第 170 节

I repeat, bound to answer every inquiry you make. We found the servant Smerdyakov, concerning whom you inquire, lying unconscious in his bed, in an epileptic fit of extreme severity, that had recurred, possibly, ten times. The doctor who was with us told us, after seeing him, that he may possibly not outlive the night.”

“Well, if that’s so, the devil must have killed him,” broke suddenly from Mitya, as though until that moment he had been asking himself: “Was it Smerdyakov or not?”

“We will come back to this later,” Nikolay Parfenovitch decided. “Now, wouldn’t you like to continue your statement?”

Mitya asked for a rest. His request was courteously granted. After resting, he went on with his story. But he was evidently depressed. He was exhausted, mortified and morally shaken. To make things worse the prosecutor exasperated him, as though intentionally, by vexatious interruptions about “trifling points.” Scarcely had Mitya described how, sitting on the wall, he had struck Grigory on the head with the pestle, while the old man had hold of his left leg, and how he had then jumped down to look at him, when the prosecutor stopped him to ask him to describe exactly how he was sitting on the wall. Mitya was surprised.

“Oh, I was sitting like this, astride, one leg on one side of the wall and one on the other.”

“And the pestle?”

“The pestle was in my hand.”

“Not in your pocket? Do you remember that precisely? Was it a violent blow you gave him?”

“It must have been a violent one. But why do you ask?”

“Would you mind sitting on the chair just as you sat on the wall then and showing us just how you moved your arm, and in what direction?”

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” asked Mitya, looking haughtily at the speaker; but the latter did not flinch.

Mitya turned abruptly, sat astride on his chair, and swung his arm.

“This was how I struck him! That’s how I knocked him down! What more do you want?”

“Thank you. May I trouble you now to explain why you jumped down, with what object, and what you had in view?”

“Oh, hang it!... I jumped down to look at the man I’d hurt ... I don’t know what for!”

“Though you were so excited and were running away?”

“Yes, though I was excited and running away.”

“You wanted to help him?”

“Help!... Yes, perhaps I did want to help him.... I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember? Then you didn’t quite know what you were doing?”

“Not at all. I remember everything—every detail. I jumped down to look at him, and wiped his face with my handkerchief.”

“We have seen your handkerchief. Did you hope to restore him to consciousness?”

“I don’t know whether I hoped it. I simply wanted to make sure whether he was alive or not.”

“Ah! You wanted to be sure? Well, what then?”

“I’m not a doctor. I couldn’t decide. I ran away thinking I’d killed him. And now he’s recovered.”

“Excellent,” commented the prosecutor. “Thank you. That’s all I wanted. Kindly proceed.”

Alas! it never entered Mitya’s head to tell them, though he remembered it, that he had jumped back from pity, and standing over the prostrate figure had even uttered some words of regret: “You’ve come to grief, old man—there’s no help for it. Well, there you must lie.”

The prosecutor could only draw one conclusion: that the man had jumped back “at such a moment and in such excitement simply with the object of ascertaining whether the _only_ witness of his crime were dead; that he must therefore have been a man of great strength, coolness, decision and foresight even at such a moment,” ... and so on. The prosecutor was satisfied: “I’ve provoked the nervous fellow by ‘trifles’ and he has said more than he meant to.”

With painful effort Mitya went on. But this time he was pulled up immediately by Nikolay Parfenovitch.

“How came you to run to the servant, Fedosya Markovna, with your hands so covered with blood, and, as it appears, your face, too?”

“Why, I didn’t notice the blood at all at the time,” answered Mitya.

“That’s quite likely. It does happen sometimes.” The prosecutor exchanged glances with Nikolay Parfenovitch.

“I simply didn’t notice. You’re quite right there, prosecutor,” Mitya assented suddenly.

Next came the account of Mitya’s sudden determination to “step aside” and make way for their happiness. But he could not make up his mind to open his heart to them as before, and tell them about “the queen of his soul.” He disliked speaking of her before these chilly persons “who were fastening on him like bugs.” And so in response to their reiterated questions he answered briefly and abruptly:

“Well, I made up my mind to kill myself. What had I left to live for? That question stared me in the face. Her first rightful lover had come back, the man who wronged her but who’d hurried back to offer his love, after five years, and atone for the wrong with marriage.... So I knew it was all over for me.... And behind me disgrace, and that blood—Grigory’s.... What had I to live for? So I went to redeem the pistols I had pledged, to load them and put a bullet in my brain to-morrow.”

“And a grand feast the night before?”

“Yes, a grand feast the night before. Damn it all, gentlemen! Do make haste and finish it. I meant to shoot myself not far from here, beyond the village, and I’d planned to do it at five o’clock in the morning. And I had a note in my pocket already. I wrote it at Perhotin’s when I loaded my pistols. Here’s the letter. Read it! It’s not for you I tell it,” he added contemptuously. He took it from his waistcoat pocket and flung it on the table. The lawyers read it with curiosity, and, as is usual, added it to the papers connected with the case.

“And you didn’t even think of washing your hands at Perhotin’s? You were not afraid then of arousing suspicion?”

“What suspicion? Suspicion or not, I should have galloped here just the same, and shot myself at five o’clock, and you wouldn’t have been in time to do anything. If it hadn’t been for what’s happened to my father, you would have known nothing about it, and wouldn’t have come here. Oh, it’s the devil’s doing. It was the devil murdered father, it was through the devil that you found it out so soon. How did you manage to get here so quick? It’s marvelous, a dream!”

“Mr. Perhotin informed us that when you came to him, you held in your hands ... your blood-stained hands ... your money ... a lot of money ... a bundle of hundred-rouble notes, and that his servant-boy saw it too.”

“That’s true, gentlemen. I remember it was so.”

“Now, there’s one little point presents itself. Can you inform us,” Nikolay Parfenovitch began, with extreme gentleness, “where did you get so much money all of a sudden, when it appears from the facts, from the reckoning of time, that you had not been home?”

The prosecutor’s brows contracted at the question being asked so plainly, but he did not interrupt Nikolay Parfenovitch.

“No, I didn’t go home,” answered Mitya, apparently perfectly composed, but looking at the floor.

“Allow me then to repeat