the left—a
rollicking dance song.
“A regular Sodom!” Vrublevsky roared suddenly. “Landlord, send the
shameless hussies away!”
The landlord, who had been for some time past inquisitively peeping in
at the door, hearing shouts and guessing that his guests were
quarreling, at once entered the room.
“What are you shouting for? D’you want to split your throat?” he said,
addressing Vrublevsky, with surprising rudeness.
“Animal!” bellowed Pan Vrublevsky.
“Animal? And what sort of cards were you playing with just now? I gave
you a pack and you hid it. You played with marked cards! I could send
you to Siberia for playing with false cards, d’you know that, for it’s
just the same as false banknotes....”
And going up to the sofa he thrust his fingers between the sofa back
and the cushion, and pulled out an unopened pack of cards.
“Here’s my pack unopened!”
He held it up and showed it to all in the room. “From where I stood I
saw him slip my pack away, and put his in place of it—you’re a cheat
and not a gentleman!”
“And I twice saw the _pan_ change a card!” cried Kalganov.
“How shameful! How shameful!” exclaimed Grushenka, clasping her hands,
and blushing for genuine shame. “Good Lord, he’s come to that!”
“I thought so, too!” said Mitya. But before he had uttered the words,
Vrublevsky, with a confused and infuriated face, shook his fist at
Grushenka, shouting:
“You low harlot!”
Mitya flew at him at once, clutched him in both hands, lifted him in
the air, and in one instant had carried him into the room on the right,
from which they had just come.
“I’ve laid him on the floor, there,” he announced, returning at once,
gasping with excitement. “He’s struggling, the scoundrel! But he won’t
come back, no fear of that!...”
He closed one half of the folding doors, and holding the other ajar
called out to the little Pole:
“Most illustrious, will you be pleased to retire as well?”
“My dear Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” said Trifon Borissovitch, “make them
give you back the money you lost. It’s as good as stolen from you.”
“I don’t want my fifty roubles back,” Kalganov declared suddenly.
“I don’t want my two hundred, either,” cried Mitya, “I wouldn’t take it
for anything! Let him keep it as a consolation.”
“Bravo, Mitya! You’re a trump, Mitya!” cried Grushenka, and there was a
note of fierce anger in the exclamation.
The little _pan_, crimson with fury but still mindful of his dignity,
was making for the door, but he stopped short and said suddenly,
addressing Grushenka:
“_Pani_, if you want to come with me, come. If not, good-by.”
And swelling with indignation and importance he went to the door. This
was a man of character: he had so good an opinion of himself that after
all that had passed, he still expected that she would marry him. Mitya
slammed the door after him.
“Lock it,” said Kalganov. But the key clicked on the other side, they
had locked it from within.
“That’s capital!” exclaimed Grushenka relentlessly. “Serve them right!”
Chapter VIII.
Delirium
What followed was almost an orgy, a feast to which all were welcome.
Grushenka was the first to call for wine.
“I want to drink. I want to be quite drunk, as we were before. Do you
remember, Mitya, do you remember how we made friends here last time!”
Mitya himself was almost delirious, feeling that his happiness was at
hand. But Grushenka was continually sending him away from her.
“Go and enjoy yourself. Tell them to dance, to make merry, ‘let the
stove and cottage dance’; as we had it last time,” she kept exclaiming.
She was tremendously excited. And Mitya hastened to obey her. The
chorus were in the next room. The room in which they had been sitting
till that moment was too small, and was divided in two by cotton
curtains, behind which was a huge bed with a puffy feather mattress and
a pyramid of cotton pillows. In the four rooms for visitors there were
beds. Grushenka settled herself just at the door. Mitya set an easy
chair for her. She had sat in the same place to watch the dancing and
singing “the time before,” when they had made merry there. All the
girls who had come had been there then; the Jewish band with fiddles
and zithers had come, too, and at last the long expected cart had
arrived with the wines and provisions.
