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Read books online » Fiction » The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖

Book online «The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖». Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky



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do you know, we’ve loved him, none but him, all this time, and

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.

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 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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