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When he got the telegram, he had, of course, set off post-haste to our town. The first to meet him was Alyosha, and Ivan was greatly surprised to find that, in opposition to the general opinion of the town, he refused to entertain a suspicion against Mitya, and spoke openly of Smerdyakov as the murderer.
“Well, my opinion is,” Smerdyakov began suddenly and unexpectedly in a loud voice, “that if that laudable soldier’s exploit was so very great there would have been, to my thinking, no sin in it if he had on such an emergency renounced, so to speak, the name of Christ and his own christening, to save by that same his life, for good deeds, by which, in the course of years to expiate his cowardice.”
Smerdyakov removed the fragments of the broken vase, while Grigory stood by the table looking gloomily at the floor. “Shouldn’t you put a wet bandage on your head and go to bed, too?” Alyosha said to him. “We’ll look after him. My brother gave you a terrible blow—on the head.” “He’s insulted me!” Grigory articulated gloomily and distinctly.
He was fretted, too, by all sorts of strange and almost surprising desires; for instance, after midnight he suddenly had an intense irresistible inclination to go down, open the door, go to the lodge and beat Smerdyakov.
“I repeat,” he said, “the only reason I haven’t killed you is that I need you for to-morrow, remember that, don’t forget it!” “Well, kill me. Kill me now,” Smerdyakov said, all at once looking strangely at Ivan. “You won’t dare do that even!” he added, with a bitter smile. “You won’t dare to do anything, you, who used to be so bold!” “Till to-morrow,” cried Ivan, and moved to go out.
If I go away, you see what will happen here.” Ivan drew his breath with difficulty. “Precisely so,” said Smerdyakov, softly and reasonably, watching Ivan intently, however. “What do you mean by ‘precisely so’?” Ivan questioned him, with a menacing light in his eyes, restraining himself with difficulty. “I spoke because I felt sorry for you.
He’s watchman at night and goes grouse-shooting in the day-time; and that’s how he lives. I’ve established myself in his room. Neither he nor the women of the house know the secret—that is, that I am on the watch here.” “No one but Smerdyakov knows, then?” “No one else. He will let me know if she goes to the old man.” “It was he told you about the money, then?” “Yes. It’s a dead secret.
He rushed at once to the other extreme, as he always does, and began to assure us that Smerdyakov could not have killed him, was not capable of it.
And pouncing upon the envelope, which he had never seen before, he tore it open to make sure whether the money was in it, and ran away with the money in his pocket, even forgetting to consider that he had left an astounding piece of evidence against himself in that torn envelope on the floor. All because it was Karamazov, not Smerdyakov, he didn’t think, he didn’t reflect, and how should he?
He heard the story of his fall in the cellar, his fit, the doctor’s visit, Fyodor Pavlovitch’s anxiety; he heard with interest, too, that his brother Ivan had set off that morning for Moscow. “Then he must have driven through Volovya before me,” thought Dmitri, but he was terribly distressed about Smerdyakov. “What will happen now? Who’ll keep watch for me? Who’ll bring me word?” he thought.
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