The personal loathing was increasing unbearably. Mitya was beside himself, and suddenly he snatched the brass pestle from his pocket. . .”
“God was watching over me then,” Mitya used to say afterwards: just at that time, the sick Grigory Vasilievich woke up on his bed. Towards evening of that day he had performed upon himself the famous treatment Smerdyakov had described to Ivan Fyodorovich—that is, with his wife’s help he had rubbed himself all over with some secret, very strong infusion made from vodka, and had drunk the rest while his wife whispered “a certain prayer” over him, after which he lay down to sleep. Marfa Ignatievna also partook, and, being a nondrinker, fell into a dead sleep next to her husband. But then, quite unexpectedly, Grigory suddenly woke up in the middle of the night, thought for a moment, and, though he at once felt a burning pain in the small of his back, sat up in bed. Again he thought something over, got up, and dressed hurriedly. Perhaps he felt pangs of conscience for sleeping while the house was left unguarded “at such a perilous time.” Smerdyakov, broken by the falling sickness, lay in the next room without moving. Marfa Ignatievna did not stir. “She’s gone feeble,” Grigory Vasilievich thought, glancing at her, and, groaning, went out onto the porch. Of course he only wanted to take a look from the porch, for he was quite unable to walk, the pain in his lower back and right leg was unbearable. But just then he remembered that he had not locked the garden gate that evening. He was a most precise and punctilious man, a man of established order and age-old habit. Limping and cringing with pain, he went down the porch steps and walked out towards the garden. Yes, indeed, the gate was wide open. Mechanically he stepped into the garden: perhaps he fancied something, perhaps he heard some noise, but, glancing to the left, he saw his master’s window open, and the window was now empty, no one was peering out of it. “Why is it open? It’s not summertime!” Grigory thought, and suddenly, just at that very moment, he caught a glimpse of something unusual right in front of him in the garden. About forty paces away from him a man seemed to be running in the darkness, some shadow was moving very quickly. “Lord!” said Grigory, and, forgetting himself and the pain in the small of his back, he rushed to intercept the running man. He took a short cut, obviously knowing the garden better than the running man; the latter was heading for the bathhouse, ran behind the bathhouse, dashed for the wall. . . Grigory kept his eyes on him and ran, forgetting himself. He reached the fence just as the fugitive was climbing over it. Beside himself, Grigory yelled, rushed forward, and clutched his leg with both hands.
Just so, his forebodings had not deceived him; he recognized the man, it was him, the “monster,” the “parricide”!
“Parricide!” the old man shouted for all the neighborhood to hear, but that was all he had time to shout; suddenly he fell as if struck by a thunderbolt. Mitya jumped back down into the garden and bent over the stricken man. There was a brass pestle in Mitya’s hand, and he threw it mechanically into the grass. The pestle fell two paces away from Grigory, not in the grass, however, but on a footpath, in a most conspicuous place. For a few seconds he examined the prostrate figure before him. The old man’s head was all covered with blood; Mitya reached out his hand and began feeling it. Afterwards he clearly recalled that at that moment he had wanted terribly “to find out for certain” whether he had cracked the old man’s skull or merely “dazed” him with the pestle. But the blood was flowing, flowing terribly, and instantly poured its hot stream over Mitya’s trembling fingers. He remembered snatching from his pocket the new white handkerchief he had provided himself with for his visit to Madame Khokhlakov, and putting it to the old man’s head, senselessly trying to wipe the blood from his forehead and face. But the handkerchief instantly became soaked with blood as well. “Lord, why am I doing this?” Mitya suddenly came to his senses. “If I’ve cracked his skull, how can I tell now ... ? And what difference does it make?” he suddenly added hopelessly. “If I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him ... You came a cropper, old man, now lie there!” he said aloud, and suddenly dashed for the fence, jumped over it into the lane, and started running. The blood-soaked handkerchief was crumpled in his right fist, and as he ran he stuffed it into the back pocket of his coat. He was running like mad, and the few rare passers-by he met in the darkness, in the streets of the town, remembered afterwards how they had met a wildly running man that night. He was flying again to the house of the widow Morozov. Fenya had rushed to the head porter, Nazar Ivanovich, just after he left, and begun begging him “by Christ God not to let the captain in again either today or tomorrow.” Nazar Ivanovich listened and agreed, but, as bad luck would have it, he went upstairs to his mistress, who had suddenly summoned him, and on his way, having met his nephew, a lad about twenty years old who had just come from the village, he told him to stay in the yard, but forgot to tell him about the captain. Mitya ran up to the gate and knocked. The lad recognized him instantly: Mitya had already tipped him several times. He at once opened the gate for him, let him in, and with a cheerful smile courteously hastened to inform him that “Agrafena Alexandrovna is not at home at the moment, sir.”
“Where is she, Prokhor?” Mitya stopped suddenly.
“She left about two hours ago, with Timofei, for Mokroye.”
“Why?” Mitya cried.
“That I can’t say, sir. To see some officer. Someone invited her there and sent horses...”
Mitya left him and ran like a madman for Fenya.
Chapter 5: A Sudden Decision
She was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother; both were preparing to go to bed. Relying on Nazar Ivanovich, they had once again not locked the doors. Mitya ran in, rushed at Fenya, and seized her tightly by the throat.
“Talk now! Where is she? Who is she with in Mokroye?” he shouted in a frenzy.
Both women shrieked.
“Aie! I’ll tell you. Aie, Dmitri Fyodorovich, dear, I’ll tell you all right now, I won’t hide anything,” Fenya rattled out, frightened to death. “She went to Mokroye to see the officer.”
“What officer?” Mitya shouted.
“Her former officer, the same one from before, from five years ago, who left her and went away,” Fenya rattled out in the same patter.
Dmitri Fyodorovich relaxed his grip on her throat and let his hands fall. He stood before her, speechless and pale as death, but one could see from his eyes that he had understood everything at once, everything, everything all at once, at half a word, had understood it to the last detail and figured it all out. It was not for poor Fenya, of course, to notice at that moment whether he had understood or not. She sat on the chest where she had been sitting when he ran in, and remained like that, trembling all over, holding her hands out in front of her as if trying to protect herself, and froze in that position. She stared at him fixedly, her eyes terrified, her pupils dilated with fear. Worse still, both his hands were stained with blood. On the way, as he was running, he must have touched his forehead with them, wiping the sweat from his face, so that he left red patches of smeared blood both on his forehead and on his right cheek. Fenya was on the verge of hysterics, and the old cook jumped up, staring crazily, and nearly passed out. Dmitri Fyodorovich stood for a moment, then suddenly dropped mechanically into a chair next to Fenya.
He sat there, not pondering exactly, but as if in fear, as if in some kind of stupor. But everything was clear as day: this officer—he knew about him, he knew everything perfectly well, knew it from Grushenka herself, knew that a month ago a letter had come from him. So for a month, for a whole month this affair had been going on in deep secret from him, up to the present arrival of this new man, and he had not even given him a thought! But how could he, how could he not give him a thought? Why had he simply forgotten about the officer, forgotten the moment he learned of him? That was the question that stood before him like some sort of bogey. And he indeed contemplated this bogey in fear, in cold fear.