第123章

"Can you do me a service, Mitri? Go to my father's, to Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, and tell him I haven't gone to Tchermashnya.Can you?""Of course I can.I've known Fyodor Pavlovitch a long time.""And here's something for you, for I dare say he won't give you anything," said Ivan, laughing gaily.

"You may depend on it he won't." Mitri laughed too."Thank you, sir.I'll be sure to do it."At seven o'clock Ivan got into the train and set off to Moscow.

"Away with the past.I've done with the old world for ever, and may I have no news, no echo, from it.To a new life, new places, and no looking back!" But instead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his heart ached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life before.He was thinking all the night.The train flew on, and only at daybreak, when he was approaching Moscow, he suddenly roused himself from his meditation.

"I am a scoundrel," he whispered to himself.

Fyodor Pavlovitch remained well satisfied at having seen his son off.For two hours afterwards he felt almost happy, and sat drinking brandy.But suddenly something happened which was very annoying and unpleasant for everyone in the house, and completely upset Fyodor Pavlovitch's equanimity at once.Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and fell down from the top of the steps.Fortunately, Marfa Ignatyevna was in the yard and heard him in time.She did not see the fall, but heard his scream- the strange, peculiar scream, long familiar to her- the scream of the epileptic falling in a fit.They could not tell whether the fit had come on him at the moment he was decending the steps, so that he must have fallen unconscious, or whether it was the fall and the shock that had caused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was known to be liable to them.They found him at the bottom of the cellar steps, writhing in convulsions and foaming at the mouth.It was thought at first that he must have broken something-an arm or a leg- and hurt himself, but "God had preserved him," as Marfa Ignatyevna expressed it- nothing of the kind had happened.But it was difficult to get him out of the cellar.They asked the neighbours to help and managed it somehow.Fyodor Pavlovitch himself was present at the whole ceremony.He helped, evidently alarmed and upset.The sick man did not regain consciousness; the convulsions ceased for a time, but then began again, and everyone concluded that the same thing would happen, as had happened a year before, when he accidently fell from the garret.They remembered that ice been put on his head then.There was still ice in the cellar, and Marfa Ignatyevna had some brought up.In the evening, Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for Doctor Herzenstube, who arrived at once.He was a most estimable old man, and the most careful and conscientious doctor in the province.After careful examination, he concluded that the fit was a very violent one and might have serious consequences; that meanwhile he, Herzenstube, did not fully understand it, but that by to-morrow morning, if the present remedies were unavailing, he would venture to try something else.The invalid was taken to the lodge, to a room next to Grigory's and Marfa Ignatyevna's.

Then Fyodor Pavlovitch had one misfortune after another to put up with that day.Marfa Ignatyevna cooked the dinner, and the soup, compared with Smerdyakov's, was "no better than dish-water," and the fowl was so dried up that it was impossible to masticate it.To her master's bitter, though deserved, reproaches, Marfa Ignatyevna replied that the fowl was a very old one to begin with, and that she had never been trained as a cook.In the evening there was another trouble in store for Fyodor Pavlovitch; he was informed that Grigory, who had not been well for the last three days, was completely laid up by his lumbago.Fyodor Pavlovitch finished his tea as early as possible and locked himself up alone in the house.He was in terrible excitement and suspense.That evening he reckoned on Grushenka's coming almost as a certainty.He had received from Smerdyakov that morning an assurance "that she had promised to come without fail." The incorrigible old man's heart throbbed with excitement; he paced up and down his empty rooms listening.He had to be on the alert.Dmitri might be on the watch for her somewhere, and when she knocked on the window (Smerdyakov had informed him two days before that he had told her where and how to knock) the door must be opened at once.She must not be a second in the passage, for fear which God forbid!- that she should be frightened and run away.Fyodor Pavlovitch had much to think of, but never had his heart been steeped in such voluptuous hopes.

This time he could say almost certainly that she would come!