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. Good-bye, 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.
'Good-bye, 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 market-place 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!
