“Defend? Is it for me to defend you? Would we even dare to defend you here? Grushenka, angel, give me your hand. Look at this plump, lovely little hand, Alexei Fyodorovich; do you see it? It brought me happiness and resurrected me, and now I am going to kiss it, back and front, here, here, and here!” And as if in rapture, she kissed the indeed lovely, if perhaps too plump, hand of Grushenka three times. The latter, offering her hand with a nervous, pealing, lovely little laugh, watched the “dear young lady,” apparently pleased at having her hand kissed like that. “Maybe a little too much rapture,” flashed through Alyosha’s mind. He blushed. All the while his heart was somehow peculiarly uneasy.
“Won’t you make me ashamed, dear young lady, kissing my hand like that in front of Alexei Fyodorovich!”
“How could I possibly make you ashamed?” said Katerina Ivanovna, somewhat surprised. “Ah, my dear, how poorly you understand me!”
“But perhaps you do not quite understand me either, dear young lady. Perhaps I’m more wicked than you see on the surface. I have a wicked heart, I’m willful. I charmed poor Dmitri Fyodorovich that time only to laugh at him.”
“But now it will be you who save him. You gave your word. You will make him listen to reason, you will reveal to him that you love another man, that you have loved him for a long time, and he is now offering you his hand...”
“Ah, no, I never gave you my word. It’s you who were saying all that, but I didn’t give my word.” “Then I must have misunderstood you,” Katerina Ivanovna said softly, turning a bit pale, as it were. “You promised...”
“Ah, no, my young lady, my angel, I promised nothing,” Grushenka interrupted softly and calmly, with the same gay and innocent expression. “Now you see, worthy young lady, how wicked and willful I am next to you. Whatever I want, I will do. Maybe I just promised you something, but now I’m thinking: what if I like him again all of a sudden—Mitya, I mean—because I did like him once very much, I liked him for almost a whole hour. So, maybe I’ll go now and tell him to stay with me starting today ... That’s how fickle I am...”
“You just said ... something quite different. . . ,” Katerina Ivanovna said faintly.
“Ah, I just said! But I have such a tender, foolish heart. Think what he’s suffered because of me! What if I go home and suddenly take pity on him—what then?”
“I didn’t expect...”
“Eh, young lady, how kind and noble you turn out to be next to me. So now perhaps you’ll stop loving such a fool as I am, seeing my character. Give me your little hand, my angel,” she asked tenderly, and took Katerina Ivanovna’s hand as if in reverence. “Here, dear young lady, I’ll take your little hand and kiss it, just as you did to me. You kissed mine three times, and for that I ought to kiss yours three hundred times to be even. And so I shall, and then let it be as God wills; maybe I’ll be your complete slave and want to please you in everything like a slave. As God wills, so let it be, with no deals or promises between us. What a hand, what a dear little hand you have, what a hand! My dear young lady, beauty that you are, my impossible beauty!”
She slowly raised this hand to her lips, though with the rather strange purpose of “getting even” in kisses. Katerina Ivanovna did not withdraw her hand: with a timid hope, she listened to Grushenka’s last, also rather strangely expressed, promise to please her “like a slave”; she looked tensely into her eyes: she saw in those eyes the same openhearted, trusting expression, the same serene gaiety ... “Perhaps she is so naive!” a hope flashed in Katerina Ivanovna’s heart. Meanwhile Grushenka, as if admiring the “dear little hand,” was slowly raising it to her lips. But with the hand just at her lips, she suddenly hesitated for two, maybe three seconds, as if thinking something over.
“Do you know, my angel,”she suddenly drawled in the most tender, sugary voice, “do you know? I’m just not going to kiss your hand.” And she laughed a gleeful little laugh. “As you wish ... What’s the matter?” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly started.
“And you can keep this as a memory—that you kissed my hand, and I did not kiss yours.” Something suddenly flashed in her eyes. She looked with terrible fixity at Katerina Ivanovna.
“Insolent!” Katerina Ivanovna said suddenly, as if suddenly understanding something. She blushed all over and jumped up from her place. Grushenka, too, got up, without haste.
“So I’ll go right now and tell Mitya that you kissed my hand, and I didn’t kiss yours at all. How he’ll laugh!”
“You slut! Get out!”
“Ah, shame on you, young lady, shame on you! It’s really quite indecent for you to use such words, dear young lady.”
“Get out, bought woman!” screamed Katerina Ivanovna. Every muscle trembled in her completely distorted face.
“Bought, am I? You yourself as a young girl used to go to your gentlemen at dusk to get money, offering your beauty for sale, and I know it.”
Katerina Ivanovna made a cry and was about to leap at her, but Alyosha held her back with all his strength.
“Not a step, not a word! Don’t speak, don’t answer anything—she’ll leave, she’ll leave right now!”
At that moment both of Katerina Ivanovna’s aunts, having heard her cry, ran into the room; the maid ran in, too. They all rushed to her.
“That I will,” said Grushenka, picking up her mantilla from the sofa. “Alyosha, dear, come with me!”
“Go, go quickly,” Alyosha pleaded, clasping his hands before her.
“Alyoshenka, dear, come with me! I have something very, very nice to tell you on the way. I performed this scene for you, Alyoshenka. Come with me, darling, you’ll be glad you did.”
Alyosha turned away, wringing his hands. Grushenka, with a peal of laughter, ran out of the house.
Katerina Ivanovna had a fit. She sobbed, she choked with spasms. Everyone fussed around her.
“I warned you,” the elder of the aunts was saying, “I tried to keep you from taking this step ... You are too passionate ... How could you think of taking such a step! You do not know these creatures, and this one, they say, is worse than all of them ... No, you are too willful!”
“She’s a tiger!” screamed Katerina Ivanovna. “Why did you hold me back, Alexei Fyodorovich! I’d have beaten her, beaten her!”
She could not restrain herself in front of Alyosha, and perhaps did not want to restrain herself. “She should be flogged, on a scaffold, by an executioner, with everyone watching!”
Alyosha backed towards the door.
“But, my God!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly cried out, clasping her hands. “And he! He could be so dishonest, so inhuman! He told this creature what happened then, on that fatal, eternally accursed, accursed day! ‘You came to sell your beauty, dear young lady!’ She knows! Your brother is a scoundrel, Alexei Fyodorovich!”
Alyosha wanted to say something, but he could not find a single word. His heart ached within him.
“Go away, Alexei Fyodorovich! It’s so shameful, so terrible! Tomorrow ... I beg you on my knees, come tomorrow. Do not condemn me. Forgive me. I don’t know what I’ll still do to myself!”
Alyosha went outside, staggering, as it were. He, too, felt like crying as she had. Suddenly a maid caught up with him.
“The young lady forgot to give you this letter from Madame Khokhlakov. She’s had it since dinnertime.”
Alyosha mechanically took the small pink envelope and almost unconsciously put it in his pocket.
Chapter 11: One More Ruined Reputation
From town to the monastery was not more than half a mile or so. Alyosha hurried along the road, which was deserted at that hour. It was already almost night; it was difficult to make out objects thirty paces ahead. There was a crossroads halfway. At the crossroads, under a solitary willow, a figure came into view. Alyosha had just reached the crossroads when the figure tore itself from its place, leaped out at him, and shouted in a wild voice: