第268章

"Why, that foreseeing such a calamity you deserted your own father, and would not protect us, for I might have been taken up any time for stealing that three thousand.""Damn you!" Ivan swore again."Stay, did you tell the prosecutor and the investigating lawyer about those knocks?""I told them everything just as it was."

Ivan wondered inwardly again.

"If I thought of anything then," he began again, "it was solely of some wickedness on your part.Dmitri might kill him, but that he would steal- I did not believe that then....But I was prepared for any wickedness from you.You told me yourself you could sham a fit.What did you say that for?""It was just through my simplicity, and I never have shammed a fit on purpose in my life.And I only said so then to boast to you.It was just foolishness.I liked you so much then, and was open-hearted with you.""My brother directly accuses you of the murder and theft.""What else is left for him to do?" said Smerdyakov, with a bitter grin."And who will believe him with all the proofs against him? Grigory Vassilyevitch saw the door open.What can he say after that? But never mind him! He is trembling to save himself."He slowly ceased speaking; then suddenly, as though on reflection, added:

"And look here again.He wants to throw it on me and make out that it is the work of my hands- I've heard that already.But as to my being clever at shamming a fit: should I have told you beforehand that I could sham one, if I really had had such a design against your father? If I had been planning such a murder could I have been such a fool as to give such evidence against myself beforehand? And to his son, too! Upon my word! Is that likely? As if that could be;such a thing has never happened.No one hears this talk of ours now, except Providence itself, and if you were to tell of it to the prosecutor and Nikolay Parfenovitch you might defend me completely by doing so, for who would be likely to be such a criminal, if he is so open-hearted beforehand? Anyone can see that.""Well," and Ivan got up to cut short the conversation, struck by Smerdyakov's last argument."I don't suspect you at all, and I think it's absurd, indeed, to suspect you.On the contrary, I am grateful to you for setting my mind at rest.Now I am going, but I'll come again.Meanwhile, good-bye.Get well.Is there anything you want?""I am very thankful for everything.Marfa Ignatyevna does not forget me, and provides me anything I want, according to her kindness.

Good people visit me every day."

"Good-bye.But I shan't say anything of your being able to sham a fit, and I don't advise you to, either," something made Ivan say suddenly.

"I quite understand.And if you don't speak of that, I shall say nothing of that conversation of ours at the gate."Then it happened that Ivan went out, and only when he had gone a dozen steps along the corridor, he suddenly felt that there was an insulting significance in Smerdyakov's last words.He was almost on the point of turning back, but it was only a passing impulse, and muttering, "Nonsense!" he went out of the hospital.

His chief feeling was one of relief at the fact that it was not Smerdyakov, but Mitya, who had committed the murder, though he might have been expected to feel the opposite.He did not want to analyse the reason for this feeling, and even felt a positive repugnance at prying into his sensations.He felt as though he wanted to make haste to forget something.In the following days he became convinced of Mitya's guilt, as he got to know all the weight of evidence against him.There was evidence of people of no importance, Fenya and her mother, for instance, but the effect of it was almost overpowering.As to Perhotin, the people at the tavern, and at Plotnikov's shop, as well as the witnesses at Mokroe, their evidence seemed conclusive.

It was the details that were so damning.The secret of the knocks impressed the lawyers almost as much as Grigory's evidence as to the open door.Grigory's wife, Marfa, in answer to Ivan's questions, declared that Smerdyakov had been lying all night the other side of the partition wall, "He was not three paces from our bed," and that although she was a sound sleeper she waked several times and heard him moaning, "He was moaning the whole time, moaning continually."Talking to Herzenstube, and giving it as his opinion that Smerdyakov was not mad, but only rather weak, Ivan only evoked from the old man a subtle smile.

"Do you know how he spends his time now?" he asked; "learning lists of French words by heart.He has an exercise-book under his pillow with the French words written out in Russian letters for him by someone, he he he!"Ivan ended by dismissing all doubts.He could not think of Dmitri without repulsion.Only one thing was strange, however.Alyosha persisted that Dmitri was not the murderer, and that "in all probability" Smerdyakov was.Ivan always felt that Alyosha's opinion meant a great deal to him, and so he was astonished at it now.Another thing that was strange was that Alyosha did not make any attempt to talk about Mitya with Ivan, that he never began on the subject and only answered his questions.This, too, struck Ivan particularly.

But he was very much preoccupied at that time with something quite apart from that.On his return from Moscow, he abandoned himself hopelessly to his mad and consuming passion for Katerina Ivanovna.

This is not the time to begin to speak of this new passion of Ivan's, which left its mark on all the rest of his life: this would furnish the subject for another novel, which I may perhaps never write.But I cannot omit to mention here that when Ivan, on leaving Katerina Ivanovna with Alyosha, as I've related already, told him, "I am not keen on her," it was an absolute lie: he loved her madly, though at times he hated her so that he might have murdered her.