第67章

"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 Iloved 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- Ifound 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.Iunderstand 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?"What worried Alyosha more than anything was that, incredible as it seemed, his brother appeared pleased at Katerina Ivanovna's humiliation.

"Bah!" Dmitri frowned fiercely, and struck his forehead with his hand.He only now realised it, though Alyosha had just told him of the insult, and Katerina Ivanovna's cry: "Your brother is a scoundrel""Yes, perhaps, I really did tell Grushenka about that 'fatal day,'

as Katya calls it.Yes, I did tell her, I remember! It was that time at Mokroe.I was drunk, the Gypsies were singing...But I was sobbing.

I was sobbing then, kneeling and praying to Katya's image, and Grushenka understood it.She understood it all then.I remember, she cried herself....Damn it all! But it's bound to be so now....Then she cried, but now 'the dagger in the heart'! That's how women are."He looked down and sank into thought.

"Yes, I am a scoundrel, a thorough scoundrel" he said suddenly, in a gloomy voice."It doesn't matter whether I cried or not, I'm a scoundrel! Tell her I accept the name, if that's any comfort.Come, that's enough.Good-bye.It's no use talking! It's not amusing.You go your way and I mine.And I don't want to see you again except as a last resource.Good-bye, Alexey!"He warmly pressed Alyosha's hand, and still looking down, without raising his head, as though tearing himself away, turned rapidly towards the town.

Alyosha looked after him, unable to believe he would go away so abruptly.