Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Mitya broke off his absurd speech with “that’s it,” and jumping up from his seat, awaited the answer to his stupid offer. At the last phrase, he felt suddenly and hopelessly that everything had fallen through, and, above all, that he had produced a lot of terrible drivel. “Strange, on my way here it all seemed fine, and now it’s all drivel!” suddenly flashed through his hopeless head. All the while he was talking, the old man sat motionlessly and watched him with an icy expression in his eyes. However, after keeping him in suspense for a moment, Kuzma Kuzmich at last declared in the most resolute and cheerless tone:
“Excuse me, sir, we do not engage in that kind of business.”
Mitya suddenly felt his legs give way under him.
“What am I to do now, Kuzma Kuzmich?” he murmured, with a pale smile. “I’m done for now, don’t you think?”
“Excuse me, sir...”
Mitya went on standing, staring fixedly at the old man, and suddenly noticed a slight movement in his face. He gave a start. “You see, sir, such business is not in our line,” the old man said slowly, “there would be courts, lawyers, all kinds of trouble! But there is a man for that, if you like you can try him...”
“My God, who is he...! You’re my resurrection, Kuzma Kuzmich,” Mitya began babbling suddenly.
“He’s not a local man, the one I mean, and he’s not here now. He’s from peasants, he trades in timber, he’s called Lyagavy. [235]He’s been bargaining for a year with Fyodor Pavlovich over that woodlot in Chermashnya, but they can’t agree on a price, as perhaps you’ve heard. Now he’s come back again and is staying with the priest in Ilyinskoye, about eight miles or so from Volovya station, in the village of Ilyinskoye. He also wrote here, to me, about the same business—that is, concerning the woodlot—asking my advice. Fyodor Pavlovich himself wants to go and see him. So if you were to get there ahead of Fyodor Pavlovich, and make Lyagavy the same offer you made me, he might just ...”
“A brilliant idea!” Mitya interrupted ecstatically. “It’s made for him, just made for him! He’s bargaining, the price is too high, and here is this document of ownership just made for him, ha, ha, ha!” Mitya burst into his clipped, wooden laugh, so unexpectedly that even Samsonov jerked his head.
“How can I thank you, Kuzma Kuzmich,” Mitya was bubbling over.
“It’s nothing, sir,” Samsonov inclined his head.
“But you don’t realize, you’ve saved me, oh, I was drawn to you by some presentiment ... And so, off to that priest!”
“No thanks are necessary, sir.”
“I hasten, I fly! I’ve abused your health. I will remember it always—it’s a Russian man saying it to you, Kuzma Kuzmich, a R-r-russian man!”
“Well, sir.”
Mitya seized his hand to shake it, but something malicious flashed in the old man’s eyes. Mitya drew his hand back, and at once reproached himself for his suspicion. “He must be tired ... ,” flashed through his mind.
“For her! For her, Kuzma Kuzmich! You understand it’s for her!” he roared suddenly to the rafters, then bowed, turned around sharply, and with the same long, quick strides walked to the door without looking back. He was trembling with delight. “Everything was on the verge of ruin, and my guardian angel saved me,” raced through his mind. “And if such a businessman as this old man (a most honorable old man, and what bearing! ) has pointed out this course, then ... then this course must surely be a winner. I’ll fly immediately. I’ll be back before nightfall, by nightfall, but the thing will be won. Can the old man have been laughing at me?” Thus Mitya exclaimed, striding back to his lodgings, and of course to his mind it could not have appeared otherwise; that is, either it was businesslike advice, and from such a businessman, who knows business and knows this Lyagavy (strange name!), or—or the old man was laughing at him! Alas! only the second of these thoughts was true. Later, much later, when the whole catastrophe had already taken place, old Samsonov himself admitted, laughing, that he had made a fool of the “captain.” This was a spiteful, cold, and sarcastic man, full of morbid antipathies as well. Whether it was the rapturous look of the captain, the foolish conviction of this “wastrel and spendthrift” that he, Samsonov, might fall for something as wild as his “plan,” or jealousy over Grushenka, in whose name this “madcap” came with such a wild thing, asking for money—I cannot say what precisely prompted the old man at the time, but when Mitya stood before him, feeling his legs give way, and exclaimed senselessly that he was done for–at that moment the old man looked upon him with boundless spite and decided to make a fool of him. Once Mitya had left, Kuzma Kuzmich, livid with spite, turned to his son and told him to give orders that not a hair of that ragamuffin was to be seen in the future, that he was not even to be allowed into the yard, or else . . .
