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Title: Under Western Eyes
Author: Joseph Conrad
Official Release Date: January, 2001 [Etext #2480]
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UNDER WESTERN EYES
by JOSEPH CONRAD
"I would take liberty from any hand as a hungry man would snatch
a piece of bread."
Miss HALDIN
PART FIRST
To begin with I wish to disclaim the possession of those high gifts
of imagination and expression which would have enabled my pen to
create for the reader the personality of the man who called himself,
after the Russian custom, Cyril son of Isidor--Kirylo Sidorovitch--
Razumov.
If I have ever had these gifts in any sort of
living form they have been smothered out of
existence a long time ago under a wilderness of
words. Words, as is well known, are the great
foes of reality. I have been for many years a
teacher of languages. It is an occupation which
at length becomes fatal to whatever share of
imagination, observation, and insight an
ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of
languages there comes a time when the world is
but a place of many words and man appears a mere
talking animal not much more wonderful than a
parrot.
This being so, I could not have observed Mr.
Razumov or guessed at his reality by the force
of insight, much less have imagined him as he
was. Even to invent the mere bald facts of his
life would have been utterly beyond my powers.
But I think that without this declaration the
readers of these pages will be able to detect in
the story the marks of documentary evidence.
And that is perfectly correct. It is based on a
document; all I have brought to it is my
knowledge of the Russian language, which is
sufficient for what is attempted here. The
document, of course, is something in the nature
of a journal, a diary, yet not exactly that in
its actual form. For instance, most of it was
not written up from day to day, though all the
entries are dated. Some of these entries cover
months of time and extend over dozens of pages.
All the earlier part is a retrospect, in a
narrative form, relating to an event which took
place about a year before.
I must mention that I have lived for a long time
in Geneva. A whole quarter of that town, on
account of many Russians residing there, is
called La Petite Russie--Little Russia. I had a
rather extensive connexion in Little Russia at
that time. Yet I confess that I have no
comprehension of the Russian character. The
illogicality of their attitude, the
arbitrariness of their conclusions, the
frequency of the exceptional, should present no
difficulty to a student of many grammars; but
there must be something else in the way, some
special human trait--one of those subtle
differences that are beyond the ken of mere
professors. What must remain striking to a
teacher of languages is the Russians'
extraordinary love of words. They gather them
up; they cherish them, but they don't hoard them
in their breasts; on the contrary, they are
always ready to pour them out by the hour or by
the night with an enthusiasm, a sweeping
abundance, with such an aptness of application
sometimes that, as in the case of very
accomplished parrots, one can't defend oneself
from the suspicion that they really understand
what they say. There is a generosity in their
ardour of speech which removes it as far as
possible from common loquacity; and it is ever
too disconnected to be classed as eloquence. . .
. But I must apologize for this digression.
It would be idle to inquire why Mr. Razumov has
left this record behind him. It is
inconceivable that he should have wished any
human eye to see it. A mysterious impulse of
human nature comes into play here. Putting
aside Samuel Pepys, who has forced in this way
the door of immortality, innumerable people,
criminals, saints, philosophers, young girls,
statesmen, and simple imbeciles, have kept self-
revealing records from vanity no doubt, but also
from other more inscrutable motives. There must
be a wonderful soothing power in mere words
since so many men have used them for self-
communion. Being myself a quiet individual I
take it that what all men are really after is
some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
Certainly they are crying loud enough for it at
the present day. What sort of peace Kirylo
Sidorovitch Razumov expected to find in the
writing up of his record it passeth my
understanding to guess.
The fact remains that he has written it.
Mr. Razumov was a tall, well-proportioned young
man, quite unusually dark for a Russian from the
Central Provinces. His good looks would have
been unquestionable if it had not been for a
peculiar lack of fineness in the features. It
was as if a face modelled vigorously in wax
(with some approach even to a classical
correctness of type) had been held close to a
fire till all sharpness of line had been lost in
the softening of the material. But even thus he
was sufficiently good-looking. His manner, too,
was good. In discussion he was easily swayed by
argument and authority. With his younger
compatriots he took the attitude of an
inscrutable listener, a listener of the kind
that hears you out intelligently and then--just
changes the subject.
This sort of trick, which may arise either from
intellectual insufficiency or from an imperfect
trust in one's own convictions, procured for Mr.
Razumov a reputation of profundity. Amongst a
lot of exuberant talkers, in the habit of
exhausting themselves daily by ardent
discussion, a comparatively taciturn personality
is naturally credited with reserve power. By
his comrades at the St. Petersburg University,
Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov, third year's student
in philosophy, was looked upon as a strong
nature--an altogether trustworthy man. This, in
a country where an opinion may be a legal crime
visited by death or sometimes by a fate worse
than mere death, meant that he was worthy of
being trusted with forbidden opinions. He was
liked also for his amiability and for his quiet
readiness to oblige his comrades even at the
cost of personal inconvenience.
Mr. Razumov was supposed to be the son of an
Archpriest and to be protected by a
distinguished nobleman--perhaps of his own
distant province. But his outward appearance
accorded badly with such humble origin. Such a
descent was not credible. It was, indeed,
suggested that Mr. Razumov was the son of an
Archpriest's pretty daughter--which, of course,
would put a different complexion on the matter.
This theory also rendered intelligible the
protection of the distinguished nobleman. All
this, however, had never been investigated
maliciously or otherwise. No one knew or cared
who the nobleman in question was. Razumov
received a modest but very sufficient allowance
from the hands of an obscure attorney, who
seemed to act as his guardian in some measure.
Now and then he appeared at some professor's
informal reception. Apart from that Razumov was
not known to have any social relations in the
town. He attended the obligatory lectures
regularly and was considered by the authorities
as a very promising student. He worked at home
in the manner of a man who means to get on, but
did not shut himself up severely for that
purpose. He was always accessible, and there
was nothing secret or reserved in his life.
I
The origin of Mr. Razumov's record is connected
with an event characteristic of modern Russia in
the actual fact: the assassination of a
prominent statesman--and still more
characteristic of the moral corruption of an
oppressed society where the noblest aspirations
of humanity, the desire of freedom, an ardent
patriotism, the love of justice, the sense of
pity, and even the fidelity of simple minds are
prostituted to the lusts of hate and fear, the
inseparable companions of an uneasy despotism.
The fact alluded to above is the successful
attempt on the life of Mr. de P---, the
President of the notorious Repressive Commission
of some years ago, the Minister of State
invested with extraordinary powers. The
newspapers made noise enough about that
fanatical, narrow-chested figure in gold-laced
uniform, with a face of crumpled parchment,
insipid, bespectacled eyes, and the cross of the
Order of St. Procopius hung under the skinny
throat. For a time, it may be remembered, not a
month passed without his portrait appearing in
some one of the illustrated papers of Europe.
He served the monarchy by imprisoning, exiling,
or sending to the gallows men and women, young
and old, with an equable, unwearied industry.
In his mystic acceptance of the principle of
autocracy he was bent on extirpating from the
land every vestige of anything that resembled
freedom in public institutions; and in his
ruthless persecution of the rising generation he
seemed to aim at the destruction of the very
hope of liberty itself.
It is said that this execrated personality had
not enough imagination to be aware of the hate
he inspired. It is hardly credible; but it is a
fact that he took very few precautions for his
safety. In the preamble of a certain famous
State paper he had declared once that "the
thought of liberty has never existed in the Act
of the Creator. From the multitude of men's
counsel nothing could come but revolt and
disorder; and revolt and disorder in a world
created for obedience and stability is sin. It
was not Reason but Authority which expressed the
Divine Intention. God was the Autocrat of the
Universe. . . ." It may be that the man who
made this declaration believed that heaven
itself was bound to protect him in his
remorseless defence of Autocracy on this earth.
No doubt the vigilance of the police saved him
many times; but, as a matter of fact, when his
appointed fate overtook him, the competent
authorities could not have given him any
warning. They had no knowledge of any
conspiracy against the Minister's life, had no
hint of any plot through their usual channels of
information, had seen no signs, were aware of no
suspicious movements or dangerous persons.
Mr. de P--- was being driven towards the railway
station in a two-horse uncovered sleigh with
footman and coachman on the box. Snow had been
falling all night, making the roadway, uncleared
as yet at this early hour, very heavy for the
horses. It was still falling thickly. But the
sleigh must have been observed and marked down.
As it drew over to the left before taking a
turn, the footman noticed a peasant walking
slowly on the edge of the pavement with his
hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat and
his shoulders hunched up to his ears under the
falling snow. On being overtaken this peasant
suddenly faced about and swung his arm. In an
instant there was a terrible shock, a detonation
muffled in the multitude of snowflakes; both
horses lay dead and mangled on the ground and
the coachman, with a shrill cry, had fallen off
the box mortally wounded. The footman (who
survived) had no time to see the face of the man
in the sheepskin coat. After throwing the bomb
this last got away, but it is supposed that,
seeing a lot of people surging up on all sides
of him in the falling snow, and all running
towards the scene of the explosion, he thought
it safer to turn back with them.
In an incredibly short time an excited crowd
assembled round the sledge. The Minister-
President, getting out unhurt into the deep
snow, stood near the groaning coachman and
addressed the people repeatedly in his weak,
colourless voice: "I beg of you to keep off:
For the love of God, I beg of you good people to
keep off."
It was then that a tall young man who had
remained standing perfectly still within a
carriage gateway, two houses lower down, stepped
out into the street and walking up rapidly flung
another bomb over the heads of the crowd. It
actually struck the Minister-President on the
shoulder as he stooped over his dying servant,
then falling between his feet exploded with a
terrific concentrated violence, striking him
dead to the ground, finishing the wounded man
and practically annihilating the empty sledge in
the twinkling of an eye. With a yell of horror
the crowd broke up and fled in all directions,
except for those who fell dead or dying where
they stood nearest to the Minister-President,
and one or two others who did not fall till they
had run a little way.
The first explosion had brought together a crowd
as if by enchantment, the second made as swiftly
a solitude in the street for hundreds of yards
in each direction. Through the falling snow
people looked from afar at the small heap of
dead bodies lying upon each other near the
carcases of the two horses. Nobody dared to
approach till some Cossacks of a street-patrol
galloped up and, dismounting, began to turn over
the dead. Amongst the innocent victims of the
second explosion laid out on the pavement there
was a body dressed in a peasant's sheepskin
coat; but the face was unrecognisable, there was
absolutely nothing found in the pockets of its
poor clothing, and it was the only one whose
identity was never established.
That day Mr. Razumov got up at his usual hour
and spent the morning within the University
buildings listening to the lectures and working
for some time in the library. He heard the
first vague rumour of something in the way of
bomb-throwing at the table of the students'
ordinary, where he was accustomed to eat his two
o'clock dinner. But this rumour was made up of
mere whispers, and this was Russia, where it was
not always safe, for a student especially, to
appear too much interested in certain kinds of
whispers. Razumov was one of those men who,
living in a period of mental and political
unrest, keep an instinctive hold on normal,
practical, everyday life. He was aware of the
emotional tension of his time; he even responded
to it in an indefinite way. But his main
concern was with his work, his studies, and with
his own future.
Officially and in fact without a family (for the
daughter of the Archpriest had long been dead),
no home influences had shaped his opinions or
his feelings. He was as lonely in the world as
a man swimming in the deep sea. The word
Razumov was the mere label of a solitary
individuality. There were no Razumovs belonging
to him anywhere. His closest parentage was
defined in the statement that he was a Russian.
Whatever good he expected from life would be
given to or withheld from his hopes by that
connexion alone. This immense parentage
suffered from the throes of internal
dissensions, and he shrank mentally from the
fray as a good-natured man may shrink from
taking definite sides in a violent family
quarrel.
Razumov, going home, reflected that having
prepared all the matters of the forthcoming
examination, he could now devote his time to the
subject of the prize essay. He hankered after
the silver medal. The prize was offered by the
Ministry of Education; the names of the
competitors would be submitted to the Minister
himself. The mere fact of trying would be
considered meritorious in the higher quarters;
and the possessor of the prize would have a
claim to an administrative appointment of the
better sort after he had taken his degree. The
student Razumov in an access of elation forgot
the dangers menacing the stability of the
institutions which give rewards and
appointments. But remembering the medallist of
the year before, Razumov, the young man of no
parentage, was sobered. He and some others
happened to be assembled in their comrade's
rooms at the very time when that last received
the official advice of his success. He was a
quiet, unassuming young man: " Forgive me," he
had said with a faint apologetic smile and
taking up his cap, " I am going out to order up
some wine. But I must first send a telegram to
my folk at home. I say! Won't the old people
make it a festive time for the neighbours for
twenty miles around our place."
Razumov thought there was nothing of that sort
for him in the world. His success would matter
to no one. But he felt no bitterness against
the nobleman his protector, who was not a
provincial magnate as was generally supposed.
He was in fact nobody less than Prince K---,
once a great and splendid figure in the world
and now, his day being over, a Senator and a
gouty invalid, living in a still splendid but
more domestic manner. He had some young
children and a wife as aristocratic and proud as
himself.
In all his life Razumov was allowed only once to
come into personal contact with the Prince.
It had the air of a chance meeting in the little
attorney's office. One day Razumov, coming in
by appointment, found a stranger standing there--
a tall, aristocratic-looking Personage with
silky, grey sidewhiskers. The bald-headed, sly
little lawyer-fellow called out, "Come in--come
in, Mr. Razumov," with a sort of ironic
heartiness. Then turning deferentially to the
stranger with the grand air, "A ward of mine,
your, Excellency. One of the most promising
students of his faculty in the St. Petersburg
University."
To his intense surprise Razumov saw a white
shapely hand extended to him. He took it in
great confusion (it was soft and passive) and
heard at the same time a condescending murmur in
which he caught only the words "Satisfactory"
and "Persevere." But the most amazing thing of
all was to feel suddenly a distinct pressure of
the white shapely hand just before it was
withdrawn: a light pressure like a secret sign.
The emotion of it was terrible. Razumov's heart
seemed to leap into his throat. When he raised
his eyes the aristocratic personage, motioning
the little lawyer aside, had opened the door and
was going out.
The attorney rummaged amongst the papers on his
desk for a time. "Do you know who that was?" he
asked suddenly.
Razumov, whose heart was thumping hard yet,
shook his head in silence.
"That was Prince K---. You wonder what he could
be doing in the hole of a poor legal rat like
myself--eh? These awfully great people have
their sentimental curiosities like common
sinners. But if I were you, Kirylo
Sidorovitch," he continued, leering and laying a
peculiar emphasis on the patronymic," I wouldn't
boast at large of the introduction. It would
not be prudent, Kirylo Sidorovitch. Oh dear no!
It would be in fact dangerous for your future."
The young man's ears burned like fire; his sight
was dim. "That man!" Razumov was saying to
himself. "He!"
Henceforth it was by this monosyllable that Mr.
Razumov got into the habit of referring mentally
to the stranger with grey silky side-whiskers.
>From that time too, when walking in the more
fashionable quarters, he noted with interest the
magnificent horses and carriages with Prince K---
's liveries on the box. Once he saw the
Princess get out--she was shopping--followed by
two girls, of which one was nearly a head taller
than the other. Their fair hair hung loose down
their backs in the English style; they had merry
eyes, their coats, muffs, and little fur caps
were exactly alike, and their cheeks and noses
were tinged a cheerful pink by the frost. They
crossed the pavement in front of him, and
Razumov went on his way smiling shyly to
himself. "His" daughters. They resembled
"Him." The young man felt a glow of warm
friendliness towards these girls who would never
know of his existence. Presently they would
marry Generals or Kammerherrs and have girls and
boys of their own, who perhaps would be aware of
him as a celebrated old professor, decorated,
possibly a Privy Councillor, one of the glories
of Russia--nothing more!
But a celebrated professor was a somebody.
Distinction would convert the label Razumov into
an honoured name. There was nothing strange in
the student Razumov's wish for distinction. A
man's real life is that accorded to him in the
thoughts of other men by reason of respect or
natural love. Returning home on the day of the
attempt on Mr. de P---'s life Razumov resolved
to have a good try for the silver medal.
Climbing slowly the four flights of the dark,
dirty staircase in the house where he had his
lodgings, he felt confident of success. The
winner's name would be published in the papers
on New Year's Day. And at the thought that "He"
would most probably read it there, Razumov
stopped short on the stairs for an instant, then
went on smiling faintly at his own emotion.
"This is but a shadow," he said to himself," but
the medal is a solid beginning."
With those ideas of industry in his head the
warmth of his room was agreeable and
encouraging. "I shall put in four hours of good
work," he thought. But no sooner had he closed
the door than he was horribly startled. All
black against the usual tall stove of white
tiles gleaming in the dusk, stood a strange
figure, wearing a skirted, close-fitting, brown
cloth coat strapped round the waist, in long
boots, and with a little Astrakhan cap on its
head. It loomed lithe and martial. Razumov was
utterly confounded. It was only when the figure
advancing two paces asked in an untroubled,
grave voice if the outer door was closed that he
regained his power of speech.
"Haldin!. . . Victor Victorovitch!. . . Is
that you? . . . Yes. The outer door is shut
all right. But this is indeed unexpected."
Victor Haldin, a student older than most of his
contemporaries at the University, was not one of
the industrious set. He was hardly ever seen at
lectures; the authorities had marked him as
"restless" and "unsound "--very bad notes. But
he had a great personal prestige with his
comrades and influenced their thoughts. Razumov
had never been intimate with him. They had met
from time to time at gatherings in other
students' houses. They had even had a
discussion together--one of those discussions on
first principles dear to the sanguine minds of
youth.
Razumov wished the man had chosen some other
time to come for a chat. He felt in good trim
to tackle the prize essay. But as Haldin could
not be slightingly dismissed Razumov adopted the
tone of hospitality, asking him to sit down and
smoke.
"Kirylo Sidorovitch," said the other, flinging
off his cap, "we are not perhaps in exactly the
same camp. Your judgment is more philosophical.
You are a man of few words, but I haven't met
anybody who dared to doubt the generosity of
your sentiments. There is a solidity about your
character which cannot exist without courage."
Razumov felt flattered and began to murmur shyly
something about being very glad of his good
opinion, when Haldin raised his hand.
"That is what I was saying to myself," he
continued, "as I dodged in the woodyard down by
the river-side. 'He has a strong character this
young man,' I said to myself. 'He does not
throw his soul to the winds.' Your reserve has
always fascinated me, Kirylo Sidorovitch. So I
tried to remember your address. But look here--
it was a piece of luck. Your dvornik was away
from the gate talking to a sleigh-driver on the
other side of the street. I met no one on the
stairs, not a soul. As I came up to your floor
I caught sight of your landlady coming out of
your rooms. But she did not see me. She
crossed the landing to her own side, and then I
slipped in. I have been here two hours
expecting you to come in every moment."
Razumov had listened in astonishment; but before
he could open his mouth Haldin added, speaking
deliberately," It was I who removed de P---
this morning." Razumov kept down a cry of
dismay. The sentiment of his life being utterly
ruined by this contact with such a crime
expressed itself quaintly by a sort of half-
derisive mental exclamation, "There goes my
silver medal!"
Haldin continued after waiting a while--
"You say nothing, Kirylo Sidorovitch! I
understand your silence. To be sure, I cannot
expect you with your frigid English manner to
embrace me. But never mind your manners. You
have enough heart to have heard the sound of
weeping and gnashing of teeth this man raised in
the land. That would be enough to get over any
philosophical hopes. He was uprooting the
tender plant. He had to be stopped. He was a
dangerous man--a convinced man. Three more
years of his work would have put us back fifty
years into bondage--and look at all the lives
wasted, at all the souls lost in that time."
His curt, self-confident voice suddenly lost its
ring and it was in a dull tone that he added,
"Yes, brother, I have killed him. It's weary
work."
Razumov had sunk into a chair. Every moment he
expected a crowd of policemen to rush in. There
must have been thousands of them out looking for
that man walking up and down in his room.
Haldin was talking again in a restrained, steady
voice. Now and then he flourished an arm,
slowly, without excitement.
He told Razumov how he had brooded for a year;
how he had not slept properly for weeks. He and
"Another " had a warning of the Minister's
movements from "a certain person" late the
evening before. He and that "Another" prepared
their "engines" and resolved to have no sleep
till "the deed" was done. They walked the
streets under the falling snow with the
"engines" on them, exchanging not a word the
livelong night. When they happened to meet a
police patrol they took each other by the arm
and pretended to be a couple of peasants on the
spree. They reeled and talked in drunken hoarse
voices. Except for these strange outbreaks they
kept silence, moving on ceaselessly. Their
plans had been previously arranged. At daybreak
they made their way to the spot which they knew
the sledge must pass. When it appeared in sight
they exchanged a muttered good-bye and
separated. The "other" remained at the corner,
Haldin took up a position a little farther up
the street. . . .
After throwing his "engine" he ran off and in a
moment was overtaken by the panic-struck people
flying away from the spot after the second
explosion. They were wild with terror. He was
jostled once or twice. He slowed down for the
rush to pass him and then turned to the left
into a narrow street. There he was alone.
He marvelled at this immediate escape. The work
was done. He could hardly believe it. He
fought with an almost irresistible longing to
lie down on the pavement and sleep. But this
sort of faintness--a drowsy faintness--passed
off quickly. He walked faster, making his way
to one of the poorer parts of the town in order
to look up Ziemianitch.
This Ziemianitch, Razumov understood, was a sort
of town-peasant who had got on; owner of a small
number of sledges and horses for hire. Haldin
paused in his narrative to exclaim--
"A bright spirit ! A hardy soul! The best driver
in St. Petersburg. He has a team of three
horses there. . . . Ah! He's a fellow!"
This man had declared himself willing to take
out safely, at any time, one or two persons to
the second or third railway station on one of
the southern lines. But there had been no time
to warn him the night before. His usual haunt
seemed to be a low-class eating-house on the
outskirts of the town. When Haldin got there
the man was not to be found. He was not
expected to turn up again till the evening.
Haldin wandered away restlessly.
He saw the gate of a woodyard open and went in
to get out of the wind which swept the bleak
broad thoroughfare. The great rectangular piles
of cut wood loaded with snow resembled the huts
of a village. At first the watchman who
discovered him crouching amongst them talked in
a friendly manner. He was a dried-up old man
wearing two ragged army coats one over the
other; his wizened little face, tied up under
the jaw and over the ears in a dirty red
handkerchief, looked comical. Presently he grew
sulky, and then all at once without rhyme or
reason began to shout furiously.
"Aren't you ever going to clear out of this, you
loafer ? We know all about factory hands of
your sort. A big, strong, young chap! You
aren't even drunk. What do you want here? You
don't frighten us. Take yourself and your ugly
eyes away."
Haldin stopped before the sitting Razumov. His
supple figure, with the white forehead above
which the fair hair stood straight up, had an
aspect of lofty daring.
" He did not like my eyes," he said. "And so. .
.here I am."
Razumov made an effort to speak calmly.
"But pardon me, Victor Victorovitch. We know
each other so little. . . . I don't see why you
. . . ."
" Confidence," said Haldin.
This word sealed Razumov's lips as if a hand had
been clapped on his mouth. His brain seethed
with arguments
"And so--here you are," he muttered through his
teeth.
The other did not detect the tone of anger.
Never suspected it.
"Yes. And nobody knows I am here. You are the
last person that could be suspected--should I
get caught. That's an advantage, you see. And
then--speaking to a superior mind like yours I
can well say all the truth. It occurred to me
that you--you have no one belonging to you--no
ties, no one to suffer for it if this came out
by some means. There have been enough ruined
Russian homes as it is. But I don't see how my
passage through your rooms can be ever known.
If I should be got hold of, I'll know how to
keep silent--no matter what they may be pleased
to do to me," he added grimly.
He began to walk again while Razumov sat still
appalled.
"You thought that--" he faltered out almost sick
with indignation.
"Yes, Razumov. Yes, brother. Some day you
shall help to build. You suppose that I am a
terrorist, now--a destructor of what is, But
consider that the true destroyers are they who
destroy the spirit of progress and truth, not
the avengers who merely kill the bodies of the
persecutors of human dignity. Men like me are
necessary to make room for self-contained,
thinking men like you. Well, we have made the
sacrifice of our lives, but all the same I want
to escape if it can be done. It is not my life
I want to save, but my power to do. I won't
live idle. Oh no! Don't make any mistake,
Razumov. Men like me are rare. And, besides,
an example like this is more awful to oppressors
when the perpetrator vanishes without a trace.
They sit in their offices and palaces and quake.
All I want you to do is to help me to vanish.
No great matter that. Only to go by and by and
see Ziemianitch for me at that place where I
went this morning. Just tell him, 'He whom you
know wants a well-horsed sledge to pull up half
an hour after midnight at the seventh lamp-post
on the left counting from the upper end of
Karabelnaya. If nobody gets in, the sledge is
to run round a block or two, so as to come back
past the same spot in ten minutes' time.' "
Razumov wondered why he had not cut short that
talk and told this man to go away long before.
Was it weakness or what?
He concluded that it was a sound instinct.
Haldin must have been seen. It was impossible
that some people should not have noticed the
face and appearance of the man who threw the
second bomb. Haldin was a noticeable person.
The police in their thousands must have had his
description within the hour. With every moment
the danger grew. Sent out to wander in the
streets he could not escape being caught in the
end.
The police would very soon find out all about
him. They would set about discovering a
conspiracy. Everybody Haldin had ever known
would be in the greatest danger. Unguarded
expressions, little facts in themselves innocent
would be counted for crimes. Razumov remembered
certain words he said, the speeches he had
listened to, the harmless gatherings he had
attended--it was almost impossible for a student
to keep out of that sort of thing, without
becoming suspect to his comrades.
Razumov saw himself shut up in a fortress,
worried, badgered, perhaps ill-used. He saw
himself deported by an administrative order, his
life broken, ruined, and robbed of all hope. He
saw himself--at best--leading a miserable
existence under police supervision, in some
small, faraway provincial town, without friends
to assist his necessities or even take any steps
to alleviate his lot--as others had. Others had
fathers, mothers, brothers, relations,
connexions, to move heaven and earth on their
behalf--he had no one. The very officials that
sentenced him some morning would forget his
existence before sunset.
He saw his youth pass away from him in misery
and half starvation--his strength give way, his
mind become an abject thing. He saw himself
creeping, broken down and shabby, about the
streets--dying unattended in some filthy hole of
a room, or on the sordid bed of a Government
hospital.
He shuddered. Then the peace of bitter calmness
came over him. It was best to keep this man out
of the streets till he could be got rid of with
some chance of escaping. That was the best that
could be done. Razumov, of course, felt the
safety of his lonely existence to be permanently
endangered. This evening's doings could turn up
against him at any time as long as this man
lived and the present institutions endured.
They appeared to him rational and indestructible
at that moment. They had a force of harmony--in
contrast with the horrible discord of this man's
presence. He hated the man. He said quietly--
"Yes, of course, I will go. 'You must give me
precise directions, and for the rest--depend on
me."
"Ah! You are a fellow! Collected--cool as a
cucumber. A regular Englishman. Where did you
get your soul from? There aren't many like you.
Look here, brother! Men like me leave no
posterity, but their souls are not lost. No
man's soul is ever lost. It works for itself--
or else where would be the sense of self-
sacrifice, of martyrdom, of conviction, of faith-
-the labours of the soul? What will become of
my soul when I die in the way I must die--soon--
very soon perhaps? It shall not perish. Don't
make a mistake, Razumov. This is not murder--it
is war, war. My spirit shall go on warring in
some Russian body till all falsehood is swept
out of the world. The modern civilization is
false, but a new revelation shall come out of
Russia. Ha! you say nothing. You are a
sceptic. I respect your philosophical
scepticism, Razumov, but don't touch the soul.
The Russian soul that lives in all of us. It
has a future. It has a mission, I tell you, or
else why should I have been moved to do this--
reckless--like a butcher--in the middle of all
these innocent people--scattering death--I! I!
. . . I wouldn't hurt a fly!"
"Not so loud," warned Razumov harshly.
Haldin sat down abruptly, and leaning his head
on his folded arms burst into tears. He wept
for a long time. The dusk had deepened in the
room. Razumov, motionless in sombre wonder,
listened to the sobs.
The other raised his head, got up and with an
effort mastered his voice.
"Yes. Men like me leave no posterity," he
repeated in a subdued tone." I have a sister
though. She's with my old mother--I persuaded
them to go abroad this year--thank God. Not a
bad little girl my sister. She has the most
trustful eyes of any human being that ever
walked this earth. She will marry well, I hope.
She may have children--sons perhaps. Look at
me. My father was a Government official in the
provinces, He had a little land too. A simple
servant of God--a true Russian in his way. His
was the soul of obedience. But I am not like
him. They say I resemble my mother's eldest
brother, an officer. They shot him in '28.
Under Nicholas, you know. Haven't I told you
that this is war, war. . . . But God of
Justice! This is weary work."
Razumov, in his chair, leaning his head on his
hand, spoke as if from the bottom of an abyss.
"You believe in God, Haldin? "
"There you go catching at words that are wrung
from one. What does it matter? What was it the
Englishman said: 'There is a divine soul in
things . . . ' Devil take him--I don't remember
now. But he spoke the truth. When the day of
you thinkers comes don't you forget what's
divine in the Russian soul--and that's
resignation. Respect that in your intellectual
restlessness and don't let your arrogant wisdom
spoil its message to the world. I am speaking
to you now like a man with a rope round his
neck. What do you imagine I am? A being in
revolt? No. It's you thinkers who are in
everlasting revolt. I am one of the resigned.
When the necessity of this heavy work came to me
and I understood that it had to be done--what
did I do? Did I exult? Did I take pride in my
purpose? Did I try to weigh its worth and
consequences? No! I was resigned. I thought
'God's will be done.'"
He threw himself full length on Razumov's bed
and putting the backs of his hands over his eyes
remained perfectly motionless and silent. Not
even the sound of his breathing could be heard.
The dead stillness or the room remained
undisturbed till in the darkness Razumov said
gloomily--
"Haldin."
"Yes," answered the other readily, quite
invisible now on the bed and without the
slightest stir.
"Isn't it time for me to start?"
"Yes, brother." The other was heard, lying
still in the darkness as though he were talking
in his sleep. "The time has come to put fate to
the test."
He paused, then gave a few lucid directions in
the quiet impersonal voice of a man in a trance.
Razumov made ready without a word of answer.
As he was leaving the room the voice on the bed
said after him--
"Go with God, thou silent soul."
On the landing, moving softly, Razumov locked
the door and put the key in his pocket.
II
The words and events of that evening must have
been graven as if with a steel tool on Mr.
Razumov's brain since he was able to write his
relation with such fullness and precision a good
many months afterwards.
The record of the thoughts which assailed him in
the street is even more minute and abundant.
They seem to have rushed upon him with the
greater freedom because his thinking powers were
no longer crushed by Haldin's presence--the
appalling presence of a great crime and the
stunning force of a great fanaticism. On
looking through the pages of Mr. Razumov's diary
I own that a "rush of thoughts" is not an
adequate image.
The more adequate description would be a tumult
of thoughts--the faithful reflection of the
state of his feelings. The thoughts in
themselves were not numerous--they were like the
thoughts of most human beings, few and simple--
but they cannot be reproduced here in all their
exclamatory repetitions which went on in an
endless and weary turmoil--for the walk was long.
If to the Western reader they appear shocking,
inappropriate, or even improper, it must be
remembered that as to the first this may be the
effect of my crude statement. For the rest I
will only remark here that this is not a story
of the West of Europe.
Nations it may be have fashioned their
Governments, but the Governments have paid them
back in the same coin. It is unthinkable that
any young Englishman should find himself in
Razumov's situation. This being so it would be
a vain enterprise to imagine what he would
think. The only safe surmise to make is that he
would not think as Mr. Razumov thought at this
crisis of his fate. He would not have an
hereditary and personal knowledge or the means
by which historical autocracy represses ideas,
guards its power, and defends its existence. By
an act of mental extravagance he might imagine
himself arbitrarily thrown into prison, but it
would never occur to him unless he were
delirious (and perhaps not even then) that he
could be beaten with whips as a practical
measure either of investigation or of punishment.
This is but a crude and obvious example of the
different conditions of Western thought. I
don't know that this danger occurred, specially,
to Mr. Razumov. No doubt it entered
unconsciously into the general dread and the
general appallingness of this crisis. Razumov,
as has been seen, was aware of more subtle ways
in which an individual may be undone by the
proceedings of a despotic Government. A simple
expulsion from the University (the very least
that could happen to him), with an impossibility
to continue his studies anywhere, was enough to
ruin utterly a young man depending entirely upon
the development of his natural abilities for his
place in the world. He was a Russian: and for
him to be implicated meant simply sinking into
the lowest social depths amongst the hopeless
and the destitute--the night birds of the city.
The peculiar circumstances of Razumov's
parentage, or rather of his lack of parentage,
should be taken into the account of his
thoughts. And he remembered them too. He had
been lately reminded of them in a peculiarly
atrocious way by this fatal Haldin. "Because I
haven't that, must everything else be taken away
from me?" he thought.
He nerved himself for another effort to go on.
Along the roadway sledges glided phantom-like
and jingling through a fluttering whiteness on
the black face of the night. "For it is a
crime," he was saying to himself. "A murder is
a murder. Though, of course, some sort of
liberal institutions. . . ."
A feeling of horrible sickness came over him.
"I must be courageous," he exhorted himself
mentally. All his strength was suddenly gone as
if taken out by a hand. Then by a mighty effort
of will it came back because he was afraid of
fainting in the street and being picked up by
the police with the key of his lodgings in his
pocket. They would find Haldin there, and then,
indeed, he would be undone.
Strangely enough it was this fear which seems to
have kept him up to the end. The passers-by
were rare. They came upon him suddenly, looming
up black in the snowflakes close by, then
vanishing all at once-without footfalls.
It was the quarter of the very poor. Razumov
noticed an elderly woman tied up in ragged
shawls. Under the street lamp she seemed a
beggar off duty. She walked leisurely in the
blizzard as though she had no home to hurry to,
she hugged under one arm a round loaf of black
bread with an air of guarding a priceless booty:
and Razumov averting his glance envied her the
peace of her mind and the serenity of her fate.
To one reading Mr. Razumov's narrative it is
really a wonder how he managed to keep going as
he did along one interminable street after
another on pavements that were gradually
becoming blocked with snow. It was the thought
of Haldin locked up in his rooms and the
desperate desire to get rid of his presence
which drove him forward. No rational
determination had any part in his exertions.
Thus, when on arriving at the low eating-house
he heard that the man of horses, Ziemianitch,
was not there, he could only stare stupidly.
The waiter, a wild-haired youth in tarred boots
and a pink shirt, exclaimed, uncovering his pale
gums in a silly grin, that Ziemianitch had got
his skinful early in the afternoon and had gone
away with a bottle under each arm to keep it up
amongst the horses--he supposed.
The owner of the vile den, a bony short man in a
dirty cloth caftan coming down to his heels,
stood by, his hands tucked into his belt, and
nodded confirmation.
The reek of spirits, the greasy rancid steam of
food got Razumov by the throat. He struck a
table with his clenched hand and shouted
violently--
"You lie."
Bleary unwashed faces were turned to his
direction. A mild-eyed ragged tramp drinking
tea at the next table moved farther away. A
murmur of wonder arose with an undertone of
uneasiness. A laugh was heard too, and an
exclamation, "There! there!" jeeringly soothing.
The waiter looked all round and announced to
the room--
"The gentleman won't believe that Ziemianitch is
drunk."
>From a distant corner a hoarse voice belonging
to a horrible, nondescript, shaggy being with a
black face like the muzzle of a bear grunted
angrily--
"The cursed driver of thieves. What do we want
with his gentlemen here? We are all honest folk
in this place."
Razumov, biting his lip till blood came to keep
himself from bursting into imprecations,
followed the owner of the den, who, whispering
"Come along, little father," led him into a tiny
hole of a place behind the wooden counter,
whence proceeded a sound of splashing. A wet
and bedraggled creature, a sort of sexless and
shivering scarecrow, washed glasses in there,
bending over a wooden tub by the light of a
tallow dip.
"Yes, little father," the man in the long caftan
said plaintively. He had a brown, cunning
little face, a thin greyish beard. Trying to
light a tin lantern he hugged it to his breast
and talked garrulously the while.
He would show Ziemianitch to the gentleman to
prove there were no lies told. And he would
show him drunk. His woman, it seems, ran away
from him last night. "Such a hag she was!
Thin! Pfui!" He spat. They were always
running away from that driver of the devil--and
he sixty years old too; could never get used to
it. But each heart knows sorrow after its own
kind and Ziemianitch was a born fool all his
days. And then he would fly to the bottle.
"'Who could bear life in our land without the
bottle?' he says. A proper Russian man--the
little pig. . . . Be pleased to follow me."
Razumov crossed a quadrangle of deep snow
enclosed between high walls with innumerable
windows. Here and there a dim yellow light hung
within the four-square mass of darkness. The
house was an enormous slum, a hive of human
vermin, a monumental abode of misery towering on
the verge of starvation and despair.
In a corner the ground sloped sharply down, and
Razumov followed the light of the lantern
through a small doorway into a long cavernous
place like a neglected subterranean byre. Deep
within, three shaggy little horses tied up to
rings hung their heads together, motionless and
shadowy in the dim light of the lantern. It
must have been the famous team of Haldin's
escape. Razumov peered fearfully into the
gloom. His guide pawed in the straw with his
foot.
"Here he is. Ah! the little pigeon. A true
Russian man. 'No heavy hearts for me,' he says.
'Bring out the bottle and take your ugly mug
out of my sight.' Ha! ha! ha! That's the fellow
he is."
He held the lantern over a prone form of a man,
apparently fully dressed for outdoors. His head
was lost in a pointed cloth hood. On the other
side of a heap of straw protruded a pair of feet
in monstrous thick boots.
" Always ready to drive," commented the keeper
of the eating-house. "A proper Russian driver
that. Saint or devil, night or day is all one
to Ziemianitch when his heart is free from
sorrow. 'I don't ask who you are, but where you
want to go,' he says. He would drive Satan
himself to his own abode and come back
chirruping to his horses. Many a one he has
driven who is clanking his chains in the
Nertchinsk mines by this time."
Razumov shuddered.
"Call him, wake him up," he faltered out.
The other set down his light, stepped back and
launched a kick at the prostrate sleeper. The
man shook at the impact but did not move. At
the third kick he grunted but remained inert as
before.
The eating-house keeper desisted and fetched a
deep sigh.
"You see for yourself how it is. We have done
what we can for you."
He picked up the lantern. The intense black
spokes of shadow swung about in the circle of
light. A terrible fury--the blind rage of self-
preservation--possessed Razumov.
" Ah! The vile beast," he bellowed out in an
unearthly tone which made the lantern jump and
tremble! "I shall wake you! Give me . . .give
me . . ."
He looked round wildly, seized the handle of a
stablefork and rushing forward struck at the
prostrate body with inarticulate cries. After a
time his cries ceased, and the rain of blows
fell in the stillness and shadows of the cellar-
like stable. Razumov belaboured Ziemianitch
with an insatiable fury, in great volleys of
sounding thwacks. Except for the violent
movements of Razumov nothing stirred, neither
the beaten man nor the spoke-like shadows on the
walls. And only the sound of blows was heard.
It was a weird scene.
Suddenly there was a sharp crack. The stick
broke and half of it flew far away into the
gloom beyond the light. At the same time
Ziemianitch sat up. At this Razumov became as
motionless as the man with the lantern--only his
breast heaved for air as if ready to burst.
Some dull sensation of pain must have penetrated
at last the consoling night of drunkenness
enwrapping the "bright Russian soul" of Haldin's
enthusiastic praise. But Ziemianitch evidently
saw nothing. His eyeballs blinked all white in
the light once, twice--then the gleam went out.
For a moment he sat in the straw with closed
eyes with a strange air of weary meditation,
then fell over slowly on his side without making
the slightest sound. Only the straw rustled a
little. Razumov stared wildly, fighting for his
breath. After a second or two he heard a light
snore.
He flung from him the piece of stick remaining
in his grasp, and went off with great hasty
strides without looking back once.
After going heedlessly for some fifty yards
along the street he walked into a snowdrift and
was up to his knees before he stopped.
This recalled him to himself; and glancing about
he discovered he had been going in the wrong
direction. He retraced his steps, but now at a
more moderate pace. When passing before the
house he had just left he flourished his fist at
the sombre refuge of misery and crime rearing
its sinister bulk on the white ground. It had
an air of brooding. He let his arm fall by his
side--discouraged.
Ziemianitch's passionate surrender to sorrow and
consolation had baffled him. That was the
people. A true Russian man! Razumov was glad
he had beaten that brute--the "bright soul" of
the other. Here they were: the people and the
enthusiast.
Between the two he was done for. Between the
drunkenness of the peasant incapable of action
and the dream-intoxication of the idealist
incapable of perceiving the reason of things,
and the true character of men. It was a sort of
terrible childishness. But children had their
masters. "Ah! the stick, the stick, the stern
hand," thought Razumov, longing for power to
hurt and destroy.
He was glad he had thrashed that brute. The
physical exertion had left his body in a
comfortable glow. His mental agitation too was
clarified as if all the feverishness had gone
out of him in a fit of outward violence.
Together with the persisting sense of terrible
danger he was conscious now of a tranquil,
unquenchable hate.
He walked slower and slower. And indeed,
considering the guest he had in his rooms, it
was no wonder he lingered on the way. It was
like harbouring a pestilential disease that
would not perhaps take your life, but would take
from you all that made life worth living--a
subtle pest that would convert earth into a hell.
What was he doing now? Lying on the bed as if
dead, with the back of his hands over his eyes ?
Razumov had a morbidly vivid vision of Haldin
on his bed--the white pillow hollowed by the
head, the legs in long boots, the upturned feet.
And in his abhorrence he said to himself, "I'll
kill him when I get home." But he knew very
well that that was of no use. The corpse
hanging round his neck would be nearly as fatal
as the living man. Nothing short of complete
annihilation would do. And that was impossible.
What then? Must one kill oneself to escape
this visitation ?
Razumov's despair was too profoundly tinged with
hate to accept that issue.
And yet it was despair--nothing less--at the
thought of having to live with Haldin for an
indefinite number of days in mortal alarm at
every sound. But perhaps when he heard that
this "bright soul" of Ziemianitch suffered from
a drunken eclipse the fellow would take his
infernal resignation somewhere else. And that
was not likely on the face of it.
Razumov thought: "I am being crushed--and I
can't even run away." Other men had somewhere a
corner of the earth--some little house in the
provinces where they had a right to take their
troubles. A material refuge. He had nothing.
