Dmitri knows nothing of what has happened to Grushenka. She has flown to a new life and left him a greeting, bidding him remember the hour of her love, and he is in a fever of activity, knowing none of it. For two days he has been in such a state that he said afterwards he might have fallen ill with brain fever. Alyosha could not find him the morning before. Ivan missed him at the tavern. The people at his lodgings, by his orders, conceal his movements. He rushes in every direction, and for some hours he even leaves the town, though it is terrible to him to lose sight of her for a moment. It never occurs to him, in those days, to think of the officer whose return she has been expecting. For him the whole question lies between himself and Fyodor. He is firmly persuaded that his father will offer her lawful wedlock, and he does not for a moment believe that the old man hopes to gain his object for three thousand roubles. He thinks her uneasiness is not knowing which of them to choose.
The money from his father, the doles that had gone on for years, has ceased. Grushenka has money of her own. He will not take it. He wants to carry her away and begin the new life at his own expense, not at hers. The very idea of her money causes him a pang of repulsion. Under that pride lies the money of Katerina Ivanovna, which he had dishonestly appropriated. He has been a scoundrel to one of them, and he will be a scoundrel again to the other the moment Grushenka knows. Where is he to get the means? Without that money, he feels, all is lost.
He goes to Kuzma Samsonov, her old protector. The lodge and the lower storey are overcrowded with the old man's sons and his clerks. Samsonov keeps the upper floor to himself. His face remains cold and immovable as a statue's while Dmitri talks. Most of the town has heard of the disputes with his father, who robbed him of his mother's inheritance. He offers the claims on the copse at Tchermashnya. Fyodor has been haggling for a year with a timber dealer and they cannot agree on the price.
He wants a sum down of only three thousand, and he wants it that very day. He will do the business at a notary's. He will hand over the deeds and sign anything. On his honour, he swears, Samsonov cannot lose, and may make six or seven thousand instead of three. The old man sends him to a man who does business in timber, Lyagavy, who is staying with the priest at Ilyinskoe, about twelve versts from the Volovya station. Lyagavy wrote to Samsonov about the copse. Fyodor means to go and see him himself. Dmitri leaves with his legs weak under him, and on the way home he can imagine nothing but that the advice is practical, from such a business man. The other possibility is that the old man was laughing at him. That second alternative was the correct one. Long afterwards, when the catastrophe had happened, Samsonov confessed, laughing, that he had made a fool of the captain. Whether it was the excited face, or the foolish conviction that he could be taken in by such a story, or jealousy of Grushenka, the old man looked at him with intense spite and resolved to make a laughing-stock of him. When Dmitri had gone, Kuzma Kuzmitch, white with rage, told his son that the beggar was never to be seen again, and never admitted even into the yard. For a whole hour he shook with anger. By evening he was worse, and sent for the doctor.
Coming Up in Chapter 47
He has only forty kopecks. He sells the old silver watch, which has long ceased to go, for six roubles, borrows three more, and drives for Volovya. The priest tells him the timber dealer's name is Gorstkin, and that the man will not listen if he is called Lyagavy.
