“Why on the way? Decide now. Decide, my dear! Make the deal, write me two lines, give the note to the priest, and he’ll send it to me at once. Then off to Venice—I won’t keep you any longer. The priest will deliver you to the Volovya station with his own horses ...”
The old man was simply delighted; he scribbled the note, the horses were sent for, cognac was served with a bite to eat. When the old man was pleased, he always became effusive, but this time he restrained himself, as it were. For instance, he did not say a single word about Dmitri Fyodorovich. And he was quite unmoved by the parting. He even seemed to have run out of things to talk about, and Ivan Fyodorovich was very much aware of it: “He’s sick of me really,” he thought to himself. Only when they were already saying good-bye on the porch did the old man begin to flutter about, as it were, and try to start kissing. But Ivan Fyodorovich quickly gave him his hand to shake, obviously backing away from the kisses. The old man understood at once and immediately checked himself.
“Well, God be with you, God be with you!” he kept repeating from the porch. “Will you come back again in this lifetime? Well, do come, I’ll always be glad to see you. Well, so Christ be with you!”
Ivan Fyodorovich got into the carriage.
“Farewell, Ivan! Don’t hold any grudges!” the father cried for the last time.
The whole household came out to see him off: Smerdyakov, Marfa, and Grigory. Ivan Fyodorovich presented each of them with ten roubles. When he was already seated in the carriage, Smerdyakov ran up to straighten the rug.
“You see ... I’m going to Chermashnya ... ,” somehow suddenly escaped from Ivan Fyodorovich; again, as the day before, it flew out by itself, accompanied by a kind of nervous chuckle. He kept remembering it for a long time afterwards.
“So it’s true what they say, that it’s always interesting to talk with an intelligent man,” Smerdyakov replied firmly, giving Ivan Fyodorovich a penetrating look.
The carriage started and raced off. All was vague in the traveler’s soul, but he greedily looked around him at the fields, the hills, the trees, a flock of geese flying high above him in the clear sky. Suddenly he felt so well. He tried to strike up a conversation with the coachman, and found something in the peasant’s reply terribly interesting, but a moment later he realized that it had all flown over his head and, in fact, he had not understood what the peasant had replied. He fell silent; it was good just as it was: clean, fresh, cool air; a clear sky. The images of Alyosha and Katerina Ivanovna flashed through his mind; but he gently smiled and gently blew at the dear shadows, and they flew away: “Their time will come,” he thought. They covered the distance to the next station quickly, changed horses, and raced on to Volovya. “Why is it interesting to talk with an intelligent man? What did he mean by that?” the thought suddenly took his breath away. “And why did I report to him that I was going to Chermashnya?” They pulled up at the Volovya station. Ivan Fyodorovich got out of the carriage and was surrounded by coachmen. They haggled over the ride to Chermashnya, eight miles by country road, in a hired carriage. He told them to harness up. He went into the station house, looked around, glanced at the stationmaster’s wife, and suddenly walked back out on the porch.
“Forget about Chermashnya, brothers. Am I too late to get to the railway by seven o’clock?”
“We’ll just make it. Shall we harness up?”
“At once. Will one of you be in town tomorrow?”
“Yes, sure, Mitri here will be.”
“Can you do me a favor, Mitri? Stop and see my father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, and tell him that I didn’t go to Chermashnya. Can you do that?”
“Why not? I’ll stop by. I’ve known Fyodor Pavlovich for a long time.”
“Here’s a tip for you; I don’t suppose you’ll get anything from him ... ,” Ivan Fyodorovich laughed gaily.
“True enough, I won’t,” Mitri laughed, too. “Thank you, sir, I’ll be sure to do it...”
At seven o’clock in the evening Ivan Fyodorovich boarded the train and flew towards Moscow. “Away with all the past, I’m through with the old world forever, and may I never hear another word or echo from it; to the new world, to new places, and no looking back!” But instead of delight, such darkness suddenly descended on his soul, and such grief gnawed at his heart, as he had never known before in the whole of his life. He sat thinking all night; the train flew on, and only at daybreak, entering Moscow, did he suddenly come to, as it were.
“I am a scoundrel,” he whispered to himself.
