The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗

love for him. I am going now; but,

believe me, Katerina Ivanovna, you really love him. And the more he

insults you, the more you love him-that’s your ‘laceration.’ You love

him just as he is; you love him for insulting you. If he reformed,

you’d give him up at once and cease to love him. But you need him so

as to contemplate continually your heroic fidelity and to reproach him

for infidelity. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there’s a

great deal of humiliation and self-abasement about it, but it all

comes from pride…. I am too young and I’ve loved you too much. I

know that I ought not to say this, that it would be more dignified

on my part simply to leave you, and it would be less offensive for

you. But I am going far away, and shall never come back…. It is

for ever. I don’t want to sit beside a ‘laceration.’… But I don’t

know how to speak now. I’ve said everything…. Goodbye, Katerina

Ivanovna; you can’t be angry with me, for I am a hundred times more

severely punished than you, if only by the fact that I shall never see

you again. Goodbye! I don’t want your hand. You have tortured me

too deliberately for me to be able to forgive you at this moment. I

shall forgive you later, but now I don’t want your hand. Den Dank,

Dame, begehr ich nicht,”* he added, with a forced smile, showing,

however, that he could read Schiller, and read him till he knew him by

heart-which Alyosha would never have believed. He went out of the

room without saying good-bye even to his hostess, Madame Hohlakov.

Alyosha clasped his hands.

 

* Thank you, madam, I want nothing.

 

“Ivan!” he cried desperately after him. “Come back, Ivan! No,

nothing will induce him to come back now!” he cried again, regretfully

realising it; “but it’s my fault, my fault. I began it! Ivan spoke

angrily, wrongly. Unjustly and angrily. He must come back here, come

back,” Alyosha kept exclaiming frantically.

 

Katerina Ivanovna went suddenly into the next room.

 

“You have done no harm. You behaved beautifully, like an angel,”

Madame Hohlakov whispered rapidly and ecstatically to Alyosha. “I will

do my utmost to prevent Ivan Fyodorovitch from going.”

 

Her face beamed with delight, to the great distress of Alyosha,

but Katerina Ivanovna suddenly returned. She had two hundred-rouble

notes in her hand.

 

“I have a great favour to ask of you, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she

began, addressing Alyosha with an apparently calm and even voice, as

though nothing had happened. “A week-yes, I think it was a week

ago-Dmitri Fyodorovitch was guilty of a hasty and unjust actiona

very ugly action. There is a low tavern here, and in it he met that

discharged officer, that captain, whom your father used to employ in

some business. Dmitri Fyodorovitch somehow lost his temper with this

captain, seized him by the beard and dragged him out into the street

and for some distance along it, in that insulting fashion. And I am

told that his son, a boy, quite a child, who is at the school here,

saw it and ran beside them crying and begging for his father,

appealing to everyone to defend him, while everyone laughed. You

must forgive me, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I cannot think without

indignation of that disgraceful action of his… one of those

actions of which only Dmitri Fyodorovitch would be capable in his

anger… and in his passions! I can’t describe it even…. I can’t

find my words. I’ve made inquiries about his victim, and find he is

quite a poor man. His name is Snegiryov. He did something wrong in the

army and was discharged. I can’t tell you what. And now he has sunk

into terrible destitution, with his family-an unhappy family of

sick children, and, I believe, an insane wife. He has been living here

a long time; he used to work as a copying clerk, but now he is getting

nothing. I thought if you… that is I thought… I don’t know. I am

so confused. You see, I wanted to ask you, my dear Alexey

Fyodorovitch, to go to him, to find some excuse to go to them-I

mean to that captain-oh, goodness, how badly I explain it!- and

delicately, carefully, as only you know how to” (Alyosha blushed),

“manage to give him this assistance, these two hundred roubles. He

will be sure to take it…. I mean, persuade him to take it…. Or,

rather, what do I mean? You see it’s not by way of compensation to

prevent him from taking proceedings (for I believe he meant to), but

simply a token of sympathy, of a desire to assist him from me,

Dmitri Fyodorovitch’s betrothed, not from himself…. But you know….

I would go myself, but you’ll know how to do it ever so much better.

