But all this could only be on condition of the first, the happy solution of the question.There was another possibility, a different and awful ending.Suddenly she might say to him: "Go away.I have just come to terms with Fyodor Pavlovitch.I am going to marry him and don't want you"- and then...but then...But Mitya did not know what would happen then.Up to the last hour he didn't know.That must be said to his credit.He had no definite intentions, had planned no crime.He was simply watching and spying in agony, while he prepared himself for the first, happy solution of his destiny.He drove away any other idea, in fact.But for that ending a quite different anxiety arose, a new, incidental, but yet fatal and insoluble difficulty presented itself.
If she were to say to him: "I'm yours; take me away," how could he take her away? Where had he the means, the money to do it? It was just at this time that all sources of revenue from Fyodor Pavlovitch, doles which had gone on without interruption for so many years, ceased.
Grushenka had money, of course, but with regard to this Mitya suddenly evinced extraordinary pride; he wanted to carry her away and begin the new life with her himself, at his own expense, not at hers.He could not conceive of taking her money, and the very idea caused him a pang of intense repulsion.I won't enlarge on this fact or analyse it here, but confine myself to remarking that this was his attitude at the moment.All this may have arisen indirectly and unconsciously from the secret stings of his conscience for the money of Katerina Ivanovna that he had dishonestly appropriated."I've been a scoundrel to one of them, and I shall be a scoundrel again to the other directly," was his feeling then, as he explained after: "and when Grushenka knows, she won't care for such a scoundrel."Where then was he to get the means, where was he to get the fateful money? Without it, all would be lost and nothing could be done, "and only because I hadn't the money.Oh, the shame of it!"To anticipate things: he did, perhaps, know where to get the money, knew, perhaps, where it lay at that moment.I will say no more of this here, as it will all be clear later.But his chief trouble, I must explain however obscurely, lay in the fact that to have that sum he knew of, to have the right to take it, he must first restore Katerina Ivanovna's three thousand- if not, "I'm a common pick-pocket, I'm a scoundrel, and I don't want to begin a new life as a scoundrel," Mitya decided.And so he made up his mind to move heaven and earth to return Katerina Ivanovna that three thousand, and that first of all.The final stage of this decision, so to say, had been reached only during the last hours, that is, after his last interview with Alyosha, two days before, on the high-road, on the evening when Grushenka had insulted Katerina Ivanovna, and Mitya, after hearing Alyosha's account of it, had admitted that he was a scoundrel, and told him to tell Katerina Ivanovna so, if it could be any comfort to her.After parting from his brother on that night, he had felt in his frenzy that it would be better "to murder and rob someone than fail to pay my debt to Katya.I'd rather everyone thought me a robber and a murderer; I'd rather go to Siberia than that Katya should have the right to say that I deceived her and stole her money, and used her money to run away with Grushenka and begin a new life! That I can't do!" So Mitya decided, grinding his teeth, and he might well fancy at times that his brain would give way.But meanwhile he went on struggling....
Strange to say, though one would have supposed there was nothing left for him but despair- for what chance had he, with nothing in the world, to raise such a sum?- yet to the very end he persisted in hoping that he would get that three thousand, that the money would somehow come to him of itself, as though it might drop from heaven.
That is just how it is with people who, like Dmitri, have never had anything to do with money, except to squander what has come to them by inheritance without any effort of their own, and have no notion how money is obtained.A whirl of the most fantastic notions took possession of his brain immediately after he had parted with Alyosha two days before, and threw his thoughts into a tangle of confusion.
This is how it was he pitched first on a perfectly wild enterprise.
And perhaps to men of that kind in such circumstances the most impossible, fantastic schemes occur first, and seem most practical.
He suddenly determined to go to Samsonov, the merchant who was Grushenka's protector, and to propose a "scheme" to him, and by means of it to obtain from him at once the whole of the sum required.Of the commercial value of his scheme he had no doubt, not the slightest, and was only uncertain how Samsonov would look upon his freak, supposing he were to consider it from any but the commercial point of view.Though Mitya knew the merchant by sight, he was not acquainted with him and had never spoken a word to him.But for some unknown reason he had long entertained the conviction that the old reprobate, who was lying at death's door, would perhaps not at all object now to Grushenka's securing a respectable position, and marrying a man "to be depended upon." And he believed not only that he would not object, but that this was what he desired, and, if opportunity arose, that he would be ready to help.From some rumour, or perhaps from some stray word of Grushenka's, he had gathered further that the old man would perhaps prefer him to Fyodor Pavlovitch for Grushenka.