He had not even a moral refuge--the refuge of
confidence. To whom could he go with this tale--
in all this great, great land?
Razumov stamped his foot--and under the soft
carpet of snow felt the hard ground of Russia,
inanimate, cold, inert, like a sullen and tragic
mother hiding her face under a winding-sheet--
his native soil!--his very own--without a
fireside, without a heart!
He cast his eyes upwards and stood amazed. The
snow had ceased to fall, and now, as if by a
miracle, he saw above his head the clear black
sky of the northern winter, decorated with the
sumptuous fires of the stars. It was a canopy
fit for the resplendent purity of the snows.
Razumov received an almost physical impression
of endless space and of countless millions.
He responded to it with the readiness of a
Russian who is born to an inheritance of space
and numbers. Under the sumptuous immensity of
the sky, the snow covered the endless forests,
the frozen rivers, the plains of an immense
country, obliterating the landmarks, the
accidents of the ground, levelling everything
under its uniform whiteness, like a monstrous
blank page awaiting the record of an
inconceivable history. It covered the passive
land with its lives of countless people like
Ziemianitch and its handful of agitators like
this Haldin--murdering foolishly.
It was a sort of sacred inertia. Razumov felt a
respect for it. A voice seemed to cry within
him, "Don't touch it." It was a guarantee of
duration, of safety, while the travail of
maturing destiny went on--a work not of
revolutions with their passionate levity of
action and their shifting impulses--but of
peace. What it needed was not the conflicting
aspirations of a people, but a will strong and
one: it wanted not the babble of many voices,
but a man--strong and one!
Razumov stood on the point of conversion. He
was fascinated by its approach, by its
overpowering logic. For a train of thought is
never false. The falsehood lies deep in the
necessities of existence, in secret fears and
half-formed ambitions, in the secret confidence
combined with a secret mistrust of ourselves, in
the love of hope and the dread of uncertain days.
In Russia, the land of spectral ideas and
disembodied aspirations, many brave minds have
turned away at last from the vain and endless
conflict to the one great historical fact of the
land. They turned to autocracy for the peace of
their patriotic conscience as a weary
unbeliever, touched by grace, turns to the faith
of his fathers for the blessing of spiritual
rest. Like other Russians before him, Razumov,
in conflict with himself, felt the touch of
grace upon his forehead.
"Haldin means disruption," he thought to
himself, beginning to walk again. " What is he
with his indignation, with his talk of bondage--
with his talk of God's justice? All that means
disruption. Better that thousands should suffer
than that a people should become a disintegrated
mass, helpless like dust in the wind.
Obscurantism is better than the light of
incendiary torches. The seed germinates in the
night. Out of the dark soil springs the perfect
plant. But a volcanic eruption is sterile, the
ruin of the fertile ground. And am I, who love
my country--who have nothing but that to love
and put my faith in--am I to have my future,
perhaps my usefulness, ruined by this sanguinary
fanatic?"
The grace entered into Razumov. He believed now
in the man who would come at the appointed time.
What is a throne? A few pieces of wood
upholstered in velvet. But a throne is a seat
of power too. The form of government is the
shape of a tool--an instrument. But twenty
thousand bladders inflated by the noblest
sentiments and jostling against each other in
the air are a miserable incumbrance of space,
holding no power, possessing no will, having
nothing to give.
He went on thus, heedless of the way, holding a
discourse with himself with extraordinary
abundance and facility. Generally his phrases
came to him slowly, after a conscious and
painstaking wooing. Some superior power had
inspired him with a flow of masterly argument as
certain converted sinners become overwhelmingly
loquacious.
He felt an austere exultation.
"What are the luridly smoky lucubrations of that
fellow to the clear grasp of my intellect?" he
thought. "Is not this my country? Have I not
got forty million brothers?" he asked himself,
unanswerably victorious in the silence of his
breast. And the fearful thrashing he had given
the inanimate Ziemianitch seemed to him a sign
of intimate union, a pathetically severe
necessity of brotherly love. "No! If I must
suffer let me at least suffer for my
convictions, not for a crime my reason--my cool
superior reason--rejects."
He ceased to think for a moment. The silence in
his breast was complete. But he felt a
suspicious uneasiness, such as we may experience
when we enter an unlighted strange place--the
irrational feeling that something may jump upon
us in the dark--the absurd dread of the unseen.
Of course he was far from being a moss-grown
reactionary. Everything was not for the best.
Despotic bureaucracy. . . abuses. . .
corruption. . . and so on. Capable men were
wanted. Enlightened intelligences. Devoted
hearts. But absolute power should be preserved--
the tool ready for the man--for the great
autocrat of the future. Razumov believed in
him. The logic of history made him unavoidable.
The state of the people demanded him, "What
else?" he asked himself ardently, "could move
all that mass in one direction? Nothing could.
Nothing but a single will."
He was persuaded that he was sacrificing his
personal longings of liberalism--rejecting the
attractive error for the stern Russian truth.
"That's patriotism," he observed mentally, and
added, "There's no stopping midway on that
road," and then remarked to himself, "I am not a
coward."
And again there was a dead silence in Razumov's
breast. He walked with lowered head, making
room for no one. He walked slowly and his
thoughts returning spoke within him with solemn
slowness.
"What is this Haldin? And what am I? Only two
grains of sand. But a great mountain is made up
of just such insignificant grains. And the
death of a man or of many men is an
insignificant thing. Yet we combat a contagious
pestilence. Do I want his death? No! I would
save him if I could--but no one can do that--he
is the withered member which must be cut off.
If I must perish through him, let me at least
not perish with him, and associated against my
will with his sombre folly that understands
nothing either of men or things. Why should I
leave a false memory?"
It passed through his mind that there was no one
in the world who cared what sort of memory he
left behind him. He exclaimed to himself
instantly, "Perish vainly for a falsehood! . . .
What a miserable fate!"
He was now in a more animated part of the town.
He did not remark the crash of two colliding
sledges close to the curb. The driver of one
bellowed tearfully at his fellow-
" Oh, thou vile wretch!"
This hoarse yell, let out nearly in his ear,
disturbed Razumov. He shook his head
impatiently and went on looking straight before
him. Suddenly on the snow, stretched on his
back right across his path, he saw Haldin,
solid, distinct, real, with his inverted hands
over his eyes, clad in a brown close-fitting
coat and long boots. He was lying out of the
way a little, as though he had selected that
place on purpose. The snow round him was
untrodden.
This hallucination had such a solidity of aspect
that the first movement of Razumov was to reach
for his pocket to assure himself that the key of
his rooms was there. But he checked the impulse
with a disdainful curve of his lips. He
understood. His thought, concentrated intensely
on the figure left lying on his bed, had
culminated in this extraordinary illusion of the
sight. Razumov tackled the phenomenon calmly.
With a stern face, without a check and gazing
far beyond the vision, he walked on,
experiencing nothing but a slight tightening of
the chest. After passing he turned his head for
a glance, and saw only the unbroken track of his
footsteps over the place where the breast of the
phantom had been lying.
Razumov walked on and after a little time
whispered his wonder to himself.
"Exactly as if alive! Seemed to breathe! And
right in my way too! I have had an
extraordinary experience."
He made a few steps and muttered through his set
teeth--
"I shall give him up."
Then for some twenty yards or more all was
blank. He wrapped his cloak closer round him.
He pulled his cap well forward over his eyes.
"Betray. A great word. What is betrayal? They
talk of a man betraying his country, his
friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral
bond first. All a man can betray is his
conscience. And how is my conscience engaged
here; by what bond of common faith, of common
conviction, am I obliged to let that fanatical
idiot drag me down with him? On the contrary--
every obligation of true courage is the other
way."
Razumov looked round from under his cap.
"What can the prejudice of the world reproach me
with? Have I provoked his confidence? No!
Have I by a single word, look, or gesture given
him reason to suppose that I accepted his trust
in me? No! It is true that I consented to go
and see his Ziemianitch. Well, I have been to
see him. And I broke a stick on his back too--
the brute."
Something seemed to turn over in his head
bringing uppermost a singularly hard, clear
facet of his brain.
"It would be better, however," he reflected with
a quite different mental accent, "to keep that
circumstance altogether to myself."
He had passed beyond the turn leading to his
lodgings, and had reached a wide and fashionable
street. Some shops were still open, and all the
restaurants. Lights fell on the pavement where
men in expensive fur coats, with here and there
the elegant figure of a woman, walked with an
air of leisure. Razumov looked at them with the
contempt of an austere believer for the
frivolous crowd. It was the world--those
officers, dignitaries, men of fashion,
officials, members of the Yacht Club. The event
of the morning affected them all. What would
they say if they knew what this student in a
cloak was going to do?
"Not one of them is capable of feeling and
thinking as deeply as I can. How many of them
could accomplish an act of conscience?"
Razumov lingered in the well-lighted street. He
was firmly decided. Indeed, it could hardly be
called a decision. He had simply discovered
what he had meant to do all along. And yet he
felt the need of some other mind's sanction.
With something resembling anguish he said to
himself--
"I want to be understood." The universal
aspiration with all its profound and melancholy
meaning assailed heavily Razumov, who, amongst
eighty millions of his kith and kin, had no
heart to which he could open himself.
The attorney was not to be thought of. He
despised the little agent of chicane too much.
One could not go and lay one's conscience before
the policeman at the corner. Neither was
Razumov anxious to go to the chief of his
district's police--a common-looking person whom
he used to see sometimes in the street in a
shabby uniform and with a smouldering cigarette
stuck to his lower lip. "He would begin by
locking me up most probably. At any rate, he is
certain to get excited and create an awful
commotion," thought Razumov practically
An act of conscience must be done with outward
dignity.
Razumov longed desperately for a word of advice,
for moral support. Who knows what true
loneliness is--not the conventional word, but
the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it
wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs
some memory or some illusion. Now and then a
fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil
for an instant. For an instant only. No human
being could bear a steady view of moral solitude
without going mad.
Razumov had reached that point of vision. To
escape from it he embraced for a whole minute
the delirious purpose of rushing to his lodgings
and flinging himself on his knees by the side of
the bed with the dark figure stretched on it; to
pour out a full confession in passionate words
that would stir the whole being of that man to
its innermost depths; that would end in embraces
and tears; in an incredible fellowship of souls--
such as the world had never seen. It was
sublime!
Inwardly he wept and trembled already. But to
the casual eyes that were cast upon him he was
aware that he appeared as a tranquil student in
a cloak, out for a leisurely stroll. He noted,
too, the sidelong, brilliant glance of a pretty
woman--with a delicate head, and covered in the
hairy skins of wild beasts down to her feet,
like a frail and beautiful savage--which rested
for a moment with a sort of mocking tenderness
on the deep abstraction of that good-looking
young man.
Suddenly Razumov stood still. The glimpse of a
passing grey whisker, caught and lost in the
same instant, had evoked the complete image of
Prince K---, the man who once had pressed his
hand as no other man had pressed it--a faint but
lingering pressure like a secret sign, like a
half-unwilling caress.
And Razumov marvelled at himself. Why did he
not think of him before!
"A senator, a dignitary, a great personage, the
very man--He!"
A strange softening emotion came over Razumov--
made his knees shake a little. He repressed it
with a new-born austerity. All that sentiment
was pernicious nonsense. He couldn't be quick
enough; and when he got into a sledge he shouted
to the driver--
"to the K--- Palace. Get on--you! Fly!" The
startled moujik, bearded up to the very whites
of his eyes, answered obsequiously--
"I hear, your high Nobility."
It was lucky for Razumov that Prince K--- was
not a man of timid character. On the day of Mr.
de P---'s murder an extreme alarm and
despondency prevailed in the high official
spheres.
Prince K---, sitting sadly alone in his study,
was told by his alarmed servants that a
mysterious young man had forced his way into the
hall, refused to tell his name and the nature of
his business, and would not move from there till
he had seen his Excellency in private. Instead
of locking himself up and telephoning for the
police, as nine out of ten high personages would
have done that evening, the Prince gave way to
curiosity and came quietly to the door of his
study.
In the hall, the front door standing wide open,
he recognised at once Razumov, pale as death,
his eyes blazing, and surrounded by perplexed
lackeys.
The Prince was vexed beyond measure, and even
indignant. But his humane instincts and a
subtle sense of self-respect could not allow him
to let this young man be thrown out into the
street by base menials. He retreated unseen
into his room, and after a little rang his bell.
Razumov heard in the hall an ominously raised
harsh voice saying somewhere far away--
"Show the gentleman in here."
Razumov walked in without a tremor. He felt
himself invulnerable--raised far above the
shallowness of common judgment. Though he saw
the Prince looking at him with black
displeasure, the lucidity of his mind, of which
he was very conscious, gave him an extraordinary
assurance. He was not asked to sit down.
Half an hour later they appeared in the hall
together. The lackeys stood up, and the Prince,
moving with difficulty on his gouty feet, was
helped into his furs. The carriage had been
ordered before. When the great double door was
flung open with a crash, Razumov, who had been
standing silent with a lost gaze but with every
faculty intensely on the alert, heard the
Prince's voice--
"Your arm, young man."
The mobile, superficial mind of the ex-Guards
officer, man of showy missions, experienced in
nothing but the arts of gallant intrigue and
worldly success, had been equally impressed by
the more obvious difficulties of such a
situation and by Razumov's quiet dignity in
stating them.
He had said, "No. Upon the whole I can't
condemn the step you ventured to take by coming
to me with your story. It is not an affair for
police understrappers. The greatest importance
is attached to. . . . Set your mind at rest. I
shall see you through this most extraordinary
and difficult situation."
Then the Prince rose to ring the bell, and
Razumov, making a short bow, had said with
deference--
"I have trusted my instinct. A young man having
no claim upon anybody in the world has in an
hour of trial involving his deepest political
convictions turned to an illustrious Russian--
that's all."
The Prince had exclaimed hastily--
"You have done well."
In the carriage--it was a small brougham on
sleigh runners--Razumov broke the silence in a
voice that trembled slightly.
"My gratitude surpasses the greatness of my
presumption."
He gasped, feeling unexpectedly in the dark a
momentary pressure on his arm.
"You have done well," repeated the Prince.
When the carriage stopped the Prince murmured to
Razumov, who had never ventured a single
question--
"The house of General T---."
In the middle of the snow-covered roadway blazed
a great bonfire. Some Cossacks, the bridles of
their horses over the arm, were warming
themselves around. Two sentries stood at the
door, several gendarmes lounged under the great
carriage gateway, and on the first-floor landing
two orderlies rose and stood at attention.
Razumov walked at the Prince's elbow.
A surprising quantity of hot-house plants in
pots cumbered the floor of the ante-room.
Servants came forward. A young man in civilian
clothes arrived hurriedly, was whispered to,
bowed low, and exclaiming zealously, "Certainly--
this minute," fled within somewhere. The Prince
signed to Razumov.
They passed through a suite of reception-rooms
all barely lit and one of them prepared for
dancing. The wife of the General had put off
her party. An atmosphere of consternation
pervaded the place. But the General's own room,
with heavy sombre hangings, two massive desks,
and deep armchairs, had all the lights turned
on. The footman shut the door behind them and
they waited.
There was a coal fire in an English grate;
Razumov had never before seen such a fire; and
the silence of the room was like the silence of
the grave; perfect, measureless, for even the
clock on the mantelpiece made no sound. Filling
a corner, on a black pedestal, stood a quarter-
life-size smooth-limbed bronze of an adolescent
figure, running. The Prince observed in an
undertone-
"Spontini's. 'Flight of Youth.' Exquisite."
"Admirable," assented Razumov faintly.
They said nothing more after this, the Prince
silent with his grand air, Razumov staring at
the statue. He was worried by a sensation
resembling the gnawing of hunger.
He did not turn when he heard an inner door fly
open, and a quick footstep, muffled on the
carpet.
The Prince's voice immediately exclaimed, thick
with excitement--
"We have got him--_ce miserable_. A worthy
young man came to me-- No! It's incredible. .
. ."
Razumov held his breath before the bronze as if
expecting a crash. Behind his back a voice he
had never heard before insisted politely--
"_Asseyez-vous donc_."
The Prince almost shrieked, "_Mais comprenez-
vous, mon cher! L'assassin_! the murderer--we
have got him. . . ."
Razumov spun round. The General's smooth big
cheeks rested on the stiff collar of his
uniform. He must have been already looking at
Razumov, because that last saw the pale blue
eyes fastened on him coldly.
The Prince from a chair waved an impressive hand.
"This is a most honourable young man whom
Providence itself. . . Mr. Razumov."
The General acknowledged the introduction by
frowning at Razumov, who did not make the
slightest movement.
Sitting down before his desk the General
listened with compressed lips. It was
impossible to detect any sign of emotion on his
face.
Razumov watched the immobility of the fleshy
profile. But it lasted only a moment, till the
Prince had finished; and when the General turned
to the providential young man, his florid
complexion, the blue, unbelieving eyes and the
bright white flash of an automatic smile had an
air of jovial, careless cruelty. He expressed
no wonder at the extraordinary story--no
pleasure or excitement--no incredulity either.
He betrayed no sentiment whatever. Only with a
politeness almost deferential suggested that
"the bird might have flown while Mr.--Mr.
Razumov was running about the streets."
Razumov advanced to the middle of the room and
said, "The door is locked and I have the key in
my pocket."
His loathing for the man was intense. It had
come upon him so unawares that he felt he had
not kept it out of his voice. The General
looked up at him thoughtfully, and Razumov
grinned.
All this went over the head of Prince K---
seated in a deep armchair, very tired and
impatient.
"A student called Haldin," said the General
thoughtfully.
Razumov ceased to grin.
"That is his name," he said unnecessarily loud.
" Victor Victorovitch Haldin--a student."
The General shifted his position a little.
"How is he dressed? Would you have the goodness
to tell me?"
Razumov angrily described Haldin's clothing in a
few jerky words. The General stared all the
time, then addressing the Prince--
"We were not without some indications," he said
in French. "A good woman who was in the street
described to us somebody wearing a dress of the
sort as the thrower of the second bomb. We have
detained her at the Secretariat, and every one
in a Tcherkess coat we could lay our hands on
has been brought to her to look at. She kept on
crossing herself and shaking her head at them.
It was exasperating. . . . "He turned to
Razumov, and in Russian, with friendly reproach--
"Take a chair, Mr. Razumov--do. Why are you
standing? "
Razumov sat down carelessly and looked at the
General.
"This goggle-eyed imbecile understands nothing,"
he thought.
The Prince began to speak loftily.
"Mr. Razumov is a young man of conspicuous
abilities. I have it at heart that his future
should not. . . ."
"Certainly," interrupted the General, with a
movement of the hand. "Has he any weapons on
him, do you think, Mr. Razumov? "
The General employed a gentle musical voice.
Razumov answered with suppressed irritation--
"No. But my razors are lying about--you
understand."
The General lowered his head approvingly.
"Precisely."
Then to the Prince, explaining courteously--
"We want that bird alive. It will be the devil
if we can't make him sing a little before we are
done with him."
The grave-like silence of the room with its mute
clock fell upon the polite modulations of this
terrible phrase. The Prince, hidden in the
chair, made no sound.
The General unexpectedly developed a thought.
"Fidelity to menaced institutions on which
depend the safety of a throne and of a people is
no child's play. We know that, _mon Prince,_
and--_tenez_--"he went on with a sort of
flattering harshness, "Mr. Razumov here begins
to understand that too."
His eyes which he turned upon Razumov seemed to
be starting out of his head. This grotesqueness
of aspect no longer shocked Razumov. He said
with gloomy conviction--
"Haldin will never speak."
"That remains to be seen," muttered the General.
"I am certain," insisted Razumov. "A man like
this never speaks. . . . Do you imagine that I
am here from fear?" he added violently. He felt
ready to stand by his opinion of Haldin to the
last extremity.
"Certainly not," protested the General, with
great simplicity of tone. "And I don't mind
telling you, Mr. Razumov, that if he had not
come with his tale to such a staunch and loyal
Russian as you, he would have disappeared like a
stone in the water . . . which would have had a
detestable effect," he added, with a bright,
cruel smile under his stony stare. "So you see,
there can be no suspicion of any fear here."
The Prince intervened, looking at Razumov round
the back of the armchair.
"Nobody doubts the moral soundness of your
action. Be at ease in that respect, pray."
He turned to the General uneasily.
"That's why I am here. You may be surprised why
I should . . . ."
The General hastened to interrupt.
"Not at all. Extremely natural. You saw the
importance. . . ."
"Yes," broke in the Prince. "And I venture to
ask insistently that mine and Mr. Razumov's
intervention should not become public. He is a
young man of promise--of remarkable aptitudes."
"I haven't a doubt of it," murmured the General.
"He inspires confidence."
"All sorts of pernicious views are so widespread
nowadays--they taint such unexpected quarters--
that, monstrous as it seems, he might suffer. .
. his studies. . . his. . ."
The General, with his elbows on the desk, took
his head between his hands.
"Yes. Yes. I am thinking it out. . . . How
long is it since you left him at your rooms, Mr.
Razumov?"
Razumov mentioned the hour which nearly
corresponded with the time of his distracted
flight from the big slum house. He had made up
his mind to keep Ziemianitch out of the affair
completely. To mention him at all would mean
imprisonment for the "bright soul," perhaps
cruel floggings, and in the end a journey to
Siberia in chains. Razumov, who had beaten
Ziemianitch, felt for him now a vague,
remorseful tenderness.
The General, giving way for the first time to
his secret sentiments, exclaimed contemptuously--
"And you say he came in to make you this
confidence like this--for nothing--_a propos des
bottes_."
Razumov felt danger in the air. The merciless
suspicion of despotism had spoken openly at
last. Sudden fear sealed Razumov's lips. The
silence of the room resembled now the silence of
a deep dungeon, where time does not count, and a
suspect person is sometimes forgotten for ever.
But the Prince came to the rescue.
"Providence itself has led the wretch in a
moment of mental aberration to seek Mr. Razumov
on the strength of some old, utterly
misinterpreted exchange of ideas--some sort of
idle speculative conversation--months ago--I am
told--and completely forgotten till now by Mr.
Razumov."
"Mr. Razumov," queried the General meditatively,
after a short silence, "do you often indulge in
speculative conversation?"
"No, Excellency," answered Razumov, coolly, in a
sudden access of self-confidence. "I am a man
of deep convictions. Crude opinions are in the
air. They are not always worth combating. But
even the silent contempt of a serious mind may
be misinterpreted by headlong utopists."
The General stared from between his hands.
Prince K--- murmured--
"A serious young man. _Un esprit superieur_."
"I see that, _mon cher Prince_," said the
General. "Mr. Razumov is quite safe with me. I
am interested in him. He has, it seems, the
great and useful quality of inspiring
confidence. What I was wondering at is why the
other should mention anything at all--I mean
even the bare fact alone--if his object was only
to obtain temporary shelter for a few hours.
For, after all, nothing was easier than to say
nothing about it unless, indeed, he were trying,
under a crazy misapprehension of your true
sentiments, to enlist your assistance--eh, Mr.
Razumov?"
It seemed to Razumov that the floor was moving
slightly. This grotesque man in a tight uniform
was terrible. It was right that he should be
terrible.
"I can see what your Excellency has in your
mind. But I can only answer that I don't know
why."
"I have nothing in my mind," murmured the
General, with gentle surprise.
"I am his prey--his helpless prey," thought
Razumov. The fatigues and the disgusts of that
afternoon, the need to forget, the fear which he
could not keep off, reawakened his hate for
Haldin.
"Then I can't help your Excellency. I don't
know what he meant. I only know there was a
moment when I wished to kill him. There was
also a moment when I wished myself dead. I said
nothing. I was overcome. I provoked no
confidence--I asked for no explanations--"
Razumov seemed beside himself; but his mind was
lucid. It was really a calculated outburst.
"It is rather a pity," the General said, "that
you did not. Don't you know at all what he
means to do?" Razumov calmed down and saw an
opening there.
"He told me he was in hopes that a sledge would
meet him about half an hour after midnight at
the seventh lamp-post on the left from the upper
end of Karabelnaya. At any rate, he meant to be
there at that time. He did not even ask me for
a change of clothes."
"_Ah voila_!" said the General, turning to
Prince K with an air of satisfaction. "There is
a way to keep your _protege_, Mr. Razumov, quite
clear of any connexion with the actual arrest.
We shall be ready for that gentleman in
Karabelnaya."
The Prince expressed his gratitude. There was
real emotion in his voice. Razumov, motionless,
silent, sat staring at the carpet. The General
turned to him.
"Half an hour after midnight. Till then we have
to depend on you, Mr. Razumov. You don't think
he is likely to change his purpose?"
"How can I tell?" said Razumov. "Those men are
not of the sort that ever changes its purpose."
" What men do you mean?"
"Fanatical lovers of liberty in general.
Liberty with a capital L, Excellency. Liberty
that means nothing precise. Liberty in whose
name crimes are committed."
The General murmured--
"I detest rebels of every kind. I can't help
it. It's my nature!"
He clenched a fist and shook it, drawing back
his arm. "They shall be destroyed, then."
"They have made a sacrifice of their lives
beforehand," said Razumov with malicious
pleasure and looking the General straight in the
face. "If Haldin does change his purpose to-
night, you may depend on it that it will not be
to save his life by flight in some other way.
He would have thought then of something else to
attempt. But that is not likely."
The General repeated as if to himself, "They
shall be destroyed."
Razumov assumed an impenetrable expression.
The Prince exclaimed--
"What a terrible necessity!"
The General's arm was lowered slowly.
"One comfort there is. That brood leaves no
posterity. I've always said it, one effort,
pitiless, persistent, steady--and we are done
with them for ever."
Razumov thought to himself that this man
entrusted with so much arbitrary power must have
believed what he said or else he could not have
gone on bearing the responsibility.
"I detest rebels. These subversive minds!
These intellectual _debauches_! My existence
has been built on fidelity. It's a feeling. To
defend it I am ready to lay down my life--and
even my honour--if that were needed. But pray
tell me what honour can there be as against
rebels--against people that deny God Himself--
perfect unbelievers! Brutes. It is horrible to
think of."
During this tirade Razumov, facing the General,
had nodded slightly twice. Prince K---,
standing on one side with his grand air,
murmured, casting up his eyes--
"_Helas!_"
Then lowering his glance and with great decision
declared--
"This young man, General, is perfectly fit to
apprehend the bearing of your memorable words."
The General's whole expression changed from dull
resentment to perfect urbanity.
"I would ask now, Mr. Razumov," he said, "to
return to his home. Note that I don't ask Mr.
Razumov whether he has justified his absence to
his guest. No doubt he did this sufficiently.
But I don't ask. Mr. Razumov inspires
confidence. It is a great gift. I only suggest
that a more prolonged absence might awaken the
criminal's suspicions and induce him perhaps to
change his plans."
He rose and with a scrupulous courtesy escorted
his visitors to the ante-room encumbered with
flower-pots.
Razumov parted with the Prince at the corner of
a street. In the carriage he had listened to
speeches where natural sentiment struggled with
caution. Evidently the Prince was afraid of
encouraging any hopes of future intercourse.
But there was a touch of tenderness in the voice
uttering in the dark the guarded general phrases
of goodwill. And the Prince too said--
"I have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Razumov."
"They all, it seems, have confidence in me,"
thought Razumov dully. He had an indulgent
contempt for the man sitting shoulder to
shoulder with him in the confined space.
Probably he was afraid of scenes with his wife.
She was said to be proud and violent.
It seemed to him bizarre that secrecy should
play such a large part in the comfort and safety
of lives. But he wanted to put the Prince's
mind at ease; and with a proper amount of
emphasis he said that, being conscious of some
small abilities and confident in his power of
work, he trusted his future to his own
exertions. He expressed his gratitude for the
helping hand. Such dangerous situations did not
occur twice in the course of one life--he added.
"And you have met this one with a firmness of
mind and correctness of feeling which give me a
high idea of your worth," the Prince said
solemnly. "You have now only to persevere--to
persevere."
On getting out on the pavement Razumov saw an
ungloved hand extended to him through the
lowered window of the brougham. It detained his
own in its grasp for a moment, while the light
of a street lamp fell upon the Prince's long
face and old-fashioned grey whiskers.
"I hope you are perfectly reassured now as to
the consequences. . . "
"After what your Excellency has condescended to
do for me, I can only rely on my conscience."
"_Adieu_," said the whiskered head with feeling.
Razumov bowed. The brougham glided away with a
slight swish in the snow--he was alone on the
edge of the pavement.
He said to himself that there was nothing to
think about, and began walking towards his home.
He walked quietly. It was a common experience
to walk thus home to bed after an evening spent
somewhere with his fellows or in the cheaper
seats of a theatre. After he had gone a little
way the familiarity of things got hold of him.
Nothing was changed. There was the familiar
corner; and when he turned it he saw the
familiar dim light of the provision shop kept by
a German woman. There were loaves of stale
bread, bunches of onions and strings of sausages
behind the small window-panes. They were
closing it. The sickly lame fellow whom he knew
so well by sight staggered out into the snow
embracing a large shutter.
Nothing would change. There was the familiar
gateway yawning black with feeble glimmers
marking the arches of the different staircases.
The sense of life's continuity depended on
trifling bodily impressions. The trivialities
of daily existence were an armour for the soul.
And this thought reinforced the inward quietness
of Razumov as he began to climb the stairs
familiar to his feet in the dark, with his hand
on the familiar clammy banister. The
exceptional could not prevail against the
material contacts which make one day resemble
another. To-morrow would be like yesterday.
It was only on the stage that the unusual was
outwardly acknowledged.
"I suppose," thought Razumov, "that if I had
made up my mind to blow out my brains on the
landing I would be going up these stairs as
quietly as I am doing it now. What's a man to
do? What must be must be. Extraordinary things
do happen. But when they have happened they are
done with. Thus, too, when the mind is made up.
That question is done with. And the daily
concerns, the familiarities of our thought
swallow it up--and the life goes on as before
with its mysterious and secret sides quite out
of sight, as they should be. Life is a public
thing."
Razumov unlocked his door and took the key out;
entered very quietly and bolted the door behind
him carefully.
He thought, "He hears me," and after bolting the
door he stood still holding his breath. There
was not a sound. He crossed the bare outer
room, stepping deliberately in the darkness.
Entering the other, he felt all over his table
for the matchbox. The silence, but for the
groping of his hand, was profound. Could the
fellow be sleeping so soundly?
He struck a light and looked at the bed. Haldin
was lying on his back as before, only both his
hands were under his head. His eyes were open.
He stared at the ceiling.
Razumov held the match up. He saw the clear-cut
features, the firm chin, the white forehead and
the topknot of fair hair against the white
pillow. There he was, lying flat on his back.
Razumov thought suddenly, "I have walked over
his chest."
He continued to stare till the match burnt
itself out; then struck another and lit the lamp
in silence without looking towards the bed any
more. He had turned his back on it and was
hanging his coat on a peg when he heard Haldin
sigh profoundly, then ask in a tired voice--
"Well! And what have you arranged?"
The emotion was so great that Razumov was glad
to put his hands against the wall. A diabolical
impulse to say, "I have given you up to the
police," frightened him exceedingly. But he did
not say that. He said, without turning round,
in a muffled voice--
"It's done."
Again he heard Haldin sigh. He walked to the
table, sat down with the lamp before him, and
only then looked towards the bed.
In the distant corner of the large room far away
from the lamp, which was small and provided with
a very thick china shade, Haldin appeared like a
dark and elongated shape--rigid with the
immobility of death. This body seemed to have
less substance than its own phantom walked over
by Razumov in the street white with snow. It
was more alarming in its shadowy, persistent
reality than the distinct but vanishing illusion.
Haldin was heard again.
"You must have had a walk--such a walk. . ." he
murmured deprecatingly.'' This weather. . . ."
Razumov answered with energy--
" Horrible walk. . . . A nightmare of a walk."
He shuddered audibly. Haldin sighed once more,
then--
"And so you have seen Ziemianitch--brother?"
"I've seen him."
Razumov, remembering the time he had spent with
the Prince, thought it prudent to add, "I had to
wait some time."
"A character--eh? It's extraordinary what a
sense of the necessity of freedom there is in
that man. And he has sayings too--simple, to
the point, such as only the people can invent in
their rough sagacity. A character that. . . ."
"I, you understand, haven't had much
opportunity. . . ." Razumov muttered through
his teeth.
Haldin continued to stare at the ceiling.
"You see, brother, I have been a good deal in
that house of late. I used to take there books--
leaflets. Not a few of the poor people who live
there can read. And, you see, the guests for
the feast of freedom must be sought for in
byways and hedges. The truth is, I have almost
lived in that house of late. I slept sometimes
in the stable. There is a stable. . . ."
"That's where I had my interview with
Ziemianitch," interrupted Razumov gently. A
mocking spirit entered into him and he added,
"It was satisfactory in a sense. I came away
from it much relieved."
"Ah! he's a fellow," went on Haldin, talking
slowly at the ceiling. "I came to know him in
that way, you see. For some weeks now, ever
since I resigned myself to do what had to be
done, I tried to isolate myself. I gave up my
rooms. What was the good of exposing a decent
widow woman to the risk of being worried out of
her mind by the police? I gave up seeing any of
our comrades. . . ."
Razumov drew to himself a half-sheet of paper
and began to trace lines on it with a pencil.
"Upon my word," he thought angrily, "he seems to
have thought of everybody's safety but mine."
Haldin was talking on.
"This morning--ah! this morning--that was
different. How can I explain to you? Before
the deed was done I wandered at night and lay
hid in the day, thinking it out, and I felt
restful. Sleepless but restful. What was there
for me to torment myself about? But this
morning--after! Then it was that I became
restless. I could not have stopped in that big
house full of misery. The miserable of this
world can't give you peace. Then when that
silly caretaker began to shout, I said to
myself, 'There is a young man in this town head
and shoulders above common prejudices.'"
"Is he laughing at me?" .Razumov asked himself,
going on with his aimless drawing of triangles
and squares. And suddenly he thought: "My
behaviour must appear to him strange. Should he
take fright at my manner and rush off somewhere
I shall be undone completely. That infernal
General. . . ."
He dropped the pencil and turned abruptly
towards the bed with the shadowy figure extended
full length on it--so much more indistinct than
the one over whose breast he had walked without
faltering. Was this, too, a phantom?
The silence had lasted a long time. "He is no
longer here," was the thought against which
Razumov struggled desperately, quite frightened
at its absurdity. "He is already gone and this.
. .only. . . ."
He could resist no longer. He sprang to his
feet, saying aloud, "I am intolerably anxious,"
and in a few headlong strides stood by the side
of the bed. His hand fell lightly on Haldin's
shoulder, and directly he felt its reality he
was beset by an insane temptation to grip that
exposed throat and squeeze the breath out of
that body, lest it should escape his custody,
leaving only a phantom behind.
Haldin did not stir a limb, but his overshadowed
eyes moving a little gazed upwards at Razumov
with wistful gratitude for this manifestation of
feeling.
Razumov turned away and strode up and down the
room. "It would have been possibly a kindness,"
he muttered to himself, and was appalled by the
nature of that apology for a murderous intention
his mind had found somewhere within him. And
all the same he could not give it up. He became
lucid about it. "What can he expect?" he
thought. "The halter--in the end. And I. . . ."
This argument was interrupted by Haldin's voice.
"Why be anxious for me? They can kill my body,
but they cannot exile my soul from this world.
I tell you what--I believe in this world so much
that I cannot conceive eternity otherwise than
as a very long life. That is perhaps the reason
I am so ready to die."
"H'm," muttered Razumov, and biting his lower
lip he continued to walk up and down and to
carry on his strange argument.
Yes, to a man in such a situation--of course it
would be an act of kindness. The question,
however, was not how to be kind, but how to be
firm. He was a slippery customer
"I too, Victor Victorovitch, believe in this
world of ours," he said with force. "I too,
while I live. . . . But you seem determined to
haunt it. You can't seriously. . . mean"
The voice of the motionless Haldin began--
"Haunt it! Truly, the oppressors of thought
which quickens the world, the destroyers of
souls which aspire to perfection of human
dignity, they shall be haunted. As to the
destroyers of my mere body, I have forgiven them
beforehand."
Razumov had stopped apparently to listen, but at
the same time he was observing his own
sensations. He was vexed with himself for
attaching so much importance to what Haldin said.
"The fellow's mad," he thought firmly, but this
opinion did not mollify him towards Haldin. It
was a particularly impudent form of lunacy--and
when it got loose in the sphere of public life
of a country, it was obviously the duty of every
good citizen. . . .
This train of thought broke off short there and
was succeeded by a paroxysm of silent hatred
towards Haldin, so intense that Razumov hastened
to speak at random.
"Yes. Eternity, of course. I, too, can't very
well represent it to myself. . . . I imagine
it, however, as something quiet and dull. There
would be nothing unexpected--don't you see? The
element of time would be wanting."
He pulled out his watch and gazed at it. Haldin
turned over on his side and looked on intently.
Razumov got frightened at this movement. A
slippery customer this fellow with a phantom.
It was not midnight yet. He hastened on--
"And unfathomable mysteries! Can you conceive
secret places in Eternity? Impossible. Whereas
life is full of them. There are secrets of
birth, for instance. One carries them on to the
grave. There is something comical. . . but
never mind. And there are secret motives of
conduct. A man's most open actions have a
secret side to them. That is interesting and so
unfathomable! For instance, a man goes out of a
room for a walk. Nothing more trivial in
appearance. And yet it may be momentous. He
comes back--he has seen perhaps a drunken brute,
taken particular notice of the snow on the
ground--and behold he is no longer the same man.
The most unlikely things have a secret power
over one's thoughts--the grey whiskers of a
particular person--the goggle eyes of another."
Razumov's forehead was moist. He took a turn or
two in the room, his head low and smiling to
himself viciously.
"Have you ever reflected on the power of goggle
eyes and grey whiskers? Excuse me. You seem to
think I must be crazy to talk in this vein at
such a time. But I am not talking lightly. I
have seen instances. It has happened to me once
to be talking to a man whose fate was affected
by physical facts of that kind. And the man did
not know it. Of course, it was a case of
conscience, but the material facts such as these
brought about the solution. . . . And you tell
me, Victor Victorovitch, not to be anxious!
Why! I am responsible for you," Razumov almost
shrieked.
He avoided with difficulty a burst of
Mephistophelian laughter. Haldin, very pale,
raised himself on his elbow.
"And the surprises of life," went on Razumov,
after glancing at the other uneasily. "Just
consider their astonishing nature. A mysterious
impulse induces you to come here. I don't say
you have done wrong. Indeed, from a certain
point of view you could not have done better.
You might have gone to a man with affections and
family ties. You have such ties yourself. As
to me, you know I have been brought up in an
educational institute where they did not give us
enough to eat. To talk of affection in such a
connexion--you perceive yourself. . . . As to
ties, the only ties I have in the world are
social. I must get acknowledged in some way
before I can act at all. I sit here working. .
. . And don't you think I am working for
progress too? I've got to find my own ideas of
the true way. . . . Pardon me," continued
Razumov, after drawing breath and with a short,
throaty laugh, "but I haven't inherited a
revolutionary inspiration together with a
resemblance from an uncle."
He looked again at his watch and noticed with
sickening disgust that there were yet a good
many minutes to midnight. He tore watch and
chain off his waistcoat and laid them on the
table well in the circle of bright lamplight.
Haldin, reclining on his elbow, did not stir.
Razumov was made uneasy by this attitude. "What
move is he meditating over so quietly?" he
thought. "He must be prevented. I must keep on
talking to him."
He raised his voice.
"You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin--I
don't know what--to no end of people. I am just
a man. Here I stand before you. A man with a
mind. Did it ever occur to you how a man who
had never heard a word of warm affection or
praise in his life would think on matters on
which you would think first with or against your
class, your domestic tradition--your fireside
prejudices?. . . Did you ever consider how a
man like that would feel? I have no domestic
tradition. I have nothing to think against. My
tradition is historical. What have I to look
back to but that national past from which you
gentlemen want to wrench away your future? Am I
to let my intelligence, my aspirations towards a
better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has
to go upon at the will of violent enthusiasts?
You come from your province, but all this land
is mine--or I have nothing. No doubt you shall
be looked upon as a martyr some day--a sort of
hero--a political saint. But I beg to be
excused. I am content in fitting myself to be a
worker. And what can you people do by
scattering a few drops of blood on the snow? On
this Immensity. On this unhappy Immensity! I
tell you," he cried, in a vibrating, subdued
voice, and advancing one step nearer the bed,
"that what it needs is not a lot of haunting
phantoms that I could walk through--but a man!"
Haldin threw his arms forward as if to keep him
off in horror.
"I understand it all now," he exclaimed, with
awestruck dismay. "I understand--at last."
Razumov staggered back against the table. His
forehead broke out in perspiration while a cold
shudder ran down his spine.
"What have I been saying?" he asked himself.
"Have I let him slip through my fingers after
all?"
"He felt his lips go stiff like buckram, and
instead of a reassuring smile only achieved an
uncertain grimace.
" What will you have?" he began in a
conciliating voice which got steady after the
first trembling word or two. "What will you
have? Consider--a man of studious, retired
habits--and suddenly like this. . . . I am not
practised in talking delicately. But. . . ."
He felt anger, a wicked anger, get hold of him
again.
"What were we to do together till midnight? Sit
here opposite each other and think of your--your-
shambles? "
Haldin had a subdued, heartbroken attitude. He
bowed his head; his hands hung between his
knees. His voice was low and pained but calm.
"I see now how it is, Razumov--brother. You are
a magnanimous soul, but my action is abhorrent
to you--alas. . . ."
Razumov stared. From fright he had set his
teeth so hard that his whole face ached. It was
impossible for him to make a sound.
"And even my person, too, is loathsome to you
perhaps," Haldin added mournfully, after a short
pause, looking up for a moment, then fixing his
gaze on the floor. "For indeed, unless one. . .
."
He broke off evidently waiting for a word.
Razumov remained silent. Haldin nodded his head
dejectedly twice.
"Of course. Of course," he murmured. . . .
"Ah! weary work!"
He remained perfectly still for a moment, then
made Razumov's leaden heart strike a ponderous
blow by springing up briskly.
"So be it," he cried sadly in a low, distinct
tone. "Farewell then."
Razumov started forward, but the sight of
Haldin's raised hand checked him before he could
get away from the table. He leaned on it
heavily, listening to the faint sounds of some
town clock tolling the hour. Haldin, already at
the door, tall and straight as an arrow, with
his pale face and a hand raised attentively,
might have posed for the statue of a daring
youth listening to an inner voice. Razumov
mechanically glanced down at his watch. When he
looked towards the door again Haldin had
vanished. There was a faint rustling in the
outer room, the feeble click of a bolt drawn
back lightly. He was gone--almost as noiseless
as a vision.