He lives in Lake Street in the house of a woman called Kalmikov….

For God’s sake, Alexey Fyodorovitch, do it for me, and now… now I am

rather… tired… Goodbye!”

 

She turned and disappeared behind the portiere so quickly that

Alyosha had not time to utter a word, though he wanted to speak. He

longed to beg her pardon, to blame himself, to say something, for

his heart was full and he could not bear to go out of the room without

it. But Madame Hohlakov took him by the hand and drew him along with

her. In the hall she stopped him again as before.

 

“She is proud, she is struggling with herself; but kind, charming,

generous, “she exclaimed, in a half-whisper. “Oh, how I love her,

especially sometimes, and how glad I am again of everything! Dear

Alexey Fyodorovitch, you didn’t know, but I must tell you, that we

all, all-both her aunts, I and all of us, Lise, even-have been

hoping and praying for nothing for the last month but that she may

give up your favourite Dmitri, who takes no notice of her and does not

care for her, and may marry Ivan Fyodorovitch-such an excellent and

cultivated young man, who loves her more than anything in the world.

We are in a regular plot to bring it about, and I am even staying on

here perhaps on that account.”

 

“But she has been crying-she has been wounded again,” cried

Alyosha.

 

“Never trust a woman’s tears, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I am never

for the women in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.”

 

“Mamma, you are spoiling him,” Lise’s little voice cried from

behind the door.

 

“No, it was all my fault. I am horribly to blame,” Alyosha

repeated unconsoled, hiding his face in his hands in an agony of

remorse for his indiscretion.

 

“Quite the contrary; you behaved like an angel, like an angel. I

am ready to say so a thousand times over.”

 

“Mamma, how has he behaved like an angel?” Lise’s voice was

heard again.

 

“I somehow fancied all at once,” Alyosha went on as though he

had not heard Lise, “that she loved Ivan, and so I said that stupid

thing…. What will happen now?”

 

“To whom, to whom?” cried Lise. “Mamma, you really want to be

the death of me. I ask you and you don’t answer.”

 

At the moment the maid ran in.

 

“Katerina Ivanovna is ill…. She is crying, struggling…

hysterics.”

 

“What is the matter?” cried Lise, in a tone of real anxiety.

“Mamma, I shall be having hysterics, and not she!”

 

“Lise, for mercy’s sake, don’t scream, don’t persecute me. At your

age one can’t know everything that grown-up people know. I’ll come and

tell you everything you ought to know. Oh, mercy on us! I am coming, I

am coming…. Hysterics is a good sign, Alexey Fyodorovitch; it’s an

excellent thing that she is hysterical. That’s just as it ought to be.

In such cases I am always against the woman, against all these

feminine tears and hysterics. Run and say, Yulia, that I’ll fly to

her. As for Ivan Fyodorovitch’s going away like that, it’s her own

fault. But he won’t go away. Lise, for mercy’s sake, don’t scream! Oh,

yes; you are not screaming. It’s I am screaming. Forgive your mamma;

but I am delighted, delighted, delighted! Did you notice, Alexey

Fyodorovitch, how young, how young Ivan Fyodorovitch was just now when

he went out, when he said all that and went out? I thought he was so

learned, such a savant, and all of a sudden he behaved so warmly,

openly, and youthfully, with such youthful inexperience, and it was

all so fine, like you…. And the way he repeated that German verse,

it was just like you! But I must fly, I must fly! Alexey Fyodorovitch,

make haste to carry out her commission, and then make haste back.

Lise, do you want anything now? For mercy’s sake, don’t keep Alexey

Fyodorovitch a minute. He will come back to you at once.”

 

Madame Hohlakov at last ran off. Before leaving, Alyosha would

have opened the door to see Lise.

 

“On no account,” cried Lise. “On no account now. Speak through the

door. How have you come to be an angel? That’s the only thing I want

to know.”

 

“For an awful piece of stupidity, Lise! Goodbye!”

 

“Don’t dare to go away like that!” Lise was beginning.

 

“Lise, I have a real sorrow! I’ll be back directly, but I have a

great, great sorrow!

 

And he ran out of the room.