The Brothers Karamazov
open window where you saw your father, he, Grigory, glanced to the
left, and, while noticing the open window, observed at the same time,
much nearer to him, the door, standing wide open—that door which you
have stated to have been shut the whole time you were in the garden. I
will not conceal from you that Grigory himself confidently affirms and
bears witness that you must have run from that door, though, of course,
he did not see you do so with his own eyes, since he only noticed you
first some distance away in the garden, running towards the fence.”
Mitya had leapt up from his chair half-way through this speech.
“Nonsense!” he yelled, in a sudden frenzy, “it’s a barefaced lie. He
couldn’t have seen the door open because it was shut. He’s lying!”
“I consider it my duty to repeat that he is firm in his statement. He
does not waver. He adheres to it. We’ve cross-examined him several
times.”
“Precisely. I have cross-examined him several times,” Nikolay
Parfenovitch confirmed warmly.
“It’s false, false! It’s either an attempt to slander me, or the
hallucination of a madman,” Mitya still shouted. “He’s simply raving,
from loss of blood, from the wound. He must have fancied it when he
came to.... He’s raving.”
“Yes, but he noticed the open door, not when he came to after his
injuries, but before that, as soon as he went into the garden from the
lodge.”
“But it’s false, it’s false! It can’t be so! He’s slandering me from
spite.... He couldn’t have seen it ... I didn’t come from the door,”
gasped Mitya.
The prosecutor turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and said to him
impressively:
“Confront him with it.”
“Do you recognize this object?”
Nikolay Parfenovitch laid upon the table a large and thick official
envelope, on which three seals still remained intact. The envelope was
empty, and slit open at one end. Mitya stared at it with open eyes.
“It ... it must be that envelope of my father’s, the envelope that
contained the three thousand roubles ... and if there’s inscribed on
it, allow me, ‘For my little chicken’ ... yes—three thousand!” he
shouted, “do you see, three thousand, do you see?”
“Of course, we see. But we didn’t find the money in it. It was empty,
and lying on the floor by the bed, behind the screen.”
For some seconds Mitya stood as though thunderstruck.
“Gentlemen, it’s Smerdyakov!” he shouted suddenly, at the top of his
voice. “It’s he who’s murdered him! He’s robbed him! No one else knew
where the old man hid the envelope. It’s Smerdyakov, that’s clear,
now!”
“But you, too, knew of the envelope and that it was under the pillow.”
“I never knew it. I’ve never seen it. This is the first time I’ve
looked at it. I’d only heard of it from Smerdyakov.... He was the only
one who knew where the old man kept it hidden, I didn’t know ...” Mitya
was completely breathless.
“But you told us yourself that the envelope was under your deceased
father’s pillow. You especially stated that it was under the pillow, so
you must have known it.”
“We’ve got it written down,” confirmed Nikolay Parfenovitch.
“Nonsense! It’s absurd! I’d no idea it was under the pillow. And
perhaps it wasn’t under the pillow at all.... It was just a chance
guess that it was under the pillow. What does Smerdyakov say? Have you
asked him where it was? What does Smerdyakov say? that’s the chief
point.... And I went out of my way to tell lies against myself.... I
told you without thinking that it was under the pillow, and now you—
Oh, you know how one says the wrong thing, without meaning it. No one
knew but Smerdyakov, only Smerdyakov, and no one else.... He didn’t
even tell me where it was! But it’s his doing, his doing; there’s no
doubt about it, he murdered him, that’s as clear as daylight now,”
Mitya exclaimed more and more frantically, repeating himself
incoherently, and growing more and more exasperated and excited. “You
must understand that, and arrest him at once.... He must have killed
him while I was running away and while Grigory was unconscious, that’s
clear now.... He gave the signal and father opened to him ... for no
one but he knew the signal, and without the signal father would never
have opened the door....”
“But you’re again forgetting the circumstance,” the prosecutor
observed, still speaking with the same restraint, though with a note of
triumph, “that there was no need to give the signal if the door already
stood open when you were there, while you were in the garden....”
“The door, the door,” muttered Mitya, and he stared speechless at the
prosecutor. He sank back helpless in his chair. All were silent.
“Yes, the door!... It’s a nightmare! God is against me!” he exclaimed,
staring before him in complete stupefaction.
“Come, you see,” the prosecutor went on with dignity, “and you can
judge for yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. On the one hand we have the
evidence of the open door from which you ran out, a fact which
overwhelms you and us. On the other side your incomprehensible,
persistent, and, so to speak, obdurate silence with regard to the
source from which you obtained the money which was so suddenly seen in
your hands, when only three hours earlier, on your own showing, you
pledged your pistols for the sake of ten roubles! In view of all these
facts, judge for yourself. What are we to believe, and what can we
depend upon? And don’t accuse us of being ‘frigid, cynical, scoffing
people,’ who are incapable of believing in the generous impulses of
your heart.... Try to enter into our position ...”
Mitya was indescribably agitated. He turned pale.
“Very well!” he exclaimed suddenly. “I will tell you my secret. I’ll
tell you where I got the money!... I’ll reveal my shame, that I may not
have to blame myself or you hereafter.”