Razumov ran forward unsteadily, with parted,
voiceless lips. The outer door stood open.
Staggering out on the landing, he leaned far
over the banister. Gazing down into the deep
black shaft with a tiny glimmering flame at the
bottom, he traced by ear the rapid spiral
descent of somebody running down the stairs on
tiptoe. It was a light, swift, pattering sound,
which sank away from him into the depths: a
fleeting shadow passed over the glimmer--a wink
of the tiny flame. Then stillness.
Razumov hung over, breathing the cold raw air
tainted by the evil smells of the unclean
staircase. All quiet.
He went back into his room slowly, shutting the
doors after him. The peaceful steady light of
his reading-lamp shone on the watch. Razumov
stood looking down at the little white dial. It
wanted yet three minutes to midnight. He took
the watch into his hand fumblingly.
"Slow," he muttered, and a strange fit of
nervelessness came over him. His knees shook,
the watch and chain slipped through his fingers
in an instant and fell on the floor. He was so
startled that he nearly fell himself. When at
last he regained enough confidence in his limbs
to stoop for it he held it to his ear at once.
After a while he growled--
"Stopped," and paused for quite a long time
before he muttered sourly--
"It's done. . . . And now to work."
He sat down, reached haphazard for a book,
opened it in middle and began to read; but after
going conscientiously over two lines he lost his
hold on the print completely and did not try to
regain it. He thought--
"There was to a certainty a police agent of some
sort watching the house across the street."
He imagined him lurking in a dark gateway,
goggle-eyed, muffled up in a cloak to the nose
and with a General's plumed, cocked hat on his
head. This absurdity made him start in the
chair convulsively. He literally had to shake
his head violently to get rid of it. The man
would be disguised perhaps as a peasant. . . a
beggar. . . . Perhaps he would be just buttoned
up in a dark overcoat and carrying a loaded
stick--a shifty-eyed rascal, smelling of raw
onions and spirits.
This evocation brought on positive nausea. "Why
do I want to bother about this?" thought
Razumov with disgust. "Am I a gendarme?
Moreover, it is done."
He got up in great agitation. It was not done.
Not yet. Not till half-past twelve. And the
watch had stopped. This reduced him to despair.
Impossible to know the time! The landlady and
all the people across the landing were asleep.
How could he go and. . . . God knows what they
would imagine, or how much they would guess. He
dared not go into the streets to find out. "I
am a suspect now. There's no use shirking that
fact," he said to himself bitterly. If Haldin
from some cause or another gave them the slip
and failed to turn up in the Karabelnaya the
police would be invading his lodging. And if he
were not in he could never clear himself.
Never. Razumov looked wildly about as if for
some means of seizing upon time which seemed to
have escaped him altogether. He had never, as
far as he could remember, heard the striking of
that town clock in his rooms before this night.
And he was not even sure now whether he had
heard it really on this night.
He went to the window and stood there with
slightly bent head on the watch for the faint
sound. 'I will stay here till I hear
something," he said to himself. He stood still,
his ear turned to the panes. An atrocious
aching numbness with shooting pains in his back
and legs tortured him. He did not budge. His
mind hovered on the borders of delirium. He
heard himself suddenly saying, "I confess," as a
person might do on the rack. "I am on the
rack," he thought. He felt ready to swoon. The
faint deep boom of the distant clock seemed to
explode in his head--he heard it so clearly. . .
. One!
If Haldin had not turned up the police would
have been already here ransacking the house. No
sound reached him. This time it was done.
He dragged himself painfully to the table and
dropped into the chair. He flung the book away
and took a square sheet of paper. It was like
the pile of sheets covered with his neat minute
handwriting, only blank. He took a pen
brusquely and dipped it with a vague notion of
going on with the writing of his essay--but his
pen remained poised over the sheet. It hung
there for some time before it came down and
formed long scrawly letters.
Still-faced and his lips set hard, Razumov began
to write. When he wrote a large hand his neat
writing lost its character altogether--became
unsteady, almost childish. He wrote five lines
one under the other.
History not Theory.
Patriotism not Internationalism.
Evolution not Revolution.
Direction not Destruction.
Unity not Disruption.
He gazed at them dully. Then his eyes strayed
to the bed and remained fixed there for a good
many minutes, while his right hand groped all
over the table for the penknife.
He rose at last, and walking up with measured
steps stabbed the paper with the penknife to the
lath and plaster wall at the head of the bed.
This done he stepped back a pace and flourished
his hand with a glance round the room.
After that he never looked again at the bed. He
took his big cloak down from its peg and,
wrapping himself up closely, went to lie down on
the hard horse-hair sofa at the other side of
his room. A leaden sleep closed his eyelids at
once. Several times that night he woke up
shivering from a dream of walking through drifts
of snow in a Russia where he was as completely
alone as any betrayed autocrat could be; an
immense, wintry Russia which, somehow, his view
could embrace in all its enormous expanse as if
it were a map. But after each shuddering start
his heavy eyelids fell over his glazed eyes and
he slept again.
III
Approaching this part of Mr. Razumov's story, my
mind, the decent mind of an old teacher of
languages, feels more and more the difficulty of
the task.
The task is not in truth the writing in the
narrative form a _precis_ of a strange human
document, but the rendering--I perceive it now
clearly--of the moral conditions ruling over a
large portion of this earth's surface;
conditions not easily to be understood, much
less discovered in the limits of a story, till
some key-word is found; a word that could stand
at the back of all the words covering the pages;
a word which, if not truth itself, may perchance
hold truth enough to help the moral discovery
which should be the object of every tale.
I turn over for the hundredth time the leaves of
Mr. Razumov's record, I lay it aside, I take up
the pen--and the pen being ready for its office
of setting down black on white I hesitate. For
the word that persists in creeping under its
point is no other word than "cynicism."
For that is the mark of Russian autocracy and of
Russian revolt. In its pride of numbers, in its
strange pretensions of sanctity, and in the
secret readiness to abase itself in suffering,
the spirit of Russia is the spirit of cynicism.
It informs the declarations of her statesmen,
the theories of her revolutionists, and the
mystic vaticinations of prophets to the point of
making freedom look like a form of debauch, and
the Christian virtues themselves appear actually
indecent. . . . But I must apologize for the
digression. It proceeds from the consideration
of the course taken by the story of Mr. Razumov
after his conservative convictions, diluted in a
vague liberalism natural to the ardour of his
age, had become crystallized by the shock of his
contact with Haldin.
Razumov woke up for the tenth time perhaps with
a heavy shiver. Seeing the light of day in his
window, he resisted the inclination to lay
himself down again. He did not remember
anything, but he did not think it strange to
find himself on the sofa in his cloak and
chilled to the bone. The light coming through
the window seemed strangely cheerless,
containing no promise as the light of each new
day should for a young man. It was the
awakening of a man mortally ill, or of a man
ninety years old. He looked at the lamp which
had burnt itself out. It stood there, the
extinguished beacon of his labours, a cold
object of brass and porcelain, amongst the
scattered pages of his notes and small piles of
books--a mere litter of blackened paper--dead
matter--without significance or interest.
He got on his feet, and divesting himself of his
cloak hung it on the peg, going through all the
motions mechanically. An incredible dullness, a
ditch-water stagnation was sensible to his
perceptions as though life had withdrawn itself
from all things and even from his own thoughts.
There was not a sound in the house.
Turning away from the peg, he thought in that
same lifeless manner that it must be very early
yet; but when he looked at the watch on his
table he saw both hands arrested at twelve
o'clock.
"Ah! yes," he mumbled to himself, and as if
beginning to get roused a little he took a
survey of his room. The paper stabbed to the
wall arrested his attention. He eyed it from
the distance without approval or perplexity; but
when he heard the servant-girl beginning to
bustle about in the outer room with the
_samovar_ for his morning tea, he walked up to
it and took it down with an air of profound
indifference.
While doing this he glanced down at the bed on
which he had not slept that night. The hollow
in the pillow made by the weight of Haldin's
head was very noticeable.
Even his anger at this sign of the man's passage
was dull. He did not try to nurse it into life.
He did nothing all that day; he neglected even
to brush his hair. The idea of going out never
occurred to him--and if he did not start a
connected train of thought it was not because he
was unable to think. It was because he was not
interested enough.
He yawned frequently. He drank large quantities
of tea, he walked about aimlessly, and when he
sat down he did not budge for a long time. He
spent some time drumming on the window with his
finger-tips quietly. In his listless wanderings
round about the table he caught sight of his own
face in the looking-glass and that arrested him.
The eyes which returned his stare were the most
unhappy eyes he had ever seen. And this was the
first thing which disturbed the mental
stagnation of that day.
He was not affected personally. He merely
thought that life without happiness is
impossible. What was happiness? He yawned and
went on shuffling about and about between the
walls of his room. Looking forward was
happiness--that's all--nothing more. To look
forward to the gratification of some desire, to
the gratification of some passion, love,
ambition, hate--hate too indubitably. Love and
hate. And to escape the dangers of existence,
to live without fear, was also happiness. There
was nothing else. Absence of fear--looking
forward. "Oh! the miserable lot of humanity!"
he exclaimed mentally; and added at once in his
thought, "I ought to be happy enough as far as
that goes." But he was not excited by that
assurance. On the contrary, he yawned again as
he had been yawning all day. He was mildly
surprised to discover himself being overtaken by
night. The room grew dark swiftly though time
had seemed to stand still. How was it that he
had not noticed the passing of that day? Of
course, it was the watch being stopped. . . .
He did not light his lamp, but went over to the
bed and threw himself on it without any
hesitation. Lying on his back, he put his hands
under his head and stared upward. After a
moment he thought, "I am lying here like that
man. I wonder if he slept while I was
struggling with the blizzard in the streets.
No, he did not sleep. But why should I not
sleep?" and he felt the silence of the night
press upon all his limbs like a weight.
In the calm of the hard frost outside, the clear-
cut strokes of the town clock counting off
midnight penetrated the quietness of his
suspended animation.
Again he began to think. It was twenty-four
hours since that man left his room. Razumov had
a distinct feeling that Haldin in the fortress
was sleeping that night. It was a certitude
which made him angry because he did not want to
think of Haldin, but he justified it to himself
by physiological and psychological reasons. The
fellow had hardly slept for weeks on his own
confession, and now every incertitude was at an
end for him. No doubt he was looking forward to
the consummation of his martyrdom. A man who
resigns himself to kill need not go very far for
resignation to die. Haldin slept perhaps more
soundly than General T---, whose task--weary
work too--was not done, and over whose head hung
the sword of revolutionary vengeance.
Razumov, remembering the thick-set man with his
heavy jowl resting on the collar of his uniform,
the champion of autocracy, who had let no sign
of surprise, incredulity, or joy escape him, but
whose goggle eyes could express a mortal hatred
of all rebellion--Razumov moved uneasily on the
bed.
"He suspected me," he thought. "I suppose he
must suspect everybody. He would be capable of
suspecting his own wife, if Haldin had gone to
her boudoir with his confession."
Razumov sat up in anguish. Was he to remain a
political suspect all his days? Was he to go
through life as a man not wholly to be trusted--
with a bad secret police note tacked on to his
record? What sort of future could he look
forward to?
"I am now a suspect," he thought again; but the
habit of reflection and that desire of safety,
of an ordered life, which was so strong in him
came to his assistance as the night wore on.
His quiet, steady, and laborious existence would
vouch at length for his loyalty. There were
many permitted ways to serve one's country.
There was an activity that made for progress
without being revolutionary. The field of
influence was great and infinitely varied--once
one had conquered a name.
His thought like a circling bird reverted after
four-and-twenty hours to the silver medal, and
as it were poised itself there.
When the day broke he had not slept, not for a
moment, but he got up not very tired and quite
sufficiently self-possessed for all practical
purposes.
He went out and attended three lectures in the
morning. But the work in the library was a mere
dumb show of research. He sat with many volumes
open before him trying to make notes and
extracts. His new tranquillity was like a
flimsy garment, and seemed to float at the mercy
of a casual word. Betrayal! Why! the fellow
had done all that was necessary to betray
himself. Precious little had been needed to
deceive him.
"I have said no word to him that was not
strictly true. Not one word," Razumov argued
with himself.
Once engaged on this line of thought there could
be no question of doing useful work. The same
ideas went on passing through his mind, and he
pronounced mentally the same words over and over
again. He shut up all the books and rammed all
his papers into his pocket with convulsive
movements, raging inwardly against Haldin.
As he was leaving the library a long bony
student in a threadbare overcoat joined him,
stepping moodily by his side. Razumov answered
his mumbled greeting without looking at him at
all.
"What does he want with me? "he thought with a
strange dread of the unexpected which he tried
to shake off lest it should fasten itself upon
his life for good and all. And the other,
muttering cautiously with downcast eyes,
supposed that his comrade had seen the news of
de P---'s executioner--that was the expression
he used--having been arrested the night before
last. . . .
"I've been ill--shut up in my rooms," Razumov
mumbled through his teeth.
The tall student, raising his shoulders, shoved
his hands deep into his pockets. He had a
hairless, square, tallowy chin which trembled
slightly as he spoke, and his nose nipped bright
red by the sharp air looked like a false nose of
painted cardboard between the sallow cheeks.
His whole appearance was stamped with the mark
of cold and hunger. He stalked deliberately at
Razumov's elbow with his eyes on the ground.
"It's an official statement," he continued in
the same cautious mutter." It may be a lie.
But there was somebody arrested between midnight
and one in the morning on Tuesday. This is
certain."
And talking rapidly under the cover of his
downcast air, he told Razumov that this was
known through an inferior Government clerk
employed at the Central Secretariat. That man
belonged to one of the revolutionary circles.
"The same, in fact, I am affiliated to,"
remarked the student.
They were crossing a wide quadrangle. An
infinite distress possessed Razumov, annihilated
his energy, and before his eyes everything
appeared confused and as if evanescent. He
dared not leave the fellow there. "He may be
affiliated to the police," was the thought that
passed through his mind. "Who could tell?" But
eyeing the miserable frost-nipped, famine-struck
figure of his companion he perceived the
absurdity of his suspicion.
"But I--you know--I don't belong to any circle.
I. . . ."
He dared not say any more. Neither dared he
mend his pace. The other, raising and setting
down his lamentably shod feet with exact
deliberation, protested in a low tone that it
was not necessary for everybody to belong to an
organization. The most valuable personalities
remained outside. Some of the best work was
done outside the organization. Then very fast,
with whispering, feverish lips--
"The man arrested in the street was Haldin."
And accepting Razumov's dismayed silence as
natural enough, he assured him that there was no
mistake. That Government clerk was on night
duty at the Secretariat. Hearing a great noise
of footsteps in the hall and aware that
political prisoners were brought over sometimes
at night from the fortress, he opened the door
of the room in which he was working, suddenly.
Before the gendarme on duty could push him back
and slam the door in his face, he had seen a
prisoner being partly carried, partly dragged
along the hall by a lot of policemen. He was
being used very brutally. And the clerk had
recognized Haldin perfectly. Less than half an
hour afterwards General T--- arrived at the
Secretariat to examine that prisoner personally.
"Aren't you astonished?" concluded the gaunt
student.
"No," said Razumov roughly--and at once
regretted his answer.
"Everybody supposed Haldin was in the provinces--
with his people. Didn't you? "
The student turned his big hollow eyes upon
Razumov, who said unguardedly--
"His people are abroad."
He could have bitten his tongue out with
vexation. The student pronounced in a tone of
profound meaning-
" So! You alone were aware. . ." and stopped.
"They have sworn my ruin," thought Razumov."
Have you spoken of this to anyone else?" he
asked with bitter curiosity.
The other shook his head.
"No, only to you. Our circle thought that as
Haldin had been often heard expressing a warm
appreciation of your character. . . ."
Razumov could not restrain a gesture of angry
despair which the other must have misunderstood
in some way, because he ceased speaking and
turned away his black, lack-lustre eyes.
They moved side by side in silence. Then the
gaunt student began to whisper again, with
averted gaze--
"As we have at present no one affiliated inside
the fortress so as to make it possible to
furnish him with a packet of poison, we have
considered already some sort of retaliatory
action--to follow very soon. . . ."
Razumov trudging on interrupted--
"Were you acquainted with Haldin? Did he know
where you live?"
"I had the happiness to hear him speak twice,"
his companion answered in the feverish whisper
contrasting with the gloomy apathy of his face
and bearing. "He did not know where I live. . .
. I am lodging poorly with an artisan family. .
. . I have just a corner in a room. It is not
very practicable to see me there, but if you
should need me for anything I am ready. . . .
Razumov trembled with rage and fear. He was
beside himself, but kept his voice low.
"You are not to come near me. You are not to
speak to me. Never address a single word to me.
I forbid you."
"Very well," said the other submissively,
showing no surprise whatever at this abrupt
prohibition. "You don't wish for secret
reasons. . . perfectly. . . I understand."
He edged away at once, not looking up even; and
Razumov saw his gaunt, shabby, famine-stricken
figure cross the street obliquely with lowered
head and that peculiar exact motion of the feet.
He watched him as one would watch a vision out
of a nightmare, then he continued on his way,
trying not to think. On his landing the
landlady seemed to be waiting for him. She was
a short, thick, shapeless woman with a large
yellow face wrapped up everlastingly in a black
woollen shawl. When she saw him come up the
last flight of stairs she flung both her arms up
excitedly, then clasped her hands before her
face.
"Kirylo Sidorovitch--little father--what have
you been doing? And such a quiet young man,
too! The police are just gone this moment after
searching your rooms."
Razumov gazed down at her with silent,
scrutinizing attention. Her puffy yellow
countenance was working with emotion. She
screwed up her eyes at him entreatingly.
"Such a sensible young man! Anybody can see you
are sensible. And now--like this--all at once.
. . . What is the good of mixing yourself up
with these Nihilists? Do give over, little
father. They are unlucky people."
Razumov moved his shoulders slightly.
"Or is it that some secret enemy has been
calumniating you, Kirylo Sidorovitch? The world
is full of black hearts and false denunciations
nowadays. There is much fear about."
"Have you heard that I have been denounced by
some one?" asked Razumov, without taking his
eyes off her quivering face.
But she had not heard anything. She had tried
to find out by asking the police captain while
his men were turning the room upside down. The
police captain of the district had known her for
the last eleven years and was a humane person.
But he said to her on the landing, looking very
black and vexed--
"My good woman, do not ask questions. I don't
know anything myself. The order comes from
higher quarters."
And indeed there had appeared, shortly after the
arrival of the policemen of the district, a very
superior gentleman in a fur coat and a shiny
hat, who sat down in the room and looked through
all the papers himself. He came alone and went
away by himself, taking nothing with him. She
had been trying to put things straight a little
since they left.
Razumov turned away brusquely and entered his
rooms.
All his books had been shaken and thrown on the
floor. His landlady followed him, and stooping
painfully began to pick them up into her apron.
His papers and notes which were kept always
neatly sorted (they all related to his studies)
had been shuffled up and heaped together into a
ragged pile in the middle of the table.
This disorder affected him profoundly,
unreasonably. He sat down and stared. He had a
distinct sensation of his very existence being
undermined in some mysterious manner, of his
moral supports falling away from him one by one.
He even experienced a slight physical giddiness
and made a movement as if to reach for something
to steady himself with.
The old woman, rising to her feet with a low
groan, shot all the books she had collected in
her apron on to the sofa and left the room
muttering and sighing.
It was only then that he noticed that the sheet
of paper which for one night had remained
stabbed to the wall above his empty bed was
lying on top of the pile.
When he had taken it down the day before he had
folded it in four, absent-mindedly, before
dropping it on the table. And now he saw it
lying uppermost, spread out, smoothed out even
and covering all the confused pile of pages, the
record of his intellectual life for the last
three years. It had not been flung there. It
had been placed there--smoothed out, too! He
guessed in that an intention of profound meaning-
-or perhaps some inexplicable mockery.
He sat staring at the piece of paper till his
eyes began to smart. He did not attempt to put
his papers in order, either that evening or the
next day--which he spent at home in a state of
peculiar irresolution. This irresolution bore
upon the question whether he should continue to
live--neither more nor less. But its nature was
very far removed from the hesitation of a man
contemplating suicide. The idea of laying
violent hands upon his body did not occur to
Razumov. The unrelated organism bearing that
label, walking, breathing, wearing these
clothes, was of no importance to anyone, unless
maybe to the landlady. The true Razumov had his
being in the willed, in the determined future--
in that future menaced by the lawlessness of
autocracy--for autocracy knows no law--and the
lawlessness of revolution. The feeling that his
moral personality was at the mercy of these
lawless forces was so strong that he asked
himself seriously if it were worth while to go
on accomplishing the mental functions of that
existence which seemed no longer his own.
"What is the good of exerting my intelligence,
of pursuing the systematic development of my
faculties and all my plans of work?" he asked
himself. "I want to guide my conduct by
reasonable convictions, but what security have I
against something--some destructive horror--
walking in upon me as I sit here?. . ."
Razumov looked apprehensively towards the door
of the outer room as if expecting some shape of
evil to turn the handle and appear before him
silently.
"A common thief," he said to himself," finds
more guarantees in the law he is breaking, and
even a brute like Ziemianitch has his
consolation." Razumov envied the materialism of
the thief and the passion of the incorrigible
lover. The consequences of their actions were
always clear and their lives remained their own.
But he slept as soundly that night as though he
had been consoling himself in the manner of
Ziemianitch. He dropped off suddenly, lay like
a log, remembered no dream on waking. But it
was as if his soul had gone out in the night to
gather the flowers of wrathful wisdom. He got
up in a mood of grim determination and as if
with a new knowledge of his own nature. He
looked mockingly on the heap of papers on his
table; and left his room to attend the lectures,
muttering to himself, "We shall see."
He was in no humour to talk to anybody or hear
himself questioned as to his absence from
lectures the day before. But it was difficult
to repulse rudely a very good comrade with a
smooth pink face and fair hair, bearing the
nickname amongst his fellow-students of "Madcap
Kostia." He was the idolized only son of a very
wealthy and illiterate Government contractor,
and attended the lectures only during the
periodical fits of contrition following upon
tearful paternal remonstrances. Noisily
blundering like a retriever puppy, his elated
voice and great gestures filled the bare academy
corridors with the joy of thoughtless animal
life, provoking indulgent smiles at a great
distance. His usual discourses treated of
trotting horses, wine-parties in expensive
restaurants, and the merits of persons of easy
virtue, with a disarming artlessness of outlook.
He pounced upon Razumov about midday, somewhat
less uproariously than his habit was, and led
him aside.
"Just a moment, Kirylo Sidorovitch. A few words
here in this quiet corner."
He felt Razumov's reluctance, and insinuated his
hand under his arm caressingly.
"No--pray do. I don't want to talk to you about
any of my silly scrapes. What are my scrapes?
Absolutely nothing. Mere childishness. The
other night I flung a fellow out of a certain
place where I was having a fairly good time. A
tyrannical little beast of a quill-driver from
the Treasury department. He was bullying the
people of the house. I rebuked him. 'You are
not behaving humanely to God's creatures that
are a jolly sight more estimable than yourself,'
I said. I can't bear to see any tyranny,
Kirylo Sidorovitch. Upon my word I can't. He
didn't take it in good part at all. 'Who's that
impudent puppy ?' he begins to shout. I was in
excellent form as it happened, and he went
through the closed window very suddenly. He
flew quite a long way into the yard. I raged
like--like a--minotaur. The women clung to me
and screamed, the fiddlers got under the table.
. . . Such fun! My dad had to put his hand
pretty deep into his pocket, I can tell you."
He chuckled.
"My dad is a very useful man. Jolly good thing
it is for me, too. I do get into unholy
scrapes."
His elation fell. That was just it. What was
his life? Insignificant; no good to anyone; a
mere festivity. It would end some fine day in
his getting his skull split with a champagne
bottle in a drunken brawl. At such times, too,
when men were sacrificing themselves to ideas.
But he could never get any ideas into his head.
His head wasn't worth anything better than to be
split by a champagne bottle.
Razumov, protesting that he had no time, made an
attempt to get away. The other's tone changed
to confidential earnestness.
"For God's sake, Kirylo, my dear soul, let me
make some sort of sacrifice. It would not be a
sacrifice really. I have my rich dad behind me.
There's positively no getting to the bottom of
his pocket."
And rejecting indignantly Razumov's suggestion
that this was drunken raving, he offered to lend
him some money to escape abroad with. He could
always get money from his dad. He had only to
say that he had lost it at cards or something of
that sort, and at the same time promise solemnly
not to miss a single lecture for three months on
end. That would fetch the old man; and he,
Kostia, was quite equal to the sacrifice.
Though he really did not see what was the good
for him to attend the lectures. It was
perfectly hopeless.
"Won't you let me be of some use?" he pleaded to
the silent Razumov, who with his eyes on the
ground and utterly unable to penetrate the real
drift of the other's intention, felt a strange
reluctance to clear up the point.
"What makes you think I want to go abroad?" he
asked at last very quietly.
Kostia lowered his voice.
"You had the police in your rooms yesterday.
There are three or four of us who have heard of
that. Never mind how we know. It is sufficient
that we do. So we have been consulting
together."
"Ah! You got to know that so soon," muttered
Razumov negligently.
"Yes. We did. And it struck us that a man like
you. . . "
"What sort of a man do you take me to be?"
Razumov interrupted him.
"A man of ideas--and a man of action too. But
you are very deep, Kirylo. There's no getting
to the bottom of your mind. Not for fellows
like me. But we all agreed that you must be
preserved for our country. Of that we have no
doubt whatever--I mean all of us who have heard
Haldin speak of you on certain occasions. A man
doesn't get the police ransacking his rooms
without there being some devilry hanging over
his head. . . . And so if you think that it
would be better for you to bolt at once. . . ."
Razumov tore himself away and walked down the
corridor, leaving the other motionless with his
mouth open. But almost at once he returned and
stood before the amazed Kostia, who shut his
mouth slowly. Razumov looked him straight in
the eyes, before saying with marked deliberation
and separating his words-
"I thank--you--very--much."
He went away again rapidly. Kostia, recovering
from his surprise at these manoeuvres, ran up
behind him pressingly.
"No! Wait! Listen. I really mean it. It would
be like giving your compassion to a starving
fellow. Do you hear, Kirylo? And any disguise
you may think of, that too I could procure from
a costumier, a Jew I know. Let a fool be made
serviceable according to his folly. Perhaps
also a false beard or something of that kind may
be needed.
"Razumov turned at bay.
"There are no false beards needed in this
business, Kostia--you good-hearted lunatic, you.
What do you know of my ideas? My ideas may be
poison to you." The other began to shake his
head in energetic protest.
"What have you got to do with ideas? Some of
them would make an end of your dad's money-bags.
Leave off meddling with what you don't
understand. Go back to your trotting horses and
your girls, and then you'll be sure at least of
doing no harm to anybody, and hardly any to
yourself."
The enthusiastic youth was overcome by this
disdain.
"You're sending me back to my pig's trough,
Kirylo. That settles it. I am an unlucky beast-
-and I shall die like a beast too. But mind--
it's your contempt that has done for me."
Razumov went off with long strides. That this
simple and grossly festive soul should have
fallen too under the revolutionary curse
affected him as an ominous symptom of the time.
He reproached himself for feeling troubled.
Personally he ought to have felt reassured.
There was an obvious advantage in this
conspiracy of mistaken judgment taking him for
what he was not. But was it not strange?
Again he experienced that sensation of his
conduct being taken out of his hands by Haldin's
revolutionary tyranny. His solitary and
laborious existence had been destroyed--the only
thing he could call his own on this earth. By
what right? he asked himself furiously. In
what name?
What infuriated him most was to feel that the
"thinkers" of the University were evidently
connecting him with Haldin--as a sort of
confidant in the background apparently. A
mysterious connexion! Ha ha!. . . He had been
made a personage without knowing anything about
it. How that wretch Haldin must have talked
about him! Yet it was likely that Haldin had
said very little. The fellow's casual
utterances were caught up and treasured and
pondered over by all these imbeciles. And was
not all secret revolutionary action based upon
folly, self-deception, and lies?
"Impossible to think of anything else," muttered
Razumov to himself. "I'll become an idiot if
this goes on. The scoundrels and the fools are
murdering my intelligence."
He lost all hope of saving his future, which
depended on the free use of his intelligence.
He reached the doorway of his house in a state
of mental discouragement which enabled him to
receive with apparent indifference an official-
looking envelope from the dirty hand of the
dvornik.
"A gendarme brought it," said the man. " He
asked if you were at home. I told him 'No, he's
not at home.' So he left it. 'Give it into his
own hands,' says he. Now you've got it--eh?"
He went back to his sweeping, and Razumov
climbed his stairs, envelope in hand. Once in
his room he did not hasten to open it. Of
course this official missive was from the
superior direction of the police. A suspect! A
suspect!
He stared in dreary astonishment at the
absurdity of his position. He thought with a
sort of dry, unemotional melancholy; three years
of good work gone, the course of forty more
perhaps jeopardized--turned from hope to terror,
because events started by human folly link
themselves into a sequence which no sagacity can
foresee and no courage can break through.
Fatality enters your rooms while your landlady's
back is turned; you come home and find it in
possession bearing a man's name, clothed in
flesh--wearing a brown cloth coat and long boots-
-lounging against the stove. It asks you, "Is
the outer door closed?"--and you don't know
enough to take it by the throat and fling it
downstairs. You don't know. You welcome the
crazy fate. "Sit down," you say. And it is all
over. You cannot shake it off any more. It
will cling to you for ever. Neither halter nor
bullet can give you back the freedom of your
life and the sanity of your thought. . . . It
was enough to dash one's head against a wall.
Razumov looked slowly all round the walls as if
to select a spot to dash his head against. Then
he opened the letter. It directed the student
Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov to present himself
without delay at the General Secretariat.
Razumov had a vision of General T---'s goggle
eyes waiting for him--the embodied power of
autocracy, grotesque and terrible. He embodied
the whole power of autocracy because he was its
guardian. He was the incarnate suspicion, the
incarnate anger, the incarnate ruthlessness of a
political and social regime on its defence. He
loathed rebellion by instinct. And Razumov
reflected that the man was simply unable to
understand a reasonable adherence to the
doctrine of absolutism.
"What can he want with me precisely--I wonder?"
he asked himself.
As if that mental question had evoked the
familiar phantom, Haldin stood suddenly before
him in the room with an extraordinary
completeness of detail. Though the short winter
day had passed already into the sinister
twilight of a land buried in snow, Razumov saw
plainly the narrow leather strap round the
Tcherkess coat. The illusion of that hateful
presence was so perfect that he half expected it
to ask, "Is the outer door closed?" He looked at
it with hatred and contempt. Souls do not take
a shape of clothing. Moreover, Haldin could not
be dead yet. Razumov stepped forward menacingly;
the vision vanished--and turning short on his
heel he walked out of his room with infinite
disdain.
But after going down the first flight of stairs
it occurred to him that perhaps the superior
authorities of police meant to confront him with
Haldin in the flesh. This thought struck him
like a bullet, and had he not clung with both
hands to the banister he would have rolled down
to the next landing most likely. His legs were
of no use for a considerable time. . . . But
why? For what conceivable reason? To what end?
There could be no rational answer to these
questions; but Razumov remembered the promise
made by the General to Prince K---. His action
was to remain unknown.
He got down to the bottom of the stairs,
lowering himself as it were from step to step,
by the banister. Under the gate he regained much
of his firmness of thought and limb. He went
out into the street without staggering visibly.
Every moment he felt steadier mentally. And yet
he was saying to himself that General T--- was
perfectly capable of shutting him up in the
fortress for an indefinite time. His
temperament fitted his remorseless task, and his
omnipotence made him inaccessible to reasonable
argument.
But when Razumov arrived at the Secretariat he
discovered that he would have nothing to do with
General T---. It is evident from Mr. Razumov's
diary that this dreaded personality was to
remain in the background. A civilian of
superior rank received him in a private room
after a period of waiting in outer offices where
a lot of scribbling went on at many tables in a
heated and stuffy atmosphere.
The clerk in uniform who conducted him said in
the corridor--
"You are going before Gregor Matvieitch Mikulin."
There was nothing formidable about the man
bearing that name. His mild, expectant glance
was turned on the door already when Razumov
entered. At once, with the penholder he was
holding in his hand, he pointed to a deep sofa
between two windows. He followed Razumov with
his eyes while that last crossed the room and
sat down. The mild gaze rested on him, not
curious, not inquisitive--certainly not
suspicious--almost without expression. In its
passionless persistence there was something
resembling sympathy.
Razumov, who had prepared his will and his
intelligence to encounter General T--- himself,
was profoundly troubled. All the moral bracing
up against the possible excesses of power and
passion went for nothing before this sallow man,
who wore a full unclipped beard. It was fair,
thin, and very fine. The light fell in coppery
gleams on the protuberances of a high, rugged
forehead. And the aspect of the broad, soft
physiognomy was so homely and rustic that the
careful middle parting of the hair seemed a
pretentious affectation.
The diary of Mr. Razumov testifies to some
irritation on his part. I may remark here that
the diary proper consisting of the more or less
daily entries seems to have been begun on that
very evening after Mr. Razumov had returned home.
Mr. Razumov, then, was irritated. His strung-up
individuality had gone to pieces within him very
suddenly.
"I must be very prudent with him," he warned
himself in the silence during which they sat
gazing at each other. It lasted some little
time, and was characterized (for silences have
their character) by a sort of sadness imparted
to it perhaps by the mild and thoughtful manner
of the bearded official. Razumov learned later
that he was the chief of a department in the
General Secretariat, with a rank in the civil
service equivalent to that of a colonel in the
army.
Razumov's mistrust became acute. The main point
was, not to be drawn into saying too much. He
had been called there for some reason. What
reason? To be given to understand that he was a
suspect--and also no doubt to be pumped. As to
what precisely? There was nothing. Or perhaps
Haldin had been telling lies. . . . Every
alarming uncertainty beset Razumov. He could
bear the silence no longer, and cursing himself
for his weakness spoke first, though he had
promised himself not to do so on any account.
"I haven't lost a moment's time," he began in a
hoarse, provoking tone; and then the faculty of
speech seemed to leave him and enter the body of
Councillor Mikulin, who chimed in approvingly--
"Very proper. Very proper. Though as a matter
of fact. . . ."
But the spell was broken, and Razumov
interrupted him boldly, under a sudden
conviction that this was the safest attitude to
take. With a great flow of words he complained
of being totally misunderstood. Even as he
talked with a perception of his own audacity he
thought that the word "misunderstood" was better
than the word "mistrusted," and he repeated it
again with insistence. Suddenly he ceased,
being seized with fright before the attentive
immobility of the official. "What am I talking
about?" he thought, eyeing him with a vague
gaze. Mistrusted--not misunderstood--was the
right symbol for these people. Misunderstood
was the other kind of curse. Both had been
brought on his head by that fellow Haldin. And
his head ached terribly. He passed his hand
over his brow--an involuntary gesture of
suffering, which he was too careless to
restrain. At that moment Razumov beheld his own
brain suffering on the rack--a long, pale figure
drawn asunder horizontally with terrific force
in the darkness of a vault, whose face he failed
to see. It was as though he had dreamed for an
infinitesimal fraction of time of some dark
print of the Inquisition.
It is not to be seriously supposed that Razumov
had actually dozed off and had dreamed in the
presence of Councillor Mikulin, of an old print
of the Inquisition. He was indeed extremely
exhausted, and he records a remarkably dream-
like experience of anguish at the circumstance
that there was no one whatever near the pale and
extended figure. The solitude of the racked
victim was particularly horrible to behold. The
mysterious impossibility to see the face, he
also notes, inspired a sort of terror. All
these characteristics of an ugly dream were
present. Yet he is certain that he never lost
the consciousness of himself on the sofa,
leaning forward with his hands between his knees
and turning his cap round and round in his
fingers. But everything vanished at the voice
of Councillor Mikulin. Razumov felt profoundly
grateful for the even simplicity of its tone.
"Yes. I have listened with interest. I
comprehend in a measure your. . . But, indeed,
you are mistaken in what you. . . . "Councillor
Mikulin uttered a series of broken sentences.
Instead of finishing them he glanced down his
beard. It was a deliberate curtailment which
somehow made the phrases more impressive. But
he could talk fluently enough, as became
apparent when changing his tone to
persuasiveness he went on: "By listening to you
as I did, I think I have proved that I do not
regard our intercourse as strictly official. In
fact, I don't want it to have that character at
all. . . . Oh yes! I admit that the request for
your presence here had an official form. But I
put it to you whether it was a form which would
have been used to secure the attendance of a. .
. ."
"Suspect," exclaimed Razumov, looking straight
into the official's eyes. They were big with
heavy eyelids, and met his boldness with a dim,
steadfast gaze. "A suspect." The open
repetition of that word which had been haunting
all his waking hours gave Razumov a strange sort
of satisfaction. Councillor Mikulin shook his
head slightly. "Surely you do know that I've
had my rooms searched by the police?"
"I was about to say a 'misunderstood person,'
when you interrupted me," insinuated quietly
Councillor Mikulin.
Razumov smiled without bitterness. The renewed
sense of his intellectual superiority sustained
him in the hour of danger. He said a little
disdainfully--
"I know I am but a reed. But I beg you to allow
me the superiority of the thinking reed over the
unthinking forces that are about to crush him
out of existence. Practical thinking in the
last instance is but criticism. I may perhaps
be allowed to express my wonder at this action
of the police being delayed for two full days
during which, of course, I could have
annihilated everything compromising by burning
it--let us say--and getting rid of the very
ashes, for that matter."
"You are angry," remarked the official, with an
unutterable simplicity of tone and manner. "Is
that reasonable? "
Razumov felt himself colouring with annoyance.
"I am reasonable. I am even--permit me to say--
a thinker, though to be sure, this name nowadays
seems to be the monopoly of hawkers of
revolutionary wares, the slaves of some French
or German thought--devil knows what foreign
notions. But I am not an intellectual mongrel.
I think like a Russian. I think faithfully--and
I take the liberty to call myself a thinker. It
is not a forbidden word, as far as I know."
" No. Why should it be a forbidden word?"
Councillor Mikulin turned in his seat with
crossed legs and resting his elbow on the table
propped his head on the knuckles of a half-
closed hand. Razumov noticed a thick forefinger
clasped by a massive gold band set with a blood-
red stone--a signet ring that, looking as if it
could weigh half a pound, was an appropriate
ornament for that ponderous man with the
accurate middle-parting of glossy hair above a
rugged Socratic forehead.
"Could it be a wig?" Razumov detected himself
wondering with an unexpected detachment. His
self-confidence was much shaken. He resolved to
chatter no more. Reserve ! Reserve ! All he
had to do was to keep the Ziemianitch episode
secret with absolute determination, when the
questions came. Keep Ziemianitch strictly out
of all the answers.
Councillor Mikulin looked at him dimly.
Razumov's self-confidence abandoned him
completely. It seemed impossible to keep
Ziemianitch out. Every question would lead to
that, because, of course, there was nothing
else. He made an effort to brace himself up.
It was a failure. But Councillor Mikulin was
surprisingly detached too.
"Why should it be forbidden?" he repeated. "I
too consider myself a thinking man, I assure
you. The principal condition is to think
correctly. I admit it is difficult sometimes at
first for a young man abandoned to himself--with
his generous impulses undisciplined, so to speak-
-at the mercy of every wild wind that blows.
Religious belief, of course, is a great. . . ."
Councillor Mikulin glanced down his beard, and
Razumov, whose tension was relaxed by that
unexpected and discursive turn, murmured with
gloomy discontent-
"That man, Haldin, believed in God."
"Ah! You are aware," breathed out Councillor
Mikulin, making the point softly, as if with
discretion, but making it nevertheless plainly
enough, as if he too were put off his guard by
Razumov's remark. The young man preserved an
impassive, moody countenance, though he
reproached himself bitterly for a pernicious
fool, to have given thus an utterly false
impression of intimacy. He kept his eyes on the
floor. "I must positively hold my tongue unless
I am obliged to speak," he admonished himself.
And at once against his will the question,
"Hadn't I better tell him everything?"
presented itself with such force that he had to
bite his lower lip. Councillor Mikulin could
not, however, have nourished any hope of
confession. He went on--
"You tell me more than his judges were able to
get out of him. He was judged by a commission
of three. He would tell them absolutely
nothing. I have the report of the
interrogatories here, by me. After every
question there stands "Refuses to answer--
refuses to answer.' It's like that page after
page. You see, I have been entrusted with some
further investigations around and about this
affair. He has left me nothing to begin my
investigations on. A hardened miscreant. And
so, you say, he believed in. . . ."
Again Councillor Mikulin glanced down his beard
with a faint grimace; but he did not pause for
long. Remarking with a shade of scorn that
blasphemers also had that sort of belief, he
concluded by supposing that Mr. Razumov had
conversed frequently with Haldin on the subject.
"No," said Razumov loudly, without looking up.
"He talked and I listened. That is not a
conversation."
"Listening is a great art," observed Mikulin
parenthetically.
"And getting people to talk is another," mumbled
Razumov.
"Well, no--that is not very difficult," Mikulin
said innocently, "except, of course, in special
cases. For instance, this Haldin. Nothing
could induce him to talk. He was brought four
times before the delegated judges. Four secret
interrogatories--and even during the last, when
your personality was put forward. . . ."
"My personality put forward?" repeated Razumov,
raising his head brusquely. "I don't
understand." Councillor Mikulin turned squarely
to the table, and taking up some sheets of grey
foolscap dropped them one after another,
retaining only the last in his hand. He held it
before his eyes while speaking.
"It was--you see--judged necessary. In a case
of that gravity no means of action upon the
culprit should be neglected. You understand
that yourself, I am certain."
Razumov stared with enormous wide eyes at the
side view of Councillor Mikulin, who now was not
looking at him at all.
"So it was decided (I was consulted by General T-
--) that a certain question should be put to the
accused. But in deference to the earnest wishes
of Prince K--- your name has been kept out of
the documents and even from the very knowledge
of the judges themselves. Prince K---
recognized the propriety, the necessity of what
we proposed to do, but he was concerned for your
safety. Things do leak out--that we can't deny.
One cannot always answer for the discretion of
inferior officials. There was, of course, the
secretary of the special tribunal--one or two
gendarmes in the room. Moreover, as I have
said, in deference to Prince K--- even the
judges themselves were to be left in ignorance.