He did not finish his threat, but even his son, who had often seen him angry, jumped in fear. For a whole hour afterwards the old man was even shaking all over with spite, and by evening he had fallen ill and sent for a “leech.”
Chapter 2: Lyagavy
So he had to go “at a gallop,” and yet he had no money, not a kopeck, for horses—that is, he had forty kopecks, but that was all, all that remained from so many years of former prosperity! But at home he had an old silver watch that had long since stopped running. He grabbed it and took it to a watchmaker, a Jew, who had his shop in the marketplace. The Jew gave him six roubles for it. “I didn’t expect even that much!” cried the delighted Mitya (he still went on being delighted), grabbed his six roubles and ran home. At home he added to the sum, borrowing three roubles from his landlords, who gave it to him gladly, though it was their last money—so much did they love him. Mitya, in his rapturous state, revealed to them at once that his fate was being decided, and told them, in a terrible hurry of course, almost the whole of his “plan,” which he had just presented to Samsonov, then Samsonov’s decision, his future hopes, and so on and so forth. His landlords even before then had been initiated into many of his secrets, which was why they looked upon him as one of their own,not at all as a proud gentleman. Having thus collected nine roubles, Mitya sent for post horses going to Volovya station. But in this way the fact came to be remembered and noted that “on the eve of a certain event, at noon, Mitya did not have a kopeck, and that, in order to get money, he sold his watch and borrowed three roubles from his landlords, all in the presence of witnesses.”
I note this fact beforehand; why I do so will become clear later.
Although, as he galloped to Volovya station, Mitya was beaming with joyful anticipation that he was at last about to finish and have done with “all these affairs,” he was nevertheless also trembling with fear: what would happen with Grushenka now, in his absence? What if precisely today she should at last decide to go to Fyodor Pavlovich? That was why he had left without telling her and ordered his landlords under no circumstances to reveal where he was going if anyone should come asking for him. “I must get back, I must get back by this evening,” he kept saying, as he jolted along in the wagon, “and maybe even drag this Lyagavy here ... to execute this deed . . .” So Mitya dreamed, with a sinking soul, but, alas, his dreams were not at all destined to come true according to his “plan.”
First of all, he was late, having set out on a back road from Volovya station. Instead of eight miles, it turned out to be twelve. Second, he did not find the Ilyinskoye priest at home; he was away in a neighboring village. It was almost dark by the time Mitya located him, having driven to this neighboring village with the same, already exhausted, horses. The priest, a timid, tender-looking little man, explained to him at once that though this Lyagavy had been staying with him at first, he was now in Sukhoy Possyolok, and would be spending the night in the forester’s hut, because he was buying timber there too. To Mitya’s urgent requests to take him to Lyagavy at once and “thereby save him, so to speak,” the priest, though hesitant at first, finally agreed to go with him to Sukhoy Possyolok, apparently out of curiosity; but, as bad luck would have it, he suggested that they go “afoot,” since it was only “a wee bit more” than half a mile. Mitya naturally agreed and set off with his long strides, so that the poor priest almost had to run to keep up. He was not yet old, and was a very cautious little man. Mitya also began speaking with him at once about his plans, hotly and nervously demanded advice concerning Lyagavy, and talked all the way. The priest listened attentively, but gave little advice. He responded evasively to Mitya’s questions: “I don’t know, oh, I don’t know, how am I to know that,” and so on. When Mitya began speaking about his disputes with his father over the inheritance, the priest was even frightened, because he stood in some sort of dependent relation to Fyodor Pavlovich. However, he did ask in surprise why Mitya called this peasant trader Gorstkin by the name of Lyagavy, and made a point of explaining to him that though the man was indeed Lyagavy, he was also not Lyagavy, because he took bitter offense at the name, and that he must be called Gorstkin, “otherwise you won’t get anywhere with him, and he won’t even listen,” the priest concluded. Mitya was slightly and briefly surprised, and explained that Samsonov himself had referred to the man that way. On hearing of this circumstance, the priest at once changed the subject, though he would have done better to explain then and there to Dmitri Fyodorovich what he suspected: that if Samsonov himself had sent him to this peasant calling him Lyagavy, did he not do it in mockery for some reason, and wasn’t there something wrong here? But Mitya had