“At once. Will any one of you be going to the town tomorrow?”
“To be sure. Mitri here will.”
“Can you do me a service, Mitri? Go to my father’s, to Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, and tell him I haven’t gone to Tchermashnya. Can you?”
“Of course I can. I’ve known Fyodor Pavlovitch a long time.”
“And here’s something for you, for I dare say he won’t give you anything,” said Ivan, laughing gayly.
“You may depend on it he won’t.” Mitya laughed too. “Thank you, sir. I’ll be sure to do it.”
At seven o’clock Ivan got into the train and set off to Moscow. “Away with the past. I’ve done with the old world forever, and may I have no news, no echo, from it. To a new life, new places and no looking back!” But instead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his heart ached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life before. He was thinking all the night. The train flew on, and only at daybreak, when he was approaching Moscow, he suddenly roused himself from his meditation.
“I am a scoundrel,” he whispered to himself.
Fyodor Pavlovitch remained well satisfied at having seen his son off. For two hours afterwards he felt almost happy, and sat drinking brandy. But suddenly something happened which was very annoying and unpleasant for everyone in the house, and completely upset Fyodor Pavlovitch’s equanimity at once. Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and fell down from the top of the steps. Fortunately, Marfa Ignatyevna was in the yard and heard him in time. She did not see the fall, but heard his scream—the strange, peculiar scream, long familiar to her—the scream of the epileptic falling in a fit. They could not tell whether the fit had