The question ready framed was sent to them by
General T--- (I wrote it out with my own hand)
with instructions to put it to the prisoner the
very last of all. Here it is."
Councillor Mikulin threw back his head into
proper focus and went on reading monotonously:
"Question--Has the man well known to you, in
whose rooms you remained for several hours on
Monday and on whose information you have been
arrested--has he had any previous knowledge of
your intention to commit a political murder?. .
. Prisoner refuses to reply.
"Question repeated. Prisoner preserves the same
stubborn silence.
"The venerable Chaplain of the Fortress being
then admitted and exhorting the prisoner to
repentance, entreating him also to atone for his
crime by an unreserved and full confession which
should help to liberate from the sin of
rebellion against the Divine laws and the sacred
Majesty of the Ruler, our Christ-loving land--
the prisoner opens his lips for the first time
during this morning's audience and in a loud,
clear voice rejects the venerable Chaplain's
ministrations.
"At eleven o'clock the Court pronounces in
summary form the death sentence.
"The execution is fixed for four o'clock in the
afternoon, subject to further instructions from
superior authorities."
Councillor Mikulin dropped the page of foolscap,
glanced down his beard, and turning to Razumov,
added in an easy, explanatory tone--
"We saw no object in delaying the execution.
The order to carry out the sentence was sent by
telegraph at noon. I wrote out the telegram
myself. He was hanged at four o'clock this
afternoon."
The definite information of Haldin's death gave
Razumov the feeling of general lassitude which
follows a great exertion or a great excitement.
He kept very still on the sofa, but a murmur
escaped him-
"He had a belief in a future existence."
Councillor Mikulin shrugged his shoulders
slightly, and Razumov got up with an effort.
There was nothing now to stay for in that room.
Haldin had been hanged at four o'clock. There
could be no doubt of that. He had, it seemed,
entered upon his future existence, long boots,
Astrakhan fur cap and all, down to the very
leather strap round his waist. A flickering,
vanishing sort of existence. It was not his
soul, it was his mere phantom he had left behind
on this earth--thought Razumov, smiling
caustically to himself while he crossed the
room, utterly forgetful of where he was and of
Councillor Mikulin's existence. The official
could have set a lot of bells ringing all over
the building without leaving his chair. He let
Razumov go quite up to the door before he spoke.
"Come, Kirylo Sidorovitch--what are you doing?"
Razumov turned his head and looked at him in
silence. He was not in the least disconcerted.
Councillor Mikulin's arms were stretched out on
the table before him and his body leaned forward
a little with an effort of his dim gaze.
"Was I actually going to clear out like this?"
Razumov wondered at himself with an impassive
countenance. And he was aware of this
impassiveness concealing a lucid astonishment.
"Evidently I was going out if he had not
spoken," he thought. "What would he have done
then? I must end this affair one way or
another. I must make him show his hand."
For a moment longer he reflected behind the mask
as it were, then let go the door-handle and came
back to the middle of the room.
"I'll tell you what you think," he said
explosively, but not raising his voice. "You
think that you are dealing with a secret
accomplice of that unhappy man. No, I do not
know that he was unhappy. He did not tell me.
He was a wretch from my point of view, because
to keep alive a false idea is a greater crime
than to kill a man. I suppose you will not deny
that? I hated him! Visionaries work
everlasting evil on earth. Their Utopias
inspire in the mass of mediocre minds a disgust
of reality and a contempt for the secular logic
of human development."
Razumov shrugged his shoulders and stared.
"What a tirade!" he thought. The silence and
immobility of Councillor Mikulin impressed him.
The bearded bureaucrat sat at his post,
mysteriously self-possessed like an idol with
dim, unreadable eyes. Razumov's voice changed
involuntarily.
"If you were to ask me where is the necessity of
my hate for such as Haldin, I would answer you--
there is nothing sentimental in it. I did not
hate him because he had committed the crime of
murder. Abhorrence is not hate. I hated him
simply because I am sane. It is in that
character that he outraged me. His death. . ."
Razumov felt his voice growing thick in his
throat. The dimness of Councillor Mikulin's
eyes seemed to spread all over his face and made
it indistinct to Razumov's sight. He tried to
disregard these phenomena.
"Indeed," he pursued, pronouncing each word
carefully, "what is his death to me? If he were
lying here on the floor I could walk over his
breast. . . . The fellow is a mere phantom. . .
."
Razumov's voice died out very much against his
will. Mikulin behind the table did not allow
himself the slightest movement. The silence
lasted for some little time before Razumov could
go on again.
"He went about talking of me. Those
intellectual fellows sit in each other's rooms
and get drunk on foreign ideas in the same way
young Guards' officers treat each other with
foreign wines. Merest debauchery. . . . Upon
my Word,"--Razumov, enraged by a sudden
recollection of Ziemianitch, lowered his voice
forcibly,--"upon my word, we Russians are a
drunken lot. Intoxication of some sort we must
have: to get ourselves wild with sorrow or
maudlin with resignation; to lie inert like a
log or set fire to the house. What is a sober
man to do, I should like to know? To cut oneself
entirely from one's kind is impossible. To live
in a desert one must be a saint. But if a
drunken man runs out of the grog-shop, falls on
your neck and kisses you on both cheeks because
something about your appearance has taken his
fancy, what then--kindly tell me? You may break,
perhaps, a cudgel on his back and yet not
succeed in beating him off. . . ."
Councillor Mikulin raised his hand and passed it
down his face deliberately.
"That's. . . of course," he said in an undertone.
The quiet gravity of that gesture made Razumov
pause. It was so unexpected, too. What did it
mean? It had an alarming aloofness. Razumov
remembered his intention of making him show his
hand.
"I have said all this to Prince K---," he began
with assumed indifference, but lost it on seeing
Councillor Mikulin's slow nod of assent. "You
know it? You've heard. . . . Then why should I
be called here to be told of Haldin's execution?
Did you want to confront me with his silence
now that the man is dead? What is his silence
to me! This is incomprehensible. "You want in
some way to shake my moral balance."
"No. Not that," murmured Councillor Mikulin,
just audibly. "The service you have rendered is
appreciated. . . ."
"Is it?'' interrupted Razumov ironically.
". . .and your position too." Councillor
Mikulin did not raise his voice. "But only
think! You fall into Prince K---'s study as if
from the sky with your startling information. .
. . You are studying yet, Mr. Razumov, but we
are serving already--don't forget that. . . .
And naturally some curiosity was bound to. . . ."
Councillor Mikulin looked down his beard.
Razumov's lips trembled.
"An occurrence of that sort marks a man," the
homely murmur went on. "I admit I was curious
to see you. General T--- thought it would be
useful, too. . . . Don't think I am incapable
of understanding your sentiments. When I was
young like you I studied. . . ."
"Yes--you wished to see me," said Razumov in a
tone of profound distaste. "Naturally you have
the right--I mean the power. It all amounts to
the same thing. But it is perfectly useless, if
you were to look at me and listen to me for a
year. I begin to think there is something about
me which people don't seem able to make out.
It's unfortunate. I imagine, however, that
Prince K--- understands. He seemed to."
Councillor Mikulin moved slightly and spoke.
"Prince K--- is aware of everything that is
being done, and I don't mind informing you that
he approved my intention of becoming personally
acquainted with you."
Razumov concealed an immense disappointment
under the accents of railing surprise.
"So he is curious too!. . . Well--after all,
Prince K--- knows me very little. It is really
very unfortunate for me, but--it is not exactly
my fault."
Councillor Mikulin raised a hasty deprecatory
hand and inclined his head slightly over his
shoulder.
"Now, Mr. Razumov--is it necessary to take it in
that way? Everybody I am sure can. . . ."
He glanced rapidly down his beard, and when he
looked up again there was for a moment an
interested expression in his misty gaze.
Razumov discouraged it with a cold, repellent
smile.
"No. That's of no importance to be sure--except
that in respect of all this curiosity being
aroused by a very simple matter. . . . What is
to be done with it? It is unappeasable. I mean
to say there is nothing to appease it with. I
happen to have been born a Russian with
patriotic instincts--whether inherited or not I
am not in a position to say."
Razumov spoke consciously with elaborate
steadiness.
"Yes, patriotic instincts developed by a faculty
of independent thinking--of detached thinking.
In that respect I am more free than any social
democratic revolution could make me. It is more
than probable that I don't think exactly as you
are thinking. Indeed, how could it be? You
would think most likely at this moment that I am
elaborately lying to cover up the track of my
repentance."
Razumov stopped. His heart had grown too big
for his breast. Councillor Mikulin did not
flinch.
"Why so?" he said simply. "I assisted
personally at the search of your rooms. I
looked through all the papers myself. I have
been greatly impressed by a sort of political
confession of faith. A very remarkable
document. Now may I ask for what purpose. . . ."
"To deceive the police naturally," said Razumov
savagely. . . . "What is all this mockery? Of
course you can send me straight from this room
to Siberia. That would be intelligible. To
what is intelligible I can submit. But I
protest against this comedy of persecution. The
whole affair is becoming too comical altogether
for my taste. A comedy of errors, phantoms, and
suspicions. It's positively indecent. . . ."
Councillor Mikulin turned an attentive ear.
"Did you say phantoms?" he murmured.
"I could walk over dozens of them." Razumov,
with an impatient wave of his hand, went on
headlong, "But, really, I must claim the right
to be done once for all with that man. And in
order to accomplish this I shall take the
liberty. . . ."
Razumov on his side of the table bowed slightly
to the seated bureaucrat.
". . . To retire--simply to retire," he finished
with great resolution.
He walked to the door, thinking, "Now he must
show his hand. He must ring and have me
arrested before I am out of the building, or he
must let me go. And either way. . . ."
An unhurried voice said--
"Kirylo Sidorovitch." Razumov at the door
turned his head.
"To retire," he repeated.
"Where to?" asked Councillor Mikulin softly.
PART SECOND
I
In the conduct of an invented story there are,
no doubt, certain proprieties to be observed for
the sake of clearness and effect. A man of
imagination, however inexperienced in the art of
narrative, has his instinct to guide him in the
choice of his words, and in the development of
the action. A grain of talent excuses many
mistakes. But this is not a work of
imagination; I have no talent; my excuse for
this undertaking lies not in its art, but in its
artlessness. Aware of my limitations and strong
in the sincerity of my purpose, I would not try
(were I able) to invent anything. I push my
scruples so far that I would not even invent a
transition.
Dropping then Mr. Razumov's record at the point
where Councillor Mikulin's question "Where to?"
comes in with the force of an insoluble problem,
I shall simply say that I made the acquaintance
of these ladies about six months before that
time. By "these ladies" I mean, of course, the
mother and the sister of the unfortunate Haldin.
By what arguments he had induced his mother to
sell their little property and go abroad for an
indefinite time, I cannot tell precisely. I
have an idea that Mrs. Haldin, at her son's
wish, would have set fire to her house and
emigrated to the moon without any sign of
surprise or apprehension; and that Miss Haldin--
Nathalie, caressingly Natalka--would have given
her assent to the scheme.
Their proud devotion to that young man became
clear to me in a very short time. Following his
directions they went straight to Switzerland--to
Zurich--where they remained the best part of a
year. From Zurich, which they did not like,
they came to Geneva. A friend of mine in
Lausanne, a lecturer in history at the
University (he had married a Russian lady, a
distant connection of Mrs. Haldin's), wrote to
me suggesting I should call on these ladies. It
was a very kindly meant business suggestion.
Miss Haldin wished to go through a course of
reading the best English authors with a
competent teacher.
Mrs. Haldin received me very kindly. Her bad
French, of which she was smilingly conscious,
did away with the formality of the first
interview. She was a tall woman in a black silk
dress. A wide brow, regular features, and
delicately cut lips, testified to her past
beauty. She sat upright in an easy chair and in
a rather weak, gentle voice told me that her
Natalka simply thirsted after knowledge. Her
thin hands were lying on her lap, her facial
immobility had in it something monachal. "In
Russia," she went on, "all knowledge was tainted
with falsehood. Not chemistry and all that, but
education generally," she explained. The
Government corrupted the teaching for its own
purposes. Both her children felt that. Her
Natalka had obtained a diploma of a Superior
School for Women and her son was a student at
the St. Petersburg University. He had a
brilliant intellect, a most noble unselfish
nature, and he was the oracle of his comrades.
Early next year, she hoped he would join them
and they would then go to Italy together. In
any other country but their own she would have
been certain of a great future for a man with
the extraordinary abilities and the lofty
character of her son--but in Russia. . . .
The young lady sitting by the window turned her
head and said--
"Come, mother. Even with us things change with
years."
Her voice was deep, almost harsh, and yet
caressing in its harshness. She had a dark
complexion, with red lips and a full figure.
She gave the impression of strong vitality. The
old lady sighed.
"You are both young--you two. It is easy for
you to hope. But I, too, am not hopeless.
Indeed, how could I be with a son like this."
I addressed Miss Haldin, asking her what authors
she wished to read. She directed upon me her
grey eyes shaded by black eyelashes, and I
became aware, notwithstanding my years, how
attractive physically her personality could be
to a man capable of appreciating in a woman
something else than the mere grace of
femininity. Her glance was as direct and
trustful as that of a young man yet unspoiled by
the world's wise lessons. And it was intrepid,
but in this intrepidity there was nothing
aggressive. A naive yet thoughtful assurance is
a better definition. She had reflected already
(in Russia the young begin to think early), but
she had never known deception as yet because
obviously she had never yet fallen under the
sway of passion. She was--to look at her was
enough--very capable of being roused by an idea
or simply by a person. At least, so I judged
with I believe an unbiassed mind; for clearly my
person could not be the person--and as to my
ideas!. . .
We became excellent friends in the course of our
reading. It was very pleasant. Without fear of
provoking a smile, I shall confess that I became
very much attached to that young girl. At the
end of four months I told her that now she could
very well go on reading English by herself. It
was time for the teacher to depart. My pupil
looked unpleasantly surprised.
Mrs. Haldin, with her immobility of feature and
kindly expression of the eyes, uttered from her
armchair in her uncertain French, "_Mais l'ami
reviendra._" And so it was settled. I returned-
-not four times a week as before, but pretty
frequently. In the autumn we made some short
excursions together in company with other
Russians. My friendship with these ladies gave
me a standing in the Russian colony which
otherwise I could not have had.
The day I saw in the papers the news of Mr. de P-
--'s assassination--it was a Sunday--I met the
two ladies in the street and walked with them
for some distance. Mrs. Haldin wore a heavy
grey cloak, I remember, over her black silk
dress, and her fine eyes met mine with a very
quiet expression.
"We have been to the late service," she said.
"Natalka came with me. Her girl-friends, the
students here, of course don't. . . . With us
in Russia the church is so identified with
oppression, that it seems almost necessary when
one wishes to be free in this life, to give up
all hope of a future existence. But I cannot
give up praying for my son."
She added with a sort of stony grimness,
colouring slightly, and in French, "_Ce n'est
peut etre qu'une habitude._" ("It may be only
habit.")
Miss Haldin was carrying the prayer-book. She
did not glance at her mother.
"You and Victor are both profound believers,"
she said.
I communicated to them the news from their
country which I had just read in a cafe. For a
whole minute we walked together fairly briskly
in silence. Then Mrs. Haldin murmured--
"There will be more trouble, more persecutions
for this. They may be even closing the
University. There is neither peace nor rest in
Russia for one but in the grave.
"Yes. The way is hard," came from the daughter,
looking straight before her at the Chain of Jura
covered with snow, like a white wall closing the
end of the street. "But concord is not so very
far off."
"That is what my children think," observed Mrs.
Haldin to me.
I did not conceal my feeling that these were
strange times to talk of concord. Nathalie
Haldin surprised me by saying, as if she had
thought very much on the subject, that the
occidentals did not understand the situation.
She was very calm and youthfully superior.
"You think it is a class conflict, or a conflict
of interests, as social contests are with you in
Europe. But it is not that at all. It is
something quite different."
"It is quite possible that I don't understand,"
I admitted.
That propensity of lifting every problem from
the plane of the understandable by means of some
sort of mystic expression, is very Russian. I
knew her well enough to have discovered her
scorn for all the practical forms of political
liberty known to the western world. I suppose
one must be a Russian to understand Russian
simplicity, a terrible corroding simplicity in
which mystic phrases clothe a naive and hopeless
cynicism. I think sometimes that the
psychological secret of the profound difference
of that people consists in this, that they
detest life, the irremediable life of the earth
as it is, whereas we westerners cherish it with
perhaps an equal exaggeration of its sentimental
value. But this is a digression indeed. . . .
I helped these ladies into the tramcar and they
asked me to call in the afternoon. At least
Mrs. Haldin asked me as she climbed up, and her
Natalka smiled down at the dense westerner
indulgently from the rear platform of the moving
car. The light of the clear wintry forenoon was
softened in her grey eyes.
Mr. Razumov's record, like the open book of
fate, revives for me the memory of that day as
something startlingly pitiless in its freedom
from all forebodings. Victor Haldin was still
with the living, but with the living whose only
contact with life is the expectation of death.
He must have been already referring to the last
of his earthly affections, the hours of that
obstinate silence, which for him was to be
prolonged into eternity. That afternoon the
ladies entertained a good many of their
compatriots--more than was usual for them to
receive at one time; and the drawing-room on the
ground floor of a large house on the Boulevard
des Philosophes was very much crowded.
I outstayed everybody; and when I rose Miss
Haldin stood up too. I took her hand and was
moved to revert to that morning's conversation
in the street.
"Admitting that we occidentals do not understand
the character of your. . . ." I began.
It was as if she had been prepared for me by
some mysterious fore-knowledge. She checked me
gently--
"Their impulses--their. . . " she sought the
proper expression and found it, but in French. .
." their _mouvements d'ame._"
Her voice was not much above a whisper.
"Very well," I said. " But still we are looking
at a conflict. You say it is not a conflict of
classes and not a conflict of interests.
Suppose I admitted that. Are antagonistic ideas
then to be reconciled more easily--can they be
cemented with blood and violence into that
concord which you proclaim to be so near?"
She looked at me searchingly with her clear grey
eyes, without answering my reasonable question--
my obvious, my unanswerable question.
"It is inconceivable," I added, with something
like annoyance.
"Everything is inconceivable," she said. "The
whole world is inconceivable to the strict logic
of ideas. And yet the world exists to our
senses, and we exist in it. There must be a
necessity superior to our conceptions. It is a
very miserable and a very false thing to belong
to the majority. We Russians shall find some
better form of national freedom than an
artificial conflict of parties--which is wrong
because it is a conflict and contemptible
because it is artificial. It is left for us
Russians to discover a better way."
Mrs. Haldin had been looking out of the window.
She turned upon me the almost lifeless beauty of
her face, and the living benign glance of her
big dark eyes.
"That's what my children think," she declared.
"I suppose," I addressed Miss Haldin, "that you
will be shocked if I tell you that I haven't
understood--I won't say a single word; I've
understood all the words. . . . But what can be
this era of disembodied concord you are looking
forward to. Life is a thing of form. It has
its plastic shape and a definite intellectual
aspect. The most idealistic conceptions of love
and forbearance must be clothed in flesh as it
were before they can be made understandable."
I took my leave of Mrs. Haldin, whose beautiful
lips never stirred. She smiled with her eyes
only. Nathalie Haldin went with me as far as
the door, very amiable.
"Mother imagines that I am the slavish echo of
my brother Victor. It is not so. He
understands me better than I can understand him.
When he joins us and you come to know him you
will see what an exceptional soul it is." She
paused. "He is not a strong man in the
conventional sense, you know," she added. "But
his character is without a flaw"
"I believe that it will not be difficult for me
to make friends with your brother Victor."
"Don't expect to understand him quite," she
said, a little maliciously. "He is not at all--
at all--western at bottom."
And on this unnecessary warning I left the room
with another bow in the doorway to Mrs. Haldin
in her armchair by the window. The shadow of
autocracy all unperceived by me had already
fallen upon the Boulevard des Philosophes, in
the free, independent and democratic city of
Geneva, where there is a quarter called "La
Petite Russie." Whenever two Russians come
together, the shadow of autocracy is with them,
tinging their thoughts, their views, their most
intimate feelings, their private life, their
public utterances--haunting the secret of their
silences.
What struck me next in the course of a week or
so was the silence of these ladies. I used to
meet them walking in the public garden near the
University. They greeted me with their usual
friendliness, but I could not help noticing
their taciturnity. By that time it was
generally known that the assassin of M. de P---
had been caught, judged, and executed. So much
had been declared officially to the news
agencies. But for the world at large he
remained anonymous. The official secrecy had
withheld his name from the public. I really
cannot imagine for what reason.
One day I saw Miss Haldin walking alone in the
main valley of the Bastions under the naked
trees.
"Mother is not very well," she explained.
As Mrs.Haldin had, it seemed, never had a day's
illness in her life, this indisposition was
disquieting. It was nothing definite, too.
"I think she is fretting because we have not
heard from my brother for rather a long time."
"No news--good news," I said cheerfully, and we
began to walk slowly side by side.
"Not in Russia," she breathed out so low that I
only just caught the words. I looked at her
with more attention.
"You too are anxious? "
She admitted after a moment of hesitation that
she was.
"It is really such a long time since we heard. .
. ."
And before I could offer the usual banal
suggestions she confided in me.
"Oh! But it is much worse than that. I wrote
to a family we know in Petersburg. They had not
seen him for more than a month. They thought he
was already with us. They were even offended a
little that he should have left Petersburg
without calling on them. The husband of the
lady went at once to his lodgings. Victor had
left there and they did not know his address."
I remember her catching her breath rather
pitifully. Her brother had not been seen at
lectures for a very long time either. He only
turned up now and then at the University gate to
ask the porter for his letters. And the
gentleman friend was told that the student
Haldin did not come to claim the last two
letters for him. But the police came to inquire
if the student Haldin ever received any
correspondence at the University and took them
away.
"My two last letters," she said.
We faced each other. A few snow-flakes
fluttered under the naked boughs. The sky was
dark.
"What do you think could have happened?" I
asked.
Her shoulders moved slightly.
"One can never tell--in Russia."
I saw then the shadow of autocracy lying upon
Russian lives in their submission or their
revolt. I saw it touch her handsome open face
nestled in a fur collar and darken her clear
eyes that shone upon me brilliantly grey in the
murky light of a beclouded, inclement afternoon.
"Let us move on," she said." It is cold
standing--to-day."
She shuddered a little and stamped her little
feet. We moved briskly to the end of the alley
and back to the great gates of the garden.
"Have you told your mother? " I ventured to ask.
"No. Not yet. I came out to walk off the
impression of this letter."
I heard a rustle of paper somewhere. It came
from her muff. She had the letter with her in
there.
"What is it that you are afraid of?" I asked.
To us Europeans of the West, all ideas of
political plots and conspiracies seem childish,
crude inventions for the theatre or a novel. I
did not like to be more definite in my inquiry.
"For us--for my mother specially, what I am
afraid of is incertitude. People do disappear.
Yes, they do disappear. I leave you to imagine
what it is--the cruelty of the dumb weeks--
months--years! This friend of ours has
abandoned his inquiries when he heard of the
police getting hold of the letters. I suppose
he was afraid of compromising himself. He has a
wife and children--and why should he, after all.
. . . Moreover, he is without influential
connections and not rich. What could he do?. .
. Yes, I am afraid of silence--for my poor
mother. She won't be able to bear it. For my
brother I am afraid of. . ." she became almost
indistinct, "of anything."
We were now near the gate opposite the theatre.
She raised her voice.
"But lost people do turn up even in Russia. Do
you know what my last hope is? Perhaps the next
thing we know, we shall see him walking into our
rooms."
I raised my hat and she passed out of the
gardens, graceful and strong, after a slight
movement of the head to me, her hands in the
muff, crumpling the cruel Petersburg letter.
On returning home I opened the newspaper I
receive from London, and glancing down the
correspondence from Russia--not the telegrams
but the correspondence--the first thing that
caught my eye was the name of Haldin. Mr. de P--
-'s death was no longer an actuality, but the
enterprising correspondent was proud of having
ferreted out some unofficial information about
that fact of modern history. He had got hold of
Haldin's name, and had picked up the story of
the midnight arrest in the street. But the
sensation from a journalistic point of view was
already well in the past. He did not allot to
it more than twenty lines out of a full column.
It was quite enough to give me a sleepless
night. I perceived that it would have been a
sort of treason to let Miss Haldin come without
preparation upon that journalistic discovery
which would infallibly be reproduced on the
morrow by French and Swiss newspapers. I had a
very bad time of it till the morning, wakeful
with nervous worry and night-marish with the
feeling of being mixed up with something
theatrical and morbidly affected. The
incongruity of such a complication in those two
women's lives was sensible to me all night in
the form of absolute anguish. It seemed due to
their refined simplicity that it should remain
concealed from them for ever. Arriving at an
unconscionably early hour at the door of their
apartment, I felt as if I were about to commit
an act of vandalism. . . .
The middle-aged servant woman led me into the
drawing-room where there was a duster on a chair
and a broom leaning against the centre table.
The motes danced in the sunshine; I regretted I
had not written a letter instead of coming
myself, and was thankful for the brightness of
the day. Miss Haldin in a plain black dress
came lightly out of her mother's room with a
fixed uncertain smile on her lips.
I pulled the paper out of my pocket. I did not
imagine that a number of the _Standard_ could
have the effect of Medusa's head. Her face went
stony in a moment--her eyes--her limbs. The
most terrible thing was that being stony she
remained alive. One was conscious of her
palpitating heart. I hope she forgave me the
delay of my clumsy circumlocution. It was not
very prolonged; she could not have kept so still
from head to foot for more than a second or two;
and then I heard her draw a breath. As if the
shock had paralysed her moral resistance, and
affected the firmness of her muscles, the
contours of her face seemed to have given way.
She was frightfully altered. She looked aged--
ruined. But only for a moment. She said with
decision--
"I am going to tell my mother at once."
"Would that be safe in her state?" I objected.
"What can be worse than the state she has been
in for the last month? We understand this in
another way. The crime is not at his door.
Don't imagine I am defending him before you."
She went to the bedroom door, then came back to
ask me in a low murmur not to go till she
returned. For twenty interminable minutes not a
sound reached me. At last Miss Haldin came out
and walked across the room with her quick light
step. When she reached the armchair she dropped
into it heavily as if completely exhausted.
Mrs. Haldin, she told me, had not shed a tear.
She was sitting up in bed, and her immobility,
her silence, were very alarming. At last she
lay down gently and had motioned her daughter
away.
"She will call me in presently," added Miss
Haldin. "I left a bell near the bed."
I confess that my very real sympathy had no
standpoint. The Western readers for whom this
story is written will understand what I mean.
It was, if I may say so, the want of experience.
Death is a remorseless spoliator. The anguish
of irreparable loss is familiar to us all.
There is no life so lonely as to be safe against
that experience. But the grief I had brought to
these two ladies had gruesome associations. It
had the associations of bombs and gallows--a
lurid, Russian colouring which made the
complexion of my sympathy uncertain.
I was grateful to Miss Haldin for not
embarrassing me by an outward display of deep
feeling. I admired her for that wonderful
command over herself, even while I was a little
frightened at it. It was the stillness of a
great tension. What if it should suddenly snap?
Even the door of Mrs. Haldin's room, with the
old mother alone in there, had a rather awful
aspect.
Nathalie Haldin murmured sadly--
"I suppose you are wondering what my feelings
are?"
Essentially that was true. It was that very
wonder which unsettled my sympathy of a dense
Occidental. I could get hold of nothing but of
some commonplace phrases, those futile phrases
that give the measure of our impotence before
each other's trials I mumbled something to the
effect that, for the young, life held its hopes
and compensations. It held duties too--but of
that I was certain it was not necessary to
remind her.
She had a handkerchief in her hands and pulled
at it nervously.
"I am not likely to forget my mother," she said.
"We used to be three. Now we are two--two
women. She's not so very old. She may live
quite a long time yet. What have we to look for
in the future ? For what hope and what
consolation?"
"You must take a wider view," I said resolutely,
thinking that with this exceptional creature
this was the right note to strike. She looked
at me steadily for a moment, and then the tears
she had been keeping down flowed unrestrained.
She jumped up and stood in the window with her
back to me.
I slipped away without attempting even to
approach her. Next day I was told at the door
that Mrs. Haldin was better. The middle-aged
servant remarked that a lot of people--Russians--
had called that day, but Miss Haldin bad not
seen anybody. A fortnight later, when making my
daily call, I was asked in and found Mrs. Haldin
sitting in her usual place by the window.
At first one would have thought that nothing was
changed. I saw across the room the familiar
profile, a little sharper in outline and
overspread by a uniform pallor as might have
been expected in an invalid. But no disease
could have accounted for the change in her black
eyes, smiling no longer with gentle irony. She
raised them as she gave me her hand. I observed
the three weeks' old number of the _Standard_
folded with the correspondence from Russia
uppermost, lying on a little table by the side
of the armchair. Mrs. Haldin's voice was
startlingly weak and colourless. Her first
words to me framed a question.
"Has there been anything more in papers?"
I released her long emaciated hand, shook my
head negatively, and sat down.
"The English press is wonderful. Nothing can be
kept secret from it, and all the world must
hear. Only our Russian news is not always easy
to understand. Not always easy. . . . But
English mothers do not look for news like that.
. . ."
She laid her hand on the newspaper and took it
away again. I said--
"We too have had tragic times in our history."
"A long time ago. A very long time ago."
"Yes."
"There are nations that have made their bargain
with fate," said Miss Haldin, who had approached
us. "We need not envy them."
"Why this scorn?" I asked gently. "It may be
that our bargain was not a very lofty one. But
the terms men and nations obtain from Fate are
hallowed by the price."
Mrs. Haldin turned her head away and looked out
of the window for a time, with that new, sombre,
extinct gaze of her sunken eyes which so
completely made another woman of her.
"That Englishman, this correspondent," she
addressed me suddenly, "do you think it is
possible that he knew my son?"
To this strange question I could only say that
it was possible of course. She saw my surprise.
"If one knew what sort of man he was one could
perhaps write to him," she murmured.
"Mother thinks," explained Miss Haldin, standing
between us, with one hand resting on the back of
my chair, "that my poor brother perhaps did not
try to save himself."
I looked up at Miss Haldin in sympathetic
consternation, but Miss Haldin was looking down
calmly at her mother. The latter said--
"We do not know the address of any of his
friends. Indeed, we know nothing of his
Petersburg comrades. He had a multitude of
young friends, only he never spoke much of them.
One could guess that they were his disciples
and that they idolized him. But he was so
modest. One would think that with so many
devoted. . . ."
She averted her head again and looked down the
Boulevard des Philosophes, a singularly arid and
dusty thoroughfare, where nothing could be seen
at the moment but two dogs, a little girl in a
pinafore hopping on one leg, and in the distance
a workman wheeling a bicycle.
"Even amongst the Apostles of Christ there was
found a Judas," she whispered as if to herself,
but with the evident intention to be heard by me.
The Russian visitors assembled in little knots,
conversed amongst themselves meantime, in low
murmurs, and with brief glances in our
direction. It was a great contrast to the usual
loud volubility of these gatherings. Miss
Haldin followed me into the ante-room.
"People will come," she said. "We cannot shut
the door in their faces."
While I was putting on my overcoat she began to
talk to me of her mother. Poor Mrs. Haldin was
fretting after more news. She wanted to go on
hearing about her unfortunate son. She could
not make up her mind to abandon him quietly to
the dumb unknown. She would persist in pursuing
him in there through the long days of motionless
silence face to face with the empty Boulevard
des Philosophes. She could not understand why
he had not escaped--as so many other
revolutionists and conspirators had managed to
escape in other instances of that kind. It was
really inconceivable that the means of secret
revolutionary organisations should have failed
so inexcusably to preserve her son. But in
reality the inconceivable that staggered her
mind was nothing but the cruel audacity of Death
passing over her head to strike at that young
and precious heart.
Miss Haldin mechanically, with an absorbed look,
handed me my hat. I understood from her that
the poor woman was possessed by the sombre and
simple idea that her son must have perished
because he did not want to be saved. It could
not have been that he despaired of his country's
future. That was impossible. Was it possible
that his mother and sister had not known how to
merit his confidence; and that, after having
done what he was compelled to do, his spirit
became crushed by an intolerable doubt, his mind
distracted by a sudden mistrust.
I was very much shocked by this piece of
ingenuity.
"Our three lives were like that!" Miss Haldin
twined the fingers of both her hands together in
demonstration, then separated them slowly,
looking straight into my face. "That's what
poor mother found to torment herself and me
with, for all the years to come," added the
strange girl. At that moment her indefinable
charm was revealed to me in the conjunction of
passion and stoicism. I imagined what her life
was likely to be by the side of Mrs. Haldin's
terrible immobility, inhabited by that fixed
idea. But my concern was reduced to silence by
my ignorance of her modes of feeling.
Difference of nationality is a terrible obstacle
for our complex Western natures. But Miss
Haldin probably was too simple to suspect my
embarrassment. She did not wait for me to say
anything, but as if reading my thoughts on my
face she went on courageously--
"At first poor mother went numb, as our peasants
say; then she began to think and she will go on
now thinking and thinking in that unfortunate
strain. You see yourself how cruel that is. . .
."
I never spoke with greater sincerity than when I
agreed with her that it would be deplorable in
the highest degree. She took an anxious breath.
"But all these strange details in the English
paper," she exclaimed suddenly. "What is the
meaning of them? I suppose they are true? But
is it not terrible that my poor brother should
be caught wandering alone, as if in despair,
about the streets at night. . . ."
We stood so close to each other in the dark
anteroom that I could see her biting her lower
lip to suppress a dry sob. After a short pause
she said--
"I suggested to mother that he may have been
betrayed by some false friend or simply by some
cowardly creature. It may be easier for her to
believe that."
I understood now the poor woman's whispered
allusion to Judas.
"It may be easier," I admitted, admiring
inwardly the directness and the subtlety of the
girl's outlook. She was dealing with life as it
was made for her by the political conditions of
her country. She faced cruel realities, not
morbid imaginings of her own making. I could
not defend myself from a certain feeling of
respect when she added simply--
"Time they say can soften every sort of
bitterness. But I cannot believe that it has
any power over remorse. It is better that
mother should think some person guilty of
Victor's death, than that she should connect it
with a weakness of her son or a shortcoming of
her own."
"But you, yourself, don't suppose that. . . ."
I began.
She compressed her lips and shook her head. She
harboured no evil thoughts against any one, she
declared--and perhaps nothing that happened was
unnecessary. On these words, pronounced low and
sounding mysterious in the half obscurity of the
ante-room, we parted with an expressive and warm
handshake. The grip of her strong, shapely hand
had a seductive frankness, a sort of exquisite
virility. I do not know why she should have
felt so friendly to me. It may be that she
thought I understood her much better than I was
able to do. The most precise of her sayings
seemed always to me to have enigmatical
prolongations vanishing somewhere beyond my
reach. I am reduced to suppose that she
appreciated my attention and my silence. The
attention she could see was quite sincere, so
that the silence could not be suspected of
coldness. It seemed to satisfy her. And it is
to be noted that if she confided in me it was
clearly not with the expectation of receiving
advice, for which, indeed she never asked.
II
Our daily relations were interrupted at this
period for something like a fortnight. I had to
absent myself unexpectedly from Geneva. On my
return I lost no time in directing my steps up
the Boulevard des Philosophes.
Through the open door of the drawing-room I was
annoyed to hear a visitor holding forth steadily
in an unctuous deep voice.
Mrs. Haldin's armchair by the window stood
empty. On the sofa, Nathalie Haldin raised her
charming grey eyes in a glance of greeting
accompanied by the merest hint of a welcoming
smile. But she made no movement. With her
strong white hands lying inverted in the lap of
her mourning dress she faced a man who presented
to me a robust back covered with black
broadcloth, and well in keeping with the deep
voice. He turned his head sharply over his
shoulder, but only for a moment.
"Ah! your English friend. I know. I know.
That's nothing."
He wore spectacles with smoked glasses, a tall
silk hat stood on the floor by the side of his
chair. Flourishing slightly a big soft hand he
went on with his discourse, precipitating his
delivery a little more.
"I have never changed the faith I held while
wandering in the forests and bogs of Siberia.
It sustained me then--it sustains me now. The
great Powers of Europe are bound to disappear--
and the cause of their collapse will be very
simple. They will exhaust themselves struggling
against their proletariat. In Russia it is
different. In Russia we have no classes to
combat each other, one holding the power of
wealth, and the other mighty with the strength
of numbers. We have only an unclean bureaucracy
in the face of a people as great and as
incorruptible as the ocean. No, we have no
classes. But we have the Russian woman. The
admirable Russian woman! I receive most
remarkable letters signed by women. So elevated
in tone, so courageous, breathing such a noble
ardour of service! The greatest part of our
hopes rests on women. I behold their thirst for
knowledge. It is admirable. Look how they
absorb, how they are making it their own. It is
miraculous. But what is knowledge? . . . I
understand that you have not been studying
anything especially--medicine for instance. No?
That's right. Had I been honoured by being
asked to advise you on the use of your time when
you arrived here I would have been strongly
opposed to such a course. Knowledge in itself
is mere dross."
He had one of those bearded Russian faces
without shape, a mere appearance of flesh and
hair with not a single feature having any sort
of character. His eyes being hidden by the dark
glasses there was an utter absence of all
expression. I knew him by sight. He was a
Russian refugee of mark. All Geneva knew his
burly black-coated figure. At one time all
Europe was aware of the story of his life
written by himself and translated into seven or
more languages. In his youth he had led an
idle, dissolute life. Then a society girl he
was about to marry died suddenly and thereupon
he abandoned the world of fashion, and began to
conspire in a spirit of repentance, and, after
that, his native autocracy took good care that
the usual things should happen to him. He was
imprisoned in fortresses, beaten within an inch
of his life, and condemned to work in mines,
with common criminals. The great success of his
book, however, was the chain.
I do not remember now the details of the weight
and length of the fetters riveted on his limbs
by an "Administrative" order, but it was in the
number of pounds and the thickness of links an
appalling assertion of the divine right of
autocracy. Appalling and futile too, because
this big man managed to carry off that simple
engine of government with him into the woods.
The sensational clink of these fetters is heard
all through the chapters describing his escape--
a subject of wonder to two continents. He had
begun by concealing himself successfully from
his guard in a hole on a river bank. It was the
end of the day; with infinite labour he managed
to free one of his legs. Meantime night fell.
He was going to begin on his other leg when he
was overtaken by a terrible misfortune. He
dropped his file.
All this is precise yet symbolic; and the file
had its pathetic history. It was given to him
unexpectedly one evening, by a quiet, pale-faced
girl. The poor creature had come out to the
mines to join one of his fellow convicts, a
delicate young man, a mechanic and a social
democrat, with broad cheekbones and large
staring eyes. She had worked her way across
half Russia and nearly the whole of Siberia to
be near him, and, as it seems, with the hope of
helping him to escape. But she arrived too
late. Her lover had died only a week before.
Through that obscure episode, as he says, in the
history of ideas in Russia, the file came into
his hands, and inspired him with an ardent
resolution to regain his liberty. When it
slipped through his fingers it was as if it had
gone straight into the earth. He could by no
manner of means put his hand on it again in the
dark. He groped systematically in the loose
earth, in the mud, in the water; the night was
passing meantime, the precious night on which he
counted to get away into the forests, his only
chance of escape. For a moment he was tempted
by despair to give up; but recalling the quiet,
sad face of the heroic girl, he felt profoundly
ashamed of his weakness. She had selected him
for the gift of liberty and he must show himself
worthy of the favour conferred by her feminine,
indomitable soul. It appeared to be a sacred
trust. To fail would have been a sort of
treason against the sacredness of self-sacrifice
and womanly love.
There are in his book whole pages of self-
analysis whence emerges like a white figure from
a dark confused sea the conviction of woman's
spiritual superiority--his new faith confessed
since in several volumes. His first tribute to
it, the great act of his conversion, was his
extraordinary existence in the endless forests
of the Okhotsk Province, with the loose end of
the chain wound about his waist. A strip torn
off his convict shirt secured the end firmly.
Other strips fastened it at intervals up his
left leg to deaden the clanking and to prevent
the slack links from getting hooked in the
bushes. He became very fierce. He developed an
unsuspected genius for the arts of a wild and
hunted existence. He learned to creep into
villages without betraying his presence by
anything more than an occasional faint jingle.
He broke into outhouses with an axe he managed
to purloin in a wood-cutters' camp. In the
deserted tracts of country he lived on wild
berries and hunted for honey. His clothing
dropped off him gradually. His naked tawny
figure glimpsed vaguely through the bushes with
a cloud of mosquitoes and flies hovering about
the shaggy head, spread tales of terror through
whole districts. His temper grew savage as the
days went by, and he was glad to discover that
that there was so much of a brute in him. He
had nothing else to put his trust in. For it
was as though there had been two human beings
indissolubly joined in that enterprise. The
civilized man, the enthusiast of advanced
humanitarian ideals thirsting for the triumph of
spiritual love and political liberty; and the
stealthy, primeval savage, pitilessly cunning in
the preservation of his freedom from day to day,
like a tracked wild beast.
The wild beast was making its way instinctively
eastward to the Pacific coast, and the civilised
humanitarian in fearful anxious dependence
watched the proceedings with awe. Through all
these weeks he could never make up his mind to
appeal to human compassion. In the wary
primeval savage this shyness might have been
natural, but the other too, the civilized
creature, the thinker, the escaping "political"
had developed an absurd form of morbid
pessimism, a form of temporary insanity,
originating perhaps in the physical worry and
discomfort of the chain. These links, he
fancied, made him odious to the rest of mankind.
It was a repugnant and suggestive load. Nobody
could feel any pity at the disgusting sight of a
man escaping with a broken chain. His
imagination became affected by his fetters in a
precise, matter-of-fact manner. It seemed to
him impossible that people could resist the
temptation of fastening the loose end to a
staple in the wall while they went for the
nearest police official. Crouching in holes or
hidden in thickets, he had tried to read the
faces of unsuspecting free settlers working in
the clearings or passing along the paths within
a foot or two of his eyes. His feeling was that
no man on earth could be trusted with the
temptation of the chain.