no time to pause over “such trifles.” He rushed, he strode along, and only when they reached Sukhoy Possyolok did he realize that they had gone not half a mile, not a mile, but a good mile and a half. This annoyed him, but he let it pass. They went into the hut. The forester, an acquaintance of the priest, occupied half of the hut, and in the other, the good half, on the opposite side of the entryway, Gorstkin was staying. They went into this good room and lighted a tallow candle. The room was overheated. The samovar on the pine table had gone out; there were also a tray with cups, an empty bottle of rum, an almost empty quart bottle of vodka, and some crusts of white bread. The visitor himself lay stretched out on a bench, his coat bunched up under his head for a pillow, snoring heavily. Mitya stood perplexed. “Of course I must wake him up; my business is too important, I’ve hurried so, I’m in a hurry to get back today,” Mitya became alarmed; but the priest and the forester stood silently without expressing their opinion. Mitya went over himself and began shaking him, quite energetically, but the sleeping man would not wake up. “He’s drunk,” Mitya de– , cided, “but what am I to do, Lord, what am I to do!” And suddenly, in terrible impatience, he began tugging the sleeping man by the arms and legs, rolling his head back and forth, lifting him up and sitting him on the bench, yet after prolonged exertions, all he accomplished was that the man began mumbling absurdly and uttering strong but inarticulate oaths.
“No, you’d better wait,” the priest finally pronounced, “he’s obviously in no condition.”
“Been drinking all day,” the forester echoed.
“Oh, God!” Mitya kept exclaiming, “if only you knew how necessary it is, and what despair I’m in now!”
“No, you’d better wait till morning,” the priest repeated. “Till morning? But, merciful God, that’s impossible!” And in his despair he was about to rush at the drunk man to wake him, but stopped at once, realizing that all efforts were useless. The priest was silent, the sleepy forester was gloomy.
“What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people,” Mitya uttered in complete despair. Sweat was streaming down his face. Seizing the moment, the priest quite reasonably explained that even if they succeeded in waking the sleeping man up, still, in his drunken state, he would not be fit for any conversation, “and you have important business, so it would be safer to leave it till morning . . “Mitya spread his arms helplessly and agreed.
“I’ll stay here, father, with a lighted candle, and try to catch the right moment. When he wakes up, I’ll begin ... I’ll pay you for the candle,” he turned to the forester, “and for the night’s lodging, too; you’ll remember Dmitri Karamazov. Only I don’t know what to do with you, father: where will you sleep?”
“No, I’d better go back to my place, sir. I’ll take his mare and go,” he pointed to the forester. “And now, farewell, sir, I hope you get full satisfaction.”
So it was settled. The priest rode off on the mare, happy to have escaped at last, but still shaking his head in perplexity and wondering whether first thing next day he ought not to inform his benefactor Fyodor Pavlovich of this curious incident, “or else, worse luck, he may find out, get angry, and stop his favors.” The forester, having scratched himself, silently went back to his room, and Mitya sat on the bench, waiting, as he put it, to catch the right moment. Deep anguish, like a heavy fog, enveloped his soul. Deep, terrible anguish! He sat and thought, but could not think anything through. The candle flickered, a cricket chirped, it was becoming unbearably stuffy in the overheated room. He suddenly imagined a garden, a lane behind the garden, the door of his father’s house secretly opening, and Grushenka running in through the door ... He jumped up from the bench.
“A tragedy!” he said, grinding his teeth, and mechanically going over to the sleeping man, he began looking at his face. He was a lean man, not yet old, with a very oblong face, light brown curly hair, and a long, thin, reddish beard, wearing a cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, from the pocket of which the chain of a silver watch peeped out. Mitya examined his physiognomy with terrible hatred, and for some reason the most hateful thing was his curly hair. Above all it was unbearably vexing that he, Mitya, should be standing there over him with his urgent business, having sacrificed so much, having left so much behind, utterly exhausted, while this parasite, “on whom my entire fate now depends, goes on snoring as if nothing were wrong, as if he came from another planet.” “Oh, the irony of fate!” Mitya exclaimed, and suddenly losing his head altogether, he again tried frantically to rouse the drunken peasant. He began rousing him in a kind of rage, pulled him, pushed him, even beat him, but, having labored over him for about five minutes, again with no results, he went back to his bench in helpless despair and sat down.
