III. Исповедь горячего сердца. В стихах

Not that he stood there like a post — nothing of that kind ever happened to him.

On the contrary, for all his agitation, he had managed to slip at once into the Father Superior's kitchen and find out exactly what his papa had been up to upstairs.

Then, however, he set off on his way, trusting that somewhere on the road into town he would find a way to settle the question that was tormenting him.

Let me say at once: he was not in the least afraid of his father's shouting, nor of the order to move back home, "with his pillows and his mattress."

He understood only too well that the command to come home, voiced aloud and with such showy bluster, had been given "in a fit of enthusiasm," for effect, so to speak, even for the beauty of the thing — rather like a tradesman in their own town who had recently gone on a spree, and who, at his own name-day party and in front of his guests, growing furious that he was given no more vodka, suddenly began smashing his own crockery, tearing his own clothes and his wife's, breaking his own furniture and at last the windows of the house — and all of it, again, for the sake of show; and now, of course, something of just the same sort had happened with his papa.

By the next day, of course, the tradesman who had gone on his spree, having sobered up, was sorry for the broken cups and plates.

Alyosha knew that the old man too would surely let him go back to the monastery the next day, and might even let him go that very day.

And he was perfectly sure, besides, that whomever else his father might want to wound, he would not want to wound him.

Alyosha was certain that nobody anywhere in the whole world would ever want to wound him — that, indeed, not only would no one want to, but that no one even could.

This was an axiom to him, settled once and for all, beyond all argument, and in this conviction he went forward without the slightest wavering.

But at this moment another sort of dread was stirring within him, of a quite different kind, and all the more tormenting because he could not have defined it to himself — namely, a dread of woman, and precisely of Katerina Ivanovna, who had so insistently begged him, in the note she had sent him earlier that day through Madame Khokhlakova, to come to her for some purpose.

This request, and the obligation to go without fail, had instantly planted a kind of tormenting feeling in his heart, and all that morning, the further it went, the worse it grew — more and more painfully the feeling ached within him — for all the scenes and incidents that had followed in the monastery, and just now at the Father Superior's, and so on, and so on.

What he was afraid of was not that he did not know what she would talk to him about, or what he would answer her.

Nor was it woman in general that he feared in her: women, to be sure, he knew but little, yet all his life — from earliest childhood right up to the monastery — it was with them alone that he had lived.

It was this woman he was afraid of, this very Katerina Ivanovna.

He had been afraid of her ever since the first time he saw her.

Yet he had seen her in all only once or twice, three times perhaps, and had even once, by chance, exchanged a few words with her.

Her image came back to him as that of a beautiful, proud, and imperious girl.

But it was not her beauty that tormented him; it was something else.

And it was precisely this inexplicability of his fear that now intensified the fear within him.

The girl's aims were of the noblest — he knew that; she was striving to save his brother Dmitri, who was already in the wrong before her, and she was striving out of pure magnanimity alone.

And yet, for all his awareness of this, and for all the justice he could not but render to all these fine and magnanimous feelings, a chill ran down his spine the nearer he drew to her house.

He reckoned that he would not find his brother Ivan Fyodorovich, who was on such close terms with her, at her place: brother Ivan was surely with their father now.

And Dmitri he would be even surer not to find there, and he had a presentiment of why.

So their conversation would take place in private.

He very much wanted to see his brother Dmitri before that fateful conversation and to run round to him.

Without showing him the letter, he might be able to have a word with him about something.

But his brother Dmitri lived a long way off and was surely not at home now either.

Having stood on the spot for a minute, he made up his mind at last, once and for all.

Crossing himself with a habitual, hurried sign of the cross, and at once smiling at something or other, he set off resolutely toward his fearsome lady.

Her house he knew.

But if he had to go by way of the High Street, then across the square, and so forth, it would be a fair distance.

Our little town is laid out exceedingly haphazardly, and the distances in it can be rather great.

Besides, his father was waiting for him, perhaps had not yet had time to forget his command and might turn cantankerous, and so he had to make haste in order to be in time both here and there.

In view of all these considerations he decided to cut the journey short by going through the back ways, and all these by-paths in the town he knew like the back of his hand.

Going by the back ways meant going almost without any roads at all — along deserted fences, sometimes even climbing over other people's wattle hedges and skirting other people's yards, where, however, everyone knew him and everyone greeted him.

By this route he could reach the High Street in half the distance.

At one point here he even had to pass very close to his father's house — right past the garden adjoining his father's, a garden belonging to a tumbledown little four-windowed house that had sagged askew with age.

The owner of this little house was, as Alyosha knew, a townswoman of the place, a legless old woman who lived with her daughter — a daughter who had been a refined lady's maid in the capital, who until quite recently had still kept to posts in generals' households, but who now, for a year past, on account of the old woman's illness, had come back home and went about flaunting herself in stylish dresses.

This old woman and her daughter had fallen, however, into dreadful poverty, and even went next door, to Fyodor Pavlovich's kitchen, for soup and bread every day. Marfa Ignatyevna ladled it out to them willingly.

But the daughter, while coming for soup, had not sold a single one of her dresses, and one of them even had a very long train.

Of this last circumstance Alyosha had learned — quite by chance, of course — from his friend Rakitin, to whom positively everything in their little town was known, and, having learned it, he had naturally forgotten it at once.

But now, drawing level with the neighbor's garden, he suddenly remembered that very train, raised his hung and brooding head sharply, and... ran all at once into the most unexpected of meetings.

Beyond the fence in the neighbor's garden, having clambered up onto something and leaning out as far as his chest, stood his brother Dmitri Fyodorovich, making signs to him with his hands with all his might, beckoning and summoning him, plainly afraid not only to shout but even to speak a word aloud, for fear of being overheard.

Alyosha ran up to the fence at once.

"A good thing you looked round of your own accord, or I'd nearly have shouted to you," Dmitri Fyodorovich whispered to him, joyful and hurried. "Climb over here! Quick!

Ah, how splendid that you've come.

I was just this moment thinking about you..."

Alyosha himself was glad too, and was only at a loss how to get over the fence.

But "Mitya" caught his elbow in a hero's grip and helped him with the leap.

Tucking up his cassock, Alyosha vaulted over with the agility of a barefoot town urchin.

"Well then, come along!" burst from Mitya in an ecstatic whisper.

"Where to?" Alyosha whispered as well, glancing about him on every side and finding himself in a garden completely empty, in which there was no one but the two of them.

The garden was small, but the owner's little house stood at least fifty paces from them all the same.

"There's no one here — why are you whispering?"

"Why am I whispering?

Ah, the devil take it," Dmitri Fyodorovich suddenly cried out at the top of his voice, "why on earth am I whispering? There, you see for yourself how a man can suddenly fall into a muddle of nature.

I'm here in secret and guarding a secret.

The explanation comes later, but, knowing there's a secret, I suddenly began to speak secretly too, and I'm whispering like a fool, when there's no need.

Come along!

Over there!

Until then, keep quiet.

I want to kiss you!

Glory to the Highest in the world, Glory to the Highest in me!..

That I was just repeating to myself only now, sitting here in front of you..."

The garden was about a desyatina in size, or a little more, but it was planted with trees only around the edges, all along the four fences — apple trees, a maple, a linden, a birch.

The middle of the garden was empty, given over to a meadow on which several poods of hay were mown in the course of a summer.

The garden was let out by the landlady from spring on, for a few rubles.

There were beds, too, with raspberries, gooseberries, and currants, all of them likewise along the fences; and vegetable plots close to the house itself, laid out only recently, however.