“And believe me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” put in Nikolay Parfenovitch, in
a voice of almost pathetic delight, “that every sincere and complete
confession on your part at this moment may, later on, have an immense
influence in your favor, and may, indeed, moreover—”
But the prosecutor gave him a slight shove under the table, and he
checked himself in time. Mitya, it is true, had not heard him.
Chapter VII.
Mitya’s Great Secret. Received With Hisses
“Gentlemen,” he began, still in the same agitation, “I want to make a
full confession: that money was _my own_.” The lawyers’ faces
lengthened. That was not at all what they expected.
“How do you mean?” faltered Nikolay Parfenovitch, “when at five o’clock
on the same day, from your own confession—”
“Damn five o’clock on the same day and my own confession! That’s
nothing to do with it now! That money was my own, my own, that is,
stolen by me ... not mine, I mean, but stolen by me, and it was fifteen
hundred roubles, and I had it on me all the time, all the time ...”
“But where did you get it?”
“I took it off my neck, gentlemen, off this very neck ... it was here,
round my neck, sewn up in a rag, and I’d had it round my neck a long
time, it’s a month since I put it round my neck ... to my shame and
disgrace!”
“And from whom did you ... appropriate it?”
“You mean, ‘steal it’? Speak out plainly now. Yes, I consider that I
practically stole it, but, if you prefer, I ‘appropriated it.’ I
consider I stole it. And last night I stole it finally.”
“Last night? But you said that it’s a month since you ... obtained
it?...”
“Yes. But not from my father. Not from my father, don’t be uneasy. I
didn’t steal it from my father, but from her. Let me tell you without
interrupting. It’s hard to do, you know. You see, a month ago, I was
sent for by Katerina Ivanovna, formerly my betrothed. Do you know her?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I know you know her. She’s a noble creature, noblest of the noble. But
she has hated me ever so long, oh, ever so long ... and hated me with
good reason, good reason!”
“Katerina Ivanovna!” Nikolay Parfenovitch exclaimed with wonder. The
prosecutor, too, stared.
“Oh, don’t take her name in vain! I’m a scoundrel to bring her into it.
Yes, I’ve seen that she hated me ... a long while.... From the very
first, even that evening at my lodging ... but enough, enough. You’re
unworthy even to know of that. No need of that at all.... I need only
tell you that she sent for me a month ago, gave me three thousand
roubles to send off to her sister and another relation in Moscow (as
though she couldn’t have sent it off herself!) and I ... it was just at
that fatal moment in my life when I ... well, in fact, when I’d just
come to love another, her, she’s sitting down below now, Grushenka. I
carried her off here to Mokroe then, and wasted here in two days half
that damned three thousand, but the other half I kept on me. Well, I’ve
kept that other half, that fifteen hundred, like a locket round my
neck, but yesterday I undid it, and spent it. What’s left of it, eight
hundred roubles, is in your hands now, Nikolay Parfenovitch. That’s the
change out of the fifteen hundred I had yesterday.”
“Excuse me. How’s that? Why, when you were here a month ago you spent
three thousand, not fifteen hundred, everybody knows that.”
“Who knows it? Who counted the money? Did I let any one count it?”
“Why, you told every one yourself that you’d spent exactly three
thousand.”
“It’s true, I did. I told the whole town so, and the whole town said
so. And here, at Mokroe, too, every one reckoned it was three thousand.
Yet I didn’t spend three thousand, but fifteen hundred. And the other
fifteen hundred I sewed into a little bag. That’s how it was,
gentlemen. That’s where I got that money yesterday....”
“This is almost miraculous,” murmured Nikolay Parfenovitch.
“Allow me to inquire,” observed the prosecutor at last, “have you
informed any one whatever of this circumstance before, I mean that you
had fifteen hundred left about you a month ago?”
“I told no one.”
“That’s strange. Do you mean absolutely no one?”
“Absolutely no one. No one and nobody.”
“What was your reason for this reticence? What was your motive for
making such a secret of it? To be more precise: You have told us at
last your secret, in your words, so ‘disgraceful,’ though in
reality—that is, of course, comparatively speaking—this action, that
is, the appropriation of three thousand roubles belonging to some one
else, and, of course, only for a time is, in my view at least, only an
act of the greatest recklessness and not so disgraceful, when one takes
into consideration your character.... Even admitting that it was an
action in the highest degree discreditable, still, discreditable is not
‘disgraceful.’... Many people have already guessed, during this last
month, about the three thousand of Katerina Ivanovna’s, that you have
spent, and I heard the legend myself, apart from your confession....
Mihail Makarovitch, for instance, had heard it, too, so that indeed, it
was scarcely a legend, but the gossip of the whole town. There are
indications, too, if I am not mistaken, that you confessed this
yourself to some one, I mean that the money was Katerina Ivanovna’s,
and so, it’s extremely surprising to me that hitherto, that is, up to
the present moment, you have made such an extraordinary secret of the
fifteen hundred you say you put by, apparently connecting a feeling of
positive horror with that secret.... It’s not easy to believe that it
could cost you such distress to confess such a secret.... You cried
out, just now, that Siberia would be better than confessing it ...”
The prosecutor ceased speaking. He was provoked. He did not conceal his
vexation, which was almost anger, and gave vent to all his accumulated
spleen, disconnectedly and incoherently, without choosing words.
“It’s not the fifteen hundred that’s the disgrace, but that I put it
apart from the rest of the three thousand,” said Mitya firmly.