The Brothers Karamazov
bed. She ran back to the bedstead and began groping with her hands, but
the bed was really empty. Then he must have gone out—where? She ran to
the steps and timidly called him. She got no answer, of course, but she
caught the sound of groans far away in the garden in the darkness. She
listened. The groans were repeated, and it was evident they came from
the garden.
“Good Lord! Just as it was with Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya!” she thought
distractedly. She went timidly down the steps and saw that the gate
into the garden was open.
“He must be out there, poor dear,” she thought. She went up to the gate
and all at once she distinctly heard Grigory calling her by name,
“Marfa! Marfa!” in a weak, moaning, dreadful voice.
“Lord, preserve us from harm!” Marfa Ignatyevna murmured, and ran
towards the voice, and that was how she found Grigory. But she found
him not by the fence where he had been knocked down, but about twenty
paces off. It appeared later, that he had crawled away on coming to
himself, and probably had been a long time getting so far, losing
consciousness several times. She noticed at once that he was covered
with blood, and screamed at the top of her voice. Grigory was muttering
incoherently:
“He has murdered ... his father murdered.... Why scream, silly ... run
... fetch some one....”
But Marfa continued screaming, and seeing that her master’s window was
open and that there was a candle alight in the window, she ran there
and began calling Fyodor Pavlovitch. But peeping in at the window, she
saw a fearful sight. Her master was lying on his back, motionless, on
the floor. His light-colored dressing-gown and white shirt were soaked
with blood. The candle on the table brightly lighted up the blood and
the motionless dead face of Fyodor Pavlovitch. Terror-stricken, Marfa
rushed away from the window, ran out of the garden, drew the bolt of
the big gate and ran headlong by the back way to the neighbor, Marya
Kondratyevna. Both mother and daughter were asleep, but they waked up
at Marfa’s desperate and persistent screaming and knocking at the
shutter. Marfa, shrieking and screaming incoherently, managed to tell
them the main fact, and to beg for assistance. It happened that Foma
had come back from his wanderings and was staying the night with them.
They got him up immediately and all three ran to the scene of the
crime. On the way, Marya Kondratyevna remembered that at about eight
o’clock she heard a dreadful scream from their garden, and this was no
doubt Grigory’s scream, “Parricide!” uttered when he caught hold of
Mitya’s leg.
“Some one person screamed out and then was silent,” Marya Kondratyevna
explained as she ran. Running to the place where Grigory lay, the two
women with the help of Foma carried him to the lodge. They lighted a
candle and saw that Smerdyakov was no better, that he was writhing in
convulsions, his eyes fixed in a squint, and that foam was flowing from
his lips. They moistened Grigory’s forehead with water mixed with
vinegar, and the water revived him at once. He asked immediately:
“Is the master murdered?”
Then Foma and both the women ran to the house and saw this time that
not only the window, but also the door into the garden was wide open,
though Fyodor Pavlovitch had for the last week locked himself in every
night and did not allow even Grigory to come in on any pretext. Seeing
that door open, they were afraid to go in to Fyodor Pavlovitch “for
fear anything should happen afterwards.” And when they returned to
Grigory, the old man told them to go straight to the police captain.
Marya Kondratyevna ran there and gave the alarm to the whole party at
the police captain’s. She arrived only five minutes before Pyotr
Ilyitch, so that his story came, not as his own surmise and theory, but
as the direct confirmation, by a witness, of the theory held by all, as
to the identity of the criminal (a theory he had in the bottom of his
heart refused to believe till that moment).
It was resolved to act with energy. The deputy police inspector of the
town was commissioned to take four witnesses, to enter Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s house and there to open an inquiry on the spot, according
to the regular forms, which I will not go into here. The district
doctor, a zealous man, new to his work, almost insisted on accompanying
the police captain, the prosecutor, and the investigating lawyer.
I will note briefly that Fyodor Pavlovitch was found to be quite dead,
with his skull battered in. But with what? Most likely with the same
weapon with which Grigory had been attacked. And immediately that
weapon was found, Grigory, to whom all possible medical assistance was
at once given, described in a weak and breaking voice how he had been
knocked down. They began looking with a lantern by the fence and found
the brass pestle dropped in a most conspicuous place on the garden
path. There were no signs of disturbance in the room where Fyodor
Pavlovitch was lying. But by the bed, behind the screen, they picked up
from the floor a big and thick envelope with the inscription: “A
present of three thousand roubles for my angel Grushenka, if she is
willing to come.” And below had been added by Fyodor Pavlovitch, “For
my little chicken.” There were three seals of red sealing-wax on the
envelope, but it had been torn open and was empty: the money had been
removed. They found also on the floor a piece of narrow pink ribbon,
with which the envelope had been tied up.
One piece of Pyotr Ilyitch’s evidence made a great impression on the
prosecutor and the investigating magistrate, namely, his idea that
Dmitri Fyodorovitch would shoot himself before daybreak, that he had
resolved to do so, had spoken of it to Ilyitch, had taken the pistols,
loaded them before him, written a letter, put it in his pocket, etc.
When Pyotr Ilyitch, though still unwilling to believe in it, threatened
to tell some one so as to prevent the suicide, Mitya had answered
grinning: “You’ll be too late.” So they must make haste to Mokroe to
find the criminal, before he really did shoot himself.