“Stupid, stupid!”Mitya kept exclaiming, “and ... how dishonorable it all is!” he suddenly added for some reason. He was getting a terrible headache. “Why not drop it? Go away altogether?” flashed through his mind. “Oh, no, not before morning. On purpose, I’ll stay on purpose! Why did I come, after all? And I have no means of leaving, how can I leave here now? Oh, absurd!”
His head, however, was aching more and more. He sat without moving and had no recollection of how he dozed off and suddenly fell asleep sitting up. He must have slept for two hours or more. He was awakened by an unbearable pain in his head, so unbearable he could have screamed. It hammered at his temples, the top of his head throbbed; having come to, it was a long time before he was able to regain full consciousness and understand what had happened to him. He finally realized that the overheated room was full of fumes, and that he might even have died. And the drunken peasant still lay there and snored; the candle guttered and was about to go out. Mitya shouted and rushed staggering across the hallway to the forester’s room. The forester woke up quickly, but on hearing that the other room was full of fumes, though he went to take care of it, he accepted the fact with strange indifference, which sorely surprised Mitya.
“But he’s dead, he’s dead, and now ... what now?” Mitya kept shouting before him in a frenzy.
They opened the door, flung the windows wide, undamped the flue; Mitya brought a bucket of water from the hallway, wet his own head first, and then, finding some rag, dipped it in the water and put it to Lyagavy’s head. The forester continued to treat the whole event somehow even disdainfully, and after opening the window, said sullenly: “That’ll do,” and went back to bed, leaving Mitya with a lighted iron lantern. Mitya fussed over the fume-poisoned drunkard for about half an hour, kept wetting his head, and seriously intended not to sleep for the rest of the night, but he became exhausted, sat down for a moment to catch his breath, instantly closed his eyes, then unconsciously stretched out on the bench and fell at once into a dead sleep.
He woke up terribly late. It was already approximately nine o’clock in the morning. The sun was shining brightly through the two windows of the hut. The curly-headed peasant of the night before was sitting on a bench, already dressed in his long-waisted coat. Before him stood a fresh samovar and a fresh quart bottle. The old one from the day before was empty, and the new one was more than half gone. Mitya jumped up and instantly realized that the cursed peasant was drunk again, deeply and irretrievably drunk. He stared wide-eyed at him for a moment. The peasant kept glancing at him silently and slyly, with a sort of offensive composure, even with a sort of derisive haughtiness, as Mitya fancied. He rushed up to him.
“Allow me, you see ... I ... you’ve probably heard from the forester there in the other room: I am Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, old Karamazov’s son, from whom you are buying a woodlot. . .”
“That’s a lie!” the peasant suddenly rapped out firmly and calmly.
“A lie? If you please, you do know Fyodor Pavlovich?”
“I don’t please to know any Fyodor Pavlovich of yours,” the peasant said, moving his tongue somehow heavily.
“A woodlot, you’re buying a woodlot from him; wake up, come to your senses! Father Pavel llyinsky brought me here ... You wrote to Samsonov, and he sent me to you ... ,” Mitya spoke breathlessly.
“A l-lie!” Lyagavy again rapped out.
Mitya’s legs went cold.
“For pity’s sake, this isn’t a joke! You’re a bit drunk, perhaps. But anyway you can speak, you can understand ... otherwise ... otherwise I don’t understand anything!”
“You’re a dyer!”
“For pity’s sake, I’m Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov, I have an offer to make you ... a profitable offer ... quite profitable ... about that same wood-lot.”
The peasant was stroking his beard solemnly.
“No, you contracted for the job and turned out to be a cheat. You’re a cheat!”
“You’re mistaken, I assure you!” Mitya was wringing his hands in despair. The peasant kept stroking his beard and suddenly narrowed his eyes slyly.
“No, you show me one thing: show me where there’s a law that allows people to play dirty tricks, do you hear? You’re a cheat, understand?”
Mitya glumly stepped back, and suddenly it was as though “something hit him on the head,” as he himself put it later. In an instant a sort of illumination came to him, “a light shone and I perceived everything.” He stood dumbfounded, wondering how he, an intelligent man after all, could have given in to such foolishness, could have been sucked into such an adventure, and kept on with it all for nearly a whole day and night, worrying over this Lyagavy, wetting his head ... “Well, the man is drunk, drunk out of his mind, and he’ll go on drinking for another week—what is there to wait for? And what if Samsonov sent me here on purpose? And what if she ... Oh, God, what have I done . . .!”
