Possibly many of the readers of my novel will feel that in reckoning on such assistance, and being ready to take his bride, so to speak, from the hands of her protector, Dmitri showed great coarseness and want of delicacy.I will only observe that Mitya looked upon Grushenka's past as something completely over.He looked on that past with infinite pity and resolved with all the fervour of his passion that when once Grushenka told him she loved him and would marry him, it would mean the beginning of a new Grushenka and a new Dmitri, free from every vice.They would forgive one another and would begin their lives afresh.As for Kuzma Samsonov, Dmitri looked upon him as a man who had exercised a fateful influence in that remote past of Grushenka's, though she had never loved him, and who was now himself a thing of the past, completely done with, and, so to say, non-existent.Besides, Mitya hardly looked upon him as a man at all, for it was known to everyone in the town that he was only a shattered wreck, whose relations with Grushenka had changed their character and were now simply paternal, and that this had been so for a long time.
In any case there was much simplicity on Mitya's part in all this, for in spite of all his vices, he was a very simple-hearted man.It was an instance of this simplicity that Mitya was seriously persuaded that, being on the eve of his departure for the next world, old Kuzma must sincerely repent of his past relations with Grushenka, and that she had no more devoted friend and protector in the world than this, now harmless, old man.
After his conversation with Alyosha, at the cross-roads, he hardly slept all night, and at ten o'clock next morning, he was at the house of Samsonov and telling the servant to announce him.It was a very large and gloomy old house of two stories, with a lodge and outhouses.In the lower story lived Samsonov's two married sons with their families, his old sister, and his unmarried daughter.In the lodge lived two of his clerks, one of whom also had a large family.
Both the lodge and the lower story were overcrowded, but the old man kept the upper floor to himself, and would not even let the daughter live there with him, though she waited upon him, and in spite of her asthma was obliged at certain fixed hours, and at any time he might call her, to run upstairs to him from below.
This upper floor contained a number of large rooms kept purely for show, furnished in the old-fashioned merchant style, with long monotonous rows of clumsy mahogany chairs along the walls, with glass chandeliers under shades, and gloomy mirrors on the walls.All these rooms were entirely empty and unused, for the old man kept to one room, a small, remote bedroom, where he was waited upon by an old servant with a kerchief on her head, and by a lad, who used to sit on the locker in the passage.Owing to his swollen legs, the old man could hardly walk at all, and was only rarely lifted from his leather armchair, when the old woman supporting him led him up and down the room once or twice.He was morose and taciturn even with this old woman.
When he was informed of the arrival of the "captain," he at once refused to see him.But Mitya persisted and sent his name up again.
Samsonov questioned the lad minutely: What he looked like? Whether he was drunk? Was he going to make a row? The answer he received was: that he was sober, but wouldn't go away.The old man again refused to see him.Then Mitya, who had foreseen this, and purposely brought pencil and paper with him, wrote clearly on the piece of paper the words: "On most important business closely concerning Agrafena Alexandrovna," and sent it up to the old man.
After thinking a little Samsonov told the lad to take the visitor to the drawing-room, and sent the old woman downstairs with a summons to his younger son to come upstairs to him at once.This younger son, a man over six foot and of exceptional physical strength, who was closely-shaven and dressed in the European style, though his father still wore a kaftan and a beard, came at once without a comment.All the family trembled before the father.The old man had sent for this giant, not because he was afraid of the "captain" (he was by no means of a timorous temper), but in order to have a witness in case of any emergency.Supported by his son and the servant lad, he waddled at last into the drawing-room.It may be assumed that he felt considerable curiosity.The drawing-room in which Mitya was awaiting him was a vast, dreary room that laid a weight of depression on the heart.It had a double row of windows, a gallery, marbled walls, and three immense chandeliers with glass lustres covered with shades.
Mitya was sitting on a little chair at the entrance, awaiting his fate with nervous impatience.When the old man appeared at the opposite door, seventy feet away, Mitya jumped up at once, and with his long, military stride walked to meet him.Mitya was well dressed, in a frock-coat, buttoned up, with a round hat and black gloves in his hands, just as he had been three days before at the elder's, at the family meeting with his father and brothers.The old man waited for him, standing dignified and unbending, and Mitya felt at once that he had looked him through and through as he advanced.
Mitya was greatly impressed, too, with Samsonov's immensely swollen face.His lower lip, which had always been thick, hung down now, looking like a bun.He bowed to his guest in dignified silence, motioned him to a low chair by the sofa, and, leaning on his son's arm he began lowering himself on to the sofa opposite, groaning painfully, so that Mitya, seeing his painful exertions, immediately felt remorseful and sensitively conscious of his insignificance in the presence of the dignified person he had ventured to disturb.
"What is it you want of me, sir?" said the old man, deliberately, distinctly, severely, but courteously, when he was at last seated.