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>“Well, and what happened?”

 

“Oh, nothing. I kept it three days, then I felt ashamed,

confessed, and gave it back.”

 

“And what then?”

 

“Naturally I was whipped. But why do you ask? Have you stolen

something?”

 

“I have,” said Mitya, winking slyly.

 

“What have you stolen?” inquired Pyotr Ilyitch curiously.

 

“I stole twenty copecks from my mother when I was nine years

old, and gave it back three days after.”

 

As he said this, Mitya suddenly got up.

 

“Dmitri Fyodorovitch, won’t you come now?” called Andrey from

the door of the shop.

 

“Are you ready? We’ll come!” Mitya started. “A few more last words

and-Andrey, a glass of vodka at starting. Give him some brandy as

well! That box” (the one with the pistols) “put under my seat.

Goodbye, Pyotr Ilyitch, don’t remember evil against me.”

 

“But you’re coming back to-morrow?”

 

“Will you settle the little bill now?” cried the clerk,

springing forward.

 

“Oh yes, the bill. Of course.”

 

He pulled the bundle of notes out of his pocket again, picked

out three hundred roubles, threw them on the counter, and ran

hurriedly out of the shop. Everyone followed him out, bowing and

wishing him good luck. Andrey, coughing from the brandy he had just

swallowed, jumped up on the box. But Mitya was only just taking his

seat when suddenly to his surprise he saw Fenya before him. She ran up

panting, clasped her hands before him with a cry, and plumped down

at his feet.

 

“Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear good Dmitri Fyodorovitch, don’t harm my

mistress. And it was I told you all about it…. And don’t murder him,

he came first, he’s hers! He’ll marry Agrafena Alexandrovna now.

That’s why he’s come back from Siberia. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear,

don’t take a fellow creature’s life!”

 

“Tut-tut-tut! That’s it, is it? So you’re off there to make

trouble!” muttered Pyotr Ilyitch. “Now, it’s all clear, as clear as

daylight. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, give me your pistols at once if you

mean to behave like a man,” he shouted aloud to Mitya. “Do you hear,

Dmitri?”

 

“The pistols? Wait a bit, brother, I’ll throw them into the pool

on the road,” answered Mitya. “Fenya, get up, don’t kneel to me. Mitya

won’t hurt anyone, the silly fool won’t hurt anyone again. But I

say, Fenya,” he shouted, after having taken his seat. “I hurt you just

now, so forgive me and have pity on me, forgive a scoundrel…. But it

doesn’t matter if you don’t. It’s all the same now. Now then,

Andrey, look alive, fly along full speed!”

 

Andrey whipped up the horses, and the bells began ringing.

 

“Goodbye, Pyotr Ilyitch! My last tear is for you!…”

 

“He’s not drunk, but he keeps babbling like a lunatic,” Pyotr

Ilyitch thought as he watched him go. He had half a mind to stay and

see the cart packed with the remaining wines and provisions, knowing

that they would deceive and defraud Mitya. But, suddenly feeling vexed

with himself, he turned away with a curse and went to the tavern to

play billiards.

 

“He’s a fool, though he’s a good fellow,” he muttered as he

went. “I’ve heard of that officer, Grushenka’s former flame. Well,

if he has turned up…. Ech, those pistols! Damn it all! I’m not his

nurse! Let them do what they like! Besides, it’ll all come to nothing.

They’re a set of brawlers, that’s all. They’ll drink and fight,

fight and make friends again. They are not men who do anything real.

What does he mean by ‘I’m stepping aside, I’m punishing myself’? It’ll

come to nothing! He’s shouted such phrases a thousand times, drunk, in

the taverns. But now he’s not drunk. ‘Drunk in spirit’- they’re fond

of fine phrases, the villains. Am I his nurse? He must have been

fighting, his face was all over blood. With whom? I shall find out

at the Metropolis. And his handkerchief was soaked in blood…. It’s

still lying on my floor…. Hang it!”

 

He reached the tavern in a bad humour and at once made up a

game. The game cheered him. He played a second game, and suddenly

began telling one of his partners that Dmitri Karamazov had come in

for some cash again-something like three thousand roubles, and had

gone to Mokroe again to spend it with Grushenka…. This news roused

singular interest in his listeners. They all spoke of it, not

laughing, but with a strange gravity. They left off playing.

 

“Three thousand? But where can he have got three thousand?”

 

Questions were asked. The story of Madame Hohlakov’s present was

received with scepticism.

 

“Hasn’t he robbed his old father?- that’s the question.”

 

“Three thousand! There’s something odd about it.”

 

“He boasted aloud that he would kill his father; we all heard him,

here. And it was three thousand he talked about…”

 

Pyotr Ilyitch listened. All at once he became short and dry in his

answers. He said not a word about the blood on Mitya’s face and hands,

though he had meant to speak of it at first.

