He had gone back to his original tone of resentful buffoonery. Alyosha felt though that he trusted him, and that if there had been some one else in his, Alyosha's place, the man would not have spoken so openly and would not have told what he had just told. This encouraged Alyosha, whose heart was trembling on the verge of tears.
“Ah, how I would like to make friends with your boy!” he cried. “If you could arrange it – ”
“Certainly, sir,” muttered the captain.
“But now listen to something quite different!” Alyosha went on. “I have a message for you. That same brother of mine, Dmitri, has insulted his betrothed, too, a noble-hearted girl of whom you have probably heard. I have a right to tell you of her wrong; I ought to do so, in fact, for hearing of the insult done to you and learning all about your unfortunate position, she commissioned me at once – just now – to bring you this help from her – but only from her alone, not from Dmitri, who has abandoned her. Nor from me, his brother, nor from any one else, but from her, only from her! She entreats you to accept her help… You have both been insulted by the same man. She thought of you only when she had just received a similar insult from him – similar in its cruelty, I mean. She comes like a sister to help a brother in misfortune… She told me to persuade you to take these two hundred roubles from her, as from a sister, knowing that you are in such need. No one will know of it, it can give rise to no unjust slander. There are the two hundred roubles, and I swear you must take them unless – unless all men are to be enemies on earth! But there are brothers even on earth… You have a generous heart … you must see that, you must,” and Alyosha held out two new rainbow-colored hundred-rouble notes.
They were both standing at the time by the great stone close to the fence, and there was no one near. The notes seemed to produce a tremendous impression on the captain. He started, but at first only from astonishment. Such an outcome of their conversation was the last thing he expected. Nothing could have been farther from his dreams than help from any one – and such a sum!
He took the notes, and for a minute he was almost unable to answer, quite a new expression came into his face.
“That for me? So much money – two hundred roubles! Good heavens! Why, I haven't seen so much money for the last four years! Mercy on us! And she says she is a sister… And is that the truth?”
“I swear that all I told you is the truth,” cried Alyosha.
The captain flushed red.
“Listen, my dear, listen. If I take it, I shan't be behaving like a scoundrel? In your eyes, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I shan't be a scoundrel? No, Alexey Fyodorovitch, listen, listen,” he hurried, touching Alyosha with both his hands. “You are persuading me to take it, saying that it's a sister sends it, but inwardly, in your heart won't you feel contempt for me if I take it, eh?”
“No, no, on my salvation I swear I shan't! And no one will ever know but me – I, you and she, and one other lady, her great friend.”
“Never mind the lady! Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, at a moment like this you must listen, for you can't understand what these two hundred roubles mean to me now.” The poor fellow went on rising gradually into a sort of incoherent, almost wild enthusiasm. He was thrown off his balance and talked extremely fast, as though afraid he would not be allowed to say all he had to say.
“Besides its being honestly acquired from a ‘sister,’ so highly respected and revered, do you know that now I can look after mamma and Nina, my hunchback angel daughter? Doctor Herzenstube came to me in the kindness of his heart and was examining them both for a whole hour. ‘I can make nothing of it,’ said he, but he prescribed a mineral water which is kept at a chemist's here. He said it would be sure to do her good, and he ordered baths, too, with some medicine in them. The mineral water costs thirty copecks, and she'd need to drink forty bottles perhaps; so I took the prescription and laid it on the shelf under the ikons, and there it lies. And he ordered hot baths for Nina with something dissolved in them, morning and evening. But how can we carry out such a cure in our mansion, without servants, without help, without a bath, and without water? Nina is rheumatic all over, I don't think I told you that. All her right side aches at night, she is in agony, and, would you believe it, the angel bears it without groaning for fear of waking us. We eat what we can get, and she'll only take the leavings, what you'd scarcely give to a dog. ‘I am not worth it, I am taking it from you, I am a burden on you,’ that's what her angel eyes try to express. We wait on her, but she doesn't like it. ‘I am a useless cripple, no good to any one.’ As though she were not worth it, when she is the saving of all of us with her angelic sweetness. Without her, without her gentle word it would be hell among us! She softens even Varvara. And don't judge Varvara harshly either, she is an angel too, she, too, has suffered wrong. She came to us for the summer, and she brought sixteen roubles she had earned by lessons and saved up, to go back with to Petersburg in September, that is now. But we took her money and lived on it, so now she has nothing to go back with. Though indeed she couldn't go back, for she has to work for us like a slave. She is like an overdriven horse with all of us on her back. She waits on us all, mends and washes, sweeps the floor, puts mamma to bed. And mamma is capricious and tearful and insane! And now I can get a servant with this money, you understand, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I can get medicines for the dear creatures, I can send my student to Petersburg, I can buy beef, I can feed them properly. Good Lord, but it's a dream!”
