HE had no time to lose indeed. Even while he was saying good-bye to Lise, the thought had struck him that he must attempt some stratagem to find his brother Dmitri, who was evidently keeping out of his way. It was getting late, nearly three o’clock. Alyosha’s whole soul turned to the monastery, to his dying saint, but the necessity of seeing Dmitri outweighed everything. The conviction that a great inevitable catastrophe was about to happen grew stronger in Alyosha’s mind with every hour. What that catastrophe was, and what he would say at that moment to his brother, he could perhaps not have said definitely. “Even if my benefactor must die without me, anyway I won’t have to reproach myself all my life with the thought that I might have saved something and did not, but passed by and hastened home. If I do as I intend, I shall be following his great precept.”
His plan was to catch his brother Dmitri unawares, to climb over the fence, as he had the day before, get into the garden and sit in the summer-house. If Dmitri were not there, thought Alyosha, he would not announce himself to Foma or the women of the house, but would remain hidden in the summer-house, even if he had to wait there till evening. If, as before, Dmitri were lying in wait for Grushenka to come, he would be very likely to come to the summer-house. Alyosha did not, however, give much thought to the details of his plan, but resolved to act upon it, even if it meant not getting back to the monastery that day.
Everything happened without hindrance, he climbed over the hurdle almost in the same spot as the day before, and stole into the summer-house unseen. He did not want to be noticed. The woman of the house and Foma too, if he were here, might be loyal to his brother and obey his instructions, and so refuse to let Alyosha come into the garden, or might warn Dmitri that he was being sought and inquired for.
There was no one in the summer-house. Alyosha sat down and began to wait. He looked round the summer-house, which somehow struck him as a great deal more ancient than before. Though the day was just as fine as yesterday, it seemed a wretched little place this time. There was a circle on the table, left no doubt from the glass of brandy having been spilt the day before. Foolish and irrelevant ideas strayed about his mind, as they always do in a time of tedious waiting. He wondered, for instance, why he had sat down precisely in the same place as before, why not in the other seat. At last he felt very depressed — depressed by suspense and uncertainty. But he had not sat there more than a quarter of an hour, when he suddenly heard the thrum of a guitar somewhere quite close. People were sitting, or had only just sat down, somewhere in the bushes not more than twenty paces away. Alyosha suddenly recollected that on coming out of the summer-house the day before, he had caught a glimpse of an old green low garden-seat among the bushes on the left, by the fence. The people must be sitting on it now. Who were they?
A man’s voice suddenly began singing in a sugary falsetto, accompanying himself on the guitar:
With invincible force
I am bound to my dear.
O Lord, have mercy
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
The voice ceased. It was a lackey’s tenor and a lackey’s song. Another voice, a woman’s, suddenly asked insinuatingly and bashfully, though with mincing affectation:
“Why haven’t you been to see us for so long, Pavel Fyodorovitch? Why do you always look down upon us?”
“Not at all answered a man’s voice politely, but with emphatic dignity. It was clear that the man had the best of the position, and that the woman was making advances. “I believe the man must be Smerdyakov,” thought Alyosha, “from his voice. And the lady must be the daughter of the house here, who has come from Moscow, the one who wears the dress with a tail and goes to Marfa for soup.”
“I am awfully fond of verses of all kinds, if they rhyme,” the woman’s voice continued. “Why don’t you go on?”
The man sang again:
What do I care for royal wealth
If but my dear one be in health?
Lord have mercy
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
“It was even better last time,” observed the woman’s voice. “You sang ‘If my darling be in health’; it sounded more tender. I suppose you’ve forgotten to-day.”
“Poetry is rubbish!” said Smerdyakov curtly.
“Oh, no! I am very fond of poetry.”
“So far as it’s poetry, it’s essential rubbish. Consider yourself, who ever talks in rhyme? And if we were all to talk in rhyme, even though it were decreed by government, we shouldn’t say much, should we? Poetry is no good, Marya Kondratyevna.”
“How clever you are! How is it you’ve gone so deep into everything?” The woman’s voice was more and more insinuating.
“I could have done better than that. I could have known more than that, if it had not been for my destiny from my childhood up. I would have shot a man in a duel if he called me names because I am descended from a filthy beggar and have no father. And they used to throw it in my teeth in Moscow. It had reached them from here, thanks to Grigory Vassilyevitch. Grigory Vassilyevitch blames me for rebelling against my birth, but I would have sanctioned their killing me before I was born that I might not have come into the world at all. They used to say in the market, and your mamma too, with great lack of delicacy, set off telling me that her hair was like a mat on her head, and that she was short of five foot by a wee bit. Why talk of a wee bit while she might have said ‘a little bit,’ like everyone else? She wanted to make it touching, a regular peasant’s feeling. Can a Russian peasant be said to feel, in comparison with an educated man? He can’t be said to have feeling at all, in his ignorance. From my childhood up when I hear ‘a wee bit,’ I am ready to burst with rage. I hate all Russia, Marya Kondratyevna.”
“If you’d been a cadet in the army, or a young hussar, you wouldn’t have talked like that, but would have drawn your sabre to defend all Russia.”
“I don’t want to be a hussar, Marya Kondratyevna, and, what’s more, I should like to abolish all soldiers.”
“And when an enemy comes, who is going to defend us?”
“There’s no need of defence. In 1812 there was a great invasion of Russia by Napoleon, first Emperor of the French, father of the present one, and it would have been a good thing if they had conquered us. A clever nation would have conquered a very stupid one and annexed it. We should have had quite different institutions.”
“Are they so much better in their own country than we are? I wouldn’t change a dandy I know of for three young englishmen,” observed Marya Kondratyevna tenderly, doubtless accompanying her words with a most languishing glance.
“That’s as one prefers.”
“But you are just like a foreigner — just like a most gentlemanly foreigner. I tell you that, though it makes me bashful.”
“If you care to know, the folks there and ours here are just alike in their vice. They are swindlers, only there the scoundrel wears polished boots and here he grovels in filth and sees no harm in it. The............