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

Chapter 7

The First and Rightful Lover

 

WITH his long, rapid strides, Mitya walked straight up to the

table.

 

“Gentlemen,” he said in a loud voice, almost shouting, yet

stammering at every word, “I… I’m all right! Don’t be afraid!” he

exclaimed, “I-there’s nothing the matter,” he turned suddenly to

Grushenka, who had shrunk back in her chair towards Kalganov, and

clasped his hand tightly. “I… I’m coming, too. I’m here till

morning. Gentlemen, may I stay with you till morning? Only till

morning, for the last time, in this same room?”

 

So he finished, turning to the fat little man, with the pipe,

sitting on the sofa. The latter removed his pipe from his lips with

dignity and observed severely:

 

“Panie,* we’re here in private. There are other rooms.”

 

* Pan and Panie mean Mr. in Polish. Pani means Mrs., Panovie,

gentlemen.

 

“Why, it’s you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch! What do you mean?” answered

Kalgonov suddenly. “Sit down with us. How are you?”

 

“Delighted to see you, dear… and precious fellow, I always

thought a lot of you.” Mitya responded, joyfully and eagerly, at

once holding out his hand across the table.

 

“Aie! How tight you squeeze! You’ve quite broken my fingers,”

laughed Kalganov.

 

“He always squeezes like that, always,” Grushenka put in gaily,

with a timid smile, seeming suddenly convinced from Mitya’s face

that he was not going to make a scene. She was watching him with

intense curiosity and still some uneasiness. She was impressed by

something about him, and indeed the last thing she expected of him was

that he would come in and speak like this at such a moment.

 

“Good evening,” Maximov ventured blandly on the left. Mitya rushed

up to him, too.

 

“Good evening. You’re here, too! How glad I am to find you here,

too! Gentlemen, gentlemen, I- ” (He addressed the Polish gentleman

with the pipe again, evidently taking him for the most important

person present.) “I flew here…. I wanted to spend my last day, my

last hour in this room, in this very room … where I, too,

adored… my queen…. Forgive me, Panie,” he cried wildly, “I flew

here and vowed-Oh, don’t be afraid, it’s my last night! Let’s drink

to our good understanding. They’ll bring the wine at once…. I

brought this with me.” (Something made him pull out his bundle of

notes.) “Allow me, panie! I want to have music, singing, a revel, as

we had before. But the worm, the unnecessary worm, will crawl away,

and there’ll be no more of him. I will commemorate my day of joy on my

last night.”

 

He was almost choking. There was so much, so much he wanted to

say, but strange exclamations were all that came from his lips. The

Pole gazed fixedly at him, at the bundle of notes in his hand;

looked at Grushenka, and was in evident perplexity.

 

“If my suverin lady is permitting- ” he was beginning.

 

“What does ‘suverin’ mean? ‘Sovereign,’ I suppose?” interrupted

Grushenka. “I can’t help laughing at you, the way you talk. Sit

down, Mitya, what are you talking about? Don’t frighten us, please.

You won’t frighten us, will you? If you won’t, I am glad to see

you…”

 

“Me, me frighten you?” cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. “Oh,

pass me by, go your way, I won’t hinder you!…”

 

And suddenly he surprised them all, and no doubt himself as

well, by flinging himself on a chair, and bursting into tears, turning

his head away to the opposite wall, while his arms clasped the back of

the chair tight, as though embracing it.

 

“Come, come, what a fellow you are!” cried Grushenka

reproachfully. “That’s just how he comes to see me-he begins talking,

and I can’t make out what he means. He cried like that once before,

and now he’s crying again! It’s shamefull Why are you crying? As

though you had anything to cry for!” she added enigmatically,

emphasising each word with some irritability.

 

“I… I’m not crying…. Well, good evening!” He instantly

turned round in his chair, and suddenly laughed, not his abrupt wooden

laugh, but a long, quivering, inaudible nervous laugh.

 

“Well, there you are again…. Come, cheer up, cheer up!”

Grushenka said to him persuasively. “I’m very glad you’ve come, very

glad, Mitya, do you hear, I’m very glad! I want him to stay here

with us,” she said peremptorily, addressing the whole company,

though her words were obviously meant for the man sitting on the sofa.

“I wish it, I wish it! And if he goes away I shall go, too!” she added

with flashing eyes.

 

“What my queen commands is law!” pronounced the Pole, gallantly

kissing Grushenka’s hand. “I beg you, panie, to join our company,”

he added politely, addressing Mitya.

