Mitya went on standing, staring fixedly at the old man, and suddenly noticed a slight movement in his face. He gave a start. “You see, sir, such business is not in our line,” the old man said slowly, “there would be courts, lawyers, all kinds of trouble! But there is a man for that, if you like you can try him...”
“My God, who is he...! You’re my resurrection, Kuzma Kuzmich,” Mitya began babbling suddenly.
“He’s not a local man, the one I mean, and he’s not here now. He’s from peasants, he trades in timber, he’s called Lyagavy.[235] He’s been bargaining for a year with Fyodor Pavlovich over that woodlot in Chermashnya, but they can’t agree on a price, as perhaps you’ve heard. Now he’s come back again and is staying with the priest in Ilyinskoye, about eight miles or so from Volovya station, in the village of Ilyinskoye. He also wrote here, to me, about the same business—that is, concerning the woodlot—asking my advice. Fyodor Pavlovich himself wants to go and see him. So if you were to get there ahead of Fyodor Pavlovich, and make Lyagavy the same offer you made me, he might just ...”
“A brilliant idea!” Mitya interrupted ecstatically. “It’s made for him, just made for him! He’s bargaining, the price is too high, and here is this document of ownership just made for him, ha, ha, ha!” Mitya burst into his clipped, wooden laugh, so unexpectedly that even Samsonov jerked his head.
“How can I thank you, Kuzma Kuzmich,” Mitya was bubbling over.
“It’s nothing, sir,” Samsonov inclined his head.
“But you don’t realize, you’ve saved me, oh, I was drawn to you by some presentiment ... And so, off to that priest!”
“No thanks are necessary, sir.”
“I hasten, I fly! I’ve abused your health. I will remember it always—it’s a Russian man saying it to you, Kuzma Kuzmich, a R-r-russian man!”
“Well, sir.”
Mitya seized his hand to shake it, but something malicious flashed in the old man’s eyes. Mitya drew his hand back, and at once reproached himself for his suspicion. “He must be tired ... ,” flashed through his mind.
“For her! For her, Kuzma Kuzmich! You understand it’s for her!” he roared suddenly to the rafters, then bowed, turned around sharply, and with the same long, quick strides walked to the door without looking back. He was trembling with delight. “Everything was on the verge of ruin, and my guardian angel saved me,” raced through his mind. “And if such a businessman as this old man (a most honorable old man, and what bearing! ) has pointed out this course, then ... then this course must surely be a winner. I’ll fly immediately. I’ll be back before nightfall, by nightfall, but the thing will be won. Can the old man have been laughing at me?” Thus Mitya exclaimed, striding back to his lodgings, and of course to his mind it could not have appeared otherwise; that is, either it was businesslike advice, and from such a businessman, who knows business and knows this Lyagavy (strange name!), or—or the old man was laughing at him! Alas! only the second of these thoughts was true. Later, much later, when the whole catastrophe had already taken place, old Samsonov himself admitted, laughing, that he had made a fool of the “captain.” This was a spiteful, cold, and sarcastic man, full of morbid antipathies as well. Whether it was the rapturous look of the captain, the foolish conviction of this “wastrel and spendthrift” that he, Samsonov, might fall for something as wild as his “plan,” or jealousy over Grushenka, in whose name this “madcap” came with such a wild thing, asking for money—I cannot say what precisely prompted the old man at the time, but when Mitya stood before him, feeling his legs give way, and exclaimed senselessly that he was done for—-at that moment the old man looked upon him with boundless spite and decided to make a fool of him. Once Mitya had left, Kuzma Kuzmich, livid with spite, turned to his son and told him to give orders that not a hair of that ragamuffin was to be seen in the future, that he was not even to be allowed into the yard, or else . . .
He did not finish his threat, but even his son, who had often seen him angry, jumped in fear. For a whole hour afterwards the old man was even shaking all over with spite, and by evening he had fallen ill and sent for a “leech.”
Chapter 2:
