"Why, the man's drunk, dead drunk, and he'll go on drinking now for a week; what's the use of waiting here? And what if Samsonov sent me here on purpose? What if she- ? Oh God, what have I done?"The peasant sat watching him and grinning.Another time Mitya might have killed the fool in a fury, but now he felt as weak as a child.He went quietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on without a word, and went out of the hut.He did not find the forester in the next room; there was no one there.He took fifty copecks in small change out of his pocket and put them on the table for his night's lodging, the candle, and the trouble he had given.
Coming out of the hut he saw nothing but forest all round.He walked at hazard, not knowing which way to turn out of the hut, to the right or to the left.Hurrying there the evening before with the priest, he had not noticed the road.He had no revengeful feeling for anybody, even for Samsonov, in his heart.He strode along a narrow forest path, aimless, dazed, without heeding where he was going.Achild could have knocked him down, so weak was he in body and soul.He got out of the forest somehow, however, and a vista of fields, bare after the harvest, stretched as far as the eye could see.
"What despair! What death all round!" he repeated, striding on and on.
He was saved by meeting an old merchant who was being driven across country in a hired trap.When he overtook him, Mitya asked the way and it turned out that the old merchant, too, was going to Volovya.After some discussion Mitya got into the trap.Three hours later they arrived.At Volovya, Mitya at once ordered posting-horses to drive to the town, and suddenly realised that he was appallingly hungry.While the horses were being harnessed, an omelette was prepared for him.He ate it all in an instant, ate a huge hunk of bread, ate a sausage, and swallowed three glasses of vodka.After eating, his spirits and his heart grew lighter.He flew towards the town, urged on the driver, and suddenly made a new and "unalterable"plan to procure that "accursed money" before evening."And to think, only to think that a man's life should be ruined for the sake of that paltry three thousand!" he cried, contemptuously."I'll settle it to-day." And if it had not been for the thought of Grushenka and of what might have happened to her, which never left him, he would perhaps have become quite cheerful again....But the thought of her was stabbing him to the heart every moment, like a sharp knife.
At last they arrived, and Mitya at once ran to Grushenka.
Chapter 3
Gold MinesTHIS was the visit of Mitya of which Grushenka had spoken to Rakitin with such horror.She was just then expecting the "message,"and was much relieved that Mitya had not been to see her that day or the day before.She hoped that "please God he won't come till I'm gone away," and he suddenly burst in on her.The rest we know already.To get him off her hands she suggested at once that he should walk with her to Samsonov's, where she said she absolutely must go "to settle his accounts," and when Mitya accompanied her at once, she said good-bye to him at the gate, ****** him promise to come at twelve o'clock to take her home again.Mitya, too, was delighted at this arrangement.If she was sitting at Samsonov's she could not be going to Fyodor Pavlovitch's, "if only she's not lying," he added at once.
But he thought she was not lying from what he saw.
He was that sort of jealous man who, in the absence of the beloved woman, at once invents all sorts of awful fancies of what may be happening to her, and how she may be betraying him, but, when shaken, heartbroken, convinced of her faithlessness, he runs back to her, at the first glance at her face, her gay, laughing, affectionate face, he revives at once, lays aside all suspicion and with joyful shame abuses himself for his jealousy.
After leaving Grushenka at the gate he rushed home.Oh, he had so much still to do that day! But a load had been lifted from his heart, anyway.
"Now I must only make haste and find out from Smerdyakov whether anything happened there last night, whether, by any chance, she went to Fyodor Pavlovitch; ough!" floated through his mind.
Before he had time to reach his lodging, jealousy had surged up again in his restless heart.
Jealousy! "Othello was not jealous, he was trustful," observed Pushkin.And that remark alone is enough to show the deep insight of our great poet.Othello's soul was shattered and his whole outlook clouded simply because his ideal was destroyed.But Othello did not begin hiding, spying, peeping.He was trustful, on the contrary.He had to be led up, pushed on, excited with great difficulty before he could entertain the idea of deceit.The truly jealous man is not like that.It is impossible to picture to oneself the shame and moral degradation to which the jealous man can descend without a qualm of conscience.And yet it's not as though the jealous were all vulgar and base souls.On the contrary, a man of lofty feelings, whose love is pure and full of self-sacrifice, may yet hide under tables, bribe the vilest people, and be familiar with the lowest ignominy of spying and eavesdropping.
