The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

such faith in the future.

Alyosha felt at once that he had gravely wronged her in his

thoughts. He was conquered and captivated immediately. Besides all

this, he noticed at her first words that she was in great

excitement, an excitement perhaps quite exceptional and almost

approaching ecstasy.

 

“I was so eager to see you, because I can learn from you the whole

truth-from you and no one else.”

 

“I have come,” muttered Alyosha confusedly, “I-he sent me.”

 

“Ah, he sent you I foresaw that. Now I know everything-everything!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, her eyes flashing. “Wait a

moment, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I’ll tell you why I’ve been so longing to

see you. You see, I know perhaps far more than you do yourself, and

there’s no need for you to tell me anything. I’ll tell you what I want

from you. I want to know your own last impression of him. I want you

to tell me most directly, plainly, coarsely even (oh, as coarsely as

you like!), what you thought of him just now and of his position after

your meeting with him to-day. That will perhaps be better than if I

had a personal explanation with him, as he does not want to come to

me. Do you understand what I want from you? Now, tell me simply,

tell me every word of the message he sent you with (I knew he would

send you).”

 

“He told me to give you his compliments and to say that he would

never come again but to give you his compliments.”

 

“His compliments? Was that what he said his own expression?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Accidentally perhaps he made a mistake in the word, perhaps he

did not use the right word?”

 

“No; he told me precisely to repeat that word. He begged me two or

three times not to forget to say so.”

 

Katerina Ivanovna flushed hotly.

 

“Help me now, Alexey Fyodorovitch. Now I really need your help.

I’ll tell you what I think, and you must simply say whether it’s right

or not. Listen! If he had sent me his compliments in passing,

without insisting on your repeating the words, without emphasising

them, that would be the end of everything! But if he particularly

insisted on those words, if he particularly told you not to forget

to repeat them to me, then perhaps he was in excitement, beside

himself. He had made his decision and was frightened at it. He

wasn’t walking away from me with a resolute step, but leaping

headlong. The emphasis on that phrase may have been simply bravado.”

 

“Yes, yes!” cried Alyosha warmly. “I believe that is it.”

 

“And, if so, he’s not altogether lost. I can still save him. Stay!

Did he not tell you anything about money-about three thousand

roubles?”

 

“He did speak about it, and it’s that more than anything that’s

crushing him. He said he had lost his honour and that nothing

matters now,” Alyosha answered warmly, feeling a rush of hope in his

heart and believing that there really might be a way of escape and

salvation for his brother. “But do you know about the money?” he

added, and suddenly broke off.

 

“I’ve known of it a long time; I telegraphed to Moscow to inquire,

and heard long ago that the money had not arrived. He hadn’t sent

the money, but I said nothing. Last week I learnt that he was still in

need of money. My only object in all this was that he should know to

whom to turn, and who was his true friend. No, he won’t recognise that

I am his truest friend; he won’t know me, and looks on me merely as

a woman. I’ve been tormented all the week, trying to think how to

prevent him from being ashamed to face me because he spent that

three thousand. Let him feel ashamed of himself, let him be ashamed of

other people’s knowing, but not of my knowing. He can tell God

everything without shame. Why is it he still does not understand how

much I am ready to bear for his sake? Why, why doesn’t he know me? How

dare he not know me after all that has happened? I want to save him

for ever. Let him forget me as his betrothed. And here he fears that

he is dishonoured in my eyes. Why, he wasn’t afraid to be open with

you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How is it that I don’t deserve the same?”

 

The last words she uttered in tears. Tears gushed from her eyes.

 

“I must tell you,” Alyosha began, his voice trembling too, “what

happened just now between him and my father.”

 

And he described the whole scene, how Dmitri had sent him to get

the money, how he had broken in, knocked his father down, and after

that had again specially and emphatically begged him to take his

compliments and farewell. “He went to that woman,” Alyosha added

softly.

 

“And do you suppose that I can’t put up with that woman? Does he

think I can’t? But he won’t marry her,” she suddenly laughed

nervously. “Could such a passion last for ever in a Karamazov? It’s

passion, not love. He won’t marry her because she won’t marry him.”

Again Katerina Ivanovna laughed strangely.

 

“He may marry her,” said Alyosha mournfully, looking down.

 

“He won’t marry her, I tell you. That girl is an angel. Do you

know that? Do you know that?” Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly

with extraordinary warmth. “She is one of the most fantastic of

fantastic creatures. I know how bewitching she is, but I know too that

she is kind, firm, and noble. Why do you look at me like that,

Alexey Fyodorovitch? Perhaps you are wondering at my words, perhaps

you don’t believe me? Agrafena Alexandrovna, my angel!” she cried

suddenly to someone, peeping into the next room, “come in to us.

This is a friend. This is Alyosha. He knows all about our affairs.

Show yourself to him.”