One day, however, he chanced to come upon a
solitary woman. It was on an open slope of
rough grass outside the forest. She sat on the
bank of a narrow stream; she had a red
handkerchief on her head and a small basket was
lying on the ground near her hand. At a little
distance could be seen a cluster of log cabins,
with a water-mill over a dammed pool shaded by
birch trees and looking bright as glass in the
twilight. He approached her silently, his
hatchet stuck in his iron belt, a thick cudgel
in his hand; there were leaves and bits of twig
in his tangled hair, in his matted beard;
bunches of rags he had wound round the links
fluttered from his waist. A faint clink of his
fetters made the woman turn her head. Too
terrified by this savage apparition to jump up
or even to scream, she was yet too stout-hearted
to faint. . . . Expecting nothing less than to
be murdered on the spot she covered her eyes
with her hands to avoid the sight of the
descending axe. When at last she found courage
to look again, she saw the shaggy wild man
sitting on the bank six feet away from her. His
thin, sinewy arms hugged his naked legs; the
long beard covered the knees on which he rested
his chin; all these clasped, folded limbs, the
bare shoulders, the wild head with red staring
eyes, shook and trembled violently while the
bestial creature was making efforts to speak.
It was six weeks since he had heard the sound of
his own voice. It seemed as though he had lost
the faculty of speech. He had become a dumb and
despairing brute, till the woman's sudden,
unexpected cry of profound pity, the insight of
her feminine compassion discovering the complex
misery of the man under the terrifying aspect of
the monster, restored him to the ranks of
humanity. This point of view is presented in
his book, with a very effective eloquence. She
ended, he says, by shedding tears over him,
sacred, redeeming tears, while he also wept with
joy in the manner of a converted sinner.
Directing him to hide in the bushes and wait
patiently (a police patrol was expected in the
Settlement) she went away towards the houses,
promising to return at night.
As if providentially appointed to be the newly
wedded wife of the village blacksmith, the woman
persuaded her husband to come out with her,
bringing some tools of his trade, a hammer, a
chisel, a small anvil. . . . "My fetters"--the
book says--" were struck off on the banks of the
stream, in the starlight of a calm night by an
athletic, taciturn young man of the people,
kneeling at my feet, while the woman like a
liberating genius stood by with clasped hands."
Obviously a symbolic couple. At the same time
they furnished his regained humanity with some
decent clothing, and put heart into the new man
by the information that the seacoast of the
Pacific was only a very few miles away. It
could be seen, in fact, from the top of the next
ridge. . . .
The rest of his escape does not lend itself to
mystic treatment and symbolic interpretation.
He ended by finding his way to the West by the
Suez Canal route in the usual manner. Reaching
the shores of South Europe he sat down to write
his autobiography--the great literary success of
its year. This book was followed by other books
written with the declared purpose of elevating
humanity. In these works he preached generally
the cult of the woman. For his own part he
practised it under the rites of special devotion
to the transcendental merits of a certain Madame
de S---, a lady of advanced views, no longer
very young, once upon a time the intriguing wife
of a now dead and forgotten diplomat. Her loud
pretensions to be one of the leaders of modern
thought and of modern sentiment, she sheltered
(like Voltaire and Mme. de Stael) on the
republican territory of Geneva. Driving through
the streets in her big landau she exhibited to
the indifference of the natives and the stares
of the tourists a long-waisted, youthful figure
of hieratic stiffness, with a pair of big
gleaming eyes, rolling restlessly behind a short
veil of black lace, which, coming down no
further than her vividly red lips, resembled a
mask. Usually the "heroic fugitive" (this name
was bestowed upon him in a review of the English
edition of his book)--the " heroic fugitive "
accompanied her, sitting, portentously bearded
and darkly bespectacled, not by her side, but
opposite her, with his back to the horses.
Thus, facing each other, with no one else in the
roomy carriage, their airings suggested a
conscious public manifestation. Or it may have
been unconscious. Russian simplicity often
marches innocently on the edge of cynicism for
some lofty purpose. But it is a vain enterprise
for sophisticated Europe to try and understand
these doings. Considering the air of gravity
extending even to the physiognomy of the
coachman and the action of the showy horses,
this quaint display might have possessed a
mystic significance, but to the corrupt
frivolity of a Western mind, like my own, it
seemed hardly decent.
However, it is not becoming for an obscure
teacher of languages to criticize a "heroic
fugitive" of worldwide celebrity. I was aware
from hearsay that he was an industrious busy-
body, hunting up his compatriots in hotels, in
private lodgings, and--I was told--conferring
upon them the honour of his notice in public
gardens when a suitable opening presented
itself. I was under the impression that after a
visit or two, several months before, he had
given up the ladies Haldin--no doubt
reluctantly, for there could be no question of
his being a determined person. It was perhaps
to be expected that he should reappear again on
this terrible occasion, as a Russian and a
revolutionist, to say the right thing, to strike
the true, perhaps a comforting, note. But I did
not like to see him sitting there. I trust that
an unbecoming jealousy of my privileged position
had nothing to do with it. I made no claim to a
special standing for my silent friendship.
Removed by the difference of age and nationality
as if into the sphere of another existence, I
produced, even upon myself, the effect of a dumb
helpless ghost, of an anxious immaterial thing
that could only hover about without the power to
protect or guide by as much as a whisper. Since
Miss Haldin with her sure instinct had refrained
from introducing me to the burly celebrity, I
would have retired quietly and returned later
on, had I not met a peculiar expression in her
eyes which I interpreted as a request to stay,
with the view, perhaps, of shortening an
unwelcome visit.
He picked up his hat, but only to deposit it on
his knees.
"We shall meet again, Natalia Victorovna. To-
day I have called only to mark those feelings
towards your honoured mother and yourself, the
nature of which you cannot doubt. I needed no
urging, but Eleanor--Madame de S--- herself has
in a way sent me. She extends to you the hand
of feminine fellowship. There is positively in
all the range of human sentiments no joy and no
sorrow that woman cannot understand, elevate,
and spiritualize by her interpretation. That
young man newly arrived from St. Petersburg, I
have mentioned to you, is already under the
charm."
At this point Miss Haldin got up abruptly. I
was glad. He did not evidently expect anything
so decisive and, at first, throwing his head
back, he tilted up his dark glasses with bland
curiosity. At last, recollecting himself, he
stood up hastily, seizing his hat off his knees
with great adroitness.
"How is it, Natalia Victorovna, that you have
kept aloof so long, from what after all is--let
disparaging tongues say what they like--a unique
centre of intellectual freedom and of effort to
shape a high conception of our future? In the
case of your honoured mother I understand in a
measure. At her age new ideas--new faces are
not perhaps. . . . But you! Was it mistrust--
or indifference? You must come out of your
reserve. We Russians have no right to be
reserved with each other. In our circumstances
it is almost a crime against humanity. The
luxury of private grief is not for us. Nowadays
the devil is not combated by prayers and
fasting. And what is fasting after all but
starvation. You must not starve yourself,
Natalia Victorovna. Strength is what we want.
Spiritual strength, I mean. As to the other
kind, what could withstand us Russians if we
only put it forth? Sin is different in our day,
and the way of salvation for pure souls is
different too. It is no longer to be found in
monasteries but in the world, in the. . . ."
The deep sound seemed to rise from under the
floor, and one felt steeped in it to the lips.
Miss Haldin's interruption resembled the effort
of a drowning person to keep above water. She
struck in with an accent of impatience--
"But, Peter Ivanovitch, I don't mean to retire
into a monastery. Who would look for salvation
there?"
"I spoke figuratively," he boomed.
"Well, then, I am speaking figuratively too.
But sorrow is sorrow and pain is pain in the old
way. They make their demands upon people. One
has got to face them the best way one can. I
know that the blow which has fallen upon us so
unexpectedly is only an episode in the fate of a
people. You may rest assured that I don't
forget that. But just now I have to think of my
mother. How can you expect me to leave her to
herself. . . ?"
"That is putting it in a very crude way," he
protested in his great effortless voice.
Miss Haldin did not wait for the vibration to
die out.
"And run about visiting amongst a lot of strange
people. The idea is distasteful for me; and I
do not know what else you may mean?"
He towered before her, enormous, deferential,
cropped as close as a convict and this big
pinkish poll evoked for me the vision of a wild
head with matted locks peering through parted
bushes, glimpses of naked, tawny limbs slinking
behind the masses of sodden foliage under a
cloud of flies and mosquitoes. It was an
involuntary tribute to the vigour of his
writing. Nobody could doubt that he had
wandered in Siberian forests, naked and girt
with a chain. The black broadcloth coat
invested his person with a character of austere
decency--something recalling a missionary.
"Do you know what I want, Natalia Victorovna?"
he uttered solemnly. "I want you to be a
fanatic."
"A fanatic?"
"Yes. Faith alone won't do."
His voice dropped to a still lower tone. He
raised for a moment one thick arm; the other
remained hanging down against his thigh, with
the fragile silk hat at the end.
"I shall tell you now something which I entreat
you to ponder over carefully. Listen, we need a
force that would move heaven and earth--nothing
less."
The profound, subterranean note of this "nothing
less" made one shudder, almost, like the deep
muttering of wind in the pipes of an organ.
"And are we to find that force in the salon of
Madame de S---? Excuse me, Peter Ivanovitch, if
I permit myself to doubt it. Is not that lady a
woman of the great world, an aristocrat?"
"Prejudice!" he cried. "You astonish me. And
suppose she was all that! She is also a woman
of flesh and blood. There is always something
to weigh down the spiritual side in all of us.
But to make of it a reproach is what I did not
expect from you. No! I did not expect that.
One would think you have listened to some
malevolent scandal."
"I have heard no gossip, I assure you. In our
province how could we? But the world speaks of
her. What can there be in common in a lady of
that sort and an obscure country girl like me?"
"She is a perpetual manifestation of a noble and
peerless spirit," he broke in. "Her charm--no,
I shall not speak of her charm. But, of course,
everybody who approaches her falls under the
spell. . . . Contradictions vanish, trouble
falls away from one. . . . Unless I am mistaken-
-but I never make a mistake in spiritual matters-
-you are troubled in your soul, Natalia
Victorovna."
Miss Haldin's clear eyes looked straight at his
soft enormous face; I received the impression
that behind these dark spectacles of his he
could be as impudent as he chose.
"Only the other evening walking back to town
from Chateau Borel with our latest interesting
arrival from Petersburg, I could notice the
powerful soothing influence--I may say
reconciling influence. . . . There he was, all
these kilometres along the shores of the lake,
silent, like a man who has been shown the way of
peace. I could feel the leaven working in his
soul, you understand. For one thing he listened
to me patiently. I myself was inspired that
evening by the firm and exquisite genius of
Eleanor--Madame de S---, you know. It was a
full moon and I could observe his face. I
cannot be deceived. . . ."
Miss Haldin, looking down, seemed to hesitate.
"Well! I will think of what you said, Peter
Ivanovitch. I shall try to call as soon as I
can leave mother for an hour or two safely."
Coldly as these words were said I was amazed at
the concession. He snatched her right hand with
such fervour that I thought he was going to
press it to his lips or his breast. But he only
held it by the finger-tips in his great paw and
shook it a little up and down while he delivered
his last volley of words.
"That's right. That's right. I haven't
obtained your full confidence as yet, Natalia
Victorovna, but that will come. All in good
time. The sister of Viktor Haldin cannot be
without importance. . . . It's simply
impossible. And no woman can remain sitting on
the steps. Flowers, tears, applause--that has
had its time; it's a mediaeval conception. The
arena, the arena itself is the place for women!"
He relinquished her hand with a flourish, as if
giving it to her for a gift, and remained still,
his head bowed in dignified submission before
her femininity.
"The arena! . . . You must descend into the
arena, Natalia."
He made one step backwards, inclined his
enormous body, and was gone swiftly. The door
fell to behind him. But immediately the
powerful resonance of his voice was heard
addressing in the ante-room the middle-aged
servant woman who was letting him out. Whether
he exhorted her too to descend into the arena I
cannot tell. The thing sounded like a lecture,
and the slight crash of the outer door cut it
short suddenly.
III
We remained looking at each other for a time."
"Do you know who he is?"
Miss Haldin, coming forward, put this question
to me in English.
I took her offered hand.
"Everybody knows. He is a revolutionary
feminist, a great writer, if you like, and--how
shall I say it--the--the familiar guest of
Madame de S---'s mystic revolutionary salon."
Miss Haldin passed her hand over her forehead.
"You know, he was with me for more than an hour
before you came in. I was so glad mother was
lying down. She has many nights without sleep,
and then sometimes in the middle of the day she
gets a rest of several hours. It is sheer
exhaustion--but still, I am thankful. . . . If
it were not for these intervals. . . ."
She looked at me and, with that extraordinary
penetration which used to disconcert me, shook
her head.
"No. She would not go mad."
"My dear young lady," I cried, by way of
protest, the more shocked because in my heart I
was far from thinking Mrs. Haldin quite sane.
"You don't know what a fine, lucid intellect
mother had," continued Nathalie Haldin, with her
calm, clear-eyed simplicity, which seemed to me
always to have a quality of heroism.
"I am sure. . . ." I murmured.
"I darkened mother's room and came out here.
I've wanted for so long to think quietly."
She paused, then, without giving any sign of
distress, added, "It's so difficult," and looked
at me with a strange fixity, as if watching for
a sign of dissent or surprise.
I gave neither. I was irresistibly impelled to
say--
"The visit from that gentleman has not made it
any easier, I fear."
Miss Haldin stood before me with a peculiar
expression in her eyes.
"I don't pretend to understand completely. Some
guide one must have, even if one does not wholly
give up the direction of one's conduct to him.
I am an inexperienced girl, but I am not
slavish, There has been too much of that in
Russia. Why should I not listen to him? There
is no harm in having one's thoughts directed.
But I don't mind confessing to you that I have
not been completely candid with Peter
Ivanovitch. I don't quite know what prevented
me at the moment. . . ."
She walked away suddenly from me to a distant
part of the room; but it was only to open and
shut a drawer in a bureau. She returned with a
piece of paper in her hand. It was thin and
blackened with close handwriting. It was
obviously a letter.
"I wanted to read you the very words," she said.
"This is one of my poor brother's letters. He
never doubted. How could he doubt? They make
only such a small handful, these miserable
oppressors, before the unanimous will of our
people."
"Your brother believed in the power of a
people's will to achieve anything?"
"It was his religion," declared Miss Haldin.
I looked at her calm face and her animated eyes.
"Of course the will must be awakened, inspired,
concentrated," she went on. "That is the true
task of real agitators. One has got to give up
one's life to it. The degradation of servitude,
the absolutist lies must be uprooted and swept
out. Reform is impossible. There is nothing to
reform. There is no legality, there are no
institutions. There are only arbitrary decrees.
There is only a handful of cruel--perhaps blind-
-officials against a nation."
The letter rustled slightly in her hand. I
glanced down at the flimsy blackened pages whose
very handwriting seemed cabalistic,
incomprehensible to the experience of Western
Europe.
"Stated like this," I confessed, "the problem
seems simple enough. But I fear I shall not see
it solved. And if you go back to Russia I know
that I shall not see you again. Yet once more I
say: go back! Don't suppose that I am thinking
of your preservation. No! I know that you will
not be returning to personal safety. But I had
much rather think of you in danger there than
see you exposed to what may be met here."
"I tell you what," said Miss Haldin, after a
moment of reflection. "I believe that you hate
revolution; you fancy it's not quite honest.
You belong to a people which has made a bargain
with fate and wouldn't like to be rude to it.
But we have made no bargain. It was never
offered to us--so much liberty for so much hard
cash. You shrink from the idea of revolutionary
action for those you think well of as if it were
something--how shall I say it--not quite decent."
I bowed my head.
"You are quite right," I said. "I think very
highly of you"
"Don't suppose I do not know it," she began
hurriedly. "Your friendship has been very
valuable."
"I have done little else but look on."
She was a little flushed under the eyes.
"There is a way of looking on which is valuable
I have felt less lonely because of it. It's
difficult to explain."
"Really? Well, I too have felt less lonely.
That's easy to explain, though. But it won't go
on much longer. The last thing I want to tell
you is this: in a real revolution--not a simple
dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions-
-in a real revolution the best characters do not
come to the front. A violent revolution falls
into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of
tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards
comes the turn of all the pretentious
intellectual failures of the time. Such are the
chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I
have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous
and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted
natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may
begin a movement--but it passes away from them.
They are not the leaders of a revolution. They
are its victims: the victims of disgust, of
disenchantment--often of remorse. Hopes
grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured--that
is the definition of revolutionary success.
There have been in every revolution hearts
broken by such successes. But enough of that.
My meaning is that I don't want you to be a
victim."
"If I could believe all you have said I still
wouldn't think of myself," protested Miss
Haldin. "I would take liberty from any hand as
a hungry man would snatch at a piece of bread.
The true progress must begin after. And for
that the right men shall be found. They are
already amongst us. One comes upon them in
their obscurity, unknown, preparing themselves.
. . ."
She spread out the letter she had kept in her
hand all the time, and looking down at it--
"Yes! One comes upon such men!" she repeated,
and then read out the words, "Unstained, lofty,
and solitary existences."
Folding up the letter, while I looked at her
interrogatively, she explained--
"These are the words which my brother applies to
a young man he came to know in St. Petersburg.
An intimate friend, I suppose. It must be. His
is the only name my brother mentions in all his
correspondence with me. Absolutely the only
one, and--would you believe it?--the man is
here. He arrived recently in Geneva."
"Have you seen him?" I inquired. "But, of
course; you must have seen him."
"No! No! I haven't! I didn't know he was
here. It's Peter Ivanovitch himself who told
me. You have heard him yourself mentioning a
new arrival from Petersburg. . . . Well, that
is the man of 'unstained, lofty, and solitary
existence.' My brother's friend!"
"Compromised politically, I suppose," I remarked.
"I don't know. Yes. It must be so. Who knows!
Perhaps it was this very friendship with my
brother which. . . . But no! It is scarcely
possible. Really, I know nothing except what
Peter Ivanovitch told me of him. He has brought
a letter of introduction from Father Zosim--you
know, the priest-democrat; you have heard of
Father Zosim?"
"Oh yes. The famous Father Zosim was staying
here in Geneva for some two months about a year
ago," I said. " When he left here he seems to
have disappeared from the world."
"It appears that he is at work in Russia again.
Somewhere in the centre," Miss Haldin said, with
animation. "But please don't mention that to
any one--don't let it slip from you, because if
it got into the papers it would be dangerous for
him."
"You are anxious, of course, to meet that friend
of your brother?" I asked.
Miss Haldin put the letter into her pocket. Her
eyes looked beyond my shoulder at the door of
her mother's room.
"Not here," she murmured. "Not for the first
time, at least."
After a moment of silence I said good-bye, but
Miss Haldin followed me into the ante-room,
closing the door behind us carefully.
"I suppose you guess where I mean to go
tomorrow?"
"You have made up your mind to call on Madame de
S---."
"Yes. I am going to the Chateau Borel. I must."
"What do you expect to hear there?" I asked, in
a low voice.
I wondered if she were not deluding herself with
some impossible hope. It was not that, however.
"Only think--such a friend. The only man
mentioned in his letters. He would have
something to give me, if nothing more than a few
poor words. It may be something said and
thought in those last days. Would you want me
to turn my back on what is left of my poor
brother--a friend?"
"Certainly not," I said. "I quite understand
your pious curiosity."
"--Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences,"
she murmured to herself. "There are! There
are! Well, let me question one of them about
the loved dead."
"How do you know, though, that you will meet him
there? Is he staying in the Chateau as a guest--
do you suppose?"
"I can't really tell," she confessed. "He
brought a written introduction from Father Zosim-
-who, it seems, is a friend of Madame de S---
too. She can't be such a worthless woman after
all."
"There were all sorts of rumours afloat about
Father Zosim himself," I observed.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Calumny is a weapon of our government too.
It's well known. Oh yes! It is a fact that
Father Zosim had the protection of the Governor-
General of a certain province. We talked on the
subject with my brother two years ago, I
remember. But his work was good. And now he is
proscribed. What better proof can one require.
But no matter what that priest was or is. All
that cannot affect my brother's friend. If I
don't meet him there I shall ask these people
for his address. And, of course, mother must
see him too, later on. There is no guessing
what he may have to tell us. It would be a
mercy if mamma could be soothed. You know what
she imagines. Some explanation perhaps may be
found, or--or even made up, perhaps. It would
be no sin."
"Certainly," I said, "it would be no sin. It
may be a mistake, though."
"I want her only to recover some of her old
spirit. While she is like this I cannot think
of anything calmly."
"Do you mean to invent some sort of pious fraud
for your mother's sake?" I asked.
"Why fraud? Such a friend is sure to know
something of my brother in these last days. He
could tell us. . . . There is something in the
facts which will not let me rest. I am certain
he meant to join us abroad--that he had some
plans--some great patriotic action in view; not
only for himself, but for both of us. I trusted
in that. I looked forward to the time! Oh!
with such hope and impatience. I could have
helped. And now suddenly this appearance of
recklessness--as if he had not cared. . . ."
She remained silent for a time, then obstinately
she concluded--
"I want to know. . . ."
Thinking it over, later on, while I walked
slowly away from the Boulevard des Philosophes,
I asked myself critically, what precisely was it
that she wanted to know? What I had heard of
her history was enough to give me a clue. In
the educational establishment for girls where
Miss Haldin finished her studies she was looked
upon rather unfavourably. She was suspected of
holding independent views on matters settled by
official teaching. Afterwards, when the two
ladies returned to their country place, both
mother and daughter, by speaking their minds
openly on public events, had earned for
themselves a reputation of liberalism. The
three-horse trap of the district police-captain
began to be seen frequently in their village.
"I must keep an eye on the peasants"--so he
explained his visits up at the house. "Two
lonely ladies must be looked after a little."
He would inspect the walls as though he wanted
to pierce them with his eyes, peer at the
photographs, turn over the books in the drawing-
room negligently, and after the usual
refreshments, would depart. But the old priest
of the village came one evening in the greatest
distress and agitation, to confess that he--the
priest--had been ordered to watch and ascertain
in other ways too (such as using his spiritual
power with the servants) all that was going on
in the house, and especially in respect of the
visitors these ladies received, who they were,
the length of their stay, whether any of them
were strangers to that part of the country, and
so on. The poor, simple old man was in an agony
of humiliation and terror. "I came to warn you.
Be cautious in your conduct, for the love of
God. I am burning with shame, but there is no
getting out from under the net. I shall have to
tell them what I see, because if I did not there
is my deacon. He would make the worst of things
to curry favour. And then my son-in-law, the
husband of my Parasha, who is a writer in the
Government Domain office; they would soon kick
him out--and maybe send him away somewhere."
The old man lamented the necessities of the
times--"when people do not agree somehow" and
wiped his eyes. He did not wish to spend the
evening of his days with a shaven head in the
penitent's cell of some monastery--"and
subjected to all the severities of
ecclesiastical discipline; for they would show
no mercy to an old man," he groaned. He became
almost hysterical, and the two ladies, full of
commiseration, soothed him the best they could
before they let him go back to his cottage.
But, as a matter of fact, they had very few
visitors. The neighbours--some of them old
friends--began to keep away; a few from
timidity, others with marked disdain, being
grand people that came only for the summer--Miss
Haldin explained to me--aristocrats,
reactionaries. It was a solitary existence for
a young girl. Her relations with her mother
were of the tenderest and most open kind; but
Mrs. Haldin had seen the experiences of her own
generation, its sufferings, its deceptions, its
apostasies too. Her affection for her children
was expressed by the suppression of all signs of
anxiety. She maintained a heroic reserve. To
Nathalie Haldin, her brother with his Petersburg
existence, not enigmatical in the least (there
could be no doubt of what he felt or thought)
but conducted a little mysteriously, was the
only visible representative of a proscribed
liberty. All the significance of freedom, its
indefinite promises, lived in their long
discussions, which breathed the loftiest hope of
action and faith in success. Then, suddenly,
the action, the hopes, came to an end with the
details ferreted out by the English journalist.
The concrete fact, the fact of his death
remained! but it remained obscure in its deeper
causes. She felt herself abandoned without
explanation. But she did not suspect him. What
she wanted was to learn almost at any cost how
she could remain faithful to his departed spirit.
IV
Several days elapsed before I met Nathalie
Haldin again. I was crossing the place in front
of the theatre when I made out her shapely
figure in the very act of turning between the
gate pillars of the unattractive public
promenade of the Bastions. She walked away from
me, but I knew we should meet as she returned
down the main alley--unless, indeed, she were
going home. In that case, I don't think I
should have called on her yet. My desire to
keep her away from these people was as strong as
ever, but I had no illusions as to my power. I
was but a Westerner, and it was clear that Miss
Haldin would not, could not listen to my wisdom;
and as to my desire of listening to her voice,
it were better, I thought, not to indulge
overmuch in that pleasure. No, I should not
have gone to the Boulevard des Philosophes; but
when at about the middle of the principal alley
I saw Miss Haldin coming towards me, I was too
curious, and too honest, perhaps, to run away.
There was something of the spring harshness in
the air. The blue sky was hard, but the young
leaves clung like soft mist about the
uninteresting range of trees; and the clear sun
put little points of gold into the grey of Miss
Haldin's frank eyes, turned to me with a
friendly greeting.
I inquired after the health of her mother.
She had a slight movement of the shoulders and a
little sad sigh.
"But, you see, I did come out for a walk. . .for
exercise, as you English say."
I smiled approvingly, and she added an
unexpected remark--
" It is a glorious day."
Her voice, slightly harsh, but fascinating with
its masculine and bird-like quality, had the
accent of spontaneous conviction. I was glad of
it. It was as though she had become aware of
her youth--for there was but little of spring-
like glory in the rectangular railed space of
grass and trees, framed visibly by the orderly
roof-slopes of that town, comely without grace,
and hospitable without sympathy. In the very
air through which she moved there was but little
warmth; and the sky, the sky of a land without
horizons, swept and washed clean by the April
showers, extended a cold cruel blue, without
elevation, narrowed suddenly by the ugly, dark
wall of the Jura where, here and there, lingered
yet a few miserable trails and patches of snow.
All the glory of the season must have been
within herself--and I was glad this feeling had
come into her life, if only for a little time.
"I am pleased to hear you say these words." She
gave me a quick look. Quick, not stealthy. If
there was one thing of which she was absolutely
incapable, it was stealthiness, Her sincerity
was expressed in the very rhythm of her walk.
It was I who was looking at her covertly--if I
may say so. I knew where she had been, but I
did not know what she had seen and heard in that
nest of aristocratic conspiracies. I use the
word aristocratic, for want of a better term.
The Chateau Borel, embowered in the trees and
thickets of its neglected grounds, had its fame
in our day, like the residence of that other
dangerous and exiled woman, Madame de Stael, in
the Napoleonic era. Only the Napoleonic
despotism, the booted heir of the Revolution,
which counted that intellectual woman for an
enemy worthy to be watched, was something quite
unlike the autocracy in mystic vestments,
engendered by the slavery of a Tartar conquest.
And Madame de S--- was very far from resembling
the gifted author of _Corinne_. She made a
great noise about being persecuted. I don't
know if she were regarded in certain circles as
dangerous. As to being watched, I imagine that
the Chateau Borel could be subjected only to a
most distant observation. It was in its
exclusiveness an ideal abode for hatching
superior plots--whether serious or futile. But
all this did not interest me. I wanted to know
the effect its extraordinary inhabitants and its
special atmosphere had produced on a girl like
Miss Haldin, so true, so honest, but so
dangerously inexperienced! Her unconsciously
lofty ignorance of the baser instincts of
mankind left her disarmed before her own
impulses. And there was also that friend of her
brother, the significant new arrival from
Russia. . . . I wondered whether she had
managed to meet him.
We walked for some time, slowly and in silence.
"You know," I attacked her suddenly, "if you
don't intend telling me anything, you must say
so distinctly, and then, of course, it shall be
final. But I won't play at delicacy. I ask you
point-blank for all the details."
She smiled faintly at my threatening tone.
"You are as curious as a child."
"No. I am only an anxious old man," I replied
earnestly.
She rested her glance on me as if to ascertain
the degree of my anxiety or the number of my
years. My physiognomy has never been
expressive, I believe, and as to my years I am
not ancient enough as yet to be strikingly
decrepit. I have no long beard like the good
hermit of a romantic ballad; my footsteps are
not tottering, my aspect not that of a slow,
venerable sage. Those picturesque advantages
are not mine. I am old, alas, in a brisk,
commonplace way. And it seemed to me as though
there were some pity for me in Miss Haldin's
prolonged glance. She stepped out a little
quicker.
"You ask for all the details. Let me see. I
ought to remember them. It was novel enough for
a--a village girl like me."
After a moment of silence she began by saying
that the Chateau Borel was almost as neglected
inside as outside. It was nothing to wonder at,
a Hamburg banker, I believe, retired from
business, had it built to cheer his remaining
days by the view of that lake whose precise,
orderly, and well-to-do beauty must have been
attractive to the unromantic imagination of a
business man. But he died soon. His wife
departed too (but only to Italy), and this house
of moneyed ease, presumably unsaleable, had
stood empty for several years. One went to it
up a gravel drive, round a large, coarse grass-
plot, with plenty of time to observe the
degradation of its stuccoed front. Miss Haldin
said that the impression was unpleasant. It
grew more depressing as one came nearer.
She observed green stains of moss on the steps
of the terrace. The front door stood wide open.
There was no one about. She found herself in a
wide, lofty, and absolutely empty hall, with a
good many doors. These doors were all shut. A
broad, bare stone staircase faced her, and the
effect of the whole was of an untenanted house.
She stood still, disconcerted by the solitude,
but after a while she became aware of a voice
speaking continuously somewhere.
"You were probably being observed all the time,"
I suggested. " There must have been eyes."
"I don't see how that could be," she retorted.
"I haven't seen even a bird in the grounds. I
don't remember hearing a single twitter in the
trees. The whole place appeared utterly
deserted except for the voice."
She could not make out the language--Russian,
French, or German. No one seemed to answer it.
It was as though the voice had been left behind
by the departed inhabitants to talk to the bare
walls. It went on volubly, with a pause now and
then. It was lonely and sad. The time seemed
very long to Miss Haldin. An invincible
repugnance prevented her from opening one of the
doors in the hall. It was so hopeless. No one
would come, the voice would never stop. She
confessed to me that she had to resist an
impulse to turn round and go away unseen, as she
had come.
''Really? You had that impulse?" I cried, full
of regret. "What a pity you did not obey it."
She shook her head.
"What a strange memory it would have been for
one. Those deserted grounds, that empty hall,
that impersonal, voluble voice, and--nobody,
nothing, not a soul."
The memory would have been unique and harmless.
But she was not a girl to run away from an
intimidating impression of solitude and mystery.
"No, I did not run away," she said. "I stayed
where I was--and I did see a soul. Such a
strange soul."
As she was gazing up the broad staircase, and
had concluded that the voice came from somewhere
above, a rustle of dress attracted her
attention. She looked down and saw a woman
crossing the hall, having issued apparently
through one of the many doors. Her face was
averted, so that at first she was not aware of
Miss Haldin.
On turning her head and seeing a stranger, she
appeared very much startled. From her slender
figure Miss Haldin had taken her for a young
girl; but if her face was almost childishly
round, it was also sallow and wrinkled, with
dark rings under the eyes. A thick crop of
dusty brown hair was parted boyishly on the side
with a lateral wave above the dry, furrowed
forehead. After a moment of dumb blinking, she
suddenly squatted down on the floor.
"What do you mean by squatted down?" I asked,
astonished. "This is a very strange detail."
Miss Haldin explained the reason. This person
when first seen was carrying a small bowl in her
hand. She had squatted down to put it on the
floor for the benefit of a large cat, which
appeared then from behind her skirts, and hid
its head into the bowl greedily. She got up,
and approaching Miss Haldin asked with nervous
bluntness--
"What do you want? Who are you?"
Miss Haldin mentioned her name and also the name
of Peter Ivanovitch. The girlish, elderly woman
nodded and puckered her face into a momentary
expression of sympathy. Her black silk blouse
was old and even frayed in places; the black
serge skirt was short and shabby. She continued
to blink at close quarters, and her eyelashes
and eyebrows seemed shabby too. Miss Haldin,
speaking gently to her, as if to an unhappy and
sensitive person, explained how it was that her
visit could not be an altogether unexpected
event to Madame de S---.
"Ah! Peter Ivanovitch brought you an
invitation. How was I to know? A _dame de
compangnie_ is not consulted, as you may
imagine."
The shabby woman laughed a little. Her teeth,
splendidly white and admirably even, looked
absurdly out of place, like a string of pearls
on the neck of a ragged tramp. "Peter
Ivanovitch is the greatest genius of the century
perhaps, but he is the most inconsiderate man
living. So if you have an appointment with him
you must not be surprised to hear that he is not
here."
Miss Haldin explained that she had no
appointment with Peter Ivanovitch. She became
interested at once in that bizarre person.
"Why should he put himself out for you or any
one else? Oh! these geniuses. If you only
knew! Yes! And their books--I mean, of course,
the books that the world admires, the inspired
books. But you have not been behind the scenes.
Wait till you have to sit at a table for a half
a day with a pen in your hand. He can walk up
and down his rooms for hours and hours. I used
to get so stiff and numb that I was afraid I
would lose my balance and fall off the chair all
at once."
She kept her hands folded in front of her, and
her eyes, fixed on Miss Haldin's face, betrayed
no animation whatever. Miss Haldin, gathering
that the lady who called herself a _dame de
compangnie_ was proud of having acted as
secretary to Peter Ivanovitch, made an amiable
remark.
"You could not imagine a more trying
experience," declared the lady. "There is an
Anglo-American journalist interviewing Madame de
S--- now, or I would take you up," she continued
in a changed tone and glancing towards the
staircase. "I act as master of ceremonies."
It appeared that Madame de S--- could not bear
Swiss servants about her person; and, indeed,
servants would not stay for very long in the
Chateau Borel. There were always difficulties.
Miss Haldin had already noticed that the hall
was like a dusty barn of marble and stucco with
cobwebs in the corners and faint tracks of mud
on the black and white tessellated floor.
"I look also after this animal," continued the
_dame de compagnie_, keeping her hands folded
quietly in front of her; and she bent her worn
gaze upon the cat. "I don't mind a bit.
Animals have their rights; though, strictly
speaking, I see no reason why they should not
suffer as well as human beings. Do you? But of
course they never suffer so much. That is
impossible. Only, in their case it is more
pitiful because they cannot make a revolution.
I used to be a Republican. I suppose you are a
Republican?"
Miss Haldin confessed to me that she did not
know what to say. But she nodded slightly, and
asked in her turn--
"And are you no longer a Republican?"
"After taking down Peter Ivanovitch from
dictation for two years, it is difficult for me
to be anything. First of all, you have to sit
perfectly motionless. The slightest movement
you make puts to flight the ideas of Peter
Ivanovitch. You hardly dare to breathe. And as
to coughing--God forbid! Peter Ivanovitch
changed the position of the table to the wall
because at first I could not help raising my
eyes to look out of the window, while waiting
for him to go on with his dictation. That was
not allowed. He said I stared so stupidly. I
was likewise not permitted to look at him over
my shoulder. Instantly Peter Ivanovitch stamped
his foot, and would roar, 'Look down on the
paper!' It seems my expression, my face, put
him off. Well, I know that I am not beautiful,
and that my expression is not hopeful either.
He said that my air of unintelligent expectation
irritated him. These are his own words."
Miss Haldin was shocked, but admitted to me that
she was not altogether surprised.
"Is it possible that Peter Ivanovitch could
treat any woman so rudely?" she cried.
The _dame de compagnie_ nodded several times
with an air of discretion, then assured Miss
Haldin that she did not mind in the least. The
trying part of it was to have the secret of the
composition laid bare before her; to see the
great author of the revolutionary gospels grope
for words as if he were in the dark as to what
he meant to say.
"I am quite willing to be the blind instrument
of higher ends. To give one's life for the
cause is nothing. But to have one's illusions
destroyed--that is really almost more than one
can bear. I really don't exaggerate," she
insisted. "It seemed to freeze my very beliefs
in me--the more so that when we worked in winter
Peter Ivanovitch, walking up and down the room,
required no artificial heat to keep himself
warm. Even when we move to the South of France
there are bitterly cold days, especially when
you have to sit still for six hours at a
stretch. The walls of these villas on the
Riviera are so flimsy. Peter Ivanovitch did not
seem to be aware of anything. It is true that I
kept down my shivers from fear of putting him
out. I used to set my teeth till my jaws felt
absolutely locked. In the moments when Peter
Ivanovitch interrupted his dictation, and
sometimes these intervals were very long--often
twenty minutes, no less, while he walked to and
fro behind my back muttering to himself--I felt
I was dying by inches, I assure you. Perhaps if
I had let my teeth rattle Peter Ivanovitch might
have noticed my distress, but I don't think it
would have had any practical effect. She's very
miserly in such matters."
The _dame de compagnie_ glanced up the
staircase. The big cat had finished the milk
and was rubbing its whiskered cheek sinuously
against her skirt. She dived to snatch it up
from the floor.
"Miserliness is rather a quality than otherwise,
you know," she continued, holding the cat in her
folded arms. "With us it is misers who can
spare money for worthy objects--not the so-
called generous natures. But pray don't think I
am a sybarite. My father was a clerk in the
Ministry of Finances with no position at all.
You may guess by this that our home was far from
luxurious, though of course we did not actually
suffer from cold. I ran away from my parents,
you know, directly I began to think by myself.
It is not very easy, such thinking. One has got
to be put in the way of it, awakened to the
truth. I am indebted for my salvation to an old
apple-woman, who had her stall under the gateway
of the house we lived in. She had a kind
wrinkled face, and the most friendly voice
imaginable. One day, casually, we began to talk
about a child, a ragged little girl we had seen
begging from men in the streets at dusk; and
from one thing to another my eyes began to open
gradually to the horrors from which innocent
people are made to suffer in this world, only in
order that governments might exist. After I
once understood the crime of the upper classes,
I could not go on living with my parents. Not a
single charitable word was to be heard in our
home from year's end to year's end; there was
nothing but the talk of vile office intrigues,
and of promotion and of salaries, and of
courting the favour of the chiefs. The mere
idea of marrying one day such another man as my
father made me shudder. I don't mean that there
was anyone wanting to marry me. There was not
the slightest prospect of anything of the kind.
But was it not sin enough to live on a
Government salary while half Russia was dying of
hunger? The Ministry of Finances! What a
grotesque horror it is! What does the starving,
ignorant people want with a Ministry of
Finances? I kissed my old folks on both cheeks,
and went away from them to live in cellars, with
the proletariat. I tried to make myself useful
to the utterly hopeless. I suppose you
understand what I mean? I mean the people who
have nowhere to go and nothing to look forward
to in this life. Do you understand how
frightful that is--nothing to look forward to!
Sometimes I think that it is only in Russia that
there are such people and such a depth of misery
can be reached. Well, I plunged into it, and--
do you know--there isn't much that one can do in
there. No, indeed--at least as long as there
are Ministries of Finances and such like
grotesque horrors to stand in the way. I
suppose I would have gone mad there just trying
to fight the vermin, if it had not been for a
man. It was my old friend and teacher, the poor
saintly apple-woman, who discovered him for me,
quite accidentally. She came to fetch me late
one evening in her quiet way. I followed her
where she would lead; that part of my life was
in her hands altogether, and without her my
spirit would have perished miserably. The man
was a young workman, a lithographer by trade,
and he had got into trouble in connexion with
that affair of temperance tracts--you remember.
There was a lot of people put in prison for
that. The Ministry of Finances again! What
would become of it if the poor folk ceased
making beasts of themselves with drink? Upon my
word, I would think that finances and all the
rest of it are an invention of the devil; only
that a belief in a supernatural source of evil
is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of
every wickedness. Finances indeed!"
Hatred and contempt hissed in her utterance of
the word "finances," but at the very moment she
gently stroked the cat reposing in her arms.
She even raised them slightly, and inclining her
head rubbed her cheek against the fur of the
animal, which received this caress with the
complete detachment so characteristic of its
kind. Then looking at Miss Haldin she excused
herself once more for not taking her upstairs to
Madame S--- The interview could not be
interrupted. Presently the journalist would be
seen coming down the stairs. The best thing was
to remain in the hall; and besides, all these
rooms (she glanced all round at the many doors),
all these rooms on the ground floor were
unfurnished.
"Positively there is no chair down here to offer
you," she continued. "But if you prefer your
own thoughts to my chatter, I will sit down on
the bottom step here and keep silent."
Miss Haldin hastened to assure her that, on the
contrary, she was very much interested in the
story of the journeyman lithographer. He was a
revolutionist, of course.
"A martyr, a simple man," said the _dame de
compangnie_, with a faint sigh, and gazing
through the open front door dreamily. She
turned her misty brown eyes on Miss Haldin.
"I lived with him for four months. It was like
a nightmare."
As Miss Haldin looked at her inquisitively she
began to describe the emaciated face of the man,
his fleshless limbs, his destitution. The room
into which the apple-woman had led her was a
tiny garret, a miserable den under the roof of a
sordid house. The plaster fallen off the walls
covered the floor, and when the door was opened
a horrible tapestry of black cobwebs waved in
the draught. He had been liberated a few days
before--flung out of prison into the streets.
And Miss Haldin seemed to see for the first
time, a name and a face upon the body of that
suffering people whose hard fate had been the
subject of so many conversations, between her
and her brother, in the garden of their country
house.
He had been arrested with scores and scores of
other people in that affair of the lithographed
temperance tracts. Unluckily, having got hold
of a great many suspected persons, the police
thought they could extract from some of them
other information relating to the revolutionist
propaganda.
"They beat him so cruelly in the course of
investigation," went on the _dame de compagnie_,
"that they injured him internally. When they
had done with him he was doomed. He could do
nothing for himself. I beheld him lying on a
wooden bedstead without any bedding, with his
head on a bundle of dirty rags, lent to him out
of charity by an old rag-picker, who happened to
live in the basement of the house. There he
was, uncovered, burning with fever, and there
was not even a jug in the room for the water to
quench his thirst with. There was nothing
whatever--just that bedstead and the bare floor."
"Was there no one in all that great town amongst
the liberals and revolutionaries, to extend a
helping hand to a brother?" asked Miss Haldin
indignantly.
"Yes. But you do not know the most terrible
part of that man's misery. Listen. It seems
that they ill-used him so atrociously that, at
last, his firmness gave way, and he did let out
some information. Poor soul, the flesh is weak,
you know. What it was he did not tell me.
There was a crushed spirit in that mangled body.
Nothing I found to say could make him whole.
