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 come on him at the moment he was decending the steps, so that he must have fallen unconscious, or whether it was the fall and the shock that had caused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was known to be liable to them. They found him at the bottom of the cellar steps, writhing in convulsions and foaming at the mouth.
It was thought at first that he must have broken something- an arm or a leg- and hurt himself, but "God had preserved him," as Marfa Ignatyevna expressed it- nothing of the kind had happened. But it was difficult to get him out of the cellar.
They asked the neighbours to help and managed it somehow.
Fyodor Pavlovitch himself was present at the whole ceremony. He helped, evidently alarmed and upset.
The sick man did not regain consciousness; the convulsions ceased for a time, but then began again, and everyone concluded that the same thing would happen, as had happened a year before, when he accidently fell from the garret.
They remembered that ice been put on his head then.
There was still ice in the cellar, and Marfa Ignatyevna had some brought up. In the evening, Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for Doctor Herzenstube, who arrived at once.
He was a most estimable old man, and the most careful and conscientious doctor in the province. After careful examination, he concluded that the fit was a very violent one and might have serious consequences; that meanwhile he, Herzenstube, did not fully understand it, but that by to-morrow morning, if the present remedies were unavailing, he would venture to try something else.
The invalid was taken to the lodge, to a room next to Grigory's and Marfa Ignatyevna's.
Then Fyodor Pavlovitch had one misfortune after another to put up with that day. Marfa Ignatyevna cooked the dinner, and the soup, compared with Smerdyakov's, was "no better than dish-water," and the fowl was so dried up that it was impossible to masticate it.
To her master's bitter, though deserved, reproaches, Marfa Ignatyevna replied that the fowl was a very old one to begin with, and that she had never been trained as a cook.
In the evening there was another trouble in store for Fyodor Pavlovitch; he was informed that Grigory, who had not been well for the last three days, was completely laid up by his lumbago.
Fyodor Pavlovitch finished his tea as early as possible and locked himself up alone in the house.
He was in terrible excitement and suspense.
That evening he reckoned on Grushenka's coming almost as a certainty. He had received from Smerdyakov that morning an assurance "that she had promised to come without fail."
The incorrigible old man's heart throbbed with excitement; he paced up and down his empty rooms listening.
He had to be on the alert. Dmitri might be on the watch for her somewhere, and when she knocked on the window (Smerdyakov had informed him two days before that he had told her where and how to knock) the door must be opened at once. She must not be a second in the passage, for fear which God forbid!- that she should be frightened and run away.
Fyodor Pavlovitch had much to think of, but never had his heart been steeped in such voluptuous hopes. This time he could say almost certainly that she would come!
Book VI.
The Russian Monk.
Chapter 1.
Father Zossima and His Visitors
WHEN with an anxious and aching heart Alyosha went into his elder's cell, he stood still almost astonished. Instead of a sick man at his last gasp, perhaps unconscious, as he had feared to find him, he saw him sitting up in his chair and, though weak and exhausted, his face was bright and cheerful, he was surrounded by visitors and engaged in a quiet and joyful conversation.
But he had only got up from his bed a quarter of an hour before Alyosha's arrival; his visitors had gathered together in his cell earlier, waiting for him to wake, having received a most confident assurance from Father Paissy that "the teacher would get up, and as he had himself promised in the morning, converse once more with those dear to his heart."
This promise and indeed every word of the dying elder Father Paissy put implicit trust in. If he had seen him unconscious, if he had seen him breathe his last, and yet had his promise that he would rise up and say good-bye to him, he would not have believed perhaps even in death, but would still have expected the dead man to recover and fulfil his promise.
In the morning as he lay down to sleep, Father Zossima had told him positively:
"I shall not die without the delight of another conversation with you, beloved of my heart. I shall look once more on your dear face and pour out my heart to you once again."
The monks, who had gathered for this probably last conversation with Father Zossima, had all been his devoted friends for many years.
There were four of them: Father Iosif and Father Paissy, Father Mihail the warden of the hermitage, a man not very old and far from being learned. He was of humble origin, of strong will and steadfast faith, of austere appearance, but of deep tenderness, though he obviously concealed it as though he were almost ashamed of it.
The fourth, Father Anfim, was a very old and humble little monk of the poorest peasant class. He was almost illiterate, and very quiet, scarcely speaking to anyone. He was the humblest of the humble, and looked as though he had been frightened by something great and awful beyond the scope of his intelligence.
Father Zossima had a great affection for this timorous man, and always treated him with marked respect, though perhaps there was no one he had known to whom he had said less, in spite of the fact that he had spent years wandering about holy Russia with him.
That was very long ago, forty years before, when Father Zossima first began his life as a monk in a poor and little monastery at Kostroma, and when, shortly after, he had accompanied Father Anfim on his pilgrimage to collect alms for their poor monastery.
The whole party were in the bedroom which, as we mentioned before, was very small, so that there was scarcely room for the four of them (in addition to Porfiry, the novice, who stood) to sit round Father Zossima on chairs brought from the sitting room.
It was already beginning to get dark, the room was lighted up by the lamps and the candles before the ikons.
Seeing Alyosha standing embarrassed in the doorway, Father Zossima smiled at him joyfully and held out his hand.
"Welcome, my quiet one, welcome, my dear, here you are too.
I knew you would come."
Alyosha went up to him, bowed down before him to the ground and wept.
Something surged up from his heart, his soul was quivering, he wanted to sob.
"Come, don't weep over me yet," Father Zossima smiled, laying his right hand on his head. "You see I am sitting up talking; maybe I shall live another twenty years yet, as that dear good woman from Vishegorye, with her little Lizaveta in her arms, wished me yesterday.
God bless the mother and the little girl Lizaveta," he crossed himself. "Porfiry, did you take her offering where I told you?"
He meant the sixty copecks brought him the day before by the good-humoured woman to be given "to someone poorer than me."
Such offerings, always of money gained by personal toil, are made by way of penance voluntarily undertaken.
The elder had sent Porfiry the evening before to a widow, whose house had been burnt down lately, and who after the fire had gone with her children begging alms.
Porfiry hastened to reply that he had given the money, as he had been instructed, "from an unknown benefactress."
"Get up, my dear boy," the elder went on to Alyosha. "Let me look at you.