The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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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 favour? 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 wilful 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
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 simplehearted,
confiding expression, the same bright gaiety.
“She’s perhaps too naive,” 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. Everyone 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 dishonourable, 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 condemm 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.
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 crossroads halfway. A
figure came into sight under a solitary willow at the crossroads.
As soon as Alyosha reached the crossroads 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 nowhere- 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, dishonouring 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 anyone 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. 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
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