THE first of these things was at the house of Madame Hohlakov, and he hurried there to get it over as quickly as possible and not be too late for Mitya. Madame Hohlakov had been slightly ailing for the last three weeks: her foot had for some reason swollen up, and though she was not in bed, she lay all day half-reclining on the couch in her boudoir, in a fascinating but decorous deshabille. Alyosha had once noted with innocent amusement that, in spite of her illness, Madame Hohlakov had begun to be rather dressy — topknots, ribbons, loose wrappers had made their appearance, and he had an inkling of the reason, though he dismissed such ideas from his mind as frivolous. During the last two months the young official, Perhotin, had become a regular visitor at the house.
Alyosha had not called for four days and he was in haste to go straight to Lise, as it was with her he had to speak, for Lise had sent a maid to him the previous day specially asking him to come to her “about something very important,” a request which, for certain reasons, had interest for Alyosha. But while the maid went to take his name in to Lise, Madame Hohlakov heard of his arrival from someone, and immediately sent to beg him to come to her “just for one minute.” Alyosha reflected that it was better to accede to the mamma’s request, or else she would be sending down to Lise’s room every minute that he was there. Madame Hohlakov was lying on a couch. She was particularly smartly dressed and was evidently in a state of extreme nervous excitement. She greeted Alyosha with cries of rapture.
“It’s ages, ages, perfect ages since I’ve seen you! It’s a whole week — only think of it! Ah, but you were here only four days ago, on Wednesday. You have come to see Lise. I’m sure you meant to slip into her room on tiptoe, without my hearing you. My dear, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, if you only knew how worried I am about her! But of that later, though that’s the most important thing, of that later. Dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, I trust you implicitly with my Lise. Since the death of Father Zossima — God rest his soul!” (she crossed herself) — “I look upon you as a monk, though you look charming in your new suit. Where did you find such a tailor in these parts? No, no, that’s not the chief thing — of that later. Forgive me for sometimes calling you Alyosha; an old woman like me may take liberties,” she smiled coquettishly; “but that will do later, too. The important thing is that I shouldn’t forget what is important. Please remind me of it yourself. As soon as my tongue runs away with me, you just say ‘the important thing?’ Ach! how do I know now what is of most importance? Ever since Lise took back her promise — her childish promise, Alexey Fyodorovitch — to marry you, you’ve realised, of course, that it was only the playful fancy of a sick child who had been so long confined to her chair — thank God, she can walk now! . . . that-new doctor Katya sent for from Moscow for your unhappy brother, who will to-morrow — but why speak of to-morrow? I am ready to die at the very thought of to-morrow. Ready to die of curiosity. . . . That doctor was with us yesterday and saw Lise. . . . I paid him fifty roubles for the visit. But that’s not the point, that’s not the point again. You see, I’m mixing everything up. I am in such a hurry. Why am I in a hurry? I don’t understand. It’s awful how I seem growing unable to understand anything. Everything seems mixed up in a sort of tangle. I am afraid you are so bored you will jump up and run away, and that will be all I shall see of you. Goodness! Why are we sitting here and no coffee? Yulia, Glafira, coffee!”
Alyosha made haste to thank her, and said that he had only just had coffee.
“Where?”
“At Agrfena Alexandrovna’s.”
“At . . . at that woman’s? Ah, it’s she has brought ruin on everyone. I know nothing about it though. They say she has become a saint, though it’s rather late in the day. She had better have done it before. What use is it now? Hush, hush, Alexey Fyodorovitch, for I have so much to say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing. This awful trial . . . I shall certainly go, I am making arrangements. I shall be carried there in my chair; besides I can sit up. I shall have people with me. And, you know, I am a witness. How shall I speak, how shall I speak? I don’t know what I shall say. One has to take an oath, hasn’t one?”
“Yes; but I don’t think you will be able to go.”
“I can sit up. Ah, you put me out! Ah! this trial, this savage act, and then they are all going to Siberia, some are getting married, and all this so quickly, so quickly, everything’s changing, and at last — nothing. All grow old and have death to look forward to. Well, so be it! I am weary. This Katya, cette charmante personne, has disappointed all my hopes. Now she is going to follow one of your brothers to Siberia, and your other brother is going to follow her, and will live in the nearest town, and they will all torment one another. It drives me out of my mind. Worst of all — the publicity. The story has been told a million times over in all the papers in Moscow and Petersburg. Ah! yes, would you believe it, there’s a paragraph that I was ‘a dear friend’ of your brother’s —, I can’t repeat the horrid word. just fancy, just fancy!”
“Impossible! Where was the paragraph? What did it say?”
“I’ll show you directly. I got the paper and read it yesterday. Here, in the Petersburg paper Gossip. The paper began coming out this year. I am awfully fond of gossip, and I take it in, and now it pays me out — this is what gossip comes to! Here it is, here, this passage. Read it.”
And she handed Alyosha a sheet of newspaper which had been under her pillow.
It was not exactly that she was upset, she seemed overwhelmed and perhaps everything really was mixed up in a tangle in her head. The paragraph was very typical, and must have been a great shock to her, but, fortunately perhaps, she was unable to keep her mind fixed on any one subject at that moment, and so might race off in a minute to something else and quite forget the newspaper.
