The Brothers Karamazov
persuaded that Fyodor Pavlovitch would offer, or perhaps had offered,
Grushenka lawful wedlock, and did not for a moment believe that the old
voluptuary hoped to gain his object for three thousand roubles. Mitya
had reached this conclusion from his knowledge of Grushenka and her
character. That was how it was that he could believe at times that all
Grushenka’s uneasiness rose from not knowing which of them to choose,
which was most to her advantage.
Strange to say, during those days it never occurred to him to think of
the approaching return of the “officer,” that is, of the man who had
been such a fatal influence in Grushenka’s life, and whose arrival she
was expecting with such emotion and dread. It is true that of late
Grushenka had been very silent about it. Yet he was perfectly aware of
a letter she had received a month ago from her seducer, and had heard
of it from her own lips. He partly knew, too, what the letter
contained. In a moment of spite Grushenka had shown him that letter,
but to her astonishment he attached hardly any consequence to it. It
would be hard to say why this was. Perhaps, weighed down by all the
hideous horror of his struggle with his own father for this woman, he
was incapable of imagining any danger more terrible, at any rate for
the time. He simply did not believe in a suitor who suddenly turned up
again after five years’ disappearance, still less in his speedy
arrival. Moreover, in the “officer’s” first letter which had been shown
to Mitya, the possibility of his new rival’s visit was very vaguely
suggested. The letter was very indefinite, high-flown, and full of
sentimentality. It must be noted that Grushenka had concealed from him
the last lines of the letter, in which his return was alluded to more
definitely. He had, besides, noticed at that moment, he remembered
afterwards, a certain involuntary proud contempt for this missive from
Siberia on Grushenka’s face. Grushenka told him nothing of what had
passed later between her and this rival; so that by degrees he had
completely forgotten the officer’s existence.
He felt that whatever might come later, whatever turn things might
take, his final conflict with Fyodor Pavlovitch was close upon him, and
must be decided before anything else. With a sinking heart he was
expecting every moment Grushenka’s decision, always believing that it
would come suddenly, on the impulse of the moment. All of a sudden she
would say to him: “Take me, I’m yours for ever,” and it would all be
over. He would seize her and bear her away at once to the ends of the
earth. Oh, then he would bear her away at once, as far, far away as
possible; to the farthest end of Russia, if not of the earth, then he
would marry her, and settle down with her incognito, so that no one
would know anything about them, there, here, or anywhere. Then, oh,
then, a new life would begin at once!
Of this different, reformed and “virtuous” life (“it must, it must be
virtuous”) he dreamed feverishly at every moment. He thirsted for that
reformation and renewal. The filthy morass, in which he had sunk of his
own free will, was too revolting to him, and, like very many men in
such cases, he put faith above all in change of place. If only it were
not for these people, if only it were not for these circumstances, if
only he could fly away from this accursed place—he would be altogether
regenerated, would enter on a new path. That was what he believed in,
and what he was yearning for.
But all this could only be on condition of the first, the _happy_
solution of the question. There was another possibility, a different
and awful ending. Suddenly she might say to him: “Go away. I have just
come to terms with Fyodor Pavlovitch. I am going to marry him and don’t
want you”—and then ... but then.... But Mitya did not know what would
happen then. Up to the last hour he didn’t know. That must be said to
his credit. He had no definite intentions, had planned no crime. He was
simply watching and spying in agony, while he prepared himself for the
first, happy solution of his destiny. He drove away any other idea, in
fact. But for that ending a quite different anxiety arose, a new,
incidental, but yet fatal and insoluble difficulty presented itself.
If she were to say to him: “I’m yours; take me away,” how could he take
her away? Where had he the means, the money to do it? It was just at
this time that all sources of revenue from Fyodor Pavlovitch, doles
which had gone on without interruption for so many years, ceased.
Grushenka had money, of course, but with regard to this Mitya suddenly
evinced extraordinary pride; he wanted to carry her away and begin the
new life with her himself, at his own expense, not at hers. He could
not conceive of taking her money, and the very idea caused him a pang
of intense repulsion. I won’t enlarge on this fact or analyze it here,
but confine myself to remarking that this was his attitude at the
moment. All this may have arisen indirectly and unconsciously from the
secret stings of his conscience for the money of Katerina Ivanovna that
he had dishonestly appropriated. “I’ve been a scoundrel to one of them,
and I shall be a scoundrel again to the other directly,” was his
feeling then, as he explained after: “and when Grushenka knows, she
won’t care for such a scoundrel.”
Where then was he to get the means, where was he to get the fateful
money? Without it, all would be lost and nothing could be done, “and
only because I hadn’t the money. Oh, the shame of it!”
