“Part with everything, Dmitri Fyodorovich!” Madame Khokhlakov interrupted him in the most determined tone. “Everything, women especially. Your goal is the mines, and there’s no need to take women there. Later, when you return in wealth and glory, you will find a companion for your heart in the highest society. She will be a modern girl, educated and without prejudices. By then the women’s question, which is just beginning now, will have ripened, and a new woman will appear ...”
“Madame, that’s not it, not it ... ,” Dmitri Fyodorovich clasped his hands imploringly.
“That is it, Dmitri Fyodorovich, that is precisely what you need, what you thirst for, without knowing it. I am no stranger to the present women’s question, Dmitri Fyodorovich. The development of women and even a political role for women in the nearest future—that is my ideal. I myself have a daughter, Dmitri Fyodorovich, and few know this side of me. I wrote in this regard to the writer Shchedrin. This writer has shown me so much, so much about the woman’s vocation, that last year I sent him an anonymous letter of two lines: ‘I embrace you and kiss you, my writer, for the contemporary woman: carry on.’ And I signed it: A mother.’ I almost wrote ‘a contemporary mother,’ but I hesitated, and then decided just to be a mother: it has more moral beauty, Dmitri Fyodorovich, and besides, the word contemporary’ would have reminded him of The Contemporary—a bitter recollection for him, owing to our censorship . . .[239] Oh, my God, what’s the matter with you?”
“Madame,” Mitya jumped up at last, clasping his hands in helpless supplication, “you will make me weep, madame, if you keep putting off what you have so generously...”
“Weep, Dmitri Fyodorovich, weep! Such feelings are beautiful ... and with such a path before you! Tears will ease you, afterwards you will return and rejoice. You will come galloping to me on purpose from Siberia, to rejoice with me ...”
“But allow me, too,” Mitya suddenly yelled, “for the last time I implore you, tell me, am I to have this promised sum from you today? And if not, precisely when should I come for it?”
“What sum, Dmitri Fyodorovich?” “The three thousand you promised ... which you so generously ...”
“Three thousand? You mean roubles? Oh, no, I haven’t got three thousand,” Madame Khokhlakov spoke with a sort of quiet surprise. Mitya was stupefied . . .
“Then why ... just ... you said ... you even said it was as good as in my pocket...”
“Oh, no, you misunderstood me, Dmitri Fyodorovich. In that case, you misunderstood me. I was talking about the mines ... It’s true I promised you more, infinitely more than three thousand, I recall it all now, but I was only thinking about the mines.”
“And the money? The three thousand?” Dmitri Fyodorovich exclaimed absurdly.
“Oh, if you meant money, I don’t have it. I don’t have any money at all now, Dmitri Fyodorovich, just now I’m fighting with my manager, and the other day I myself borrowed five hundred roubles from Miusov. No, no, I have no money. And you know, Dmitri Fyodorovich, even if I had, I would not give it to you. First, I never lend to anyone. Lending means quarreling. But to you, to you especially I would not give anything, out of love for you I would not give anything, in order to save you I would not give anything, because you need only one thing: mines, mines, mines...!”
“Ah, devil take . . .!” Mitya suddenly roared, and banged his fist on the table with all his might.
“Aiee!” Khokhlakov cried in fear and flew to the other end of the drawing room.
Mitya spat and with quick steps walked out of the room, out of the house, into the street, into the darkness! He walked like a madman, beating himself on the chest, on that very place on his chest where he had beaten himself two days before, with Alyosha, when he had seen him for the last time, in the evening, in the darkness, on the road. What this beating on the chest, on that spot, meant, and what he intended to signify by it—so far was a secret that no one else in the world knew, which he had not revealed then even to Alyosha, but for him that secret concealed more than shame, it concealed ruin and suicide, for so he had determined if he were unable to obtain the three thousand to pay back Katerina Ivanovna and thereby lift from his chest, “from that place on his chest,” the shame he carried there, which weighed so heavily on his conscience. All this will be perfectly well explained to the reader later on, but now, after his last hope had disappeared, this man, physically so strong, having gone a few steps from Madame Khokhlakov’s house, suddenly dissolved in tears like a little child. He walked on, unconsciously wiping his tears away with his fist. Thus he came out into the square and suddenly felt that he had bumped into something with his full weight. He heard the squeaking howl of some little old woman whom he had almost knocked over.
“Lord, he nearly killed me! What are you stomping around here for, hooligan!”
“What, is it you?” Mitya cried, recognizing the old woman in the darkness. It was the same old serving-woman who served Kuzma Samsonov, and whom Mitya had noticed only too well the day before.
“And you, who are you, my dear?” the old woman said in quite a different voice. “I can’t make you out in the dark.”
“You live at Kuzma Kuzmich’s, you’re a servant there?”
“That’s so, my dear, I’ve just run over to Prokhorich’s ... But how is it I still don’t recognize you?”
“Tell me, granny, is Agrafena Alexandrovna there now?” Mitya asked, beside himself with impatience. “I took her there some time ago.”
“She was, my dear, she came, she stayed for a while and left.”
“What? Left?” cried Mitya. “When?”
“Right then she left, she only stayed for a minute, told Kuzma Kuzmich some story, made him laugh, and ran away.”
“You’re lying, damn you!”yelled Mitya.
“Aiee!” cried the little old woman, but Mitya’s tracks were already cold; he ran as fast as he could to the widow Morozov’s house. It was exactly at the same time that Grushenka drove off to Mokroye, not more than a quarter of an hour after her departure. Fenya was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother, the cook Matryona, when the “captain” suddenly ran in. Seeing him, Fenya screamed to high heaven.
“You’re screaming?” Mitya yelled. “Where is she?” And without giving the terror-stricken Fenya time to say a word, he suddenly collapsed at her feet:
“Fenya, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, tell me where she is!”
“My dear, I know nothing, dear Dmitri Fyodorovich, I know nothing, even if you kill me, I know nothing,” Fenya began swearing and crossing herself. “You took her yourself...”
“She came back...!”
“She didn’t, my dear, I swear to God she didn’t!”
“You’re lying,” roared Mitya. “I can see by how scared you are, you know where she is...!”
He dashed out. The frightened Fenya was glad to have gotten off so easily, but she knew very well that he simply had no time, otherwise it would have gone badly for her. But as he ran out, he still surprised both Fenya and old Matryona by a most unexpected act: on the table stood a brass mortar with a pestle in it, a small brass pestle, only seven inches long. As he was running out, having already opened the door with one hand, Mitya suddenly, without stopping, snatched the pestle from the mortar with his other hand, shoved it into his side pocket, and made off with it.
“Oh, Lord,” Fenya clasped her hands, “he’ll kill somebody!”
Chapter 4: In the Dark