The peasant sat watching him and chuckled. On another occasion Mitya might have killed the fool in a rage, but now he himself became weak as a child. He quietly walked over to the bench, took his coat, silently put it on, and went out of the room. He did not find the forester in the other room; no one was there. He took fifty kopecks in change from his pocket and put it on the table, for the night’s lodging, the candle, and the trouble. Stepping out of the hut, he saw nothing but forest all around. He walked at random, not even remembering whether to turn right or left from the hut; hurrying there with the priest the night before, he had not noticed the way. There was no vengeance in his soul for anyone, not even Samsonov. He strode along a narrow forest path, senselessly, lost, with his “lost idea,” not caring where he was going. A passing child might have knocked him down, so strengthless had he suddenly become in soul and body. Somehow he nevertheless got out of the forest: suddenly before him spread a boundless expanse of bare, harvested fields. “What despair, what death all around!” he kept saying as he strode on and on.
He was saved by some passers-by: a coachman was taking an old merchant over the back road. When they drew up with him, Mitya asked the way, and it turned out that they, too, were going to Volovya. After some negotiating, they agreed to take Mitya along. They arrived three hours later. At Volovya station Mitya immediately ordered post horses to town, and suddenly realized that he was impossibly hungry. While the horses were being harnessed, some fried eggs were fixed for him. He ate them instantly, ate a whole big hunk of bread, ate some sausage that turned up, and drank three glasses of vodka. Having refreshed himself, he cheered up and his soul brightened again. He flew down the road, urging the coachman on, and suddenly arrived at a new, and this time “immutable,” plan for obtaining “that accursed money” before evening. “And to think that a man’s fate should be ruined because of a worthless three thousand roubles!”heexclaimed contemptuously. “I’ll have done with it today!” And had it not been for ceaselessly thinking of Grushenka and whether anything had happened with her, he would perhaps have become quite happy again. But the thought of her stabbed his soul every moment like a sharp knife. They arrived at last, and Mitya ran at once to Grushenka.
Chapter 3: Gold Mines
This was precisely the visit from Mitya of which Grushenka had told Rakitin with such fear. She was then expecting her “messenger,” and was very glad that Mitya had not come either the day before or that day, hoping that perchance, God willing, he would not come before her departure, when suddenly he descended upon her. The rest we know: in order to get him off her hands, she persuaded him at once to take her to Kuzma Samsonov’s, where she said it was terribly necessary for her to go to “count the money,” and when Mitya promptly took her, she made him promise, as she said good-bye to him at Kuzma’s gate, to come for her after eleven and take her home again. Mitya was also pleased with this order: “If she’s sitting at Kuzma’s, she won’t go to Fyodor Pavlovich ... if only she’s not lying,” he added at once. But from what he could see, she was not lying. His jealousy was precisely of such a sort that, separated from the beloved woman, he at once invented all kinds of horrors about what was happening with her, and how she had gone and “betrayed” him; but, running back to her, shaken, crushed, convinced irretrievably that she had managed to betray him, with the first look at her face, at the gay, laughing, tender face of this woman, his spirits would at once revive, he would at once lose all suspicion, and with joyful shame reproach himself for his jealousy. Having accompanied Grushenka, he rushed home. Oh, he still somehow had to do so much that day! But at least he felt relieved. “Only I must find out quickly from Smerdyakov whether anything happened last night, whether, God forbid, she went to Fyodor Pavlovich!” raced through his head. And so, in just the time it took him to run home, jealousy had already begun stirring again in his restless heart.