Mitya bustled about. All sorts of people began coming into the room to
look on, peasants and their women, who had been roused from sleep and
attracted by the hopes of another marvelous entertainment such as they
had enjoyed a month before. Mitya remembered their faces, greeting and
embracing every one he knew. He uncorked bottles and poured out wine
for every one who presented himself. Only the girls were very eager for
the champagne. The men preferred rum, brandy, and, above all, hot
punch. Mitya had chocolate made for all the girls, and ordered that
three samovars should be kept boiling all night to provide tea and
punch for everyone to help himself.
An absurd chaotic confusion followed, but Mitya was in his natural
element, and the more foolish it became, the more his spirits rose. If
the peasants had asked him for money at that moment, he would have
pulled out his notes and given them away right and left. This was
probably why the landlord, Trifon Borissovitch, kept hovering about
Mitya to protect him. He seemed to have given up all idea of going to
bed that night; but he drank little, only one glass of punch, and kept
a sharp look-out on Mitya’s interests after his own fashion. He
intervened in the nick of time, civilly and obsequiously persuading
Mitya not to give away “cigars and Rhine wine,” and, above all, money
to the peasants as he had done before. He was very indignant, too, at
the peasant girls drinking liqueur, and eating sweets.
“They’re a lousy lot, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” he said. “I’d give them a
kick, every one of them, and they’d take it as an honor—that’s all
they’re worth!”
Mitya remembered Andrey again, and ordered punch to be sent out to him.
“I was rude to him just now,” he repeated with a sinking, softened
voice. Kalganov did not want to drink, and at first did not care for
the girls’ singing; but after he had drunk a couple of glasses of
champagne he became extraordinarily lively, strolling about the room,
laughing and praising the music and the songs, admiring every one and
everything. Maximov, blissfully drunk, never left his side. Grushenka,
too, was beginning to get drunk. Pointing to Kalganov, she said to
Mitya:
“What a dear, charming boy he is!”
And Mitya, delighted, ran to kiss Kalganov and Maximov. Oh, great were
his hopes! She had said nothing yet, and seemed, indeed, purposely to
refrain from speaking. But she looked at him from time to time with
caressing and passionate eyes. At last she suddenly gripped his hand
and drew him vigorously to her. She was sitting at the moment in the
low chair by the door.
“How was it you came just now, eh? Have you walked in!... I was
frightened. So you wanted to give me up to him, did you? Did you really
want to?”
“I didn’t want to spoil your happiness!” Mitya faltered blissfully. But
she did not need his answer.
“Well, go and enjoy yourself ...” she sent him away once more. “Don’t
cry, I’ll call you back again.”
He would run away, and she listened to the singing and looked at the
dancing, though her eyes followed him wherever he went. But in another
quarter of an hour she would call him once more and again he would run
back to her.
“Come, sit beside me, tell me, how did you hear about me, and my coming
here yesterday? From whom did you first hear it?”
And Mitya began telling her all about it, disconnectedly, incoherently,
feverishly. He spoke strangely, often frowning, and stopping abruptly.
“What are you frowning at?” she asked.
“Nothing.... I left a man ill there. I’d give ten years of my life for
him to get well, to know he was all right!”
“Well, never mind him, if he’s ill. So you meant to shoot yourself
to-morrow! What a silly boy! What for? I like such reckless fellows as
you,” she lisped, with a rather halting tongue. “So you would go any
length for me, eh? Did you really mean to shoot yourself to-morrow, you
stupid? No, wait a little. To-morrow I may have something to say to
you.... I won’t say it to-day, but to-morrow. You’d like it to be
to-day? No, I don’t want to to-day. Come, go along now, go and amuse
yourself.”
Once, however, she called him, as it were, puzzled and uneasy.
“Why are you sad? I see you’re sad.... Yes, I see it,” she added,
looking intently into his eyes. “Though you keep kissing the peasants
and shouting, I see something. No, be merry. I’m merry; you be merry,
too.... I love somebody here. Guess who it is. Ah, look, my boy has
fallen asleep, poor dear, he’s drunk.”
She meant Kalganov. He was, in fact, drunk, and had dropped asleep for
a moment, sitting on the sofa. But he was not merely drowsy from drink;
he felt suddenly dejected, or, as he said, “bored.” He was intensely
depressed by the girls’ songs, which, as the drinking went on,