Alyosha was delighted that he had brought him such happiness and that the poor fellow had consented to be made happy.
“Stay, Alexey Fyodorovitch, stay,” the captain began to talk with frenzied rapidity, carried away by a new day-dream. “Do you know that Ilusha and I will perhaps really carry out our dream. We will buy a horse and cart, a black horse, he insists on its being black, and we will set off as we pretended the other day. I have an old friend, a lawyer in K. province, and I heard through a trustworthy man that if I were to go he'd give me a place as clerk in his office, so, who knows, maybe he would. So I'd just put mamma and Nina in the cart, and Ilusha could drive, and I'd walk, I'd walk… Why, if I only succeed in getting one debt paid that's owing me, I should have perhaps enough for that too!”
“There would be enough!” cried Alyosha. “Katerina Ivanovna will send you as much more as you need, and you know, I have money too, take what you want, as you would from a brother, from a friend, you can give it back later… (You'll get rich, you'll get rich!) And you know you couldn't have a better idea than to move to another province! It would be the saving of you, especially of your boy – and you ought to go quickly, before the winter, before the cold. You must write to us when you are there, and we will always be brothers… No, it's not a dream!”
Alyosha could have hugged him, he was so pleased. But glancing at him he stopped short. The man was standing with his neck outstretched and his lips protruding, with a pale and frenzied face. His lips were moving as though trying to articulate something; no sound came, but still his lips moved. It was uncanny.
“What is it?” asked Alyosha, startled.
“Alexey Fyodorovitch … I … you,” muttered the captain, faltering, looking at him with a strange, wild, fixed stare, and an air of desperate resolution. At the same time there was a sort of grin on his lips. “I … you, sir … wouldn't you like me to show you a little trick I know?” he murmured, suddenly, in a firm rapid whisper, his voice no longer faltering.
“What trick?”
“A pretty trick,” whispered the captain. His mouth was twisted on the left side, his left eye was screwed up. He still stared at Alyosha.
“What is the matter? What trick?” Alyosha cried, now thoroughly alarmed.
“Why, look,” squealed the captain suddenly, and showing him the two notes which he had been holding by one corner between his thumb and forefinger during the conversation, he crumpled them up savagely and squeezed them tight in his right hand. “Do you see, do you see?” he shrieked, pale and infuriated. And suddenly flinging up his hand, he threw the crumpled notes on the sand. “Do you see?” he shrieked again, pointing to them. “Look there!”
And with wild fury he began trampling them under his heel, gasping and exclaiming as he did so:
“So much for your money! So much for your money! So much for your money! So much for your money!”
Suddenly he darted back and drew himself up before Alyosha, and his whole figure expressed unutterable pride.
“Tell those who sent you that the wisp of tow does not sell his honor,” he cried, raising his arm in the air. Then he turned quickly and began to run; but he had not run five steps before he turned completely round and kissed his hand to Alyosha. He ran another five paces and then turned round for the last time. This time his face was not contorted with laughter, but quivering all over with tears. In a tearful, faltering, sobbing voice he cried:
“What should I say to my boy if I took money from you for our shame?”
And then he ran on without turning. Alyosha looked after him, inexpressibly grieved. Oh, he saw that till the very last moment the man had not known he would crumple up and fling away the notes. He did not turn back. Alyosha knew he would not. He would not follow him and call him back, he knew why. When he was out of sight, Alyosha picked up the two notes. They were very much crushed and crumpled, and had been pressed into the sand, but were uninjured and even rustled like new ones when Alyosha unfolded them and smoothed them out. After smoothing them out, he folded them up, put them in his pocket and went to Katerina Ivanovna to report on the success of her commission.
Book V. Pro And Contra
Chapter I. The Engagement
Madame Hohlakov was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was flustered; something important had happened. Katerina Ivanovna's hysterics had ended in a fainting fit, and then “a terrible, awful weakness had followed, she lay with her eyes turned up and was delirious. Now she was in a fever. They had sent for Herzenstube; they had sent for the aunts. The aunts were already here, but Herzenstube had not yet come. They were all sitting in her room, waiting. She was unconscious now, and what if it turned to brain fever!”
Madame Hohlakov looked gravely alarmed. “This is serious, serious,” she added at every word, as though nothing that had happened to her before had been serious. Alyosha listened with distress, and was beginning to describe his adventures, but she interrupted him at the first words. She had not time to listen. She begged him to sit with Lise and wait for her there.