To anticipate things: he did, perhaps, know where to get the money,
knew, perhaps, where it lay at that moment. I will say no more of this
here, as it will all be clear later. But his chief trouble, I must
explain however obscurely, lay in the fact that to have that sum he
knew of, to _have the right_ to take it, he must first restore Katerina
Ivanovna’s three thousand—if not, “I’m a common pickpocket, I’m a
scoundrel, and I don’t want to begin a new life as a scoundrel,” Mitya
decided. And so he made up his mind to move heaven and earth to return
Katerina Ivanovna that three thousand, and that _first of all_. The
final stage of this decision, so to say, had been reached only during
the last hours, that is, after his last interview with Alyosha, two
days before, on the high-road, on the evening when Grushenka had
insulted Katerina Ivanovna, and Mitya, after hearing Alyosha’s account
of it, had admitted that he was a scoundrel, and told him to tell
Katerina Ivanovna so, if it could be any comfort to her. After parting
from his brother on that night, he had felt in his frenzy that it would
be better “to murder and rob some one than fail to pay my debt to
Katya. I’d rather every one thought me a robber and a murderer, I’d
rather go to Siberia than that Katya should have the right to say that
I deceived her and stole her money, and used her money to run away with
Grushenka and begin a new life! That I can’t do!” So Mitya decided,
grinding his teeth, and he might well fancy at times that his brain
would give way. But meanwhile he went on struggling....
Strange to say, though one would have supposed there was nothing left
for him but despair—for what chance had he, with nothing in the world,
to raise such a sum?—yet to the very end he persisted in hoping that he
would get that three thousand, that the money would somehow come to him
of itself, as though it might drop from heaven. That is just how it is
with people who, like Dmitri, have never had anything to do with money,
except to squander what has come to them by inheritance without any
effort of their own, and have no notion how money is obtained. A whirl
of the most fantastic notions took possession of his brain immediately
after he had parted with Alyosha two days before, and threw his
thoughts into a tangle of confusion. This is how it was he pitched
first on a perfectly wild enterprise. And perhaps to men of that kind
in such circumstances the most impossible, fantastic schemes occur
first, and seem most practical.
He suddenly determined to go to Samsonov, the merchant who was
Grushenka’s protector, and to propose a “scheme” to him, and by means
of it to obtain from him at once the whole of the sum required. Of the
commercial value of his scheme he had no doubt, not the slightest, and
was only uncertain how Samsonov would look upon his freak, supposing he
were to consider it from any but the commercial point of view. Though
Mitya knew the merchant by sight, he was not acquainted with him and
had never spoken a word to him. But for some unknown reason he had long
entertained the conviction that the old reprobate, who was lying at
death’s door, would perhaps not at all object now to Grushenka’s
securing a respectable position, and marrying a man “to be depended
upon.” And he believed not only that he would not object, but that this
was what he desired, and, if opportunity arose, that he would be ready
to help. From some rumor, or perhaps from some stray word of
Grushenka’s, he had gathered further that the old man would perhaps
prefer him to Fyodor Pavlovitch for Grushenka.
Possibly many of the readers of my novel will feel that in reckoning on
such assistance, and being ready to take his bride, so to speak, from
the hands of her protector, Dmitri showed great coarseness and want of
delicacy. I will only observe that Mitya looked upon Grushenka’s past
as something completely over. He looked on that past with infinite pity
and resolved with all the fervor of his passion that when once
Grushenka told him she loved him and would marry him, it would mean the
beginning of a new Grushenka and a new Dmitri, free from every vice.
They would forgive one another and would begin their lives afresh. As
for Kuzma Samsonov, Dmitri looked upon him as a man who had exercised a
fateful influence in that remote past of Grushenka’s, though she had
never loved him, and who was now himself a thing of the past,
completely done with, and, so to say, non-existent. Besides, Mitya
hardly looked upon him as a man at all, for it was known to every one
in the town that he was only a shattered wreck, whose relations with
Grushenka had changed their character and were now simply paternal, and
that this had been so for a long time.
In any case there was much simplicity on Mitya’s part in all this, for
in spite of all his vices, he was a very simple-hearted man. It was an
instance of this simplicity that Mitya was seriously persuaded that,
being on the eve of his departure for the next world, old Kuzma must
sincerely repent of his past relations with Grushenka, and that she had
no more devoted friend and protector in the world than this now
harmless old man.
After his conversation with Alyosha, at the cross-roads, he hardly
slept all night, and at ten o’clock next morning, he was at the house
of Samsonov and telling the servant to announce him. It was a very
large and gloomy old house of two stories, with a lodge and outhouses.
In the lower story lived Samsonov’s two married sons with their
families, his old sister, and his unmarried daughter. In the lodge
lived two of his clerks, one of whom also had a large family. Both the
lodge and the lower story were overcrowded, but the old man kept the
upper floor to himself, and would not even let the daughter live there
with him, though she waited upon him, and in spite of her asthma was
obliged at certain fixed hours, and at any time he might call her, to
run upstairs to him from below.
This upper floor contained a number of large rooms kept purely for
show, furnished in the old-fashioned merchant style, with long
monotonous rows of clumsy mahogany chairs along the walls, with glass
chandeliers under shades, and gloomy mirrors on the walls. All these