“He’ll get a twenty-year taste of the mines.”
“Not less.”
“Yes, sir, our peasants stood up for themselves.”
“And finished off our Mitenka.”
End of the Fourth and Last Part
EPILOGUE
Chapter 1: Plans to Save Mitya
On the fifth day after Mitya’s trial, very early in the morning, before nine o’clock, Alyosha came to see Katerina Ivanovna, to make final arrangements in a certain business important for them both, and with an errand to her besides. She sat and talked with him in the same room where she had once received Grushenka; nearby, in the next room, lay Ivan Fyodorovich, in fever and unconscious. Immediately after the scene in court, Katerina Ivanovna had ordered the sick and unconscious Ivan Fyodorovich moved to her house, scorning any future and inevitable talk of society and its condemnation. One of the two relatives who lived with her left for Moscow just after the scene in court, the other remained. But even if both had left, Katerina Ivanovna would not have altered her decision and would have stayed to look after the sick man and sit by him day and night. He was treated by Varvinsky and Herzenstube; the Moscow doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to predict his opinion concerning the possible outcome of the illness. Though the remaining doctors encouraged Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was apparent that they were still unable to give any firm hope. Alyosha visited his sick brother twice a day. But this time he came on special, most troublesome business, and sensed how difficult it would be to begin talking about it, and yet he was in a hurry: he had other pressing business that same morning in a different place and had to rush. They had already been talking for about a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was pale, very tired, and at the same time in a state of extreme, morbid agitation: she sensed why, among other things, Alyosha had come to her now.
“Don’t worry about his decision,” she told Alyosha with firm insistence. “One way or another, he will still come to this way out: he must escape! That unfortunate man, that hero of honor and conscience—not him, not Dmitri Fyodorovich, but the one lying behind this door, who sacrificed himself for his brother,” Katya added with flashing eyes, “told me the whole plan of escape long ago. You know, he has already made contacts ... I’ve already told you something ... You see, it will probably take place at the third halt, when the party of convicts is taken to Siberia. Oh, it’s still a long way off. Ivan Fyodorovich has been to see the head man at the third halting-place. But it’s not known yet who will head the party, and it’s impossible to find out beforehand. Tomorrow, perhaps, I’ll show you the whole plan in detail; Ivan Fyodorovich left it with me the night before the trial, in case something ... It was that same time, remember, when you found us quarreling that evening: he was just going downstairs, and when I saw you, I made him come back—remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about?”
“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha.
“Of course he concealed it from you then: it was precisely about this plan of escape. He had revealed all the main things to me three days earlier—that was when we began quarreling, and we went on quarreling for three days. We quarreled because, when he announced to me that if Dmitri Fyodorovich was convicted, he would flee abroad with that creature, I suddenly got furious— I won’t tell you why, I don’t know why myself ... Oh, of course, because of that creature, I got furious because of that creature, and precisely because she, too, was going to flee abroad, together with Dmitri!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly exclaimed, her lips trembling with wrath. “As soon as Ivan Fyodorovich saw how furious I was because of that creature, he immediately thought I was jealous of her over Dmitri, and that it meant I still loved Dmitri. And that led to our first quarrel. I did not want to give explanations, I could not ask forgiveness; it was hard for me to think that such a man could suspect me of still loving that ... Even though I myself had already told him directly, long before , that I did not love Dmitri, but loved only him! I got furious with him only because I was so furious with that creature! Three days later, that evening when you came, he brought me a sealed envelope, to be opened at once in case something happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He revealed to me that the envelope contained details of the escape, and that if he should die or become dangerously ill, I must save Mitya alone. He left me money along with it, nearly ten thousand roubles—the same money the prosecutor mentioned in his speech, having learned somehow that he had sent it to be cashed. I was terribly struck that Ivan Fyodorovich, who was still jealous over me and still convinced that I loved Mitya, nonetheless did not abandon the idea of saving his brother, and entrusted me, me myself, with saving him! Oh, there was a sacrifice! No, you would not understand such self-sacrifice in all its fullness, Alexei Fyodorovich. I almost fell at his feet in reverence, but the thought suddenly occurred to me that he would take it simply as my joy at Mitya’s being saved (and he certainly would have thought that), and I was so annoyed simply at the possibility of such an unjust thought on his part, that I became annoyed again, and instead of kissing his feet, I made another scene! Oh, how wretched I am! It’s my character—a terrible, wretched character! Oh, one day you’ll see: I’ll do it, I’ll bring it to such a point that he, too, will leave me for some other woman, someone easier to live with, as Dmitri did, but then ... no, I couldn’t bear it, I’d kill myself! And when you came then, and I called to you and told him to come back, when he came in with you then, the hateful, contemptuous look he suddenly gave me filled me with such wrath that—remember?—I suddenly cried to you that he, he alonehad convinced me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I slandered him on purpose, in order to hurt him once more, but he never, never tried to convince me that his brother was a murderer, on the contrary, it was I, I who kept trying to convince him! Oh, my rage was the cause of everything, everything! It was I, I who brought on that cursed scene in court! He wanted to prove to me that he was noble, and that even though I might love his brother, he still would not destroy him out of revenge and jealousy. And so he stood up in court ... I am the cause of it all, I alone am guilty!”
Never before had Katya made such confessions to Alyosha, and he felt that she had then reached precisely that degree of unbearable suffering when a proud heart painfully shatters its own pride and falls, overcome by grief. Oh, Alyosha knew yet another terrible reason for her present torment, no matter how she had concealed it from him all those days since Mitya had been convicted; but for some reason it would have been too painful for him if she had decided to lower herself so much as to begin talking with him herself, now, at that moment, about that reason. She was suffering over her “betrayal” in court, and Alyosha sensed that her conscience was urging her to confess, precisely to him, to Alyosha, with tears, with shrieks, with hysterics, beating on the floor. But he dreaded that moment and wished to spare the suffering woman. This made the errand on which he had come all the more difficult. He again began talking about Mitya.
“Never mind, never mind, don’t worry about him!” Katya began again, sharply and stubbornly. “It’s all momentary with him, I know him, I know his heart only too well. Rest assured, he’ll agree to escape. And, above all, it’s not right now; he still has time to make up his mind. Ivan Fyodorovich will be well by then, and will handle it all himself, so there will be nothing left for me to do. Don’t worry, he’ll agree to escape. He has already agreed: how can he part with that creature of his? Since they won’t let her go to penal servitude, how can he not escape? He’s afraid of you most of all, afraid you won’t approve of his escape on moral grounds, but you must magnanimously allowhim to do it, since your sanction here is so necessary,” Katya added with venom. She paused briefly and grinned.
“He keeps talking there,” she started again, “about some sort of hymns, about the cross he has to bear, about some sort of duty, I remember Ivan Fyodorovich told me a lot about it then, and if you knew how he spoke!” Katya suddenly exclaimed with irrepressible feeling. “If you knew how he loved the wretched man at that moment, as he was telling about him, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the same moment! And I, oh, I listened to his story and his tears with a scornful smile! Oh, the creature! Me, I’m the creature! I gave birth to this brain fever for him! And that man, that convict, is not prepared to suffer,” Katya concluded with irritation, “how can such a man suffer? Such men never suffer!”