When they let him out, he crept into that hole,
and bore his remorse stoically. He would not go
near anyone he knew. I would have sought
assistance for him, but, indeed, where could I
have gone looking for it? Where was I to look
for anyone who had anything to spare or any
power to help? The people living round us were
all starving and drunken. They were the victims
of the Ministry of Finances. Don't ask me how
we lived. I couldn't tell you. It was like a
miracle of wretchedness. I had nothing to sell,
and I assure you my clothes were in such a state
that it was impossible for me to go out in the
daytime. I was indecent. I had to wait till it
was dark before I ventured into the streets to
beg for a crust of bread, or whatever I could
get, to keep him and me alive. Often I got
nothing, and then I would crawl back and lie on
the floor by the side of his couch. Oh yes, I
can sleep quite soundly on bare boards. That is
nothing, and I am only mentioning it to you so
that you should not think I am a sybarite. It
was infinitely less killing than the task of
sitting for hours at a table in a cold study to
take the books of Peter Ivanovitch from
dictation. But you shall see yourself what that
is like, so I needn't say any more about it."
"It is by no means certain that I will ever take
Peter Ivanovitch from dictation," said Miss
Haldin.
"No!" cried the other incredulously. "Not
certain? You mean to say that you have not made
up your mind?"
When Miss Haldin assured her that there never
had been any question of that between her and
Peter Ivanovitch, the woman with the cat
compressed her lips tightly for a moment.
"Oh, you will find yourself settled at the table
before you know that you have made up your mind.
Don't make a mistake, it is disenchanting to
hear Peter Ivanovitch dictate, but at the same
time there is a fascination about it. He is a
man of genius. Your face is certain not to
irritate him; you may perhaps even help his
inspiration, make it easier for him to deliver
his message. As I look at you, I feel certain
that you are the kind of woman who is not likely
to check the flow of his inspiration."
Miss Haldin thought it useless to protest
against all these assumptions.
"But this man--this workman did he die under
your care?" she said, after a short silence.
The _dame de compagnie_, listening up the stairs
where now two voices were alternating with some
animation, made no answer for a time. When the
loud sounds of the discussion had sunk into an
almost inaudible murmur, she turned to Miss
Haldin.
"Yes, he died, but not, literally speaking, in
my arms, as you might suppose. As a matter of
fact, I was asleep when he breathed his last.
So even now I cannot say I have seen anybody
die. A few days before the end, some young men
found us out in our extremity. They were
revolutionists, as you might guess. He ought to
have trusted in his political friends when he
came out of prison. He had been liked and
respected before, and nobody would have dreamed
of reproaching him with his indiscretion before
the police. Everybody knows how they go to
work, and the strongest man has his moments of
weakness before pain. Why, even hunger alone is
enough to give one queer ideas as to what may be
done. A doctor came, our lot was alleviated as
far as physical comforts go, but otherwise he
could not be consoled--poor man. I assure you,
Miss Haldin, that he was very lovable, but I had
not the strength to weep. I was nearly dead
myself. But there were kind hearts to take care
of me. A dress was found to clothe my
nakedness. I tell you, I was not decent--and
after a time the revolutionists placed me with a
Jewish family going abroad, as governess. Of
course I could teach the children, I finished
the sixth class of the Lyceum; but the real
object was, that I should carry some important
papers across the frontier. I was entrusted
with a packet which I carried next my heart.
The gendarmes at the station did not suspect the
governess of a Jewish family, busy looking after
three children. I don't suppose those Hebrews
knew what I had on me, for I had been introduced
to them in a very roundabout way by persons who
did not belong to the revolutionary movement,
and naturally I had been instructed to accept a
very small salary. When we reached Germany I
left that family and delivered my papers to a
revolutionist in Stuttgart; after this I was
employed in various ways. But you do not want
to hear all that. I have never felt that I was
very useful, but I live in hopes of seeing all
the Ministries destroyed, finances and all. The
greatest joy of my life has been to hear what
your brother has done."
She directed her round eyes again to the
sunshine outside, while the cat reposed within
her folded arms in lordly beatitude and sphinx-
like meditation.
"Yes! I rejoiced," she began again. "For me
there is a heroic ring about the very name of
Haldin. They must have been trembling with fear
in their Ministries--all those men with fiendish
hearts. Here I stand talking to you, and when I
think of all the cruelties, oppressions, and
injustices that are going on at this very
moment, my head begins to swim. I have looked
closely at what would seem inconceivable if
one's own eyes had not to be trusted. I have
looked at things that made me hate myself for my
helplessness. I hated my hands that had no
power, my voice that could not be heard, my very
mind that would not become unhinged. Ah! I
have seen things. And you?"
Miss Haldin was moved. She shook her head
slightly.
"No, I have seen nothing for myself as yet," she
murmured "We have always lived in the country.
It was my brother's wish."
"It is a curious meeting--this--between you and
me," continued the other. "Do you believe in
chance, Miss Haldin? How could I have expected
to see you, his sister, with my own eyes? Do
you know that when the news came the
revolutionaries here were as much surprised as
pleased, every bit? No one seemed to know
anything about your brother. Peter Ivanovitch
himself had not foreseen that such a blow was
going to be struck. I suppose your brother was
simply inspired. I myself think that such deeds
should be done by inspiration. It is a great
privilege to have the inspiration and the
opportunity. Did he resemble you at all? Don't
you rejoice, Miss Haldin?"
"You must not expect too much from me," said
Miss Haldin, repressing an inclination to cry
which came over her suddenly. She succeeded,
then added calmly, "I am not a heroic person!"
"You think you couldn't have done such a thing
yourself perhaps?"
"I don't know. I must not even ask myself till
I have lived a little longer, seen more. . . ."
The other moved her head appreciatively. The
purring of the cat had a loud complacency in the
empty hall. No sound of voices came from
upstairs. Miss Haldin broke the silence.
"What is it precisely that you heard people say
about my brother? You said that they were
surprised. Yes, I supposed they were. Did it
not seem strange to them that my brother should
have failed to save himself after the most
difficult part--that is, getting away from the
spot--was over? Conspirators should understand
these things well. There are reasons why I am
very anxious to know how it is he failed to
escape."
The _dame de compagnie_ had advanced to the open
hall-door. She glanced rapidly over her
shoulder at Miss Haldin, who remained within the
hall.
"Failed to escape," she repeated absently.
"Didn't he make the sacrifice of his life?
Wasn't he just simply inspired? Wasn't it an
act of abnegation? Aren't you certain?"
"What I am certain of," said Miss Haldin, "is
that it was not an act of despair. Have you not
heard some opinion expressed here upon his
miserable capture?"
The _dame de compagnie_ mused for a while in the
doorway.
"Did I hear? Of course, everything is discussed
here. Has not all the world been speaking about
your brother? For my part, the mere mention of
his achievement plunges me into an envious
ecstasy. Why should a man certain of
immortality think of his life at all?"
She kept her back turned to Miss Haldin.
Upstairs from behind a great dingy white and
gold door, visible behind the balustrade of the
first floor landing, a deep voice began to drone
formally, as if reading over notes or something
of the sort. It paused frequently, and then
ceased altogether.
"I don't think I can stay any longer now," said
Miss Haldin. "I may return another day."
She waited for the _dame de compagnie_ to make
room for her exit; but the woman appeared lost
in the contemplation of sunshine and shadows,
sharing between themselves the stillness of the
deserted grounds. She concealed the view of the
drive from Miss Haldin. Suddenly she said--
"It will not be necessary; here is Peter
Ivanovitch himself coming up. But he is not
alone. He is seldom alone now."
Hearing that Peter Ivanovitch was approaching,
Miss Haldin was not so pleased as she might have
been expected to be. Somehow she had lost the
desire to see either the heroic captive or
Madame de S---, and the reason of that shrinking
which came upon her at the very last minute is
accounted for by the feeling that those two
people had not been treating the woman with the
cat kindly.
"Would you please let me pass?" said Miss Haldin
at last, touching lightly the shoulder of the
_dame de compagnie_.
But the other, pressing the cat to her breast,
did not budge.
"I know who is with him," she said, without even
looking back.
More unaccountably than ever Miss Haldin felt a
strong impulse to leave the house.
"Madame de S--- may be engaged for some time
yet, and what I have got to say to Peter
Ivanovitch is just a simple question which I
might put to him when I meet him in the grounds
on my way down. I really think I must go. I
have been some time here, and I am anxious to
get back to my mother. Will you let me pass,
please?"
The _dame de compagnie_ turned her head at last.
"I never supposed that you really wanted to see
Madame de S---," she said, with unexpected
insight. "Not for a moment." There was
something confidential and mysterious in her
tone. She passed through the door, with Miss
Haldin following her, on to the terrace, and
they descended side by side the moss-grown stone
steps. There was no one to be seen on the part
of the drive visible from the front of the house.
"They are hidden by the trees over there,"
explained Miss Haldin's new acquaintance, "but
you shall see them directly. I don't know who
that young man is to whom Peter Ivanovitch has
taken such a fancy. He must be one of us, or he
would not be admitted here when the others come.
You know what I mean by the others. But I must
say that he is not at all mystically inclined.
I don't know that I have made him out yet.
Naturally I am never for very long in the
drawing-room. There is always something to do
for me, though the establishment here is not so
extensive as the villa on the Riviera. But
still there are plenty of opportunities for me
to make myself useful."
To the left, passing by the ivy-grown end of the
stables, appeared Peter Ivanovitch and his
companion. They walked very slowly, conversing
with some animation. They stopped for a moment,
and Peter Ivanovitch was seen to gesticulate,
while the young man listened motionless, with
his arms hanging down and his head bowed a
little. He was dressed in a dark brown suit and
a black hat. The round eyes of the _dame de
compagnie_ remained fixed on the two figures,
which had resumed their leisurely approach.
"An extremely polite young man," she said. "You
shall see what a bow he will make; and it won't
altogether be so exceptional either. He bows in
the same way when he meets me alone in the hall."
She moved on a few steps, with Miss Haldin by
her side, and things happened just as she had
foretold. The young man took off his hat, bowed
and fell back, while Peter Ivanovitch advanced
quicker, his black, thick arms extended
heartily, and seized hold of both Miss Haldin's
hands, shook them, and peered at her through his
dark glasses.
"That's right, that's right!" he exclaimed
twice, approvingly. "And so you have been
looked after by. . . ." He frowned slightly at
the _dame de compagnie_, who was still nursing
the cat. "I conclude Eleanor--Madame de S--- is
engaged. I know she expected somebody to-day.
So the newspaper man did turn up, eh? She is
engaged?"
For all answer the _dame de compagnie_ turned
away her head.
"It is very unfortunate--very unfortunate
indeed. I very much regret that you should have
been. . . ." He lowered suddenly his voice.
"But what is it--surely you are not departing,
Natalia Victorovna? You got bored waiting,
didn't you?"
"Not in the least," Miss Haldin protested.
"Only I have been here some time, and I am
anxious to get back to my mother."
"The time seemed long, eh? I am afraid our
worthy friend here" (Peter Ivanovitch suddenly
jerked his head sideways towards his right
shoulder and jerked it up again),--"our worthy
friend here has not the art of shortening the
moments of waiting. No, distinctly she has not
the art; and in that respect good intentions
alone count for nothing."
The _dame de compagnie_ dropped her arms, and
the cat found itself suddenly on the ground. It
remained quite still after alighting, one hind
leg stretched backwards. Miss Haldin was
extremely indignant on behalf of the lady
companion.
"Believe me, Peter Ivanovitch, that the moments
I have passed in the hall of this house have
been not a little interesting, and very
instructive too. They are memorable. I do not
regret the waiting, but I see that the object of
my call here can be attained without taking up
Madame de S---'s time."
At this point I interrupted Miss Haldin. The
above relation is founded on her narrative,
which I have not so much dramatized as might be
supposed. She had rendered, with extraordinary
feeling and animation, the very accent almost of
the disciple of the old apple-woman, the
irreconcilable hater of Ministries, the
voluntary servant of the poor. Miss Haldin's
true and delicate humanity had been extremely
shocked by the uncongenial fate of her new
acquaintance, that lady companion, secretary,
whatever she was. For my own part, I was
pleased to discover in it one more obstacle to
intimacy with Madame de S---. I had a positive
abhorrence for the painted, bedizened, dead-
faced, glassy-eyed Egeria of Peter Ivanovitch.
I do not know what was her attitude to the
unseen, but I know that in the affairs of this
world she was avaricious, greedy, and
unscrupulous. It was within my knowledge that
she had been worsted in a sordid and desperate
quarrel about money matters with the family of
her late husband, the diplomatist. Some very
august personages indeed (whom in her fury she
had insisted upon scandalously involving in her
affairs) had incurred her animosity. I find it
perfectly easy to believe that she had come to
within an ace of being spirited away, for
reasons of state, into some discreet _maison de
sante_--a madhouse of sorts, to be plain. It
appears, however, that certain high-placed
personages opposed it for reasons which. . . .
But it's no use to go into details.
Wonder may be expressed at a man in the position
of a teacher of languages knowing all this with
such definiteness. A novelist says this and
that of his personages, and if only he knows how
to say it earnestly enough he may not be
questioned upon the inventions of his brain in
which his own belief is made sufficiently
manifest by a telling phrase, a poetic image,
the accent of emotion. Art is great! But I
have no art, and not having invented Madame de S-
--, I feel bound to explain how I came to know
so much about her.
My informant was the Russian wife of a friend of
mine already mentioned, the professor of
Lausanne University. It was from her that I
learned the last fact of Madame de S---'s
history, with which I intend to trouble my
readers. She told me, speaking positively, as a
person who trusts her sources, of the cause of
Madame de S---'s flight from Russia, some years
before. It was neither more nor less than this:
that she became suspect to the police in
connexion with the assassination of the Emperor
Alexander. The ground of this suspicion was
either some unguarded expressions that escaped
her in public, or some talk overheard in her
salon. Overheard, we must believe, by some
guest, perhaps a friend, who hastened to play
the informer, I suppose. At any rate, the
overheard matter seemed to imply her
foreknowledge of that event, and I think she was
wise in not waiting for the investigation of
such a charge. Some of my readers may remember
a little book from her pen, published in Paris,
a mystically bad-tempered, declamatory, and
frightfully disconnected piece of writing, in
which she all but admits the foreknowledge, more
than hints at its supernatural origin, and
plainly suggests in venomous innuendoes that the
guilt of the act was not with the terrorists,
but with a palace intrigue. When I observed to
my friend, the professor's wife, that the life
of Madame de S---, with its unofficial
diplomacy, its intrigues, lawsuits, favours,
disgrace, expulsions, its atmosphere of scandal,
occultism, and charlatanism, was more fit for
the eighteenth century than for the conditions
of our own time, she assented with a smile, but
a moment after went on in a reflective tone:
"Charlatanism?--yes, in a certain measure.
Still, times are changed. There are forces now
which were non-existent in the eighteenth
century. I should not be surprised if she were
more dangerous than an Englishman would be
willing to believe. And what's more, she is
looked upon as really dangerous by certain
people--_chez nous_."
_Chez nous_ in this connexion meant Russia in
general, and the Russian political police in
particular. The object of my digression from
the straight course of Miss Haldin's relation
(in my own words) of her visit to the Chateau
Borel, was to bring forward that statement of my
friend, the professor's wife. I wanted to bring
it forward simply to make what I have to say
presently of Mr. Razumov's presence in Geneva, a
little more credible--for this is a Russian
story for Western ears, which, as I have
observed already, are not attuned to certain
tones of cynicism and cruelty, of moral
negation, and even of moral distress already
silenced at our end of Europe. And this I state
as my excuse for having left Miss Haldin
standing, one of the little group of two women
and two men who had come together below the
terrace of the Chateau Borel.
The knowledge which I have just stated was in my
mind when, as I have said, I interrupted Miss
Haldin. I interrupted her with the cry of
profound satisfaction--
"So you never saw Madame de S---, after all?"
Miss Haldin shook her head. It was very
satisfactory to me. She had not seen Madame de
S---! That was excellent, excellent! I
welcomed the conviction that she would never
know Madame de S--- now. I could not explain
the reason of the conviction but by the
knowledge that Miss Haldin was standing face to
face with her brother's wonderful friend. I
preferred him to Madame de S--- as the companion
and guide of that young girl, abandoned to her
inexperience by the miserable end of her
brother. But, at any rate, that life now ended
had been sincere, and perhaps its thoughts might
have been lofty, its moral sufferings profound,
its last act a true sacrifice. It is not for
us, the staid lovers calmed by the possession of
a conquered liberty, to condemn without appeal
the fierceness of thwarted desire.
I am not ashamed of the warmth of my regard for
Miss Haldin. It was, it must be admitted, an
unselfish sentiment, being its own reward. The
late Victor Haldin--in the light of that
sentiment--appeared to me not as a sinister
conspirator, but as a pure enthusiast. I did
not wish indeed to judge him, but the very fact
that he did not escape, that fact which brought
so much trouble to both his mother and his
sister, spoke to me in his favour. Meantime, in
my fear of seeing the girl surrender to the
influence of the Chateau Borel revolutionary
feminism, I was more than willing to put my
trust in that friend of the late Victor Haldin.
He was nothing but a name, you will say.
Exactly! A name! And what's more, the only
name; the only name to be found in the
correspondence between brother and sister. The
young man had turned up; they had come face to
face, and, fortunately, without the direct
interference of Madame de S---. What will come
of it ? what will she tell me presently? I was
asking myself.
It was only natural that my thought should turn
to the young man, the bearer of the only name
uttered in all the dream-talk of a future to be
brought about by a revolution. And my thought
took the shape of asking myself why this young
man had not called upon these ladies. He had
been in Geneva for some days before Miss Haldin
heard of him first in my presence from Peter
Ivanovitch. I regretted that last's presence at
their meeting. I would rather have had it
happen somewhere out of his spectacled sight.
But I supposed that, having both these young
people there, he introduced them to each other.
I broke the silence by beginning a question on
that point--
"I suppose Peter Ivanovitch. . . ."
Miss Haldin gave vent to her indignation. Peter
Ivanovitch directly he had got his answer from
her had turned upon the _dame de compagnie_ in a
shameful manner.
"Turned upon her?" I wondered. "What about?
For what reason? "
"It was unheard of; it was shameful," Miss
Haldin pursued, with angry eyes. " _Il lui a
fait une scene_--like this, before strangers.
And for what? You would never guess. For some
eggs. . . . Oh!"
I was astonished. "Eggs, did you say?"
"For Madame de S---. That lady observes a
special diet, or something of the sort. It
seems she complained the day before to Peter
Ivanovitch that the eggs were not rightly
prepared. Peter Ivanovitch suddenly remembered
this against the poor woman, and flew out at
her. It was most astonishing. I stood as if
rooted."
"Do you mean to say that the great feminist
allowed himself to be abusive to a woman?" I
asked.
"Oh, not that! It was something you have no
conception of. It was an odious performance.
Imagine, he raised his hat to begin with. He
made his voice soft and deprecatory. 'Ah! you
are not kind to us--you will not deign to
remember. . . .' This sort of phrases, that
sort of tone. The poor creature was terribly
upset. Her eyes ran full of tears. She did not
know where to look. I shouldn't wonder if she
would have preferred abuse, or even a blow."
I did not remark that very possibly she was
familiar with both on occasions when no one was
by. Miss Haldin walked by my side, her head up
in scornful and angry silence.
"Great men have their surprising peculiarities,"
I observed inanely. "Exactly like men who are
not great. But that sort of thing cannot be
kept up for ever. How did the great feminist
wind up this very characteristic episode?"
Miss Haldin, without turning her face my way,
told me that the end was brought about by the
appearance of the interviewer, who had been
closeted with Madame de S---.
He came up rapidly, unnoticed, lifted his hat
slightly, and paused to say in French: "The
Baroness has asked me, in case I met a lady on
my way out, to desire her to come in at once."
After delivering this message, he hurried down
the drive. The _dame de compagnie_ flew towards
the house, and Peter Ivanovitch followed her
hastily, looking uneasy. In a moment Miss
Haldin found herself alone with the young man,
who undoubtedly must have been the new arrival
from Russia. She wondered whether her brother's
friend had not already guessed who she was.
I am in a position to say that, as a matter of
fact, he had guessed. It is clear to me that
Peter Ivanovitch, for some reason or other, had
refrained from alluding to these ladies'
presence in Geneva. But Razumov had guessed.
The trustful girl! Every word uttered by Haldin
lived in Razumov's memory. They were like
haunting shapes; they could not be exorcised.
The most vivid amongst them was the mention of
the sister. The girl had existed for him ever
since. But he did not recognize her at once.
Coming up with Peter Ivanovitch, he did observe
her; their eyes had met, even. He had
responded, as no one could help responding, to
the harmonious charm of her whole person, its
strength, its grace, its tranquil frankness--and
then he had turned his gaze away. He said to
himself that all this was not for him; the
beauty of women and the friendship of men were
not for him. He accepted that feeling with a
purposeful sternness, and tried to pass on. It
was only her outstretched hand which brought
about the recognition. It stands recorded in
the pages of his self-confession, that it nearly
suffocated him physically with an emotional
reaction of hate and dismay, as though her
appearance had been a piece of accomplished
treachery.
He faced about. The considerable elevation of
the terrace concealed them from anyone lingering
in the doorway of the house; and even from the
upstairs windows they could not have been seen.
Through the thickets run wild, and the trees of
the gently sloping grounds, he had cold, placid
glimpses of the lake. A moment of perfect
privacy had been vouchsafed to them at this
juncture. I wondered to myself what use they
had made of that fortunate circumstance.
"Did you have time for more than a few words?" I
asked.
That animation with which she had related to me
the incidents of her visit to the Chateau Borel
had left her completely. Strolling by my side,
she looked straight before her; but I noticed a
little colour on her cheek. She did not answer
me.
After some little time I observed that they
could not have hoped to remain forgotten for
very long, unless the other two had discovered
Madame de S--- swooning with fatigue, perhaps,
or in a state of morbid exaltation after the
long interview. Either would require their
devoted ministrations. I could depict to myself
Peter Ivanovitch rushing busily out of the house
again, bareheaded, perhaps, and on across the
terrace with his swinging gait, the black skirts
of the frock-coat floating clear of his stout
light grey legs. I confess to having looked
upon these young people as the quarry of the
"heroic fugitive." I had the notion that they
would not be allowed to escape capture. But of
that I said nothing to Miss Haldin, only as she
still remained uncommunicative, I pressed her a
little.
"Well--but you can tell me at least your
impression."
She turned her head to look at me, and turned
away again.
"Impression?" she repeated slowly, almost
dreamily; then in a quicker tone--
"He seems to be a man who has suffered more from
his thoughts than from evil fortune."
"From his thoughts, you say?"
"And that is natural enough in a Russian," she
took me up." In a young Russian; so many of
them are unfit for action, and yet unable to
rest."
"And you think he is that sort of man?"
"No, I do not judge him. How could I, so
suddenly? You asked for my impression--I
explain my impression. I--I--don't know the
world, nor yet the people in it; I have been too
solitary--I am too young to trust my own
opinions."
"Trust your instinct," I advised her. "Most
women trust to that, and make no worse mistakes
than men. In this case you have your brother's
letter to help you"
She drew a deep breath like a light sigh.
"Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences," she
quoted as if to herself. But I caught the
wistful murmur distinctly.
"High praise, "I whispered to her.''
"The highest possible."
"So high that, like the award of happiness, it
is more fit to come only at the end of a life.
But still no common or altogether unworthy
personality could have suggested such a
confident exaggeration of praise and. . . ."
"Ah!" She interrupted me ardently. "And if you
had only known the heart from which that
judgment has come!"
She ceased on that note, and for a space I
reflected on the character of the words which I
perceived very well must tip the scale of the
girl's feelings in that young man's favour.
They had not the sound of a casual utterance.
Vague they were to my Western mind and to my
Western sentiment, but I could not forget that,
standing by Miss Haldin's side, I was like a
traveller in a strange country. It had also
become clear to me that Miss Haldin was
unwilling to enter into the details of the only
material part of their visit to the Chateau
Borel. But I was not hurt. Somehow I didn't
feel it to be a want of confidence. It was some
other difficulty--a difficulty I could not
resent. And it was without the slightest
resentment that I said--
"Very well. But on that high ground, which I
will not dispute, you, like anyone else in such
circumstances, you must have made for yourself a
representation of that exceptional friend, a
mental image of him, and--please tell me--you
were not disappointed?"
"What do you mean? His personal appearance?"
"I don't mean precisely his good looks, or
otherwise."
We turned at the end of the alley and made a few
steps without looking at each other.
"His appearance is not ordinary," said Miss
Haldin at last.
"No, I should have thought not--from the little
you've said of your first impression. After
all, one has to fall back on that word.
Impression! What I mean is that something
indescribable which is likely to mark a 'not
ordinary' person."
I perceived that she was not listening. There
was no mistaking her expression; and once more I
had the sense of being out of it--not because of
my age, which at any rate could draw inferences--
but altogether out of it, on another plane
whence I could only watch her from afar. And so
ceasing to speak I watched her stepping out by
my side.
"No, she exclaimed suddenly, "I could not have
been disappointed with a man of such strong
feeling."
"Aha! Strong feeling, "I muttered, thinking to
myself censoriously: like this, at once, all in
a moment!
"What did you say?" inquired Miss Haldin
innocently.
"Oh, nothing. I beg your pardon. Strong
feeling. I am not surprised."
"And you don't know how abruptly I behaved to
him!" she cried remorsefully.
I suppose I must have appeared surprised, for,
looking at me with a still more heightened
colour, she said she was ashamed to admit that
she had not been sufficiently collected; she had
failed to control her words and actions as the
situation demanded. She lost the fortitude
worthy of both the men, the dead and the living;
the fortitude which should have been the note of
the meeting of Victor Haldin's sister with
Victor Haldin's only known friend. He was
looking at her keenly, but said nothing, and she
was--she confessed--painfully affected by his
want of comprehension. All she could say was:
"You are Mr. Razumov." A slight frown passed
over his forehead. After a short, watchful
pause, he made a little bow of assent, and
waited.
At the thought that she had before her the man
so highly regarded by her brother, the man who
had known his value, spoken to him, understood
him, had listened to his confidences, perhaps
had encouraged him--her lips trembled, her eyes
ran full of tears; she put out her hand, made a
step towards him impulsively, saying with an
effort to restrain her emotion, "Can't you guess
who I am?" He did not take the proffered hand.
He even recoiled a pace, and Miss Haldin
imagined that he was unpleasantly affected.
Miss Haldin excused him, directing her
displeasure at herself. She had behaved
unworthily, like an emotional French girl. A
manifestation of that kind could not be welcomed
by a man of stern, self-contained character.
He must have been stern indeed, or perhaps very
timid with women, not to respond in a more human
way to the advances of a girl like Nathalie
Haldin--I thought to myself. Those lofty and
solitary existences (I remembered the words
suddenly) make a young man shy and an old man
savage--often.
"Well," I encouraged Miss Haldin to proceed.
She was still very dissatisfied with herself.
"I went from bad to worse," she said, with an
air of discouragement very foreign to her. "I
did everything foolish except actually bursting
into tears. I am thankful to say I did not do
that. But I was unable to speak for quite a
long time."
She had stood before him, speechless, swallowing
her sobs, and when she managed at last to utter
something, it was only her brother's name--
"Victor--Victor Haldin!" she gasped out, and
again her voice failed her.
"Of course," she commented to me, "this
distressed him. He was quite overcome. I have
told you my opinion that he is a man of deep
feeling--it is impossible to doubt it. You
should have seen his face. He positively
reeled. He leaned against the wall of the
terrace. Their friendship must have been the
very brotherhood of souls! I was grateful to
him for that emotion, which made me feel less
ashamed of my own lack of self-control. Of
course I had regained the power of speech at
once, almost. All this lasted not more than a
few seconds. 'I am his sister,' I said. 'Maybe
you have heard of me.'"
" And had he?" I interrupted.
"I don't know. How could it have been
otherwise? And yet. . . . But what does that
matter? I stood there before him, near enough
to be touched and surely not looking like an
impostor. All I know is, that he put out both
his hands then to me, I may say flung them out
at me, with the greatest readiness and warmth,
and that I seized and pressed them, feeling that
I was finding again a little of what I thought
was lost to me for ever, with the loss of my
brother--some of that hope, inspiration, and
support which I used to get from my dear dead. .
. ."
I understood quite well what she meant. We
strolled on slowly. I refrained from looking at
her. And it was as if answering my own thoughts
that I murmured--
"No doubt it was a great friendship--as you say.
And that young man ended by welcoming your
name, so to speak, with both hands. After that,
of course, you would understand each other.
Yes, you would understand each other quickly."
It was a moment before I heard her voice.
"Mr. Razumov seems to be a man of few words. A
reserved man--even when he is strongly moved."
Unable to forget---or even to forgive--the bass-
toned expansiveness of Peter Ivanovitch, the
Archpatron of revolutionary parties, I said that
I took this for a favourable trait of character.
It was associated with sincerity--in my mind.
"And, besides, we had not much time," she added.
"No, you would not have, of course." My
suspicion and even dread of the feminist and his
Egeria was so ineradicable that I could not help
asking with real anxiety, which I made smiling--
"But you escaped all right?"
She understood me, and smiled too, at my
uneasiness.
"Oh yes! I escaped, if you like to call it
that. I walked away quickly. There was no need
to run. I am neither frightened nor yet
fascinated, like that poor woman who received me
so strangely."
"And Mr.--Mr. Razumov. . .?"
"He remained there, of course. I suppose he
went into the house after I left him. You
remember that he came here strongly recommended
to Peter Ivanovitch--possibly entrusted with
important messages for him."
"Ah yes! From that priest who. . . ."
"Father Zosim--yes. Or from others, perhaps."
"You left him, then. But have you seen him
since, may I ask?"
For some time Miss Haldin made no answer to this
very direct question, then--
"I have been expecting to see him here to-day,"
she said quietly.
"You have! Do you meet, then, in this garden?
In that case I had better leave you at once."
"No, why leave me? And we don't meet in this
garden. I have not seen Mr. Razumov since that
first time. Not once. But I have been
expecting him. . . ."
She paused. I wondered to myself why that young
revolutionist should show so little alacrity.
"Before we parted I told Mr. Razumov that I
walked here for an hour every day at this time.
I could not explain to him then why I did not
ask him to come and see us at once. Mother must
be prepared for such a visit. And then, you
see, I do not know myself what Mr. Razumov has
to tell us. He, too, must be told first how it
is with poor mother. All these thoughts flashed
through my mind at once. So I told him
hurriedly that there was a reason why I could
not ask him to see us at home, but that I was in
the habit of walking here. . . . This is a
public place, but there are never many people
about at this hour. I thought it would do very
well. And it is so near our apartments. I
don't like to be very far away from mother. Our
servant knows where I am in case I should be
wanted suddenly."
"Yes. It is very convenient from that point of
view," I agreed.
In fact, I thought the Bastions a very
convenient place, since the girl did not think
it prudent as yet to introduce that young man to
her mother. It was here, then, I thought,
looking round at that plot of ground of
deplorable banality, that their acquaintance
will begin and go on in the exchange of generous
indignations and of extreme sentiments, too
poignant, perhaps, for a non-Russian mind to
conceive. I saw these two, escaped out of four
score of millions of human beings ground between
the upper and nether millstone, walking under
these trees, their young heads close together.
Yes, an excellent place to stroll and talk in.
It even occurred to me, while we turned once
more away from the wide iron gates, that when
tired they would have plenty of accommodation to
rest themselves. There was a quantity of tables
and chairs displayed between the restaurant
chalet and the bandstand, a whole raft of
painted deals spread out under the trees. In
the very middle of it I observed a solitary
Swiss couple, whose fate was made secure from
the cradle to the grave by the perfected
mechanism of democratic institutions in a
republic that could almost be held in the palm
of ones hand. The man, colourlessly uncouth,
was drinking beer out of a glittering glass; the
woman, rustic and placid, leaning back in the
rough chair, gazed idly around.
There is little logic to be expected on this
earth, not only in the matter of thought, but
also of sentiment. I was surprised to discover
myself displeased with that unknown young man.
A week had gone by since they met. Was he
callous, or shy, or very stupid? I could not
make it out.
"Do you think," I asked Miss Haldin, after we
had gone some distance up the great alley, "that
Mr Razumov understood your intention? "
"Understood what I meant?" she wondered. "He
was greatly moved. That I know! In my own
agitation I could see it. But I spoke
distinctly. He heard me; he seemed, indeed, to
hang on my words. . ."
Unconsciously she had hastened her pace. Her
utterance, too, became quicker.
I waited a little before I observed thoughtfully-
-
"And yet he allowed all these days to pass."
"How can we tell what work he may have to do
here? He is not an idler travelling for his
pleasure. His time may not be his own--nor yet
his thoughts, perhaps."
She slowed her pace suddenly, and in a lowered
voice added--
"Or his very life"--then paused and stood still
"For all I know, he may have had to leave Geneva
the very day he saw me."
"Without telling you!" I exclaimed
incredulously.
"I did not give him time. I left him quite
abruptly. I behaved emotionally to the end. I
am sorry for it. Even if I had given him the
opportunity he would have been justified in
taking me for a person not to be trusted. An
emotional, tearful girl is not a person to
confide in. But even if he has left Geneva for
a time, I am confident that we shall meet again."
"Ah! you are confident. . . . I dare say. But
on what ground?"
"Because I've told him that I was in great need
of some one, a fellow-countryman, a fellow-
believer, to whom I could give my confidence in
a certain matter."
"I see. I don't ask you what answer he made. I
confess that this is good ground for your belief
in Mr. Razumov's appearance before long. But he
has not turned up to-day?"
"No," she said quietly, "not to-day;" and we
stood for a time in silence, like people that
have nothing more to say to each other and let
their thoughts run widely asunder before their
bodies go off their different ways. Miss Haldin
glanced at the watch on her wrist and made a
brusque movement. She had already overstayed
her time, it seemed.
"I don't like to be away from mother," she
murmured, shaking her head. "It is not that she
is very ill now. But somehow when I am not with
her I am more uneasy than ever."
Mrs. Haldin had not made the slightest allusion
to her son for the last week or more. She sat,
as usual, in the arm-chair by the window,
looking out silently on that hopeless stretch of
the Boulevard des Philosophes. When she spoke,
a few lifeless words, it was of indifferent,
trivial things.
"For anyone who knows what the poor soul is
thinking of, that sort of talk is more painful
than her silence. But that is bad too; I can
hardly endure it, and I dare not break it.
Miss Haldin sighed, refastening a button of her
glove which had come undone. I knew well enough
what a hard time of it she must be having. The
stress, its causes, its nature, would have
undermined the health of an Occidental girl; but
Russian natures have a singular power of
resistance against the unfair strains of life.
Straight and supple, with a short jacket open on
her black dress, which made her figure appear
more slender and her fresh but colourless face
more pale, she compelled my wonder and
admiration.
"I can't stay a moment longer. You ought to
come soon to see mother. You know she calls you
'_L'ami._' It is an excellent name, and she
really means it. And now _au revoir_; I must
run."
She glanced vaguely down the broad walk--the
hand she put out to me eluded my grasp by an
unexpected upward movement, and rested upon my
shoulder. Her red lips were slightly parted,
not in a smile, however, but expressing a sort
of startled pleasure. She gazed towards the
gates and said quickly, with a gasp--
"There! I knew it. Here he comes!"
I understood that she must mean Mr. Razumov. A
young man was walking up the alley, without
haste. His clothes were some dull shade of
brown, and he carried a stick. When my eyes
first fell on him, his head was hanging on his
breast as if in deep thought. While I was
looking at him he raised it sharply, and at once
stopped. I am certain he did, but that pause
was nothing more perceptible than a faltering
check in his gait, instantaneously overcome.
Then he continued his approach, looking at us
steadily. Miss Haldin signed to me to remain,
and advanced a step or two to meet him.
I turned my head away from that meeting, and did
not look at them again till I heard Miss
Haldin's voice uttering his name in the way of
introduction. Mr. Razumov was informed, in a
warm, low tone, that, besides being a wonderful
teacher, I was a great support "in our sorrow
and distress."
Of course I was described also as an Englishman.
Miss Haldin spoke rapidly, faster than I have
ever heard her speak, and that by contrast made
the quietness of her eyes more expressive.
"I have given him my confidence," she added,
looking all the time at Mr. Razumov. That young
man did, indeed, rest his gaze on Miss Haldin,
but certainly did not look into her eyes which
were so ready for him. Afterwards he glanced
backwards and forwards at us both, while the
faint commencement of a forced smile, followed
by the suspicion of a frown, vanished one after
another; I detected them, though neither could
have been noticed by a person less intensely
bent upon divining him than myself. I don't
know what Nathalie Haldin had observed, but my
attention seized the very shades of these
movements. The attempted smile was given up,
the incipient frown was checked, and smoothed so
that there should be no sign; but I imagined him
exclaiming inwardly--
"Her confidence! To this elderly person--this
foreigner!"
I imagined this because he looked foreign enough
to me. I was upon the whole favourably
impressed. He had an air of intelligence and
even some distinction quite above the average of
the students and other inhabitants of the
_Petite Russie_. His features were more decided
than in the generality of Russian faces; he had
a line of the jaw, a clean-shaven, sallow cheek;
his nose was a ridge, and not a mere
protuberance. He wore the hat well down over
his eyes, his dark hair curled low on the nape
of his neck; in the ill-fitting brown clothes
there were sturdy limbs; a slight stoop brought
out a satisfactory breadth of shoulders. Upon
the whole I was not disappointed. Studious--
robust--shy.
Before Miss Haldin had ceased speaking I felt
the grip of his hand on mine, a muscular, firm
grip, but unexpectedly hot and dry. Not a word
or even a mutter assisted this short and arid
handshake.
I intended to leave them to themselves, but Miss
Haldin touched me lightly on the forearm with a
significant contact, conveying a distinct wish.
Let him smile who likes, but I was only too
ready to stay near Nathalie Haldin, and I am not
ashamed to say that it was no smiling matter to
me. I stayed, not as a youth would have stayed,
uplifted, as it were poised in the air, but
soberly, with my feet on the ground and my mind
trying to penetrate her intention. She had
turned to Razumov.
"Well. This is the place. Yes, it is here that
I meant you to come. I have been walking every
day. . . . Don't excuse yourself--I understand.
I am grateful to you for coming to-day, but all
the same I cannot stay now. It is impossible.
I must hurry off home. Yes, even with you
standing before me, I must run off. I have been
too long away. . . . You know how it is?"
These last words were addressed to me. I
noticed that Mr. Razumov passed the tip of his
tongue over his lips just as a parched, feverish
man might do. He took her hand in its black
glove, which closed on his, and held it--
detained it quite visibly to me against a
drawing-back movement.
"Thank you once more for--for understanding me,"
she went on warmly. He interrupted her with a
certain effect of roughness. I didn't like him
speaking to this frank creature so much from
under the brim of his hat, as it were. And he
produced a faint, rasping voice quite like a man
with a parched throat.
"What is there to thank me for? Understand you?
. . . How did I understand you? . . . You had
better know that I understand nothing. I was
aware that you wanted to see me in this garden.
I could not come before. I was hindered. And
even to-day, you see. . . late."
She still held his hand.
"I can, at any rate, thank you for not
dismissing me from your mind as a weak,
emotional girl. No doubt I want sustaining. I
am very ignorant. But I can be trusted. Indeed
I can!"
"You are ignorant," he repeated thoughtfully.
He had raised his head, and was looking straight
into her face now, while she held his hand.
They stood like this for a long moment. She
released his hand.
"Yes. You did come late. It was good of you to
come on the chance of me having loitered beyond
my time. I was talking with this good friend
here. I was talking of you. Yes, Kirylo
Sidorovitch, of you. He was with me when I
first heard of your being here in Geneva. He
can tell you what comfort it was to my
bewildered spirit to hear that news. He knew I
meant to seek you out. It was the only object
of my accepting the invitation of Peter
Ivanovitch. . . .
"Peter Ivanovitch talked to you of me," he
interrupted, in that wavering, hoarse voice
which suggested a horribly dry throat.
"Very little. Just told me your name, and that
you had arrived here. Why should I have asked
for more? What could he have told me that I did
not know already from my brother's letter?
Three lines! And how much they meant to me! I
will show them to you one day, Kirylo
Sidorovitch. But now I must go. The first talk
between us cannot be a matter of five minutes,
so we had better not begin. . . ."
I had been standing a little aside, seeing them
both in profile. At that moment it occurred to
me that Mr. Razumov's face was older than his
age.
"If mother"--the girl had turned suddenly to me
" were to wake up in my absence (so much longer
than usual) she would perhaps question me. She
seems to miss me more, you know, of late. She
would want to know what delayed me--and, you
see, it would be painful for me to dissemble
before her."
I understood the point very well. For the same
reason she checked what seemed to be on Mr.
Razumov's part a movement to accompany her.
"No! No! I go alone, but meet me here as soon
as possible." Then to me in a lower,
significant tone--
"Mother may be sitting at the window at this
moment, looking down the street. She must not
know anything of Mr. Razumov's presence here
till--till something is arranged." She paused
before she added a little louder, but still
speaking to me, "Mr. Razumov does not quite
understand my difficulty, but you know what it
is."
V
With a quick inclination of the head for us
both, and an earnest, friendly glance at the
young man, Miss Haldin left us covering our
heads and looking after her straight, supple
figure receding rapidly. Her walk was not that
hybrid and uncertain gliding affected by some
women, but a frank, strong, healthy movement
forward. Rapidly she increased the distance--
disappeared with suddenness at last. I
discovered only then that Mr. Razumov, after
ramming his hat well over his brow, was looking
me over from head to foot. I dare say I was a
very unexpected fact for that young Russian to
stumble upon. I caught in his physiognomy, in
his whole bearing, an expression compounded of
curiosity and scorn, tempered by alarm--as
though he had been holding his breath while I
was not looking. But his eyes met mine with a
gaze direct enough. I saw then for the first
time that they were of a clear brown colour and
fringed with thick black eyelashes. They were
the youngest feature of his face. Not at all
unpleasant eyes. He swayed slightly, leaning on
his stick and generally hung in the wind. It
flashed upon me that in leaving us together Miss
Haldin had an intention--that something was
entrusted to me, since, by a mere accident I had
been found at hand. On this assumed ground I
put all possible friendliness into my manner. I
cast about for some right thing to say, and
suddenly in Miss Haldin's last words I perceived
the clue to the nature of my mission.
"No," I said gravely, if with a smile, "you
cannot be expected to understand."
His clean-shaven lip quivered ever so little
before he said, as if wickedly amused--
"But haven't you heard just now? I was thanked
by that young lady for understanding so well."
