“You are lying; you suggested my going away yourself; you told me to get out of the way of trouble.”
“That was simply out of affection and my sincere devotion to you, foreseeing trouble in the house, to spare you. Only I wanted to spare myself even more. That’s why I told you to get out of harm’s way, that you might understand that there would be trouble in the house, and would remain at home to protect your father.”
“You might have said it more directly, you blockhead!” Ivan suddenly fired up.
“How could I have said it more directly then? It was simply my fear that made me speak, and you might have been angry, too. I might well have been apprehensive that Dmitri Fyodorovitch would make a scene and carry away that money, for he considered it as good as his own; but who could tell that it would end in a murder like this? I thought that he would only carry off the three thousand that lay under the master’s mattress in the envelope, and you see, he’s murdered him. How could you guess it either, sir?”
“But if you say yourself that it couldn’t be guessed, how could I have guessed and stayed at home? You contradict yourself!” said Ivan, pondering.
“You might have guessed from my sending you to Tchermashnya and not to Moscow.”
“How could I guess it from that?”
Smerdyakov seemed much exhausted, and again he was silent for a minute.
“You might have guessed from the fact of my asking you not to go to Moscow, but to Tchermashnya, that I wanted to have you nearer, for