“Lise,” she whispered almost in his ear, “Lise has greatly surprised me just now, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch. She touched me, too, and so my heart forgives her everything. Only fancy, as soon as you had gone, she began to be truly remorseful for having laughed at you to-day and yesterday, though she was not laughing at you, but only joking. But she was seriously sorry for it, almost ready to cry, so that I was quite surprised. She has never been really sorry for laughing at me, but has only made a joke of it. And you know she is laughing at me every minute. But this time she was in earnest. She thinks a great deal of your opinion, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and don't take offense or be wounded by her if you can help it. I am never hard upon her, for she's such a clever little thing. Would you believe it? She said just now that you were a friend of her childhood, ‘the greatest friend of her childhood’ – just think of that – ‘greatest friend’ – and what about me? She has very strong feelings and memories, and, what's more, she uses these phrases, most unexpected words, which come out all of a sudden when you least expect them. She spoke lately about a pine-tree, for instance: there used to be a pine-tree standing in our garden in her early childhood. Very likely it's standing there still; so there's no need to speak in the past tense. Pine-trees are not like people, Alexey Fyodorovitch, they don't change quickly. ‘Mamma,’ she said, ‘I remember this pine-tree as in a dream,’ only she said something so original about it that I can't repeat it. Besides, I've forgotten it. Well, good-by! I am so worried I feel I shall go out of my mind. Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I've been out of my mind twice in my life. Go to Lise, cheer her up, as you always can so charmingly. Lise,” she cried, going to her door, “here I've brought you Alexey Fyodorovitch, whom you insulted so. He is not at all angry, I assure you; on the contrary, he is surprised that you could suppose so.”
“
Merci, maman.
Come in, Alexey Fyodorovitch.”
Alyosha went in. Lise looked rather embarrassed, and at once flushed crimson. She was evidently ashamed of something, and, as people always do in such cases, she began immediately talking of other things, as though they were of absorbing interest to her at the moment.
“Mamma has just told me all about the two hundred roubles, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and your taking them to that poor officer … and she told me all the awful story of how he had been insulted … and you know, although mamma muddles things … she always rushes from one thing to another … I cried when I heard. Well, did you give him the money and how is that poor man getting on?”
“The fact is I didn't give it to him, and it's a long story,” answered Alyosha, as though he, too, could think of nothing but his regret at having failed, yet Lise saw perfectly well that he, too, looked away, and that he, too, was trying to talk of other things.
Alyosha sat down to the table and began to tell his story, but at the first words he lost his embarrassment and gained the whole of Lise's attention as well. He spoke with deep feeling, under the influence of the strong impression he had just received, and he succeeded in telling his story well and circumstantially. In old days in Moscow he had been fond of coming to Lise and describing to her what had just happened to him, what he had read, or what he remembered of his childhood. Sometimes they had made day-dreams and woven whole romances together – generally cheerful and amusing ones. Now they both felt suddenly transported to the old days in Moscow, two years before. Lise was extremely touched by his story. Alyosha described Ilusha with warm feeling. When he finished describing how the luckless man trampled on the money, Lise could not help clasping her hands and crying out:
“So you didn't give him the money! So you let him run away! Oh, dear, you ought to have run after him!”
“No, Lise; it's better I didn't run after him,” said Alyosha, getting up from his chair and walking thoughtfully across the room.
“How so? How is it better? Now they are without food and their case is hopeless?”
“Not hopeless, for the two hundred roubles will still come to them. He'll take the money to-morrow. To-morrow he will be sure to take it,” said Alyosha, pacing up and down, pondering. “You see, Lise,” he went on, stopping suddenly before her, “I made one blunder, but that, even that, is all for the best.”
“What blunder, and why is it for the best?”
“I'll tell you. He is a man of weak and timorous character; he has suffered so much and is very good-natured. I keep wondering why he took offense so suddenly, for I assure you, up to the last minute, he did not know that he was going to trample on the notes. And I think now that there was a great deal to offend him … and it could not have been otherwise in his position… To begin with, he was sore at having been so glad of the money in my presence and not having concealed it from me. If he had been pleased, but not so much; if he had not shown it; if he had begun affecting scruples and difficulties, as other people do when they take money, he might still endure to take it. But he was too genuinely delighted, and that was mortifying. Ah, Lise, he is a good and truthful man – that's the worst of the whole business. All the while he talked, his voice was so weak, so broken, he talked so fast, so fast, he kept laughing such a laugh, or perhaps he was crying – yes, I am sure he was crying, he was so delighted – and he talked about his daughters – and about the situation he could get in another town… And when he had poured out his heart, he felt ashamed at having shown me his inmost soul like that. So he began to hate me at once. He is one of those awfully sensitive poor people. What had made him feel most ashamed was that he had given in too soon and accepted me as a friend, you see. At first he almost flew at me and tried to intimidate me, but as soon as he saw the money he had begun embracing me; he kept touching me with his hands. This must have been how he came to feel it all so humiliating, and then I made that blunder, a very important one. I suddenly said to him that if he had not money enough to move to another town, we would give it to him, and, indeed, I myself would give him as much as he wanted out of my own money. That struck him all at once. Why, he thought, did I put myself forward to help him? You know, Lise, it's awfully hard for a man who has been injured, when other people look at him as though they were his benefactors… I've heard that; Father Zossima told me so. I don't know how to put it, but I have often seen it myself. And I feel like that myself, too. And the worst of it was that though he did not know, up to the very last minute, that he would trample on the notes, he had a kind of presentiment of it, I am sure of that. That's just what made him so ecstatic, that he had that presentiment… And though it's so dreadful, it's all for the best. In fact, I believe nothing better could have happened.”
“Why, why could nothing better have happened?” cried Lise, looking with great surprise at Alyosha.
“Because if he had taken the money, in an hour after getting home, he would be crying with mortification, that's just what would have happened. And most likely he would have come to me early to-morrow, and perhaps have flung the notes at me and trampled upon them as he did just now. But now he has gone home awfully proud and triumphant, though he knows he has ‘ruined himself.’ So now nothing could be easier than to make him accept the two hundred roubles by to-morrow, for he has already vindicated his honor, tossed away the money, and trampled it under foot… He couldn't know when he did it that I should bring it to him again to-morrow, and yet he is in terrible need of that money. Though he is proud of himself now, yet even to-day he'll be thinking what a help he has lost. He will think of it more than ever at night, will dream of it, and by to-morrow morning he may be ready to run to me to ask forgiveness. It's just then that I'll appear. ‘Here, you are a proud man,’ I shall say: ‘you have shown it; but now take the money and forgive us!’ And then he will take it!”
Alyosha was carried away with joy as he uttered his last words, “And then he will take it!” Lise clapped her hands.
“Ah, that's true! I understand that perfectly now. Ah, Alyosha, how do you know all this? So young and yet he knows what's in the heart… I should never have worked it out.”
“The great thing now is to persuade him that he is on an equal footing with us, in spite of his taking money from us,” Alyosha went on in his excitement, “and not only on an equal, but even on a higher footing.”
“ ‘On a higher footing’ is charming, Alexey Fyodorovitch; but go on, go on!”
“You mean there isn't such an expression as ‘on a higher footing’; but that doesn't matter because – ”
“Oh, no, of course it doesn't matter. Forgive me, Alyosha, dear… You know, I scarcely respected you till now – that is I respected you but on an equal footing; but now I shall begin to respect you on a higher footing. Don't be angry, dear, at my joking,” she put in at once, with strong feeling. “I am absurd and small, but you, you! Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch. Isn't there in all our analysis – I mean your analysis … no, better call it ours – aren't we showing contempt for him, for that poor man – in analyzing his soul like this, as it were, from above, eh? In deciding so certainly that he will take the money?”
“No, Lise, it's not contempt,” Alyosha answered, as though he had prepared himself for the question. “I was thinking of that on the way here. How can it be contempt when we are all like him, when we are all just the same as he is? For you know we are just the same, no better. If we are better, we should have been just the same in his place… I don't know about you, Lise, but I consider that I have a sordid soul in many ways, and his soul is not sordid; on the contrary, full of fine feeling… No, Lise, I have no contempt for him. Do you know, Lise, my elder told me once to care for most people exactly as one would for children, and for some of them as one would for the sick in hospitals.”
“Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, dear, let us care for people as we would for the sick!”
“Let us, Lise; I am ready. Though I am not altogether ready in myself. I am sometimes very impatient and at other times I don't see things. It's different with you.”
“Ah, I don't believe it! Alexey Fyodorovitch, how happy I am!”
“I am so glad you say so, Lise.”
“Alexey Fyodorovitch, you are wonderfully good, but you are sometimes sort of formal… And yet you are not a bit formal really. Go to the door, open it gently, and see whether mamma is listening,” said Lise, in a nervous, hurried whisper.
Alyosha went, opened the door, and reported that no one was listening.