I looked at him rather hard. Was there a hidden
and inexplicable sneer in this retort? No. It
was not that. It might have been resentment.
Yes. But what had he to resent? He looked as
though he had not slept very well of late. I
could almost feel on me the weight of his
unrefreshed, motionless stare, the stare of a
man who lies unwinking in the dark, angrily
passive in the toils of disastrous thoughts.
Now, when I know how true it was, I can honestly
affirm that this was the effect he produced on
me. It was painful in a curiously indefinite
way--for, of course, the definition comes to me
now while I sit writing in the fullness of my
knowledge. But this is what the effect was at
that time of absolute ignorance. This new sort
of uneasiness which he seemed to be forcing upon
me I attempted to put down by assuming a
conversational, easy familiarity.
"That extremely charming and essentially
admirable young girl (I am--as you see--old
enough to be frank in my expressions) was
referring to her own feelings. Surely you must
have understood that much?"
He made such a brusque movement that he even
tottered a little.
"Must understand this! Not expected to
understand that! I may have other things to do.
And the girl is charming and admirable. Well--
and if she is! I suppose I can see that for
myself."
This sally would have been insulting if his
voice had not been practically extinct, dried up
in his throat; and the rustling effort of his
speech too painful to give real offence.
I remained silent, checked between the obvious
fact and the subtle impression. It was open to
me to leave him there and then; but the sense of
having been entrusted with a mission, the
suggestion of Miss Haldin's last glance, was
strong upon me. After a moment of reflection I
said--
"Shall we walk together a little?"
He shrugged his shoulders so violently that he
tottered again. I saw it out of the corner of
my eye as I moved on, with him at my elbow. He
had fallen back a little and was practically out
of my sight, unless I turned my head to look at
him. I did not wish to indispose him still
further by an appearance of marked curiosity.
It might have been distasteful to such a young
and secret refugee from under the pestilential
shadow hiding the true, kindly face of his land.
And the shadow, the attendant of his
countrymen, stretching across the middle of
Europe, was lying on him too, darkening his
figure to my mental vision. "Without doubt," I
said to myself, "he seems a sombre, even a
desperate revolutionist; but he is young, he may
be unselfish and humane, capable of compassion,
of. . . ."
I heard him clear gratingly his parched throat,
and became all attention.
"This is beyond everything," were his first
words. "It is beyond everything! I find you
here, for no reason that I can understand, in
possession of something I cannot be expected to
understand! A confidant! A foreigner! Talking
about an admirable Russian girl. Is the
admirable girl a fool, I begin to wonder? What
are you at? What is your object?"
He was barely audible, as if his throat had no
more resonance than a dry rag, a piece of
tinder. It was so pitiful that I found it
extremely easy to control my indignation.
"When you have lived a little longer, Mr.
Razumov, you will discover that no woman is an
absolute fool. I am not a feminist, like that
illustrious author, Peter Ivanovitch, who, to
say the truth, is not a little suspect to me. .
. ."
He interrupted me, in a surprising note of
whispering astonishment.
"Suspect to you! Peter Ivanovitch suspect to
you! To you! . . ."
"Yes, in a certain aspect he is," I said,
dismissing my remark lightly. "As I was saying,
Mr. Razumov, when you have lived long enough,
you will learn to discriminate between the noble
trustfulness of a nature foreign to every
meanness and the flattered credulity of some
women; though even the credulous, silly as they
may be, unhappy as they are sure to be, are
never absolute fools. It is my belief that no
woman is ever completely deceived. Those that
are lost leap into the abyss with their eyes
open, if all the truth were known."
"Upon my word," he cried at my elbow, "what is
it to me whether women are fools or lunatics? I
really don't care what you think of them. I--I
am not interested in them. I let them be. I am
not a young man in a novel. How do you know
that I want to learn anything about women? . . .
What is the meaning of all this?"
"The object, you mean, of this conversation,
which I admit I have forced upon you in a
measure."
"Forced! Object!" he repeated, still keeping
half a pace or so behind me. "You wanted to
talk about women, apparently. That's a subject.
But I don't care for it. I have never. . . .
In fact, I have had other subjects to think
about."
"I am concerned here with one woman only--a
young girl--the sister of your dead friend--Miss
Haldin. Surely you can think a little of her.
What I meant from the first was that there is a
situation which you cannot be expected to
understand."
I listened to his unsteady footfalls by my side
for the space of several strides.
"I think that it may prepare the ground for your
next interview with Miss Haldin if I tell you of
it. I imagine that she might have had something
of the kind in her mind when she left us
together. I believe myself authorized to speak.
The peculiar situation I have alluded to has
arisen in the first grief and distress of Victor
Haldin's execution. There was something
peculiar in the circumstances of his arrest.
You no doubt know the whole truth. . . ."
I felt my arm seized above the elbow, and next
instant found myself swung so as to face Mr.
Razumov.
"You spring up from the ground before me with
this talk. Who the devil are you? This is not
to be borne! Why! What for? What do you know
what is or is not peculiar? What have you to do
with any confounded circumstances, or with
anything that happens in Russia, anyway?"
He leaned on his stick with his other hand,
heavily; and when he let go my arm, I was
certain in my mind that he was hardly able to
keep on his feet.
"Let us sit down at one of these vacant tables,"
I proposed, disregarding this display of
unexpectedly profound emotion. It was not
without its effect on me, I confess. I was
sorry for him.
"What tables? What are you talking about? Oh--
the empty tables? The tables there. Certainly.
I will sit at one of the empty tables."
I led him away from the path to the very centre
of the raft of deals before the _chalet_. The
Swiss couple were gone by that time. We were
alone on the raft, so to speak. Mr. Razumov
dropped into a chair, let fall his stick, and
propped on his elbows, his head between his
hands, stared at me persistently, openly, and
continuously, while I signalled the waiter and
ordered some beer. I could not quarrel with
this silent inspection very well, because, truth
to tell, I felt somewhat guilty of having been
sprung on him with some abruptness--of having
"sprung from the ground," as he expressed it.
While waiting to be served I mentioned that,
born from parents settled in St. Petersburg, I
had acquired the language as a child. The town
I did not remember, having left it for good as a
boy of nine, but in later years I had renewed my
acquaintance with the language. He listened,
without as much as moving his eyes the least
little bit. He had to change his position when
the beer came, and the instant draining of his
glass revived him. He leaned back in his chair
and, folding his arms across his chest,
continued to stare at me squarely. It occurred
to me that his clean-shaven, almost swarthy face
was really of the very mobile sort, and that the
absolute stillness of it was the acquired habit
of a revolutionist, of a, conspirator
everlastingly on his guard against self-betrayal
in a world of secret spies.
"But you are an Englishman--a teacher of English
literature," he murmured, in a voice that was no
longer issuing from a parched throat. "I have
heard of you. People told me you have lived
here for years."
"Quite true. More than twenty years. And I
have been assisting Miss Haldin with her English
studies."
"You have been reading English poetry with her,"
he said, immovable now, like another man
altogether, a complete stranger to the man of
the heavy and uncertain footfalls a little while
ago--at my elbow.
"Yes, English poetry," I said. " But the
trouble of which I speak was caused by an
English newspaper."
He continued to stare at me. I don't think he
was aware that the story of the midnight arrest
had been ferreted out by an English journalist
and given to the world. When I explained this
to him he muttered contemptuously, "It may have
been altogether a lie."
"I should think you are the best judge of that,"
I retorted, a little disconcerted. "I must
confess that to me it looks to be true in the
main."
"How can you tell truth from lies?" he queried
in his new, immovable manner.
"I don't know how you do it in Russia," I began,
rather nettled by his attitude. He interrupted
me.
"In Russia, and in general everywhere--in a
newspaper, for instance. The colour of the ink
and the shapes of the letters are the same."
"Well, there are other trifles one can go by.
The character of the publication, the general
verisimilitude of the news, the consideration of
the motive, and so on. I don't trust blindly
the accuracy of special correspondents--but why
should this one have gone to the trouble of
concocting a circumstantial falsehood on a
matter of no importance to the world?"
"That's what it is," he grumbled. "What's going
on with us is of no importance--a mere
sensational story to amuse the readers of the
papers--the superior contemptuous Europe. It is
hateful to think of. But let them wait a bit!"
He broke off on this sort of threat addressed to
the western world. Disregarding the anger in
his stare, I pointed out that whether the
journalist was well- or ill-informed, the
concern of the friends of these ladies was with
the effect the few lines of print in question
had produced--the effect alone. And surely he
must be counted as one of the friends--if only
for the sake of his late comrade and intimate
fellow-revolutionist. At that point I thought
he was going to speak vehemently; but he only
astounded me by the convulsive start of his
whole body. He restrained himself, folded his
loosened arms tighter across his chest, and sat
back with a smile in which there was a twitch of
scorn and malice.
"Yes, a comrade and an intimate. . . . Very
well," he said.
"I ventured to speak to you on that assumption.
And I cannot be mistaken. I was present when
Peter Ivanovitch announced your arrival here to
Miss Haldin, and I saw her relief and
thankfulness when your name was mentioned.
Afterwards she showed me her brother's letter,
and read out the few words in which he alludes
to you. What else but a friend could you have
been?"
"Obviously. That's perfectly well known. A
friend. Quite correct . . . . Go on. You were
talking of some effect."
I said to myself: "He puts on the callousness
of a stern revolutionist, the insensibility to
common emotions of a man devoted to a
destructive idea. He is young, and his
sincerity assumes a pose before a stranger, a
foreigner, an old man. Youth must assert
itself. . . . As concisely as possible I
exposed to him the state of mind poor Mrs.
Haldin had been thrown into by the news of her
son's untimely end.
He listened--I felt it--with profound attention.
His level stare deflected gradually downwards,
left my face, and rested at last on the ground
at his feet.
"You can enter into the sister's feelings. As
you said, I have only read a little English
poetry with her, and I won't make myself
ridiculous in your eyes by trying to speak of
her. But you have seen her. She is one of
these rare human beings that do not want
explaining. At least I think so. They had only
that son, that brother, for a link with the
wider world, with the future. The very
groundwork of active existence for Nathalie
Haldin is gone with him. Can you wonder then
that she turns with eagerness to the only man
her brother mentions in his letters. Your name
is a sort of legacy."
"What could he have written of me?" he cried, in
a low, exasperated tone.
"Only a few words. It is not for me to repeat
them to you, Mr. Razumov; but you may believe my
assertion that these words are forcible enough
to make both his mother and his sister believe
implicitly in the worth of your judgment and in
the truth of anything you may have to say to
them. It's impossible for you now to pass them
by like strangers."
I paused, and for a moment sat listening to the
footsteps of the few people passing up and down
the broad central walk. While I was speaking
his head had sunk upon his breast above his
folded arms. He raised it sharply.
"Must I go then and lie to that old woman!"
It was not anger; it was something else,
something more poignant, and not so simple. I
was aware of it sympathetically, while I was
profoundly concerned at the nature of that
exclamation.
"Dear me! Won't the truth do, then? I hoped
you could have told them something consoling. I
am thinking of the poor mother now. Your Russia
_is_ a cruel country."
He moved a little in his chair.
"Yes," I repeated. "I thought you would have
had something authentic to tell."
The twitching of his lips before he spoke was
curious.
"What if it is not worth telling?"
"Not worth--from what point of view? I don't
understand."
"From every point of view."
I spoke with some asperity.
"I should think that anything which could
explain the circumstances of that midnight
arrest. . . ."
"Reported by a journalist for the amusement of
the civilized Europe," he broke in scornfully.
"Yes, reported. . . . But aren't they true? I
can't make out your attitude in this? Either
the man is a hero to you, or. . . ."
He approached his face with fiercely distended
nostrils close to mine so suddenly that I had
the greatest difficulty in not starting back.
"You ask me! I suppose it amuses you, all this.
Look here! I am a worker. I studied. Yes, I
studied very hard. There is intelligence here."
(He tapped his forehead with his finger-tips.)
"Don't you think a Russian may have sane
ambitions? Yes--I had even prospects.
Certainly! I had. And now you see me here,
abroad, everything gone, lost, sacrificed. You
see me here--and you ask! You see me, don't
you?--sitting before you."
He threw himself back violently. I kept
outwardly calm.
"Yes, I see you here; and I assume you are here
on account of the Haldin affair?"
His manner changed.
"You call it the Haldin affair--do you?" he
observed indifferently.
"I have no right to ask you anything," I said.
"I wouldn't presume. But in that case the
mother and the sister of him who must be a hero
in your eyes cannot be indifferent to you. The
girl is a frank and generous creature, having
the noblest--well--illusions. You will tell her
nothing--or you will tell her everything. But
speaking now of the object with which I've
approached you first, we have to deal with the
morbid state of the mother. Perhaps something
could be invented under your authority as a cure
for a distracted and suffering soul filled with
maternal affection."
His air of weary indifference was accentuated, I
could not help thinking, wilfully.
"Oh yes. Something might," he mumbled
carelessly.
He put his hand over his mouth to conceal a
yawn. When he uncovered his lips they were
smiling faintly.
"Pardon me. This has been a long conversation,
and I have not had much sleep the last two
nights."
This unexpected, somewhat insolent sort of
apology had the merit of being perfectly true.
He had had no nightly rest to speak of since
that day when, in the grounds of the Chateau
Borel, the sister of Victor Haldin had appeared
before him. The perplexities and the complex
terrors--I may say--of this sleeplessness are
recorded in the document I was to see later--the
document which is the main source of this
narrative. At the moment he looked to me
convincingly tired, gone slack all over, like a
man who has passed through some sort of crisis.
"I have had a lot of urgent writing to do," he
added.
I rose from my chair at once, and he followed my
example, without haste, a little heavily.
"I must apologize for detaining you so long," I
said.
"Why apologize? One can't very well go to bed
before night. And you did not detain me. I
could have left you at any time."
I had not stayed with him to be offended.
"I am glad you have been sufficiently
interested," I said calmly. "No merit of mine,
though--the commonest sort of regard for the
mother of your friend was enough. . . . As to
Miss Haldin herself, she at one time was
disposed to think that her brother had been
betrayed to the police in some way."
To my great surprise Mr. Razumov sat down again
suddenly. I stared at him, and I must say that
he returned my stare without winking for quite a
considerable time.
"In some way," he mumbled, as if he had not
understood or could not believe his ears.
"Some unforeseen event, a sheer accident might
have done that," I went on. "Or, as she
characteristically put it to me, the folly or
weakness of some unhappy fellow-revolutionist."
"Folly or weakness," he repeated bitterly.
"She is a very generous creature," I observed
after a time. The man admired by Victor Haldin
fixed his eyes on the ground. I turned away and
moved off, apparently unnoticed by him. I
nourished no resentment of the moody brusqueness
with which he had treated me. The sentiment I
was carrying away from that conversation was
that of hopelessness. Before I had got fairly
clear of the raft of chairs and tables he had
rejoined me.
"H'm, yes!" I heard him at my elbow again.
"But what do you think?"
I did not look round even.
"I think that you people are under a curse."
He made no sound. It was only on the pavement
outside the gate that I heard him again.
"I should like to walk with you a little."
After all, I preferred this enigmatical young
man to his celebrated compatriot, the great
Peter Ivanovitch. But I saw no reason for being
particularly gracious.
"I am going now to the railway station, by the
shortest way from here, to meet a friend from
England," I said, for all answer to his
unexpected proposal. I hoped that something
informing could come of it. As we stood on the
curbstone waiting for a tramcar to pass, he
remarked gloomily--
"I like what you said just now."
"Do you?"
We stepped off the pavement together.
"The great problem," he went on, "is to
understand thoroughly the nature of the curse."
"That's not very difficult, I think."
"I think so too," he agreed with me, and his
readiness, strangely enough, did not make him
less enigmatical in the least.
"A curse is an evil spell," I tried him again.
"And the important, the great problem, is to
find the means to break it."
"Yes. To find the means."
That was also an assent, but he seemed to be
thinking of something else. We had crossed
diagonally the open space before the theatre,
and began to descend a broad, sparely frequented
street in the direction of one of the smaller
bridges. He kept on by my side without speaking
for a long time.
"You are not thinking of leaving Geneva soon?"
I asked.
He was silent for so long that I began to think
I had been indiscreet, and should get no answer
at all. Yet on looking at him I almost believed
that my question had caused him something in the
nature of positive anguish. I detected it
mainly in the clasping of his hands, in which he
put a great force stealthily. Once, however, he
had overcome that sort of agonizing hesitation
sufficiently to tell me that he had no such
intention, he became rather communicative--at
least relatively to the former off-hand curtness
of his speeches. The tone, too, was more
amiable. He informed me that he intended to
study and also to write. He went even so far as
to tell me he had been to Stuttgart. Stuttgart,
I was aware, was one of the revolutionary
centres. The directing committee of one of the
Russian parties (I can't tell now which) was
located in that town. It was there that he got
into touch with the active work of the
revolutionists outside Russia.
"I have never been abroad before," he explained,
in a rather inanimate voice now. Then, after a
slight hesitation, altogether different from the
agonizing irresolution my first simple question
"whether he meant to stay in Geneva" had
aroused, he made me an unexpected confidence--
"The fact is, I have received a sort of mission
from them."
"Which will keep you here in Geneva?"
"Yes. Here. In this odious. . . ."
I was satisfied with my faculty for putting two
and two together when I drew the inference that
the mission had something to do with the person
of the great Peter Ivanovitch. But I kept that
surmise to myself naturally, and Mr. Razumov
said nothing more for some considerable time.
It was only when we were nearly on the bridge we
had been making for that he opened his lips
again, abruptly--
"Could I see that precious article anywhere?"
I had to think for a moment before I saw what he
was referring to.
"It has been reproduced in parts by the Press
here. There are files to be seen in various
places. My copy of the English newspaper I have
left with Miss Haldin, I remember, on the day
after it reached me. I was sufficiently worried
by seeing it lying on a table by the side of the
poor mother's chair for weeks. Then it
disappeared. It was a relief, I assure you."
He had stopped short.
"I trust," I continued, "that you will find time
to see these ladies fairly often--that you will
make time."
He stared at me so queerly that I hardly know
how to define his aspect. I could not
understand it in this connexion at all. What
ailed him? I asked myself. What strange
thought had come into his head? What vision of
all the horrors that can be seen in his hopeless
country had come suddenly to haunt his brain?
If it were anything connected with the fate of
Victor Haldin, then I hoped earnestly he would
keep it to himself for ever. I was, to speak
plainly, so shocked that I tried to conceal my
impression by--Heaven forgive me--a smile and
the assumption of a light manner.
"Surely," I exclaimed, "that needn't cost you a
great effort."
He turned away from me and leaned over the
parapet of the bridge. For a moment I waited,
looking at his back. And yet, I assure you, I
was not anxious just then to look at his face
again. He did not move at all. He did not mean
to move. I walked on slowly on my way towards
the station, and at the end of the bridge I
glanced over my shoulder. No, he had not moved.
He hung well over the parapet, as if captivated
by the smooth rush of the blue water under the
arch. The current there is swift, extremely
swift; it makes some people dizzy; I myself can
never look at it for any length of time without
experiencing a dread of being suddenly snatched
away by its destructive force. Some brains
cannot resist the suggestion of irresistible
power and of headlong motion.
It apparently had a charm for Mr. Razumov. I
left him hanging far over the parapet of the
bridge. The way he had behaved to me could not
be put down to mere boorishness. There was
something else under his scorn and impatience.
Perhaps, I thought, with sudden approach to
hidden truth, it was the same thing which had
kept him over a week, nearly ten days indeed,
from coming near Miss Haldin. But what it was I
could not tell.
PART THIRD
I
The water under the bridge ran violent and deep.
Its slightly undulating rush seemed capable of
scouring out a channel for itself through solid
granite while you looked. But had it flowed
through Razumov's breast, it could not have
washed away the accumulated bitterness the
wrecking of his life had deposited there.
"What is the meaning of all this?" he thought,
staring downwards at the headlong flow so smooth
and clean that only the passage of a faint air-
bubble, or a thin vanishing streak of foam like
a white hair, disclosed its vertiginous
rapidity, its terrible force. "Why has that
meddlesome old Englishman blundered against me?
And what is this silly tale of a crazy old
woman?"
He was trying to think brutally on purpose, but
he avoided any mental reference to the young
girl. "A crazy old woman," he repeated to
himself." It is a fatality! Or ought I to
despise all this as absurd? But no! I am
wrong! I can't afford to despise anything. An
absurdity may be the starting-point of the most
dangerous complications. How is one to guard
against it? It puts to rout one's intelligence.
The more intelligent one is the less one
suspects an absurdity."
A wave of wrath choked his thoughts for a
moment. It even made his body leaning over the
parapet quiver; then he resumed his silent
thinking, like a secret dialogue with himself.
And even in that privacy, his thought had some
reservations of which he was vaguely conscious.
"After all, this is not absurd. It is
insignificant. It is absolutely insignificant--
absolutely. The craze of an old woman--the
fussy officiousness of a blundering elderly
Englishman. What devil put him in the way?
Haven't I treated him cavalierly enough?
Haven't I just? That's the way to treat these
meddlesome persons. Is it possible that he
still stands behind my back, waiting?"
Razumov felt a faint chill run down his spine.
It was not fear. He was certain that it was not
fear--not fear for himself--but it was, all the
same, a sort of apprehension as if for another,
for some one he knew without being able to put a
name on the personality. But the recollection
that the officious Englishman had a train to
meet tranquillized him for a time. It was too
stupid to suppose that he should be wasting his
time in waiting. It was unnecessary to look
round and make sure.
But what did the man mean by his extraordinary
rigmarole about the newspaper, and that crazy
old woman? he thought suddenly. It was a
damnable presumption, anyhow, something that
only an Englishman could be capable of. All
this was a sort of sport for him--the sport of
revolution--a game to look at from the height of
his superiority. And what on earth did he mean
by his exclamation, "Won't the truth do?"
Razumov pressed his folded arms to the stone
coping over which he was leaning with force.
"Won't the truth do? The truth for the crazy
old mother of the--"
The young man shuddered again. Yes. The truth
would do! Apparently it would do. Exactly.
And receive thanks, he thought, formulating the
unspoken words cynically. "Fall on my neck in
gratitude, no doubt," he jeered mentally. But
this mood abandoned him at once. He felt sad,
as if his heart had become empty suddenly.
"Well, I must be cautious," he concluded, coming
to himself as though his brain had been awakened
from a trance. "There is nothing, no one, too
insignificant, too absurd to be disregarded," he
thought wearily. "I must be cautious."
Razumov pushed himself with his hand away from
the balustrade and, retracing his steps along
the bridge, walked straight to his lodgings,
where, for a few days, he led a solitary and
retired existence. He neglected Peter
Ivanovitch, to whom he was accredited by the
Stuttgart group; he never went near the refugee
revolutionists, to whom he had been introduced
on his arrival. He kept out of that world
altogether. And he felt that such conduct,
causing surprise and arousing suspicion,
contained an element of danger for himself.
This is not to say that during these few days he
never went out. I met him several times in the
streets, but he gave me no recognition. Once,
going home after an evening call on the ladies
Haldin, I saw him crossing the dark roadway of
the Boulevard des Philosophes. He had a broad-
brimmed soft hat, and the collar of his coat
turned up. I watched him make straight for the
house, but, instead of going in, he stopped
opposite the still lighted windows, and after a
time went away down a side-street.
I knew that he had not been to see Mrs. Haldin
yet. Miss Haldin told me he was reluctant;
moreover, the mental condition of Mrs. Haldin
had changed. She seemed to think now that her
son was living, and she perhaps awaited his
arrival. Her immobility in the great arm-chair
in front of the window had an air of expectancy,
even when the blind was down and the lamps
lighted.
For my part, I was convinced that she had
received her death-stroke; Miss Haldin, to whom,
of course, I said nothing of my forebodings,
thought that no good would come from introducing
Mr. Razumov just then, an opinion which I shared
fully. I knew that she met the young man on the
Bastions. Once or twice I saw them strolling
slowly up the main alley. They met every day
for weeks. I avoided passing that way during
the hour when Miss Haldin took her exercise
there. One day, however, in a fit of absent-
mindedness, I entered the gates and came upon
her walking alone. I stopped to exchange a few
words. Mr. Razumov failed to turn up, and we
began to talk about him--naturally.
"Did he tell you anything definite about your
brother's activities--his end?" I ventured to
ask.
"No," admitted Miss Haldin, with some
hesitation. "Nothing definite."
I understood well enough that all their
conversations must have been referred mentally
to that dead man who had brought them together.
That was unavoidable. But it was in the living
man that she was interested. That was
unavoidable too, I suppose. And as I pushed my
inquiries I discovered that he had disclosed
himself to her as a by no means conventional
revolutionist, contemptuous of catchwords, of
theories, of men too. I was rather pleased at
that--but I was a little puzzled.
"His mind goes forward, far ahead of the
struggle," Miss Haldin explained. "Of course,
he is an actual worker too," she added.
"And do you understand him?" I inquired point-
blank.
She hesitated again. "Not altogether," she
murmured.
I perceived that he had fascinated her by an
assumption of mysterious reserve.
"Do you know what I think?" she went on,
breaking through her reserved, almost reluctant
attitude: "I think that he is observing,
studying me, to discover whether I am worthy of
his trust. . . ."
"And that pleases you?"
She kept mysteriously silent for a moment. Then
with energy, but in a confidential tone--
"I am convinced;" she declared, "that this
extraordinary man is meditating some vast plan,
some great undertaking; he is possessed by it--
he suffers from it--and from being alone in the
world."
"And so he's looking for helpers?" I commented,
turning away my head.
Again there was a silence.
"Why not?" she said at last.
The dead brother, the dying mother, the foreign
friend, had fallen into a distant background.
But, at the same time, Peter Ivanovitch was
absolutely nowhere now. And this thought
consoled me. Yet I saw the gigantic shadow of
Russian life deepening around her like the
darkness of an advancing night. It would devour
her presently. I inquired after Mrs. Haldin--
that other victim of the deadly shade.
A remorseful uneasiness appeared in her frank
eyes. Mother seemed no worse, but if I only
knew what strange fancies she had sometimes!
Then Miss Haldin, glancing at her watch,
declared that she could not stay a moment
longer, and with a hasty hand-shake ran off
lightly.
Decidedly, Mr. Razumov was not to turn up that
day. Incomprehensible youth!
But less than an hour afterwards, while crossing
the Place Mollard, I caught sight of him
boarding a South Shore tramcar.
"He's going to the Chateau Borel," I thought.
After depositing Razumov at the gates of the
Chateau Borel, some half a mile or so from the
town, the car continued its journey between two
straight lines of shady trees. Across the
roadway in the sunshine a short wooden pier
jutted into the shallow pale water, which
farther out had an intense blue tint contrasting
unpleasantly with the green orderly slopes on
the opposite shore. The whole view, with the
harbour jetties of white stone underlining
lividly the dark front of the town to the left,
and the expanding space of water to the right
with jutting promontories of no particular
character, had the uninspiring, glittering
quality of a very fresh oleograph. Razumov
turned his back on it with contempt. He thought
it odious--oppressively odious--in its
unsuggestive finish: the very perfection of
mediocrity attained at last after centuries of
toil and culture. And turning his back on it,
he faced the entrance to the grounds of the
Chateau Borel.
The bars of the central way and the wrought-iron
arch between the dark weather-stained stone
piers were very rusty; and, though fresh tracks
of wheels ran under it, the gate looked as if it
had not been opened for a very long time. But
close against the lodge, built of the same grey
stone as the piers (its windows were all boarded
up), there was a small side entrance. The bars
of that were rusty too; it stood ajar and looked
as though it had not been closed for a long
time. In fact, Razumov, trying to push it open
a little wider, discovered it was immovable.
"Democratic virtue. There are no thieves here,
apparently," he muttered to himself, with
displeasure. Before advancing into the grounds
he looked back sourly at an idle working man
lounging on a bench in the clean, broad avenue.
The fellow had thrown his feet up; one of his
arms hung over the low back of the public seat;
he was taking a day off in lordly repose, as if
everything in sight belonged to him.
"Elector! Eligible! Enlightened!" Razumov
muttered to himself. "A brute, all the same."
Razumov entered the grounds and walked fast up
the wide sweep of the drive, trying to think of
nothing--to rest his head, to rest his emotions
too. But arriving at the foot of the terrace
before the house he faltered, affected
physically by some invisible interference. The
mysteriousness of his quickened heart-beats
startled him. He stopped short and looked at
the brick wall of the terrace, faced with
shallow arches, meagrely clothed by a few
unthriving creepers, with an ill-kept narrow
flower-bed along its foot.
"It is here!" he thought, with a sort of awe.
"It is here--on this very spot. . . ."
He was tempted to flight at the mere
recollection of his first meeting with Nathalie
Haldin. He confessed it to himself; but he did
not move, and that not because he wished to
resist an unworthy weakness, but because he knew
that he had no place to fly to. Moreover, he
could not leave Geneva. He recognized, even
without thinking, that it was impossible. It
would have been a fatal admission, an act of
moral suicide. It would have been also
physically dangerous. Slowly he ascended the
stairs of the terrace, flanked by two stained
greenish stone urns of funereal aspect.
Across the broad platform, where a few blades of
grass sprouted on the discoloured gravel, the
door of the house, with its ground-floor windows
shuttered, faced him, wide open. He believed
that his approach had been noted, because,
framed in the doorway, without his tall hat,
Peter Ivanovitch seemed to be waiting for his
approach.
The ceremonious black frock-coat and the bared
head of Europe's greatest feminist accentuated
the dubiousness of his status in the house
rented by Madame de S---, his Egeria. His
aspect combined the formality of the caller with
the freedom of the proprietor. Florid and
bearded and masked by the dark blue glasses, he
met the visitor, and at once took him familiarly
under the arm.
Razumov suppressed every sign of repugnance by
an effort which the constant necessity of
prudence had rendered almost mechanical. And
this necessity had settled his expression in a
cast of austere, almost fanatical, aloofness.
The "heroic fugitive," impressed afresh by the
severe detachment of this new arrival from
revolutionary Russia, took a conciliatory, even
a confidential tone. Madame de S--- was resting
after a bad night. She often had bad nights.
He had left his hat upstairs on the landing and
had come down to suggest to his young friend a
stroll and a good open-hearted talk in one of
the shady alleys behind the house. After
voicing this proposal, the great man glanced at
the unmoved face by his side, and could not
restrain himself from exclaiming--
"On my word, young man, you are an extraordinary
person."
"I fancy you are mistaken, Peter Ivanovitch. If
I were really an extraordinary person, I would
not be here, walking with you in a garden in
Switzerland, Canton of Geneva, Commune of--
what's the name of the Commune this place
belongs to? . . . Never mind--the heart of
democracy, anyhow. A fit heart for it; no
bigger than a parched pea and about as much
value. I am no more extraordinary than the rest
of us Russians, wandering abroad."
But Peter Ivanovitch dissented emphatically--
"No! No! You are not ordinary. I have some
experience of Russians who are--well--living
abroad. You appear to me, and to others too, a
marked personality,"
"What does he mean by this?" Razumov asked
himself, turning his eyes fully on his
companion. The face of Peter Ivanovitch
expressed a meditative seriousness.
"You don't suppose, Kirylo Sidorovitch, that I
have not heard of you from various points where
you made yourself known on your way here? I
have had letters."
"Oh, we are great in talking about each other,"
interjected Razumov, who had listened with great
attention. "Gossip, tales, suspicions, and all
that sort of thing, we know how to deal in to
perfection. Calumny, even."
In indulging in this sally, Razumov managed very
well to conceal the feeling of anxiety which had
come over him. At the same time he was saying
to himself that there could be no earthly reason
for anxiety. He was relieved by the evident
sincerity of the protesting voice.
"Heavens!" cried Peter Ivanovitch. "What are
you talking about? What reason can _you_ have
to. . .?
The great exile flung up his arms as if words
had failed him in sober truth. Razumov was
satisfied. Yet he was moved to continue in the
same vein.
"I am talking of the poisonous plants which
flourish in the world of conspirators, like evil
mushrooms in a dark cellar."
"You are casting aspersions," remonstrated Peter
Ivanovitch, "which as far as you are concerned---
"
"No!" Razumov interrupted without heat.
"Indeed, I don't want to cast aspersions, but
it's just as well to have no illusions."
Peter Ivanovitch gave him an inscrutable glance
of his dark spectacles, accompanied by a faint
smile.
"The man who says that he has no illusions has
at least that one," he said, in a very friendly
tone. "But I see how it is, Kirylo Sidorovitch.
You aim at stoicism."
" Stoicism! That's a pose of the Greeks and the
Romans. Let's leave it to them. We are
Russians, that is--children; that is--sincere;
that is--cynical, if you like. But that's not a
pose."
A long silence ensued. They strolled slowly
under the lime-trees. Peter Ivanovitch had put
his hands behind his back. Razumov felt the
ungravelled ground of the deeply shaded walk
damp and as if slippery under his feet. He
asked himself, with uneasiness, if he were
saying the right things. The direction of the
conversation ought to have been more under his
control, he reflected. The great man appeared
to be reflecting on his side too. He cleared
his throat slightly, and Razumov felt at once a
painful reawakening of scorn and fear.
"I am astonished," began Peter Ivanovitch
gently. "Supposing you are right in your
indictment, how can you raise any question of
calumny or gossip, in your case? It is
unreasonable. The fact is, Kirylo Sidorovitch,
there is not enough known of you to give hold to
gossip or even calumny. Just now you are a man
associated with a great deed, which had been
hoped for, and tried for too, without success.
People have perished for attempting that which
you and Haldin have done at last. You come to
us out of Russia, with that prestige. But you
cannot deny that you have not been
communicative, Kirylo Sidorovitch. People you
have met imparted their impressions to me; one
wrote this, another that, but I form my own
opinions. I waited to see you first. You are a
man out of the common. That's positively so.
You are close, very close. This taciturnity,
this severe brow, this something inflexible and
secret in you, inspires hopes and a little
wonder as to what you may mean. There is
something of a Brutus. . . ."
"Pray spare me those classical allusions!" burst
out Razumov nervously. "What comes Junius
Brutus to do here? It is ridiculous! Do you
mean to say," he added sarcastically, but
lowering his voice, "that the Russian
revolutionists are all patricians and that I am
an aristocrat?"
Peter Ivanovitch, who had been helping himself
with a few gestures, clasped his hands again
behind his back, and made a few steps, pondering.
"Not _all_ patricians," he muttered at last.
"But you, at any rate, are one of _us_."
Razumov smiled bitterly.
"To be sure my name is not Gugenheimer," he said
in a sneering tone. "I am not a democratic Jew.
How can I help it? Not everybody has such
luck. I have no name, I have no. . . ."
The European celebrity showed a great concern.
He stepped back a pace and his arms flew in
front of his person, extended, deprecatory,
almost entreating. His deep bass voice was full
of pain.
"But, my dear young friend!" he cried. "My dear
Kirylo Sidorovitch. . . ."
Razumov shook his head.
"The very patronymic you are so civil as to use
when addressing me I have no legal right to--but
what of that? I don't wish to claim it. I have
no father. So much the better. But I will tell
you what: my mother's grandfather was a peasant--
a serf. See how much I am one of _you_. I
don't want anyone to claim me. But Russia
_can't_ disown me. She cannot!"
Razumov struck his breast with his fist.
"I am _it_ !"
Peter Ivanovitch walked on slowly, his head
lowered. Razumov followed, vexed with himself.
That was not the right sort of talk. All
sincerity was an imprudence. Yet one could not
renounce truth altogether, he thought, with
despair. Peter Ivanovitch, meditating behind
his dark glasses, became to him suddenly so
odious that if he had had a knife, he fancied he
could have stabbed him not only without
compunction, but with a horrible, triumphant
satisfaction. His imagination dwelt on that
atrocity in spite of himself. It was as if he
were becoming light-headed. " It is not what is
expected of me," he repeated to himself. "It is
not what is--I could get away by breaking the
fastening on the little gate I see there in the
back wall. It is a flimsy lock. Nobody in the
house seems to know he is here with me. Oh yes.
The hat! These women would discover presently
the hat he has left on the landing. They would
come upon him, lying dead in this damp, gloomy
shade--but I would be gone and no one could
ever. . .Lord! Am I going mad?" he asked
himself in a fright.
The great man was heard--musing in an undertone.
"H'm, yes! That--no doubt--in a certain sense.
. . ." He raised his voice. "There is a deal
of pride about you. . . ."
The intonation of Peter Ivanovitch took on a
homely, familiar ring, acknowledging, in a way,
Razumov's claim to peasant descent.
"A great deal of pride, brother Kirylo. And I
don't say that you have no justification for it.
I have admitted you had. I have ventured to
allude to the facts of your birth simply because
I attach no mean importance to it. You are one
of us--_un des notres_. I reflect on that with
satisfaction."
"I attach some importance to it also," said
Razumov quietly. "I won't even deny that it may
have some importance for you too," he continued,
after a slight pause and with a touch of
grimness of which he was himself aware, with
some annoyance. He hoped it had escaped the
perception of Peter Ivanovitch. "But suppose we
talk no more about it?"
"Well, we shall not--not after this one time,
Kirylo Sidorovitch," persisted the noble arch-
priest of Revolution. "This shall be the last
occasion. You cannot believe for a moment that
I had the slightest idea of wounding your
feelings. You are clearly a superior nature--
that's how I read you. Quite above the common--
h'm--susceptibilities. But the fact is, Kirylo
Sidorovitch, I don't know your susceptibilities.
Nobody, out of Russia, knows much of you--as
yet!"
"You have been watching me?" suggested Razumov.
"Yes."
The great man had spoken in a tone of perfect
frankness, but as they turned their faces to
each other Razumov felt baffled by the dark
spectacles. Under their cover, Peter Ivanovitch
hinted that he had felt for some time the need
of meeting a man of energy and character, in
view of a certain project. He said nothing more
precise, however; and after some critical
remarks upon the personalities of the various
members of the committee of revolutionary action
in Stuttgart, he let the conversation lapse for
quite a long while. They paced the alley from
end to end. Razumov, silent too, raised his
eyes from time to time to cast a glance at the
back of the house. It offered no sign of being
inhabited. With its grimy, weather-stained
walls and all the windows shuttered from top to
bottom, it looked damp and gloomy and deserted.
It might very well have been haunted in
traditional style by some doleful, groaning,
futile ghost of a middle-class order. The
shades evoked, as worldly rumour had it, by
Madame de S-- to meet statesmen, diplomatists,
deputies of various European Parliaments, must
have been of another sort. Razumov had never
seen Madame de S___ but in the carriage.
Peter Ivanovitch came out of his abstraction.
"Two things I may say to you at once. I
believe, first, that neither a leader nor any
decisive action can come out of the dregs of a
people. Now, if you ask me what are the dregs
of a people--h'm--it would take too long to
tell. You would be surprised at the variety of
ingredients that for me go to the making up of
these dregs--of that which ought, _must_ remain
at the bottom. Moreover, such a statement might
be subject to discussion. But I can tell you
what is _not_ the dregs. On that it is
impossible for us to disagree. The peasantry of
a people is not the dregs; neither is its
highest class--well--the nobility. Reflect on
that, Kirylo Sidorovitch! I believe you are
well fitted for reflection. Everything in a
people that is not genuine, not its own by
origin or development, is--well--dirt!
Intelligence in the wrong place is that.
Foreign-bred doctrines are that. Dirt! Dregs!
The second thing I would offer to your
meditation is this: that for us at this moment
there yawns a chasm between the past and the
future. It can never be bridged by foreign
liberalism. All attempts at it are either folly
or cheating. Bridged it can never be! It has
to be filled up."
A sort of sinister jocularity had crept into the
tones of the burly feminist. He seized
Razumov's arm above the elbow, and gave it a
slight shake.
"Do you understand, enigmatical young man? It
has got to be just filled up."
Razumov kept an unmoved countenance.
"Don't you think that I have already gone beyond
meditation on that subject?" he said, freeing
his arm by a quiet movement which increased the
distance a little between himself and Peter
Ivanovitch, as they went on strolling abreast.
And he added that surely whole cartloads of
words and theories could never fill that chasm.
No meditation was necessary. A sacrifice of
many lives could alone-- He fell silent without
finishing the phrase.
Peter Ivanovitch inclined his big hairy head
slowly. After a moment he proposed that they
should go and see if Madame de S-- was now
visible.
"We shall get some tea," he said, turning out of
the shaded gloomy walk with a brisker step.
The lady companion had been on the look out.
Her dark skirt whisked into the doorway as the
two men came in sight round the corner. She ran
off somewhere altogether, and had disappeared
when they entered the hall. In the crude light
falling from the dusty glass skylight upon the
black and white tessellated floor, covered with
muddy tracks, their footsteps echoed faintly.
The great feminist led the way up the stairs.
On the balustrade of the first-floor landing a
shiny tall hat reposed, rim upwards, opposite
the double door of the drawing-room, haunted, it
was said, by evoked ghosts, and frequented, it
was to be supposed, by fugitive revolutionists.
The cracked white paint of the panels, the
tarnished gilt of the mouldings, permitted one
to imagine nothing but dust and emptiness
within. Before turning the massive brass
handle, Peter Ivanovitch gave his young
companion a sharp, partly critical, partly
preparatory glance.
"No one is perfect," he murmured discreetly.
Thus, the possessor of a rare jewel might,
before opening the casket, warn the profane that
no gem perhaps is flawless.
He remained with his hand on the door-handle so
long that Razumov assented by a moody "No."
"Perfection itself would not produce that
effect," pursued Peter Ivanovitch, "in a world
not meant for it. But you shall find there a
mind--no!--the quintessence of feminine
intuition which will understand any perplexity
you may be suffering from by the irresistible,
enlightening force of sympathy. Nothing can
remain obscure before that--that--inspired, yes,
inspired penetration, this true light of
femininity."
The gaze of the dark spectacles in its glossy
steadfastness gave his face an air of absolute
conviction. Razumov felt a momentary shrinking
before that closed door.
"Penetration? Light," he stammered out. "Do
you mean some sort of thought-reading?"
Peter Ivanovitch seemed shocked.
"I mean something utterly different," he
retorted, with a faint, pitying smile.
Razumov began to feel angry, very much against
his wish.
"This is very mysterious," he muttered through
his teeth.
"You don't object to being understood, to being
guided?" queried the great feminist. Razumov
exploded in a fierce whisper.
"In what sense? Be pleased to understand that I
am a serious person. Who do you take me for?"
They looked at each other very closely.
