V. У Илюшиной постельки

Several boys were sitting with Ilusha this time, and though every one of them, like Smurov, was ready to deny that it was Alyosha who had reconciled them and brought them together with Ilusha, that is exactly how it had happened.

All his artistry in this matter lay simply in his having brought them to Ilusha one after another, without any "calf's tendernesses", and as if entirely by accident and unintentionally.

And to Ilusha this brought an enormous relief in his sufferings.

Seeing the almost tender friendship and concern shown him by all these boys, his former enemies, he was deeply moved.

Krassotkin alone was missing, and that lay on his heart like a dreadful weight.

If there was anything most bitter of all in little Ilusha's bitter memories, it was precisely this whole episode with Krassotkin, who had been his one and only friend and protector, and at whom he had then flung himself with a penknife.

So thought the clever little boy Smurov as well (the first to come and make peace with Ilusha).

But Krassotkin himself, when Smurov hinted from a distance that Alyosha wished to come to him "on a certain matter," at once cut off and severed the approach, charging Smurov to inform "Karamazov" immediately that he himself knew how to act, that he asked no one's advice, and that if he did go to the sick boy he himself knew when to go, because he had "his own reckoning."

This was still some two weeks before that Sunday.

That is why Alyosha did not go to him himself, as he had intended.

Still, though he waited, he nevertheless sent Smurov to Krassotkin once more, and then once again.

But on both these occasions Krassotkin answered with a most impatient and curt refusal, sending word to Alyosha that if he came for him himself, then for that very reason he would never go to Ilusha, and that they should stop pestering him.

Even up to that very last day Smurov himself did not know that Kolya had decided to set out for Ilusha's that morning, and only the evening before, as they were parting, did Kolya abruptly announce to him that he was to wait for him at home the next morning, because he would go with him to the Snegirevs', but that he was not to dare, however, to give anyone notice of his coming, since he wanted to arrive unexpectedly.

Smurov obeyed.

Now the dream that he would bring back the lost Zhutchka had arisen in Smurov on the strength of certain words Krassotkin had once let drop in passing, that "they were all asses if they couldn't track down a dog, supposing it was still alive."

When Smurov, timidly and biding his time, hinted to Krassotkin at his guess about the dog, the other suddenly flew into a terrible rage: "What sort of ass am I, to go hunting for other people's dogs all over town, when I have my own Perezvon?

And can one even dream that a dog which has swallowed a pin should stay alive?

Calf's tendernesses, nothing more!"

Meanwhile Ilusha had for two weeks now scarcely left his little bed in the corner, by the icons.

He had not gone to his classes since that very incident when he had clashed with Alyosha and bitten his finger.

Indeed, from that same day he had fallen ill, though for another month or so he could still manage somehow to walk about the room now and then, and out into the entryway, getting up from his bed from time to time.

At last he grew so weak that he could not move without his father's help.

His father trembled over him, even gave up drinking altogether, almost lost his mind with the fear that his boy would die, and often — especially after he had led him, as he sometimes did, around the room on his arm and laid him down again in his little bed — would suddenly run out into the entryway, into a dark corner, and, pressing his forehead to the wall, would begin to sob with a kind of choked, shuddering weeping, stifling his voice so that his sobs should not be heard by little Ilusha.

On returning to the room he would usually set about amusing and comforting his dear boy with something or other, telling him fairy tales, funny anecdotes, or acting out for him various comical people he had happened to meet, and even mimicking animals, how funnily they howl or cry.

But Ilusha very much disliked it when his father played the buffoon and made a clown of himself.

Though the boy tried not to show that this was disagreeable to him, he nonetheless knew with an aching heart that his father had been humiliated in company, and he constantly, inescapably, remembered the "bast-whisk" and that "terrible day".

Ninochka, little Ilusha's legless, quiet, and gentle sister, also disliked it when their father played the fool (as for Varvara Nikolaevna, she had long since gone off to Petersburg to attend courses), whereas the half-witted mamma was greatly amused and laughed with all her heart whenever her husband would, as he sometimes did, set about acting something out or making some sort of funny gestures.

This alone could comfort her, while all the rest of the time she grumbled ceaselessly and complained that everyone had forgotten her now, that no one respected her, that she was being wronged, and so on, and so on.

But in these very last days she too had suddenly seemed wholly transformed.

She had often begun to look into the corner at Ilusha and to grow pensive.

She had grown far more silent, subdued, and if she did fall to crying, she did it quietly, so that no one should hear.

The staff-captain noticed this change in her with bitter bewilderment.

The boys' visits had not pleased her at first and only irritated her, but afterward the children's merry shouts and tales began to amuse even her, and in the end she came to like them so much that, had these boys stopped coming, she would have pined away dreadfully.

When the children told some story or began to play, she would laugh and clap her hands.

Some of them she would call over to her and kiss.

The boy Smurov she came to love especially.

As for the staff-captain, the appearance in his lodgings of children who came to cheer Ilusha filled his soul from the very first with a rapturous joy and even with the hope that Ilusha would now stop fretting and might, for that reason, recover the sooner.

Not for a single minute, until the very last, had he doubted, for all his terror over Ilusha, that his boy would suddenly get well.

He met his little guests with reverence, hovered about them, waited on them, was ready to carry them about on his own back, and even did begin to carry them in earnest, but Ilusha did not like these games and they were given up.

He took to buying them treats, little gingerbreads, nuts, set out tea, spread bread and butter.

It should be noted that throughout all this time his money never ran short.

The two hundred roubles he had received back then from Katerina Ivanovna he had taken exactly as Alyosha had foretold.

And afterward Katerina Ivanovna, having learned in greater detail of their circumstances and of Ilusha's illness, visited their lodgings herself, became acquainted with the whole family, and even managed to charm the half-witted staff-captain's wife.

From that time on her hand never ran dry, while the staff-captain himself, crushed by horror at the thought that his boy would die, forgot his former pride and humbly accepted the alms.

All this time Doctor Herzenstube, at Katerina Ivanovna's request, came regularly and punctually every other day to the sick boy, but little came of his visits, while he plied him with medicines dreadfully.

But on this particular day, that is, on this Sunday morning, the staff-captain was awaiting a new doctor, one who had come from Moscow and was reckoned a celebrity there.

Katerina Ivanovna had deliberately summoned and invited him from Moscow at great expense — not for little Ilusha, but for another purpose of her own, of which more will be said below and in its proper place; but since he had arrived, she had asked him to look in on little Ilusha as well, of which the staff-captain had been forewarned beforehand.

Of Kolya Krassotkin's coming, however, he had no presentiment whatever, although he had long wished that this boy, over whom his little Ilusha so grieved, would finally come.

At the very moment when Krassotkin opened the door and appeared in the room, everyone — the staff-captain and the boys — was crowded around the sick boy's little bed, examining a tiny mastiff puppy that had only just been brought in, born only the day before but ordered a week earlier by the staff-captain, so as to divert and comfort little Ilusha, who pined all the while for the vanished and, of course, by now perished Zhutchka.

But Ilusha, who had already heard and known three days before that he was to be given a little dog, and not just any dog but a real mastiff (which, of course, was terribly important), though out of a fine and delicate feeling he made a show of being glad of the gift, made everyone — both his father and the boys — plainly see that the new puppy had perhaps only stirred all the more keenly in his little heart the memory of the unhappy Zhutchka, whom he had tormented to death.