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.
Chapter 11
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, 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 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 might had been called, if it had not been so spontaneous. “So the other one called her tigress! And a tigress she is! So she ought to be flogged on a scaffold? Yes, yes, so she ought. That’s just what I think; she ought to have been long ago. It’s like this, brother, let her be punished, but I must get better first. I understand the queen of impudence. That’s her all over! You saw her all over in that hand-kissing, the she-devil! She’s magnificent in her own line! So she ran home? I’ll go — ah — I’ll run to her! Alyosha, don’t blame me, I agree that hanging is too good for her.”
“But Katerina Ivanovna!” exclaimed Alyosha sorrowfully.
“I see her, too! I see right through her, as I’ve never done before! It’s a regular discovery of the four continents of the world, that is, of the five! What a thing to do! That’s just like Katya, who was not afraid to face a coarse, unmannerly officer and risk a deadly insult on a generous impulse to save her father! But the pride, the recklessness, the defiance of fate, the unbounded defiance! You say that aunt tried to stop her? That aunt, you know, is overbearing, herself. She’s the sister of the general’s widow in Moscow, and even more stuck-up than she. But her husband was caught stealing government money. He lost everything, his estate and all, and the proud wife had to lower her colours, and hasn’t raised them since. So she tried to prevent Katya, but she wouldn’t listen to her! She thinks she can overcome everything, that everything will give way to her. She thought she could bewitch Grushenka if she liked, and she believed it herself: she plays a part to herself, and whose fault is it? Do you think she kissed Grushenka’s hand first, on purpose, with a motive? No, she really was fascinated by Grushenka, that’s to say, not by Grushenka, but by her own dream, her own delusion — because it was her dream, her delusion! Alyosha, darling, how did you escape from them, those women? Did you pick up your cassock and run? Ha ha ha!”
“Brother, you don’t seem to have noticed how you’ve insulted Katerina Ivanovna by telling Grushenka about that day. And she flung it in her face just now that she had gone to gentlemen in secret to sell her beauty! Brother, what could be worse than that insult?”