HE hurried to the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day after his fate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous fever, and was sent to the prison division of the town hospital. But at the request of several persons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise, etc.), Doctor Varvinsky had put Mitya not with other prisoners, but in a separate little room, the one where Smerdyakov had been. It is true that there was a sentinel at the other end of the corridor, and there was a grating over the window, so that Varvinsky could be at ease about the indulgence he had shown, which was not quite legal, indeed; but he was a kind-hearted and compassionate young man. He knew how hard it would be for a man like Mitya to pass at once so suddenly into the society of robbers and murderers, and that he must get used to it by degrees. The visits of relations and friends were informally sanctioned by the doctor and overseer, and even by the police captain. But only Alyosha and Grushenka had visited Mitya. Rakitin had tried to force his way in twice, but Mitya persistently begged Varvinsky not to admit him.
Alyosha found him sitting on his bed in a hospital dressing gown, rather feverish, with a towel, soaked in vinegar and water, on his head. He looked at Alyosha as he came in with an undefined expression, but there was a shade of something like dread discernible in it. He had become terribly preoccupied since the trial; sometimes he would be silent for half an hour together, and seemed to be pondering something heavily and painfully, oblivious of everything about him. If he roused himself from his brooding and began to talk, he always spoke with a kind of abruptness and never of what he really wanted to say. He looked sometimes with a face of suffering at his brother. He seemed to be more at ease with Grushenka than with Alyosha. It is true, he scarcely spoke to her at all, but as soon as she came in, his whole face lighted up with joy.
Alyosha sat down beside him on the bed in silence. This time Mitya was waiting for Alyosha in suspense, but he did not dare ask him a question. He felt it almost unthinkable that Katya would consent to come, and at the same time he felt that if she did not come, something inconceivable would happen. Alyosha understood his feelings.
“Trifon Borissovitch,” Mitya began nervously, “has pulled his whole inn to pieces, I am told. He’s taken up the flooring, pulled apart the planks, split up all the gallery, I am told. He is seeking treasure all the time — the fifteen hundred roubles which the prosecutor said I’d hidden there. He began playing these tricks, they say, as soon as he got home. Serve him right, the swindler! The guard here told me yesterday; he comes from there.”
“Listen,” began Alyosha. “She will come, but I don’t know when. Perhaps to-day, perhaps in a few days, that I can’t tell. But she will come, she will, that’s certain.”
Mitya started, would have said something, but was silent. The news had a tremendous effect on him. It was evident that he would have liked terribly to know what had been said, but he was again afraid to ask. Something cruel and contemptuous from Katya would have cut him like a knife at that moment.
“This was what she said among other things; that I must be sure to set your conscience at rest about escaping. If Ivan is not well by then she will see to it all herself.”
“You’ve spoken of that already,” Mitya observed musingly.
“And you have repeated it to Grusha,” observed Alyosha.
“Yes,” Mitya admitted. “She won’t come this morning.” He looked timidly at his brother. “She won’t come till the evening. When I told her yesterday that Katya was taking measures, she was silent, but she set her mouth. She only whispered, ‘Let her!’ She understood that it was important. I did not dare to try her further. She understands now, I think, that Katya no longer cares for me, but loves Ivan.”
“Does she?” broke from Alyosha.
“Perhaps she does not. Only she is not coming this morning,” Mitya hastened to explain again; “I asked her to do something for me. You know, Ivan is superior to all of us. He ought to live, not us. He will recover.”
“Would you believe it, though Katya is alarmed about him, she scarcely doubts of his recovery,” said Alyosha.
“That means that she is convinced he will die. It’s because she is frightened she’s so sure he will get well.”
“Ivan has a strong constitution, and I, too, believe there’s every hope that he will get well,” Alyosha observed anxiously.
“Yes, he will get well. But she is convinced that he will die. She has a great deal of sorrow to bear . . . ” A silence followed. A grave anxiety was fretting Mitya.
“Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly,” he said suddenly in a shaking voice, full of tears.
“They won’t let her go out there to you,” Alyosha put in at once.
“And there is something else I wanted tell you,” Mitya went on, with a sudden ring in his voice. “If they beat me on the way or out there, I won’t submit to it. I shall kill someone, and shall be shot for it. And this will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as it is. I’ve been lying here all night, passing judgment on myself. I am not ready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a ‘hymn’; but if a guard speaks rudely to me, I have not the strength to bear it. For Grusha I would bear anything . . . anything except blows. . . . But she won’t be allowed to come there.”
Alyosha smiled gently.
“Listen, brother, once for all,” he said. “This is what I think about it. And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Listen: you are not ready, and such a cross is not for you. What’s more, you don’t need such a martyr’s cross when you are not ready for it. If you had murdered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your punishment. But you are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to make yourself another man by suffering. I say, only remember that other man always, all your life and wherever you go; and that will be enough for you. Your refusal of that great cross will only serve to make you feel all your life even greater duty, and that constant feeling will do more to make you a new man, perhaps, than if you went there. For there you would not endure it and would repine, and perhaps at last would say: ‘I am quits.’ The lawyer was right about that. Such heavy burdens are not for all men. For some they are impossible. These are my thoughts about it, if you want them so much. If other men would have to answer for your escape, officers or soldiers, then I would not have ‘allowed’ you,” smiled Alyosha. “But they declare — the superintendent of that etape31 told Ivan himself — that if it’s well managed there will be no great inquiry, and that they can get off easily. Of course, bribing is dishonest even in such a case, but I can’t undertake to judge about it, because if Ivan and Katya commissioned me to act for you, I know I should go and give bribes. I must tell you the truth. And so I can’t judge of your own action. But let me assure you that I shall never condemn you. And it would be a strange thing if I could judge you in this. Now I think I’ve gone into everything.”
31 Stockade.
“But I do condemn myself!” cried Mitya. “I shall escape, that was settled apart from you; could Mitya Karamazov do anything but run away? But I shall condemn myself, and I will pray for my sin for ever. That’s how the Jesuits talk, isn’t it? Just as we are doing?”
“Yes.” Alyosha smiled gently.
“I love you for always telling the whole truth and never hiding anything,” cried Mitya, with a joyful laugh. “So I’ve caught my Alyosha being Jesuitical. I must kiss you for that. Now listen to the rest; I’ll open the other side of my heart to you. This is what I planned and decided. If I run away, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I should be cheered up by the thought that I am not running away for pleasure, not for happiness, but to another exile as bad, perhaps, as Siberia. It is as bad, Alyosha, it is! I hate that America, damn it, already. Even though Grusha will be with me. Just look at her; is she an American? She is Russian, Russian to the marrow of her bones; she will be homesick for the mother country, and I shall see every hour that she is suffering for my sake, that she has taken up that cross for me. And what harm has she done? And how shall I, too, put up with the rabble out there, though they may be better than I, every one of them? I hate that America already! And though they may be wonderful at machi............