 

Mitya was jumping up with the obvious intention of delivering

another tirade, but the words did not come.

 

“Let’s drink, Panie,” he blurted out instead of making a speech.

Everyone laughed.

 

“Good heavens! I thought he was going to begin again!” Grushenka

exclaimed nervously. “Do you hear, Mitya,” she went on insistently,

“don’t prance about, but it’s nice you’ve brought the champagne. I

want some myself, and I can’t bear liqueurs. And best of all, you’ve

come yourself. We were fearfully dull here…. You’ve come for a spree

again, I suppose? But put your money in your pocket. Where did you get

such a lot?”

 

Mitya had been, all this time, holding in his hand the crumpled

bundle of notes on which the eyes of all, especially of the Poles,

were fixed. In confusion he thrust them hurriedly into his pocket.

He flushed. At that moment the innkeeper brought in an uncorked bottle

of champagne, and glasses on a tray. Mitya snatched up the bottle, but

he was so bewildered that he did not know what to do with it. Kalgonov

took it from him and poured out the champagne.

 

“Another! Another bottle!” Mitya cried to the innkeeper, and,

forgetting to clink glasses with the Pole whom he had so solemnly

invited to drink to their good understanding, he drank off his glass

without waiting for anyone else. His whole countenance suddenly

changed. The solemn and tragic expression with which he had entered

vanished completely, and a look of something childlike came into his

face. He seemed to have become suddenly gentle and subdued. He

looked shyly and happily at everyone, with a continual nervous

little laugh, and the blissful expression of a dog who has done wrong,

been punished, and forgiven. He seemed to have forgotten everything,

and was looking round at everyone with a childlike smile of delight.

He looked at Grushenka, laughing continually, and bringing his chair

close up to her. By degrees he had gained some idea of the two

Poles, though he had formed no definite conception of them yet.

 

The Pole on the sofa struck him by his dignified demeanour and his

Polish accent; and, above all, by his pipe. “Well, what of it? It’s

a good thing he’s smoking a pipe,” he reflected. The Pole’s puffy,

middle-aged face, with its tiny nose and two very thin, pointed,

dyed and impudent-looking moustaches, had not so far roused the

faintest doubts in Mitya. He was not even particularly struck by the

Pole’s absurd wig made in Siberia, with love-locks foolishly combed

forward over the temples. “I suppose it’s all right since he wears a

wig,” he went on, musing blissfully. The other, younger Pole, who

was staring insolently and defiantly at the company and listening to

the conversation with silent contempt, still only impressed Mitya by

his great height, which was in striking contrast to the Pole on the

sofa. “If he stood up he’d be six foot three.” The thought flitted

through Mitya’s mind. It occurred to him, too, that this Pole must

be the friend of the other, as it were, a “bodyguard,” and no doubt

the big Pole was at the disposal of the little Pole with the pipe. But

this all seemed to Mitya perfectly right and not to be questioned.

In his mood of doglike submissiveness all feeling of rivalry had

died away.

 

Grushenka’s mood and the enigmatic tone of some of her words he

completely failed to grasp. All he understood, with thrilling heart,

was that she was kind to him, that she had forgiven him, and made

him sit by her. He was beside himself with delight, watching her sip

her glass of champagne. The silence of the company seemed somehow to

strike him, however, and he looked round at everyone with expectant

eyes.

 

“Why are we sitting here though, gentlemen? Why don’t you begin

doing something?” his smiling eyes seemed to ask.

 

“He keeps talking nonsense, and we were all laughing,” Kalgonov

began suddenly, as though divining his thought, and pointing to

Maximov.

 

Mitya immediately stared at Kalgonov and then at Maximov

 

“He’s talking nonsense?” he laughed, his short, wooden laugh,

seeming suddenly delighted at something- “ha ha!”

 

“Yes. Would you believe it, he will have it that all our cavalry

officers in the twenties married Polish women. That’s awful rot, isn’t

it?”

 

“Polish women?” repeated Mitya, perfectly ecstatic.

 

Kalgonov was well aware of Mitya’s attitude to Grushenka, and he

guessed about the Pole, too, but that did not so much interest him,

perhaps did not interest him at all; what he was interested in was

Maximov. He had come here with Maximov by chance, and he met the Poles

here at the inn for the first time in his life. Grushenka he knew

before, and had once been with someone to see her; but she had not

taken to him. But here she looked at him very affectionately: before

Mitya’s arrival, she had been making much of him, but he