 

“I’ve only been waiting behind the curtain for you to call me,”

said a soft, one might even say sugary, feminine voice.

 

The portiere was raised and Grushenka herself, smiling and

beaming, came up to the table. A violent revulsion passed over

Alyosha. He fixed his eyes on her and could not take them off. Here

she was, that awful woman, the “beast,” as Ivan had called her half an

hour before. And yet one would have thought the creature standing

before him most simple and ordinary, a good-natured, kind woman,

handsome certainly, but so like other handsome ordinary women! It is

true she was very, very good-looking with that Russian beauty so

passionately loved by many men. She was a rather tall woman, though

a little shorter than Katerina Ivanovna, who was exceptionally tall.

She had a full figure, with soft, as it were, noiseless, movements,

softened to a peculiar over-sweetness, like her voice. She moved,

not like Katerina Ivanovna, with a vigorous, bold step, but

noiselessly. Her feet made absolutely no sound on the floor. She

sank softly into a low chair, softly rustling her sumptuous black silk

dress, and delicately nestling her milk-white neck and broad shoulders

in a costly cashmere shawl. She was twenty-two years old, and her face

looked exactly that age. She was very white in the face, with a pale

pink tint on her cheeks. The modelling of her face might be said to be

too broad, and the lower jaw was set a trifle forward. Her upper lip

was thin, but the slightly prominent lower lip was at least twice as

full, and looked pouting. But her magnificent, abundant dark brown

hair, her sable-coloured eyebrows and charming greyblue eyes with

their long lashes would have made the most indifferent person, meeting

her casually in a crowd in the street, stop at the sight of her face

and remember it long after. What struck Alyosha most in that face

was its expression of childlike good nature. There was a childlike

look in her eyes, a look of childish delight. She came up to the

table, beaming with delight and seeming to expect something with

childish, impatient, and confiding curiosity. The light in her eyes

gladdened the soul-Alyosha felt that. There was something else in her

which he could not understand, or would not have been able to

define, and which yet perhaps unconsciously affected him. It was

that softness, that voluptuousness of her bodily movements, that

catlike noiselessness. Yet it was a vigorous, ample body. Under the

shawl could be seen full broad shoulders, a high, still quite

girlish bosom. Her figure suggested the lines of the Venus of Milo,

though already in somewhat exaggerated proportions. That could be

divined. Connoisseurs of Russian beauty could have foretold with

certainty that this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its

harmony by the age of thirty, would “spread”; that the face would

become puffy, and that wrinkles would very soon appear upon her

forehead and round the eyes; the complexion would grow coarse and

red perhaps-in fact, that it was the beauty of the moment, the

fleeting beauty which is so often met with in Russian women.

Alyosha, of course, did not think of this; but though he was

fascinated, yet he wondered with an unpleasant sensation, and as it

were regretfully, why she drawled in that way and could not speak

naturally. She did so, evidently feeling there was a charm in the

exaggerated, honeyed modulation of the syllables. It was, of course,

only a bad, underbred habit that showed bad education and a false idea

of good manners. And yet this intonation and manner of speaking

impressed Alyosha as almost incredibly incongruous with the childishly

simple and happy expression of her face, the soft, babyish joy in

her eyes. Katerina Ivanovna at once made her sit down in an

armchair facing Alyosha, and ecstatically kissed her several times on

her smiling lips. She seemed quite in love with her.

 

“This is the first time we’ve met, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she

said rapturously. “I wanted to know her, to see her. I wanted to go to

her, but I’d no sooner expressed the wish than she came to me. I

knew we should settle everything together-everything. My heart told

me so-I was begged not to take the step, but I foresaw it would be

a way out of the difficulty, and I was not mistaken. Grushenka has

explained everything to me, told me all she means to do. She flew here

like an angel of goodness and brought us peace and joy.”

 

“You did not disdain me, sweet, excellent young lady,” drawled

Grushenka in her singsong voice, still with the same charming smile of

delight.

 

“Don’t dare to speak to me like that, you sorceress, you witch!

Disdain you! Here, I must kiss your lower lip once more. It looks as

though it were swollen, and now it will be more so, and more and more.

Look how she laughs, Alexey Fyodorovitch!

 

Alyosha flushed, and faint, imperceptible shivers kept running

down him.

 

“You make so much of me, dear young lady, and perhaps I am not

at all worthy of your kindness.”

 

“Not worthy! She’s not worthy of it!” Katerina Ivanovna cried

again with the same warmth. “You know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we’re

fanciful, we’re self-willed, but proudest of the proud in our little

heart. We’re noble, we’re generous, Alexey Fyodorovitch, let me tell

you. We have only been unfortunate. We were too ready to make every

sacrifice for an unworthy, perhaps, or fickle man. There was one

man-one, an officer too, we loved him, we sacrificed everything to

him. That was long ago, five years ago, and he has forgotten us, he

has married. Now he is a widower, he has written, he is coming here,

and,