Jealousy!”Othello is not jealous, he is trustful,” Pushkin observed, [236]and this one observation already testifies to the remarkable depth of our great poet’s mind. Othello’s soul is simply shattered and his whole world view clouded because his ideal is destroyed.Othello will not hide, spy, peep: he is trustful. On the contrary, he had to be led, prompted, roused with great effort to make him even think of betrayal. A truly jealous man is not like that. It is impossible to imagine all the shame and moral degradation a jealous man can tolerate without the least remorse. And it is not that they are all trite and dirty souls. On the contrary, it is possible to have a lofty heart, to love purely, to be full of self-sacrifice, and at the same time to hide under tables, to bribe the meanest people, and live with the nastiest filth of spying and eavesdropping. Othello could in no way be reconciled with betrayal—not that he could not forgive, but he could not be reconciled—though his soul was gentle and innocent as a babe’s. Not so the truly jealous man: it is hard to imagine what some jealous men can tolerate and be reconciled to, and what they can forgive! Jealous men forgive sooner than anyone else, and all women know it. The jealous man (having first made a terrible scene, of course) can and will very promptly forgive, for example, a nearly proven betrayal, the embraces and kisses he has seen himself, if, for example, at the same time he can somehow be convinced that this was “the last time” and that his rival will disappear from that moment on, that he will go to the end of the earth, or that he himself will take her away somewhere, to some place where this terrible rival will never come. Of course, the reconciliation will only last an hour, because even if the rival has indeed disappeared, tomorrow he will invent another, a new one, and become jealous of this new one. And one may ask what is the good of a love that must constantly be spied on, and what is the worth of a love that needs to be guarded so intensely? But that is something the truly jealous will never understand, though at the same time there happen, indeed, to be lofty hearts among them. It is also remarkable that these same lofty-hearted men, while standing in some sort of closet, eavesdropping and spying, though they understand clearly “in their lofty hearts” all the shame they have gotten into of their own will, nevertheless, at least for that moment, while standing in that closet, will not feel any pangs of remorse. Mitya’s jealousy disappeared at the sight of Grushenka, and for a moment he became trustful and noble, and even despised himself for his bad feelings. But this meant only that his love for this woman consisted in something much higher than he himself supposed and not in passion alone, not merely in that “curve of the body” he had explained to Alyosha. But when Grushenka disappeared, Mitya at once began again to suspect in her all the baseness and perfidy of betrayal. And for that he felt no pangs of remorse.
And so jealousy was again seething in him. He had to hurry in any case. First of all he needed at least a little money to get by on. The previous day’s nine roubles had been almost entirely spent on the trip, and without money, as everyone knows, one cannot take a step. But that morning, in the wagon, along with his new plan, he had also thought of how to find some money to get by on. He had a pair of fine dueling pistols with cartridges, and if he had not pawned them yet, it was because he loved them more than anything else he owned. Some time before, in the “Metropolis,” he had struck up a slight acquaintance with a certain young official and had learned somehow, also in the tavern, that this official, a bachelor of no small means, had a passion for weapons, bought pistols, revolvers, daggers, hung them on the wall, showed them to his acquaintances, boasted of them, was expert at explaining the workings of the revolver, loading, firing, and so on. Without thinking twice, Mitya went straight to him and offered to pawn the pistols to him for ten roubles. The delighted official tried to persuade him to sell them outright, but Mitya would not agree, so the man handed him ten roubles, declaring that he would not think of accepting any interest. They parted friends. Mitya was in a hurry; he raced off to behind Fyodor Pavlovich’s, to his gazebo, in order to send quickly for Smerdyakov. In this way, again, the fact emerged that only three or four hours before a certain incident, of which I shall speak below, Mitya did not have a kopeck, and pawned his dearest possession for ten roubles, whereas three hours later he suddenly had thousands in his hands ... But I anticipate.
At Maria Kondratievna’s (next door to Fyodor Pavlovich) the news awaited him of Smerdyakov’s illness, which struck and dismayed him greatly. He listened to the story of the fall into the cellar, then of the falling fit, the doctor’s visit, Fyodor Pavlovich’s concern; he was also interested to learn that his brother Ivan Fyodorovich had gone off to Moscow that morning. “He must have passed through Volovya ahead of me,” Dmitri Fyodorovich thought, but Smerdyakov troubled him terribly: “What now? Who will keep watch? Who will bring me word?” Greedily he began inquiring of the women whether they had noticed anything the previous evening. They knew very well what he was trying to find out and reassured him completely: no one had come, Ivan Fyodorovich had spent the night there, “everything was in perfect order.” Mitya began to think. Undoubtedly he had to be on watch today, too, but where– here, or at Samsonov’s gate? Both here and there, he decided, depending on the situation, but meanwhile, meanwhile ... What faced him now was that morning’s “plan,” the new and this time certain plan, which he had thought up in the wagon, the carrying out of which could not be put off any longer. Mitya decided to sacrifice an hour to it: “In an hour I’ll settle everything, find out everything, and then—then first of all to Samsonov’s house, to see whether Grushenka is there, then immediately back here, stay here till eleven, then again to Samsonov’s to take her home.” That was what he decided.