“Come here, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” Lise went on, flushing redder and redder. “Give me your hand – that's right. I have to make a great confession, I didn't write to you yesterday in joke, but in earnest,” and she hid her eyes with her hand. It was evident that she was greatly ashamed of the confession.
Suddenly she snatched his hand and impulsively kissed it three times.
“Ah, Lise, what a good thing!” cried Alyosha joyfully. “You know, I was perfectly sure you were in earnest.”
“Sure? Upon my word!” She put aside his hand, but did not leave go of it, blushing hotly, and laughing a little happy laugh. “I kiss his hand and he says, ‘What a good thing!’ ”
But her reproach was undeserved. Alyosha, too, was greatly overcome.
“I should like to please you always, Lise, but I don't know how to do it,” he muttered, blushing too.
“Alyosha, dear, you are cold and rude. Do you see? He has chosen me as his wife and is quite settled about it. He is sure I was in earnest. What a thing to say! Why, that's impertinence – that's what it is.”
“Why, was it wrong of me to feel sure?” Alyosha asked, laughing suddenly.
“Ah, Alyosha, on the contrary, it was delightfully right,” cried Lise, looking tenderly and happily at him.
Alyosha stood still, holding her hand in his. Suddenly he stooped down and kissed her on her lips.
“Oh, what are you doing?” cried Lise. Alyosha was terribly abashed.
“Oh, forgive me if I shouldn't… Perhaps I'm awfully stupid… You said I was cold, so I kissed you… But I see it was stupid.”
Lise laughed, and hid her face in her hands. “And in that dress!” she ejaculated in the midst of her mirth. But she suddenly ceased laughing and became serious, almost stern.
“Alyosha, we must put off kissing. We are not ready for that yet, and we shall have a long time to wait,” she ended suddenly. “Tell me rather why you who are so clever, so intellectual, so observant, choose a little idiot, an invalid like me? Ah, Alyosha, I am awfully happy, for I don't deserve you a bit.”
“You do, Lise. I shall be leaving the monastery altogether in a few days. If I go into the world, I must marry. I know that.
He
told me to marry, too. Whom could I marry better than you – and who would have me except you? I have been thinking it over. In the first place, you've known me from a child and you've a great many qualities I haven't. You are more light-hearted than I am; above all, you are more innocent than I am. I have been brought into contact with many, many things already… Ah, you don't know, but I, too, am a Karamazov. What does it matter if you do laugh and make jokes, and at me, too? Go on laughing. I am so glad you do. You laugh like a little child, but you think like a martyr.”
“Like a martyr? How?”
“Yes, Lise, your question just now: whether we weren't showing contempt for that poor man by dissecting his soul – that was the question of a sufferer… You see, I don't know how to express it, but any one who thinks of such questions is capable of suffering. Sitting in your invalid chair you must have thought over many things already.”
“Alyosha, give me your hand. Why are you taking it away?” murmured Lise in a failing voice, weak with happiness. “Listen, Alyosha. What will you wear when you come out of the monastery? What sort of suit? Don't laugh, don't be angry, it's very, very important to me.”
“I haven't thought about the suit, Lise; but I'll wear whatever you like.”
“I should like you to have a dark blue velvet coat, a white piqué waistcoat, and a soft gray felt hat… Tell me, did you believe that I didn't care for you when I said I didn't mean what I wrote?”
“No, I didn't believe it.”
“Oh, you insupportable person, you are incorrigible.”
“You see, I knew that you – seemed to care for me, but I pretended to believe that you didn't care for me to make it – easier for you.”
“That makes it worse! Worse and better than all! Alyosha, I am awfully fond of you. Just before you came this morning, I tried my fortune. I decided I would ask you for my letter, and if you brought it out calmly and gave it to me (as might have been expected from you) it would mean that you did not love me at all, that you felt nothing, and were simply a stupid boy, good for nothing, and that I am ruined. But you left the letter at home and that cheered me. You left it behind on purpose, so as not to give it back, because you knew I would ask for it? That was it, wasn't it?”
“Ah, Lise, it was not so a bit. The letter is with me now, and it was this morning, in this pocket. Here it is.”
Alyosha pulled the letter out laughing, and showed it her at a distance.
“But I am not going to give it to you. Look at it from here.”
“Why, then you told a lie? You, a monk, told a lie!”
“I told a lie if you like,” Alyosha laughed, too. “I told a lie so as not to give you back the letter. It's very precious to me,” he added suddenly, with strong feeling, and again he flushed. “It always will be, and I won't give it up to any one!”
Lise looked at him joyfully. “Alyosha,” she murmured again, “look at the door. Isn't mamma listening?”
“Very well, Li