"Mistress, mistress darling, a messenger has galloped up," she cried, breathless and joyful."A carriage from Mokroe for you, Timofey the driver, with three horses, they are just putting in fresh horses....A letter, here's the letter, mistress."A letter was in her hand and she waved it in the air all the while she talked.Grushenka snatched the letter from her and carried it to the candle.It was only a note, a few lines.She read it in one instant.
"He has sent for me," she cried, her face white and distorted, with a wan smile; "he whistles! Crawl back, little dog!"But only for one instant she stood as though hesitating;suddenly the blood rushed to her head and sent a glow to her cheeks.
"I will go," she cried; "five years of my life! Good-bye!
Good-bye, Alyosha, my fate is sealed.Go, go, leave me all of you, don't let me see you again! Grushenka is flying to a new life....
Don't you remember evil against me either, Rakitin.I may be going to my death! Ugh! I feel as though I were drunk!"She suddenly left them and ran into her bedroom.
"Well, she has no thoughts for us now!" grumbled Rakitin."Let's go, or we may hear that feminine shriek again.I am sick of all these tears and cries."Alyosha mechanically let himself be led out.In the yard stood a covered cart.Horses were being taken out of the shafts, men were running to and fro with a lantern.Three fresh horses were being led in at the open gate.But when Alyosha and Rakitin reached the bottom of the steps, Grushenka's bedroom window was suddenly opened and she called in a ringing voice after Alyosha:
"Alyosha, give my greetings to your brother Mitya and tell him not to remember evil against me, though I have brought him misery.And tell him, too, in my words: 'Grushenka has fallen to a scoundrel, and not to you, noble heart.' And add, too, that Grushenka loved him only one hour, only one short hour she loved him- so let him remember that hour all his life-say, 'Grushenka tells you to!'
She ended in a voice full of sobs.The window was shut with a slam.
"H'm, h'm!" growled Rakitin, laughing, "she murders your brother Mitya and then tells him to remember it all his life! What ferocity!"Alyosha made no reply, he seemed not to have heard.He walked fast beside Rakitin as though in a terrible hurry.He was lost in thought and moved mechanically.Rakitin felt a sudden twinge as though he had been touched on an open wound.He had expected something quite different by bringing Grushenka and Alyosha together.Something very different from what he had hoped for had happened.
"He is a Pole, that officer of hers," he began again, restraining himself; "and indeed he is not an officer at all now.He served in the customs in Siberia, somewhere on the Chinese frontier, some puny little beggar of a Pole, I expect.Lost his job, they say.
He's heard now that Grushenka's saved a little money, so he's turned up again- that's the explanation of the mystery."Again Alyosha seemed not to hear.Rakitin could not control himself.
"Well, so you've saved the sinner?" he laughed spitefully."Have you turned the Magdalene into the true path? Driven out the seven devils, eh? So you see the miracles you were looking out for just now have come to pass!""Hush, Rakitin," Alyosha, answered with an aching heart.
"So you despise me now for those twenty-five roubles? I've sold my friend, you think.But you are not Christ, you know, and I am not Judas.""Oh, Rakitin, I assure you I'd forgotten about it," cried Alyosha, "you remind me of it yourself..."But this was the last straw for Rakitin.
"Damnation take you all and each of you" he cried suddenly, "why the devil did I take you up? I don't want to know you from this time forward.Go alone, there's your road!" And he turned abruptly into another street, leaving Alyosha alone in the dark.Alyosha came out of the town and walked across the fields to the monastery.
Chapter 4
Cana of GalileeIT was very late, according to the monastery ideas, when Alyosha returned to the hermitage; the door-keeper let him in by a special entrance.It had struck nine o'clock- the hour of rest and repose after a day of such agitation for all.Alyosha timidly opened the door and went into the elder's cell where his coffin was now standing.
There was no one in the cell but Father Paissy, reading the Gospel in solitude over the coffin, and the young novice Porfiry, who, exhausted by the previous night's conversation and the disturbing incidents of the day, was sleeping the deep sound sleep of youth on the floor of the other room.Though Father Paissy heard Alyosha come in, he did not even look in his direction.Alyosha turned to the right from the door to the corner, fell on his knees and began to pray.
His soul was overflowing but with mingled feelings; no single sensation stood out distinctly; on the contrary, one drove out another in a slow, continual rotation.But there was a sweetness in his heart and, strange to say, Alyosha was not surprised at it.Again he saw that coffin before him, the hidden dead figure so precious to him, but the weeping and poignant grief of the morning was no longer aching in his soul.As soon as he came in, he fell down before the coffin as before a holy shrine, but joy, joy was glowing in his mind and in his heart.The one window of the cell was open, the air was fresh and cool."So the smell must have become stronger, if they opened the window," thought Alyosha.But even this thought of the smell of corruption, which had seemed to him so awful and humiliating a few hours before, no longer made him feel miserable or indignant.He began quietly praying, but he soon felt that he was praying almost mechanically.Fragments of thought floated through his soul, flashed like stars and went out again at once, to be succeeded by others.
But yet there was reigning in his soul a sense of the wholeness of things- something steadfast and comforting- and he was aware of it himself.Sometimes he began praying ardently, he longed to pour out his thankfulness and love...