Alyosha was well aware that the story of the terrible case had spread all over Russia. And, good heavens! what wild rumours about his brother, about the Karamazovs, and about himself he had read in the course of those two months, among other equally credible items! One paper had even stated that he had gone into a monastery and become a monk, in horror at his brother’s crime. Another contradicted this, and stated that he and his elder, Father Zossima, had broken into the monastery chest and “made tracks from the monastery.” The present paragraph in the paper Gossip was under the heading, “The Karamazov Case at Skotoprigonyevsk.” (That, alas! was the name of our little town. I had hitherto kept it concealed.) It was brief, and Madame Hohlakov was not directly mentioned in it. No names appeared, in fact. It was merely stated that the criminal, whose approaching trial was making such a sensation — retired army captain, an idle swaggerer, and reactionary bully — was continually involved in amorous intrigues, and particularly popular with certain ladies “who were pining in solitude.” One such lady, a pining widow, who tried to seem young though she had a grown-up daughter, was so fascinated by him that only two hours before the crime she offered him three thousand roubles, on condition that he would elope with her to the gold mines. But the criminal, counting on escaping punishment, had preferred to murder his father to get the three thousand rather than go off to Siberia with the middle-aged charms of his pining lady. This playful paragraph finished, of course, with an outburst of generous indignation at the wickedness of parricide and at the lately abolished institution of serfdom. Reading it with curiosity, Alyosha folded up the paper and handed it back to Madame Hohlakov.
“Well, that must be me,” she hurried on again. “Of course I am meant. Scarcely more than an hour before, I suggested gold mines to him, and here they talk of ‘middle-aged charms’ as though that were my motive! He writes that out of spite! God Almighty forgive him for the middle-aged charms, as I forgive him! You know it’s — Do you know who it is? It’s your friend Rakitin.”
“Perhaps,” said Alyosha, “though I’ve heard nothing about it.”
“It’s he, it’s he! No ‘perhaps’ about it. You know I turned him out of the house. . . . You know all that story, don’t you?”
“I know that you asked him not to visit you for the future, but why it was, I haven’t heard . . . from you, at least.”
“Ah, then you’ve heard it from him! He abuses me, I suppose, abuses me dreadfully?”
“Yes, he does; but then he abuses everyone. But why you’ve given him up I, haven’t heard from him either. I meet him very seldom now, indeed. We are not friends.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you all about it. There’s no help for it, I’ll confess, for there is one point in which I was perhaps to blame. Only a little, little point, so little that perhaps it doesn’t count. You see, my dear boy” — Madame Hohlakov suddenly looked arch and a charming, though enigmatic, smile played about her lips — “you see, I suspect . . . You must forgive me, Alyosha. I am like a mother to you . . . No, no; quite the contrary. I speak to you now as though you were my father — mother’s quite out of place. Well, it’s as though I were confessing to Father Zossima, that’s just it. I called you a monk just now. Well, that poor young man, your friend, Rakitin (Mercy on us! I can’t be angry with him. I feel cross, but not very), that frivolous young man, would you believe it, seems to have taken it into his head to fall in love with me. I only noticed it later. At first — a month ago — he only began to come oftener to see me, almost every day; though, of course, we were acquainted before. I knew nothing about it . . . and suddenly it dawned upon me, and I began to notice things with surprise. You know, two months ago, that modest, charming, excellent young man, Ilyitch Perhotin, who’s in the service here, began to be a regular visitor at the house. You met him here ever so many times yourself. And he is an excellent, earnest young man, isn’t he? He comes once every three days, not every day (though I should be glad to see him every day), and always so well dressed. Altogether, I love young people, Alyosha, talented, modest, like you, and he has almost the mind of a statesman, he talks so charmingly, and I shall certainly, certainly try and get promotion for him. He is a future diplomat. On that awful day he almost saved me from death by coming in the night. And your friend Rakitin comes in such boots, and always stretches them out on the carpet. . . . He began hinting at his feelings, in fact, and one day, as he was going, he squeezed my hand terribly hard. My foot began to swell directly after he pressed my hand like that. He had met Pyotr Ilyitch here before, and would you believe it, he is always gibing at him, growling at him, for some reason. I simply looked at the way they went on together and laughed inwardly. So I was sitting here alone — no, I was laid up then. Well, I was lying here alone and suddenly Rakitin comes in, and only fancy! brought me some verses of his own composition — a short poem, on my bad foot: that is, he described my foot in a poem. Wait a minute — how did it go?
A captivating little foot.
It began somehow like that. I can never remember poetry. I’ve got it here. I’ll show it to you later. But it’s a charming thing — charming; and, you know, it’s not only about the foot, it had a good moral, too, a charming idea, only I’ve forgotten it; in fact, it was just the thing for an album. So, of course, I thanked him, and he was evidently flattered. I’d hardly had time to thank him when in comes Pyotr Ilyitch, and Rakitin suddenly looked as black as night. I could see that Pyotr Ilyitch was in the way, for Rakitin certainl............