 

They began a third game, and by degrees the talk about Mitya

died away. But by the end of the third game, Pyotr Ilyitch felt no

more desire for billiards; he laid down the cue, and without having

supper as he had intended, he walked out of the tavern. When he

reached the marketplace he stood still in perplexity, wondering at

himself. He realised that what he wanted was to go to Fyodor

Pavlovitch’s and find out if anything had happened there. “On

account of some stupid nonsense as it’s sure to turn out-am I going

to wake up the household and make a scandal? Fooh! damn it, is it my

business to look after them?”

 

In a very bad humour he went straight home, and suddenly

remembered Fenya. “Damn it all! I ought to have questioned her just

now,” he thought with vexation, “I should have heard everything.”

And the desire to speak to her, and so find out, became so pressing

and importunate that when he was halfway home he turned abruptly and

went towards the house where Grushenka lodged. Going up to the gate he

knocked. The sound of the knock in the silence of the night sobered

him and made him feel annoyed. And no one answered him; everyone in

the house was asleep.

 

“And I shall be making a fuss!” he thought, with a feeling of

positive discomfort. But instead of going away altogether, he fell

to knocking again with all his might, filling the street with clamour.

 

“Not coming? Well, I will knock them up, I will!” he muttered at

each knock, fuming at himself, but at the same time he redoubled his

knocks on the gate.

Chapter 6

“I Am Coming, Too!”

 

BUT Dmitri Fyodorovitch was speeding along the road. It was a

little more than twenty versts to Mokroe, but Andrey’s three horses

galloped at such a pace that the distance might be covered in an

hour and a quarter. The swift motion revived Mitya. The air was

fresh and cool, there were big stars shining in the sky. It was the

very night, and perhaps the very hour, in which Alyosha fell on the

earth, and rapturously swore to love it for ever and ever.

 

All was confusion, confusion in Mitya’s soul, but although many

things were goading his heart, at that moment his whole being was

yearning for her, his queen, to whom he was flying to look on her

for the last time. One thing I can say for certain; his heart did

not waver for one instant. I shall perhaps not be believed when I

say that this jealous lover felt not the slightest jealousy of this

new rival, who seemed to have sprung out of the earth. If any other

had appeared on the scene, he would have been jealous at once, and

would-perhaps have stained his fierce hands with blood again. But as

he flew through the night, he felt no envy, no hostility even, for the

man who had been her first lover…. It is true he had not yet seen

him.

 

“Here there was no room for dispute: it was her right and his;

this was her first love which, after five years, she had not

forgotten; so she had loved him only for those five years, and I,

how do I come in? What right have I? Step aside, Mitya, and make

way! What am I now? Now everything is over apart from the officer even

if he had not appeared, everything would be over…”

 

These words would roughly have expressed his feelings, if he had

been capable of reasoning. But he could not reason at that moment. His

present plan of action had arisen without reasoning. At Fenya’s

first words, it had sprung from feeling, and been adopted in a

flash, with all its consequences. And yet, in spite of his resolution,

there was confusion in his soul, an agonising confusion: his

resolution did not give him peace. There was so much behind that

tortured him. And it seemed strange to him, at moments, to think

that he had written his own sentence of death with pen and paper: “I

punish myself,” and the paper was lying there in his pocket, ready;

the pistol was loaded; he had already resolved how, next morning, he

would meet the first warm ray of “golden-haired Phoebus.”

 

And yet he could not be quit of the past, of all that he had

left behind and that tortured him. He felt that miserably, and the

thought of it sank into his heart with despair. There was one moment

when he felt an impulse to stop Andrey, to jump out of the cart, to

pull out his loaded pistol, and to make an end of everything without

waiting for the dawn. But that moment flew by like a spark. The horses

galloped on, “devouring space,” and as he drew near his goal, again

the thought of her, of her alone, took more and more complete

possession of his soul, chasing away the fearful images that had

been haunting it. Oh, how he longed to look upon her, if only for a

moment, if only from a distance!

 

“She’s now with him,” he thought, “now I shall see what she

looks like with him, her first love, and that’s all I want.” Never had

this woman, who was such a fateful influence in his life, aroused such

love in his breast, such new and unknown feeling, surprising even to

himself, a feeling tender to devoutness, to self-effacement before

her! “I will efface myself!” he said, in a rush of almost hysterical

ecstasy.

 

They had been galloping nearly an hour. Mitya was silent, and

though Andrey was, as a rule, a talkative peasant, he did not utter

a word, either. He seemed afraid to talk, he only whipped up smartly

his three lean, but mettlesome, bay horses. Suddenly Mitya cried out

in horrible anxiety:

 

“Andrey! What if they’re asleep?”

 

This thought fell upon him like a blow. It had not occurred to him

before.

 

“It may well be that they’re gone to bed by now, Dmitri

Fyodorovitch.”

 

Mitya frowned as though in pain. Yes, indeed… he was rushing

there… with such feelings… while they were asleep… she was

asleep, perhaps, there too…. An angry feeling surged up in his

heart.

 

“Drive on, Andrey! Whip them up! Look alive!” he cried, beside

himself.

 

“But maybe they’re not in bed!” Andrey went on after a pause.

“Timofey said they were a lot of them there-.”

 

“At the station?”

 

“Not at the posting-station, but at Plastunov’s, at the inn, where

they let

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