She suddenly turned and disappeared again behind the portière, so quickly that Alyosha did not have time to say a word—and he wanted to. He wanted to ask forgiveness, to blame himself, to say at least something, because his heart was full, and he decidedly did not want to go from the room without that. But Madame Khokhlakov seized his hand and herself led him out. In the front hall she stopped him again as before.

“She’s proud, fighting against herself, but kind, lovely, magnanimous!” exclaimed Madame Khokhlakov in a half-whisper. “Oh, how I love her, especially sometimes, and how glad I am now once more again about everything, everything! Dear Alexei Fyodorovich, you did not know this, but you must know that all of us, all of us—I, and her two aunts—well, all of us, even Lise, for as much as a whole month now, have been wishing and praying for one thing only: that she would break with your beloved Dmitri Fyodorovich, who does not even want to know her and does not love her in the least, and marry Ivan Fyodorovich, an educated and excellent young man, who loves her more than anything in the world. We’ve joined in a whole conspiracy here, and that is perhaps the only reason I haven’t gone away ...”

“But she was crying, she’s been insulted again!” Alyosha exclaimed.

“Don’t believe in women’s tears, Alexei Fyodorovich—I’m always against the women in such cases, and for the men.”

“Mama, you are spoiling and ruining him,” Lise’s thin little voice came from behind the door.

“No, I was the cause of it all, I am terribly to blame!” the inconsolable Alyosha repeated in a burst of agonizing shame for his escapade, and even covered his face with his hands in shame. “On the contrary, you acted like an angel, an angel, I will gladly say it a thousand times over.”

“Mama, how did he act like an angel?” once more Lise’s voice was heard.

“I suddenly fancied for some reason, looking at all that,” Alyosha continued as if he hadn’t heard Liza, “that she loves Ivan, and so I said that foolishness ... and now what will happen?”

“To whom, to whom?” Lise exclaimed. “Mama, you really will be the death of me. I’m asking you and you don’t even answer.”

At that moment the maid ran in.

“Katerina Ivanovna is sick ... She’s crying ... hysterics, thrashing.”

“What is it?” cried Lise, her voice alarmed now. “Mama, it’s I who am going to have hysterics, not her!”

“Lise, for God’s sake, don’t shout, don’t destroy me. You are still too young to know everything that grown-ups know. I’ll run and tell you everything you ought to know. Oh, my God! I must run, run ... Hysterics! It’s a good sign, Alexei Fyodorovich, it’s excellent that she’s in hysterics. It’s precisely as it should be. In such cases I am always against the women, against all these hysterics and women’s tears. Yulia, run and tell her I’m flying. And it’s her own fault that Ivan Fyodorovich walked out like that. But he won’t go away. Lise, for God’s sake, stop shouting! Oh, yes, you’re not shouting, it’s I who am shouting, forgive your mama, but I’m in ecstasy, ecstasy, ecstasy! And did you notice, Alexei Fyodorovich, what youthfulness came out in Ivan Fyodorovich just now, he said it all and walked out! I thought he was such a scholar, an academician, and he suddenly spoke so ardently—ardently, openly, and youthfully, naively and youthfully, and it was all so beautiful, beautiful, just like you ... And he recited that little German verse, just like you! But I must run, run. Hurry, Alexei Fyodorovich, do that errand for her quickly and come back soon. Lise, do you need anything? For God’s sake don’t keep Alexei Fyodorovich for a minute, he will come back to you right away ...”

Madame Khokhlakov finally ran off. Alyosha, before leaving, was about to open the door to Lise’s room.

“No you don’t!” Lise cried out. “Not now you don’t! Speak like that, through the door. How did you get to be an angel? That’s all I want to know.”

“For my terrible foolishness, Lise! Good-bye.”

“Don’t you dare go like that!” cried Lise.

“Lise, I am in real grief! I’ll come back right away, but I am in great, great grief!”

And he ran out of the room.

Chapter 6: Strain in the Cottage

He was indeed in real grief, of a kind he had seldom experienced before. He had gone and “put his foot in it”—and in what? An affair of the heart!”But what do I know of that, what kind of judge am I in such matters?” he repeated to himself for the hundredth time, blushing. “Oh, shame would be nothing, shame would be only the punishment I deserve—the trouble is that now I will undoubtedly be the cause of new misfortunes ... And the elder sent me to reconcile and unite. Is this any way to unite?” Here again he recalled how he had “united” their hands, and again he felt terribly ashamed. “Though I did it all sincerely, I must be smarter in the future,” he suddenly concluded, and did not even smile at his conclusion.

For Katerina Ivanovna’s errand he had to go to Lake Street, and his brother Dmitri lived just on the way there, not far from Lake Street, in a lane. Alyosha decided to stop at his place in any case, before going to the captain’s, though he had a premonition that he would not find him at home. He suspected that his brother would perhaps somehow be deliberately hiding from him now, but he had to find him at all costs. Time was passing: the thought of the dying elder had never left him, not for a minute, not for a second, from the moment he left the monastery.

There was one fleeting detail in Katerina Ivanovna’s errand that also interested him greatly: when Katerina Ivanovna mentioned that a little boy, a schoolboy, the captain’s son, had run beside his father, crying loudly, the thought flashed through Alyosha’s mind even then that this boy must be the same schoolboy who had bitten his finger when he, Alyosha, asked him how he had offended him. Now Alyosha was almost sure of it, though he did not know why. Thus, drawn to other thoughts, he became distracted and decided not to “think” about the “disaster” he had just caused, not to torment himself with remorse, but to go about his business, and let be what came. With that thought, he finally cheered up. Incidentally, as he turned into the lane where his brother Dmitri lived, he felt hungry, pulled from his pocket the loaf he had taken from his father, and ate it as he walked. This fortified him.

Dmitri was not at home. The owners of the little house—an old cabinetmaker, his son, and an old woman, his wife—even looked at Alyosha with suspicion. “It’s three days now since he’s slept here, maybe he’s vacated somewhere,” the old man replied to Alyosha’s urgent inquiries. Alyosha realized that he was answering on instructions. When he asked whether he might be at Grushenka’s, or hiding at Foma’s again (Alyosha used these confidences deliberately), the owners all even looked at him with alarm. “So they love him, they’re on his side,” thought Alyosha, “that’s good.”

At last he found Mrs. Kalmykov’s house on Lake Street, a decrepit, lopsided little house, with only three windows looking out onto the street, and a dirty courtyard, in the middle of which a cow stood solitarily. The entry to the front hall was through the courtyard; on the left side of the hall lived the old landlady with her elderly daughter, both apparently deaf. In reply to his question about the captain, repeated several times, one of them finally understood that he was asking for the tenants and jabbed with her finger across the hall, pointing at the door to the front room. Indeed, the captain’s lodgings turned out to be just a peasant cottage. Alyosha already had his hand on the iron door-pull when he was suddenly struck by the unusual silence behind the door. Yet he knew from what Katerina Ivanovna had told him that the retired captain was a family man: “Either they’re all asleep, or perhaps they heard me come and are waiting for me to open the door. I’d better knock first,” and he knocked. An answer came, though not at once but perhaps even ten seconds later.