“That’s clear, that’s clear!” repeated the prosecutor in great
excitement. “That’s just the way with mad fellows like that: ‘I shall
kill myself to-morrow, so I’ll make merry till I die!’”
The story of how he had bought the wine and provisions excited the
prosecutor more than ever.
“Do you remember the fellow that murdered a merchant called Olsufyev,
gentlemen? He stole fifteen hundred, went at once to have his hair
curled, and then, without even hiding the money, carrying it almost in
his hand in the same way, he went off to the girls.”
All were delayed, however, by the inquiry, the search, and the
formalities, etc., in the house of Fyodor Pavlovitch. It all took time
and so, two hours before starting, they sent on ahead to Mokroe the
officer of the rural police, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch Schmertsov, who had
arrived in the town the morning before to get his pay. He was
instructed to avoid raising the alarm when he reached Mokroe, but to
keep constant watch over the “criminal” till the arrival of the proper
authorities, to procure also witnesses for the arrest, police
constables, and so on. Mavriky Mavrikyevitch did as he was told,
preserving his incognito, and giving no one but his old acquaintance,
Trifon Borissovitch, the slightest hint of his secret business. He had
spoken to him just before Mitya met the landlord in the balcony,
looking for him in the dark, and noticed at once a change in Trifon
Borissovitch’s face and voice. So neither Mitya nor any one else knew
that he was being watched. The box with the pistols had been carried
off by Trifon Borissovitch and put in a suitable place. Only after four
o’clock, almost at sunrise, all the officials, the police captain, the
prosecutor, the investigating lawyer, drove up in two carriages, each
drawn by three horses. The doctor remained at Fyodor Pavlovitch’s to
make a post-mortem next day on the body. But he was particularly
interested in the condition of the servant, Smerdyakov.
“Such violent and protracted epileptic fits, recurring continually for
twenty-four hours, are rarely to be met with, and are of interest to
science,” he declared enthusiastically to his companions, and as they
left they laughingly congratulated him on his find. The prosecutor and
the investigating lawyer distinctly remembered the doctor’s saying that
Smerdyakov could not outlive the night.
After these long, but I think necessary explanations, we will return to
that moment of our tale at which we broke off.
Chapter III.
The Sufferings Of A Soul, The First Ordeal
And so Mitya sat looking wildly at the people round him, not
understanding what was said to him. Suddenly he got up, flung up his
hands, and shouted aloud:
“I’m not guilty! I’m not guilty of that blood! I’m not guilty of my
father’s blood.... I meant to kill him. But I’m not guilty. Not I.”
But he had hardly said this, before Grushenka rushed from behind the
curtain and flung herself at the police captain’s feet.
“It was my fault! Mine! My wickedness!” she cried, in a heartrending
voice, bathed in tears, stretching out her clasped hands towards them.
“He did it through me. I tortured him and drove him to it. I tortured
that poor old man that’s dead, too, in my wickedness, and brought him
to this! It’s my fault, mine first, mine most, my fault!”
“Yes, it’s your fault! You’re the chief criminal! You fury! You harlot!
You’re the most to blame!” shouted the police captain, threatening her
with his hand. But he was quickly and resolutely suppressed. The
prosecutor positively seized hold of him.
“This is absolutely irregular, Mihail Makarovitch!” he cried. “You are
positively hindering the inquiry.... You’re ruining the case....” he
almost gasped.
“Follow the regular course! Follow the regular course!” cried Nikolay
Parfenovitch, fearfully excited too, “otherwise it’s absolutely
impossible!...”
“Judge us together!” Grushenka cried frantically, still kneeling.
“Punish us together. I will go with him now, if it’s to death!”
“Grusha, my life, my blood, my holy one!” Mitya fell on his knees
beside her and held her tight in his arms. “Don’t believe her,” he
cried, “she’s not guilty of anything, of any blood, of anything!”
He remembered afterwards that he was forcibly dragged away from her by
several men, and that she was led out, and that when he recovered
himself he was sitting at the table. Beside him and behind him stood
the men with metal plates. Facing him on the other side of the table
sat Nikolay Parfenovitch, the investigating lawyer. He kept persuading
him to drink a little water out of a glass that stood on the table.
“That will refresh you, that will calm you. Be calm, don’t be
frightened,” he added, extremely politely. Mitya (he remembered it
afterwards) became suddenly intensely interested in his big rings, one
with an amethyst, and another with a transparent bright yellow stone,
of great brilliance. And long afterwards he remembered with wonder how
those rings had riveted his attention through all those terrible hours
of interrogation, so that he was utterly unable to tear himself away
from them and dismiss them, as things that had nothing to do with his
position. On Mitya’s left side, in the place where Maximov had been
sitting at the beginning of the evening, the prosecutor was now seated,
and on Mitya’s right hand, where Grushenka had been, was a rosy-cheeked
young man in a sort of shabby hunting-jacket, with ink and paper before
him. This was the secretary of the investigating lawyer, who had
brought him with him. The police captain was now standing by the window
at the other end of the room, beside Kalganov, who was sitting there.
“Drink some water,” said the investigating lawyer softly, for the tenth