Razumov's temper was cooled by the impenetrable
earnestness of the blue glasses meeting his
stare. Peter Ivanovitch turned the handle at
last.
"You shall know directly," he said, pushing the
door open.
A low-pitched grating voice was heard within the
room.
"_Enfin_."
In the doorway, his black-coated bulk blocking
the view, Peter Ivanovitch boomed in a hearty
tone with something boastful in it.
"Yes. Here I am!"
He glanced over his shoulder at Razumov, who
waited for him to move on.
"And I am bringing you a proved conspirator--a
real one this time. _Un vrai celui la_."
This pause in the doorway gave the "proved
conspirator" time to make sure that his face did
not betray his angry curiosity and his mental
disgust.
These sentiments stand confessed in Mr.
Razumov's memorandum of his first interview with
Madame de S---. The very words I use in my
narrative are written where their sincerity
cannot be suspected. The record, which could
not have been meant for anyone's eyes but his
own, was not, I think, the outcome of that
strange impulse of indiscretion common to men
who lead secret lives, and accounting for the
invariable existence of "compromising documents"
in all the plots and conspiracies of history.
Mr. Razumov looked at it, I suppose, as a man
looks at himself in a mirror, with wonder,
perhaps with anguish, with anger or despair.
Yes, as a threatened man may look fearfully at
his own face in the glass, formulating to
himself reassuring excuses for his appearance
marked by the taint of some insidious hereditary
disease.
II
The Egeria of the "Russian Mazzini" produced, at
first view, a strong effect by the death-like
immobility of an obviously painted face. The
eyes appeared extraordinarily brilliant. The
figure, in a close-fitting dress, admirably
made, but by no means fresh, had an elegant
stiffness. The rasping voice inviting him to
sit down; the rigidity of the upright attitude
with one arm extended along the back of the
sofa, the white gleam of the big eyeballs
setting off the black, fathomless stare of the
enlarged pupils, impressed Razumov more than
anything he had seen since his hasty and secret
departure from St. Petersburg. A witch in
Parisian clothes, he thought. A portent! He
actually hesitated in his advance, and did not
even comprehend, at first, what the rasping
voice was saying.
"Sit down. Draw your chair nearer me. There--"
He sat down. At close quarters the rouged
cheekbones, the wrinkles, the fine lines on each
side of the vivid lips, astounded him. He was
being received graciously, with a smile which
made him think of a grinning skull.
"We have been hearing about you for some time."
He did not know what to say, and murmured some
disconnected words. The grinning skull effect
vanished.
"And do you know that the general complaint is
that you have shown yourself very reserved
everywhere?"
Razumov remained silent for a time, thinking of
his answer.
"I, don't you see, am a man of action," he said
huskily, glancing upwards.
Peter Ivanovitch stood in portentous expectant
silence by the side of his chair. A slight
feeling of nausea came over Razumov. What could
be the relations of these two people to each
other? She like a galvanized corpse out of some
Hoffman's Tale--he the preacher of feminist
gospel for all the world, and a super-
revolutionist besides! This ancient, painted
mummy with unfathomable eyes, and this burly,
bull-necked, deferential. . .what was it?
Witchcraft, fascination. . . . "It's for her
money," he thought. "She has millions!"
The walls, the floor of the room were bare like
a barn. The few pieces of furniture had been
discovered in the garrets and dragged down into
service without having been properly dusted,
even. It was the refuse the banker's widow had
left behind her. The windows without curtains
had an indigent, sleepless look. In two of them
the dirty yellowy-white blinds had been pulled
down. All this spoke, not of poverty, but of
sordid penuriousness.
The hoarse voice on the sofa uttered angrily-
"You are looking round, Kirylo Sidorovitch. I
have been shamefully robbed, positively ruined."
A rattling laugh, which seemed beyond her
control, interrupted her for a moment.
"A slavish nature would find consolation in the
fact that the principal robber was an exalted
and almost a sacrosanct person--a Grand Duke, in
fact. Do you understand, Mr. Razumov? A Grand
Duke--No! You have no idea what thieves those
people are! Downright thieves!"
Her bosom heaved, but her left arm remained
rigidly extended along the back of the couch.
"You will only upset yourself," breathed out a
deep voice, which, to Razumov's startled glance,
seemed to proceed from under the steady
spectacles of Peter Ivanovitch, rather than from
his lips, which had hardly moved.
"What of hat? I say thieves! _Voleurs!
Voleurs!_"
Razumov was quite confounded by this unexpected
clamour, which had in it something of wailing
and croaking, and more than a suspicion of
hysteria.
"_Voleurs! Voleurs! Vol_. . . ."
"No power on earth can rob you of your genius,"
shouted Peter Ivanovitch in an overpowering
bass, but without stirring, without a gesture of
any kind. A profound silence fell.
Razumov remained outwardly impassive. "What is
the meaning of this performance?" he was asking
himself. But with a preliminary sound of
bumping outside some door behind him, the lady
companion, in a threadbare black skirt and
frayed blouse, came in rapidly, walking on her
heels, and carrying in both hands a big Russian
samovar, obviously too heavy for her. Razumov
made an instinctive movement to help, which
startled her so much that she nearly dropped her
hissing burden. She managed, however, to land
it on the table, and looked so frightened that
Razumov hastened to sit down. She produced
then, from an adjacent room, four glass
tumblers, a teapot, and a sugar-basin, on a
black iron tray.
The rasping voice asked from the sofa abruptly--
"_Les gateaux_? Have you remembered to bring
the cakes?"
Peter Ivanovitch, without a word, marched out on
to the landing, and returned instantly with a
parcel wrapped up in white glazed paper, which
he must have extracted from the interior of his
hat. With imperturbable gravity he undid the
string and smoothed the paper open on a part of
the table within reach of Madame de S---'s hand.
The lady companion poured out the tea, then
retired into a distant corner out of everybody's
sight. From time to time Madame de S---
extended a claw-like hand, glittering with
costly rings, towards the paper of cakes, took
up one and devoured it, displaying her big false
teeth ghoulishly. Meantime she talked in a
hoarse tone of the political situation in the
Balkans. She built great hopes on some
complication in the peninsula for arousing a
great movement of national indignation in Russia
against "these thieves--thieves thieves."
"You will only upset yourself," Peter Ivanovitch
interposed, raising his glassy gaze. He smoked
cigarettes and drank tea in silence,
continuously. When he had finished a glass, he
flourished his hand above his shoulder. At that
signal the lady companion, ensconced in her
corner, with round eyes like a watchful animal,
would dart out to the table and pour him out
another tumblerful.
Razumov looked at her once or twice. She was
anxious, tremulous, though neither Madame de S---
nor Peter Ivanovitch paid the slightest
attention to her. "What have they done between
them to that forlorn creature?" Razumov asked
himself. "Have they terrified her out of her
senses with ghosts, or simply have they only
been beating her?" When she gave him his second
glass of tea, he noticed that her lips trembled
in the manner of a scared person about to burst
into speech. But of course she said nothing,
and retired into her corner, as if hugging to
herself the smile of thanks he gave her.
"She may be worth cultivating," thought Razumov
suddenly.
He was calming down, getting hold of the
actuality into which he had been thrown--for the
first time perhaps since Victor Haldin had
entered his room. . .and had gone out again. He
was distinctly aware of being the object of the
famous--or notorious--Madame de S---'s ghastly
graciousness.
Madame de S--- was pleased to discover that this
young man was different from the other types of
revolutionist members of committees, secret
emissaries, vulgar and unmannerly fugitive
professors, rough students, ex-cobblers with
apostolic faces, consumptive and ragged
enthusiasts, Hebrew youths, common fellows of
all sorts that used to come and go around Peter
Ivanovitch--fanatics, pedants, proletarians all.
It was pleasant to talk to this young man of
notably good appearance--for Madame de S--- was
not always in a mystical state of mind.
Razumov's taciturnity only excited her to a
quicker, more voluble utterance. It still dealt
with the Balkans. She knew all the statesmen of
that region, Turks, Bulgarians, Montenegrins,
Roumanians, Greeks, Armenians, and nondescripts,
young and old, the living and the dead. With
some money an intrigue could be started which
would set the Peninsula in a blaze and outrage
the sentiment of the Russian people. A cry of
abandoned brothers could be raised, and then,
with the nation seething with indignation, a
couple of regiments or so would be enough to
begin a military revolution in St. Petersburg
and make an end of these thieves. . . .
"Apparently I've got only to sit still and
listen," the silent Razumov thought to himself.
"As to that hairy and obscene brute" (in such
terms did Mr. Razumov refer mentally to the
popular expounder of a feministic conception of
social state), "as to him, for all his cunning
he too shall speak out some day."
Razumov ceased to think for a moment. Then a
sombre-toned reflection formulated itself in his
mind, ironical and bitter. "I have the gift of
inspiring confidence." He heard himself
laughing aloud. It was like a goad to the
painted, shiny-eyed harridan on the sofa.
"You may well laugh!" she cried hoarsely. "What
else can one do! Perfect swindlers--and what
base swindlers at that! Cheap Germans--Holstein-
Gottorps! Though, indeed, it's hardly safe to
say who and what they are. A family that counts
a creature like Catherine the Great in its
ancestry--you understand!"
"You are only upsetting yourself," said Peter
Ivanovitch, patiently but in a firm tone. This
admonition had its usual effect on the Egeria.
She dropped her thick, discoloured eyelids and
changed her position on the sofa. All her
angular and lifeless movements seemed completely
automatic now that her eyes were closed.
Presently she opened them very full. Peter
Ivanovitch drank tea steadily, without haste.
"Well, I declare!" She addressed Razumov
directly. "The people who have seen you on your
way here are right. You are very reserved. You
haven't said twenty words altogether since you
came in. You let nothing of your thoughts be
seen in your face either."
"I have been listening, Madame," said Razumov,
using French for the first time, hesitatingly,
not being certain of his accent. But it seemed
to produce an excellent impression. Madame de S-
-- looked meaningly into Peter Ivanovitch's
spectacles, as if to convey her conviction of
this young man's merit. She even nodded the
least bit in his direction, and Razumov heard
her murmur under her breath the words, " Later
on in the diplomatic service," which could not
but refer to the favourable impression he had
made. The fantastic absurdity of it revolted
him because it seemed to outrage his ruined
hopes with the vision of a mock-career. Peter
Ivanovitch, impassive as though he were deaf,
drank some more tea. Razumov felt that he must
say something.
"Yes," he began deliberately, as if uttering a
meditated opinion. "Clearly. Even in planning
a purely military revolution the temper of the
people should be taken into account."
"You have understood me perfectly. The
discontent should be spiritualized. That is
what the ordinary heads of revolutionary
committees will not understand. They aren't
capable of it. For instance, Mordatiev was in
Geneva last month. Peter Ivanovitch brought him
here. You know Mordatiev? Well, yes--you have
heard of him. They call him an eagle--a hero!
He has never done half as much as you have.
Never attempted--not half. . . ."
Madame de S--- agitated herself angularly on the
sofa.
"We, of course, talked to him. And do you know
what he said to me? 'What have we to do with
Balkan intrigues? We must simply extirpate the
scoundrels.' Extirpate is all very well--but
what then? The imbecile! I screamed at him,
'But you must spiritualize--don't you
understand?--spiritualize the discontent.'. . ."
She felt nervously in her pocket for a
handkerchief; she pressed it to her lips.
"Spiritualize?" said Razumov interrogatively,
watching her heaving breast. The long ends of
an old black lace scarf she wore over her head
slipped off her shoulders and hung down on each
side of her ghastly rosy cheeks.
"An odious creature," she burst out again.
"Imagine a man who takes five lumps of sugar in
his tea. . . . Yes, I said spiritualize! How
else can you make discontent effective and
universal?"
"Listen to this, young man." Peter Ivanovitch
made himself heard solemnly. "Effective and
universal."
Razumov looked at him suspiciously.
"Some say hunger will do that," he remarked.
"Yes. I know. Our people are starving in
heaps. But you can't make famine universal.
And it is not despair that we want to create.
There is no moral support to be got out of that.
It is indignation. . . ."
Madame de S--- let her thin, extended arm sink
on her knees.
"I am not a Mordatiev," began Razumov.
"Bien sur!" murmured Madame de S---.
"Though I too am ready to say extirpate,
extirpate! But in my ignorance of political
work, permit me to ask: A Balkan--well--
intrigue, wouldn't that take a very long time?"
Peter Ivanovitch got up and moved off quietly,
to stand with his face to the window. Razumov
heard a door close; he turned his head and
perceived that the lady companion had scuttled
out of the room.
"In matters of politics I am a supernaturalist."
Madame de S--- broke the silence harshly.
Peter Ivanovitch moved away from the window and
struck Razumov lightly on the shoulder. This
was a signal for leaving, but at the same time
he addressed Madame de S--- in a peculiar
reminding tone---
"Eleanor!"
Whatever it meant, she did not seem to hear him.
She leaned back in the corner of the sofa like
a wooden figure. The immovable peevishness of
the face, framed in the limp, rusty lace, had a
character of cruelty.
"As to extirpating," she croaked at the
attentive Razumov, "there is only one class in
Russia which must be extirpated. Only one. And
that class consists of only one family. You
understand me? That one family must be
extirpated."
Her rigidity was frightful, like the rigor of a
corpse galvanized into harsh speech and
glittering stare by the force of murderous hate.
The sight fascinated Razumov--yet he felt more
self-possessed than at any other time since he
had entered this weirdly bare room. He was
interested. But the great feminist by his side
again uttered his appeal--
"Eleanor!"
She disregarded it. Her carmine lips
vaticinated with an extraordinary rapidity. The
liberating spirit would use arms before which
rivers would part like Jordan, and ramparts fall
down like the walls of Jericho. The deliverance
from bondage would be effected by plagues and by
signs, by wonders and by war. The women. . . .
"Eleanor!"
She ceased; she had heard him at last. She
pressed her hand to her forehead.
"What is it? Ah yes! That girl--the sister of.
. . ."
It was Miss Haldin that she meant. That young
girl and her mother had been leading a very
retired life. They were provincial ladies--were
they not? The mother had been very beautiful--
traces were left yet. Peter Ivanovitch, when he
called there for the first time, was greatly
struck. . . . But the cold way they received
him was really surprising.
"He is one of our national glories," Madams de S-
-- cried out, with sudden vehemence. "All the
world listens to him."
"I don't know these ladies," said Razumov loudly
rising from his chair.
"What are you saying, Kirylo Sidorovitch? I
understand that she was talking to you here, in
the garden, the other day."
"Yes, in the garden," said Razumov gloomily.
Then, with an effort, "She made herself known to
me."
"And then ran away from us all," Madame de S---
continued, with ghastly vivacity. "After coming
to the very door! What a peculiar proceeding!
Well, I have been a shy little provincial girl
at one time. Yes, Razumov" (she fell into this
familiarity intentionally, with an appalling
grimace of graciousness. Razumov gave a
perceptible start), "yes, that's my origin. A
simple provincial family
"You are a marvel," Peter Ivanovich uttered in
his
But it was to Razumov that she gave her death's-
head smile. Her tone was quite imperious.
"You must bring the wild young thing here. She
is wanted. I reckon upon your success--mind!"
"She is not a wild young thing," muttered
Razumov, in a surly voice.
"Well, then--that's all the same. She may be
one of these young conceited democrats. Do you
know what I think? I think she is very much
like you in character. There is a smouldering
fire of scorn in you. You are darkly self-
sufficient, but I can see your very soul."
Her shiny eyes had a dry, intense stare, which,
missing Razumov, gave him an absurd notion that
she was looking at something which was visible
to her behind him. He cursed himself for an
impressionable fool, and asked with forced
calmness--
"What is it you see? Anything resembling me?"
She moved her rigidly set face from left to
right, negatively.
"Some sort of phantom in my image?" pursued
Razumov slowly. "For, I suppose, a soul when it
is seen is just that. A vain thing. There are
phantoms of the living as well as of the dead."
The tenseness of Madame de S---'s stare had
relaxed, and now she looked at Razumov in a
silence that became disconcerting.
"I myself have had an experience," he stammered
out, as if compelled. " I've seen a phantom
once." The unnaturally red lips moved to frame
a question harshly.
"Of a dead person?"
"No. Living."
"A friend?"
" No."
"An enemy?"
"I hated him."
"Ah! It was not a woman, then?"
"A woman!" repeated Razumov, his eyes looking
straight into the eyes of Madame de S---. "Why
should it have been a woman? And why this
conclusion? Why should I not have been able to
hate a woman?"
As a matter of fact, the idea of hating a woman
was new to him. At that moment he hated Madame
de S---. But it was not exactly hate. It was
more like the abhorrence that may be caused by a
wooden or plaster figure of a repulsive kind.
She moved no more than if she were such a
figure; even her eyes, whose unwinking stare
plunged into his own, though shining, were
lifeless, as though they were as artificial as
her teeth. For the first time Razumov became
aware of a faint perfume, but faint as it was it
nauseated him exceedingly. Again Peter
Ivanovitch tapped him slightly on the shoulder.
Thereupon he bowed, and was about to turn away
when he received the unexpected favour of a
bony, inanimate hand extended to him, with the
two words in hoarse French--
"_Au revoir!_"
He bowed over the skeleton hand and left the
room, escorted by the great man, who made him go
out first. The voice from the sofa cried after
them-
"You remain here, _Pierre_."
"Certainly, _ma chere amie_."
But he left the room with Razumov, shutting the
door behind him. The landing was prolonged into
a bare corridor, right and left, desolate
perspectives of white and gold decoration
without a strip of carpet. The very light,
pouring through a large window at the end,
seemed dusty; and a solitary speck reposing on
the balustrade of white marble--the silk top-hat
of the great feminist--asserted itself
extremely, black and glossy in all that crude
whiteness.
Peter Ivanovitch escorted the visitor without
opening his lips. Even when they had reached
the head of the stairs Peter Ivanovitch did not
break the silence. Razumov's impulse to
continue down the flight and out of the house
without as much as a nod abandoned him suddenly.
He stopped on the first step and leaned his
back against the wall. Below him the great hall
with its chequered floor of black and white
seemed absurdly large and like some public place
where a great power of resonance awaits the
provocation of footfalls and voices. As if
afraid of awakening the loud echoes of that
empty house, Razumov adopted a low tone.
"I really have no mind to turn into a dilettante
spiritualist."
Peter Ivanovitch shook his head slightly, very
serious.
"Or spend my time in spiritual ecstasies or
sublime meditations upon the gospel of
feminism," continued Razumov. "I made my way
here for my share of action--action, most
respected Peter Ivanovitch! It was not the
great European writer who attracted me, here, to
this odious town of liberty. It was somebody
much greater. It was the idea of the chief
which attracted me. There are starving young
men in Russia who believe in you so much that it
seems the only thing that keeps them alive in
their misery. Think of that, Peter Ivanovitch!
No! But only think of that!"
The great man, thus entreated, perfectly
motionless and silent, was the very image of
patient, placid respectability.
"Of course I don't speak of the people. They
are brutes," added Razumov, in the same subdued
but forcible tone. At this, a protesting murmur
issued from the "heroic fugitive's" beard. A
murmur of authority.
"Say--children."
"No! Brutes!" Razumov insisted bluntly.
"But they are sound, they are innocent," the
great man pleaded in a whisper.
"As far as that goes, a brute is sound enough."
Razumov raised his voice at last. "And you
can't deny the natural innocence of a brute.
But what's the use of disputing about names?
You just try to give these children the power
and stature of men and see what they will be
like. You just give it to them and see. . . .
But never mind. I tell you, Peter Ivanovitch,
that half a dozen young men do not come together
nowadays in a shabby student's room without your
name being whispered, not as a leader of
thought, but as a centre of revolutionary
energies--the centre of action. What else has
drawn me near you, do you think? It is not what
all the world knows of you, surely. It's
precisely what the world at large does not know.
I was irresistibly drawn-let us say impelled,
yes, impelled; or, rather, compelled, driven--
driven,'' repented Razumov loudly, and ceased,
as if startled by the hollow reverberation of
the word "driven" along two bare corridors and
in the great empty hall.
Peter Ivanovitch did not seem startled in the
least. The young man could not control a dry,
uneasy laugh. The great revolutionist remained
unmoved with an effect of commonplace, homely
superiority.
"Curse him," said Razumov to himself, "he is
waiting behind his spectacles for me to give
myself away." Then aloud, with a satanic
enjoyment of the scorn prompting him to play
with the greatness of the great man--
"Ah, Peter Ivanovitch, if you only knew the
force which drew--no, which _drove_ me towards
you! The irresistible force."
He did not feel any desire to laugh now. This
time Peter Ivanovitch moved his head sideways,
knowingly, as much as to say, "Don't I?" This
expressive movement was almost imperceptible.
Razumov went on in secret derision--
"All these days you have been trying to read me,
Peter Ivanovitch. That is natural. I have
perceived it and I have been frank. Perhaps you
may think I have not been very expansive? But
with a man like you it was not needed; it would
have looked like an impertinence, perhaps. And
besides, we Russians are prone to talk too much
as a rule. I have always felt that. And yet,
as a nation, we are dumb. I assure you that I
am not likely to talk to you so much again--ha!
ha!--"
Razumov, still keeping on the lower step, came a
little nearer to the great man.
"You have been condescending enough. I quite
understood it was to lead me on. You must
render me the justice that I have not tried to
please. I have been impelled, compelled, or
rather sent--let us say sent--towards you for a
work that no one but myself can do. You would
call it a harmless delusion: a ridiculous
delusion at which you don't even smile. It is
absurd of me to talk like this, yet some day you
shall remember these words, I hope. Enough of
this. Here I stand before you-confessed! But
one thing more I must add to complete it: a mere
blind tool I can never consent to be."
Whatever acknowledgment Razumov was prepared
for, he was not prepared to have both his hands
seized in the great man's grasp. The swiftness
of the movement was aggressive enough to
startle. The burly feminist could not have been
quicker had his purpose been to jerk Razumov
treacherously up on the landing and bundle him
behind one of the numerous closed doors near by.
This idea actually occurred to Razumov; his
hands being released after a darkly eloquent
squeeze, he smiled, with a beating heart,
straight at the beard and the spectacles hiding
that impenetrable man.
He thought to himself (it stands confessed in
his handwriting), "I won't move from here till
he either speaks or turns away. This is a
duel." Many seconds passed without a sign or
sound.
"Yes, yes," the great man said hurriedly, in
subdued tones, as if the whole thing had been a
stolen, breathless interview. "Exactly. Come
to see us here in a few days. This must be gone
into deeply--deeply, between you and me. Quite
to the bottom. To the. . . . And, by the by,
you must bring along Natalia Victorovna--you
know, the Haldin girl. . . .
"Am I to take this as my first instruction from
you?" inquired Razumov stiffly.
Peter Ivanovitch seemed perplexed by this new
attitude.
"Ah! h'm! You are naturally the proper person--
_la personne indiquee_. Every one shall be
wanted presently. Every one."
He bent down from the landing over Razumov, who
had lowered his eyes.
"The moment of action approaches,'' he murmured.
Razumov did not look up. He did not move till
he heard the door of the drawing-room close
behind the greatest of feminists returning to
his painted Egeria. Then he walked down slowly
into the hall. The door stood open, and the
shadow of the house was lying aslant over the
greatest part of the terrace. While crossing it
slowly, he lifted his hat and wiped his damp
forehead, expelling his breath with force to get
rid of the last vestiges of the air he had been
breathing inside. He looked at the palms of his
hands, and rubbed them gently against his thighs.
He felt, bizarre as it may seem, as though
another self, an independent sharer of his mind,
had been able to view his whole person very
distinctly indeed. "This is curious," he
thought. After a while he formulated his
opinion of it in the mental ejaculation:
"Beastly!" This disgust vanished before a
marked uneasiness. "This is an effect of
nervous exhaustion," he reflected with weary
sagacity. "How am I to go on day after day if I
have no more power of resistance--moral
resistance?"
He followed the path at the foot of the terrace.
"Moral resistance, moral resistance;" he kept
on repeating these words mentally. Moral
endurance. Yes, that was the necessity of the
situation. An immense longing to make his way
out of these grounds and to the other end of the
town, of throwing himself on his bed and going
to sleep for hours, swept everything clean out
of his mind for a moment. "Is it possible that
I am but a weak creature after all?" he asked
himself, in sudden alarm. "Eh! What's that?"
He gave a start as if awakened from a dream. He
even swayed a little before recovering himself.
"Ah! You stole away from us quietly to walk
about here," he said.
The lady companion stood before him, but how she
came there he had not the slightest idea. Her
folded arms were closely cherishing the cat.
"I have been unconscious as I walked, it's a
positive fact," said Razumov to himself in
wonder. He raised his hat with marked civility.
The sallow woman blushed duskily. She had her
invariably scared expression, as if somebody had
just disclosed to her some terrible news. But
she held her ground, Razumov noticed, without
timidity. "She is incredibly shabby," he
thought. In the sunlight her black costume
looked greenish, with here and there threadbare
patches where the stuff seemed decomposed by age
into a velvety, black, furry state. Her very
hair and eyebrows looked shabby. Razumov
wondered whether she were sixty years old. Her
figure, though, was young enough. He observed
that she did not appear starved, but rather as
if she had been fed on unwholesome scraps and
leavings of plates.
Razumov smiled amiably and moved out of her way.
She turned her head to keep her scared eyes on
him.
"I know what you have been told in there," she
affirmed, without preliminaries. Her tone, in
contrast with her manner, had an unexpectedly
assured character which put Razumov at his ease.
"Do you? You must have heard all sorts of talk
on many occasions in there."
She varied her phrase, with the same incongruous
effect of positiveness.
"I know to a certainty what you have been told
to do."
"Really?" Razumov shrugged his shoulders a
little. He was about to pass on with a bow,
when a sudden thought struck him. "Yes. To be
sure! In your confidential position you are
aware of many things," he murmured, looking at
the cat.
That animal got a momentary convulsive hug from
the lady companion.
"Everything was disclosed to me a long time
ago," she said.
"Everything," Razumov repeated absently.
"Peter Ivanovitch is an awful despot," she
jerked out.
Razumov went on studying the stripes on the grey
fur of the cat.
"An iron will is an integral part of such a
temperament. How else could he be a leader?
And I think that you are mistaken in--"
"There!" she cried. " You tell me that I am
mistaken. But I tell you all the same that he
cares for no one." She jerked her head up.
"Don't you bring that girl here. That's what
you have been told to do--to bring that girl
here. Listen to me; you had better tie a stone
round her neck and throw her into the lake."
Razumov had a sensation of chill and gloom, as
if a heavy cloud had passed over the sun.
"The girl?" he said. "What have I to do with
her?"
"But you have been told to bring Nathalie Haldin
here. Am I not right? Of course I am right. I
was not in the room, but I know. I know Peter
Ivanovitch sufficiently well. He is a great
man. Great men are horrible. Well, that's it.
Have nothing to do with her. That's the best
you can do, unless you want her to become like
me--disillusioned! Disillusioned!"
"Like you," repeated Razumov, glaring at her
face, as devoid of all comeliness of feature and
complexion as the most miserable beggar is of
money. He smiled, still feeling chilly: a
peculiar sensation which annoyed him."
Disillusioned as to Peter Ivanovitch! Is that
all you have lost?"
She declared, looking frightened, but with
immense conviction, "Peter Ivanovitch stands for
everything." Then she added, in another tone,
"Keep the girl away from this house."
"And are you absolutely inciting me to disobey
Peter Ivanovitch just because--because you are
disillusioned?"
She began to blink.
"Directly I saw you for the first time I was
comforted. You took your hat off to me. You
looked as if one could trust you. Oh!"
She shrank before Razumov's savage snarl of, "I
have heard something like this before."
She was so confounded that she could do nothing
but blink for a long time.
"It was your humane manner," she explained
plaintively. "I have been starving for, I won't
say kindness, but just for a little civility,
for I don't know how long. And now you are
angry. . . ."
"But no, on the contrary," he protested. " I am
very glad you trust me. It's possible that
later on I may. . . ."
"Yes, if you were to get ill," she interrupted
eagerly, " or meet some bitter trouble, you
would find I am not a useless fool. You have
only to let me know. I will come to you. I
will indeed. And I will stick to you. Misery
and I are old acquaintances--but this life here
is worse than starving."
She paused anxiously, then in a voice for the
first time sounding really timid, she added--
"Or if you were engaged in some dangerous work.
Sometimes a humble companion--I would not want
to know anything. I would follow you with joy.
I could carry out orders. I have the courage."
Razumov looked attentively at the scared round
eyes, at the withered, sallow, round cheeks.
They were quivering about the corners of the
mouth.
"She wants to escape from here," he thought.
"Suppose I were to tell you that I am engaged in
dangerous work?" he uttered slowly.
She pressed the cat to her threadbare bosom with
a breathless exclamation. "Ah!" Then not much
above a whisper: "Under Peter Ivanovitch?"
"No, not under Peter Ivanovitch."
He read admiration in her eyes, and made an
effort to smile.
"Then--alone?"
He held up his closed hand with the index
raised. "Like this finger," he said.
She was trembling slightly. But it occurred to
Razumov that they might have been observed from
the house, and he became anxious to be gone.
She blinked, raising up to him her puckered
face, and seemed to beg mutely to be told
something more, to be given a word of
encouragement for her starving, grotesque, and
pathetic devotion.
"Can we be seen from the house?" asked Razumov
confidentially.
She answered, without showing the slightest
surprise at the question--
"No, we can't, on account of this end of the
stables." And she added, with an acuteness
which surprised Razumov," But anybody looking
out of an upstairs window would know that you
have not passed through the gates yet."
"Who's likely to spy out of the window?" queried
Razumov. "Peter Ivanovitch?"
She nodded.
"Why should he trouble his head?"
"He expects somebody this afternoon."
"You know the person?"
"There's more than one."
She had lowered her eyelids. Razumov looked at
her curiously.
"Of course. You hear everything they say."
She murmured without any animosity--
"So do the tables and chairs."
He understood that the bitterness accumulated in
the heart of that helpless creature had got into
her veins, and, like some subtle poison, had
decomposed her fidelity to that hateful pair.
It was a great piece of luck for him, he
reflected; because women are seldom venal after
the manner of men, who can be bought for
material considerations. She would be a good
ally, though it was not likely that she was
allowed to hear as much as the tables and chairs
of the Chateau Borel. That could not be
expected. But still. . . . And, at any rate,
she could be made to talk.
When she looked up her eyes met the fixed stare
of Razumov, who began to speak at once.
"Well, well, dear. . .but upon my word, I
haven't the pleasure of knowing your name yet.
Isn't it strange?"
For the first time she made a movement of the
shoulders.
"Is it strange? No one is told my name. No one
cares. No one talks to me, no one writes to me.
My parents don't even know if I'm alive. I
have no use for a name, and I have almost
forgotten it myself."
Razumov murmured gravely, "Yes, but still. . ."
She went on much slower, with indifference--
"You may call me Tekla, then. My poor Andrei
called me so. I was devoted to him. He lived
in wretchedness and suffering, and died in
misery. That is the lot of all us Russians,
nameless Russians. There is nothing else for
us, and no hope anywhere, unless. . ."
"Unless what?"
"Unless all these people with names are done
away with," she finished, blinking and pursing
up her lips.
"It will be easier to call you Tekla, as you
direct me," said Razumov, "if you consent to
call me Kirylo, when we are talking like this--
quietly--only you and me."
And he said to himself, "Here's a being who must
be terribly afraid of the world, else she would
have run away from this situation before." Then
he reflected that the mere fact of leaving the
great man abruptly would make her a suspect.
She could expect no support or countenance from
anyone. This revolutionist was not fit for an
independent existence.
She moved with him a few steps, blinking and
nursing the cat with a small balancing movement
of her arms.
"Yes--only you and I. That's how I was with my
poor Andrei, only he was dying, killed by these
official brutes--while you! You are strong.
You kill the monsters. You have done a great
deed. Peter Ivanovitch himself must consider
you. Well--don't forget me--especially if you
are going back to work in Russia. I could
follow you, carrying anything that was wanted--
at a distance, you know. Or I could watch for
hours at the corner of a street if necessary,--
in wet or snow--yes, I could--all day long. Or
I could write for you dangerous documents, lists
of names or instructions, so that in case of
mischance the handwriting could not compromise
you. And you need not be afraid if they were to
catch me. I would know how to keep dumb. We
women are not so easily daunted by pain. I
heard Peter Ivanovitch say it is our blunt
nerves or something. We can stand it better.
And it's true; I would just as soon bite my
tongue out and throw it at them as not. What's
the good of speech to me? Who would ever want
to hear what I could say? Ever since I closed
the eyes of my poor Andrei I haven't met a man
who seemed to care for the sound of my voice. I
should never have spoken to you if the very
first time you appeared here you had not taken
notice of me so nicely. I could not help
speaking of you to that charming dear girl. Oh,
the sweet creature! And strong! One can see
that at once. If you have a heart don't let her
set her foot in here. Good-bye!"
Razumov caught her by the arm. Her emotion at
being thus seized manifested itself by a short
struggle, after which she stood still, not
looking at him.
"But you can tell me," he spoke in her ear, "why
they--these people in that house there--are so
anxious to get hold of her?"
She freed herself to turn upon him, as if made
angry by the question.
"Don't you understand that Peter Ivanovitch must
direct, inspire, influence? It is the breath of
his life. There can never be too many
disciples. He can't bear thinking of anyone
escaping him. And a woman, too! There is
nothing to be done without women, he says. He
has written it. He--"
The young man was staring at her passion when
she broke off suddenly and ran away behind the
stable.
III
Razumov, thus left to himself, took the
direction of the gate. But on this day of many
conversations, he discovered that very probably
he could not leave the grounds without having to
hold another one.
Stepping in view from beyond the lodge appeared
the expected visitors of Peter Ivanovitch: a
small party composed of two men and a woman.
They noticed him too, immediately, and stopped
short as if to consult. But in a moment the
woman, moving aside, motioned with her arm to
the two men, who, leaving the drive at once,
struck across the large neglected lawn, or
rather grass-plot, and made directly for the
house. The woman remained on the path waiting
for Razumov's approach. She had recognized him.
He, too, had recognized her at the first
glance. He had been made known to her at
Zurich, where he had broken his journey while on
his way from Dresden. They had been much
together for the three days of his stay.
She was wearing the very same costume in which
he had seen her first. A blouse of crimson silk
made her noticeable at a distance. With that
she wore a short brown skirt and a leather belt.
Her complexion was the colour of coffee and
milk, but very clear; her eyes black and
glittering, her figure erect. A lot of thick
hair, nearly white, was done up loosely under a
dusty Tyrolese hat of dark cloth, which seemed
to have lost some of its trimmings.
The expression of her face was grave, intent; so
grave that Razumov, after approaching her close,
felt obliged to smile. She greeted him with a
manly hand-grasp.
"What! Are you going away?" she exclaimed.
"How is that, Razumov?"
"I am going away because I haven't been asked to
stay," Razumov answered, returning the pressure
of her hand with much less force than she had
put into it.
She jerked her head sideways like one who
understands. Meantime Razumov's eyes had
strayed after the two men. They were crossing
the grass-plot obliquely, without haste. The
shorter of the two was buttoned up in a narrow
overcoat of some thin grey material, which came
nearly to his heels. His companion, much taller
and broader, wore a short, close-fitting jacket
and tight trousers tucked into shabby top-boots.
The woman, who had sent them out of Razumov's
way apparently, spoke in a businesslike voice.
"I had to come rushing from Zurich on purpose to
meet the train and take these two along here to
see Peter Ivanovitch. I've just managed it."
"Ah! indeed," Razumov said perfunctorily, and
very vexed at her staying behind to talk to him
"From Zurich--yes, of course. And these two,
they come from. . . ."
She interrupted, without emphasis--
"From quite another direction. From a distance,
too. A considerable distance."
Razumov shrugged his shoulders. The two men
from a distance, after having reached the wall
of the terrace, disappeared suddenly at its foot
as if the earth had opened to swallow them up.
"Oh, well, they have just come from America."
The woman in the crimson blouse shrugged her
shoulders too a little before making that
statement. "The time is drawing near," she
interjected, as if speaking to herself. "I did
not tell them who you were. Yakovlitch would
have wanted to embrace you."
"Is that he with the wisp of hair hanging from
his chin, in the long coat?"
"You've guessed aright. That's Yakovlitch."
"And they could not find their way here from the
station without you coming on purpose from
Zurich to show it to them? Verily, without
women we can do nothing. So it stands written,
and apparently so it is."
He was conscious of an immense lassitude under
his effort to be sarcastic. And he could see
that she had detected it with those steady,
brilliant black eyes.
"What is the matter with you?"
"I don't know. Nothing. I've had a devil of a
day."
She waited, with her black eyes fixed on his
face. Then--
"What of that? You men are so impressionable
and self-conscious. One day is like another,
hard, hard--and there's an end of it, till the
great day comes. I came over for a very good
reason. They wrote to warn Peter Ivanovitch of
their arrival. But where from? Only from
Cherbourg on a bit of ship's notepaper. Anybody
could have done that. Yakovlitch has lived for
years and years in America. I am the only one
at hand who had known him well in the old days.
I knew him very well indeed. So Peter
Ivanovitch telegraphed, asking me to come. It's
natural enough, is it not?"
"You came to vouch for his identity?" inquired
Razumov.
"Yes. Something of the kind. Fifteen years of
a life like his make changes in a man. Lonely,
like a crow in a strange country. When I think
of Yakovlitch before he went to America--"
The softness of the low tone caused Razumov to
glance at her sideways. She sighed; her black
eyes were looking away; she had plunged the
fingers of her right hand deep into the mass of
nearly white hair, and stirred them there
absently. When she withdrew her hand the little
hat perched on the top of her head remained
slightly tilted, with a queer inquisitive
effect, contrasting strongly with the
reminiscent murmur that escaped her.
"We were not in our first youth even then. But
a man is a child always."
Razumov thought suddenly, "They have been living
together." Then aloud--
"Why didn't you follow him to America?" he asked
point-blank.
She looked up at him with a perturbed air.
"Don't you remember what was going on fifteen
years ago? It was a time of activity. The
Revolution has its history by this time. You
are in it and yet you don't seem to know it.
Yakovlitch went away then on a mission; I went
back to Russia. It had to be so. Afterwards
there was nothing for him to come back to."
"Ah! indeed," muttered Razumov, with affected
surprise. " Nothing!"
"What are you trying to insinuate " she
exclaimed quickly. " Well, and what then if he
did get discouraged a little. . . ."
"He looks like a Yankee, with that goatee
hanging from his chin. A regular Uncle Sam,"
growled Razumov. "Well, and you? You who went
to Russia? You did not get discouraged."
"Never mind. Yakovlitch is a man who cannot be
doubted. He, at any rate, is the right sort."
Her black, penetrating gaze remained fixed upon
Razumov while she spoke, and for a moment
afterwards.
"Pardon me, "Razumov inquired coldly, "but does
it mean that you, for instance, think that I am
not the right sort?"
She made no protest, gave no sign of having
heard the question; she continued looking at him
in a manner which he judged not to be absolutely
unfriendly. In Zurich when he passed through
she had taken him under her charge, in a way,
and was with him from morning till night during
his stay of two days. She took him round to see
several people. At first she talked to him a
great deal and rather unreservedly, but always
avoiding all reference to herself; towards the
middle of the second day she fell silent,
attending him zealously as before, and even
seeing him off at the railway station, where she
pressed his hand firmly through the lowered
carriage window, and, stepping back without a
word, waited till the train moved. He had
noticed that she was treated with quiet regard.
He knew nothing of her parentage, nothing of her
private history or political record; he judged
her from his own private point of view, as being
a distinct danger in his path. "Judged " is not
perhaps the right word. It was more of a
feeling, the summing up of slight impressions
aided by the discovery that he could not despise
her as he despised all the others. He had not
expected to see her again so soon.
No, decidedly; her expression was not
unfriendly. Yet he perceived an acceleration in
the beat of his heart. The conversation could
not be abandoned at that point. He went on in
accents of scrupulous inquiry--
"Is it perhaps because I don't seem to accept
blindly every development of the general
doctrine--such for instance as the feminism of
our great Peter Ivanovitch? If that is what
makes me suspect, then I can only say I would
scorn to be a slave even to an idea."
She had been looking at him all the time, not as
a listener looks at one, but as if the words he
chose to say were only of secondary interest.
When he finished she slipped her hand, by a
sudden and decided movement, under his arm and
impelled him gently towards the gate of the
grounds. He felt her firmness and obeyed the
impulsion at once, just as the other two men
had, a moment before, obeyed unquestioningly the
wave of her hand.
They made a few steps like this.
"No, Razumov, your ideas are probably all
right," she said. "You may be valuable--very
valuable. What's the matter with you is that
you don't like us."
She released him. He met her with a frosty
smile.
" Am I expected then to have love as well as
convictions?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"You know very well what I mean. People have
been thinking you not quite whole-hearted. I
have heard that opinion from one side and
another. But I have understood you at the end
of the first day. . . ."
Razumov interrupted her, speaking steadily.
"I assure you that your perspicacity is at fault
here."
"What phrases he uses!" she exclaimed
parenthetically. "Ah! Kirylo Sidorovitch, you
like other men are fastidious, full of self-love
and afraid of trifles. Moreover, you had no
training. What you want is to be taken in hand
by some woman. I am sorry I am not staying here
a few days. I am going back to Zurich to-
morrow, and shall take Yakovlitch with me most
likely."
This information relieved Razumov.
"I am sorry too," he said. "But, all the same,
I don't think you understand me."
He breathed more freely; she did not protest,
but asked, "And how did you get on with Peter
Ivanovitch? You have seen a good deal of each
other. How is it between you two?"
Not knowing what answer to make, the young man
inclined his head slowly.
Her lips had been parted in expectation. She
pressed them together, and seemed to reflect.
"That's all right."
This had a sound of finality, but she did not
leave him. It was impossible to guess what she
had in her mind. Razumov muttered--
"It is not of me that you should have asked that
question. In a moment you shall see Peter
Ivanovitch himself, and the subject will come up
naturally. He will be curious to know what has
delayed you so long in this garden."
"No doubt Peter Ivanovitch will have something
to say to me. Several things. He may even
speak of you--question me. Peter Ivanovitch is
inclined to trust me generally."
"Question you? That's very likely."
She smiled, half serious.
"Well--and what shall I say to him?"
"I don't know. You may tell him of your
discovery."
"What's that?"
"Why--my lack of love for. . . ."
"Oh! That's between ourselves," she
interrupted, it was hard to say whether in jest
or earnest.
"I see that you want to tell Peter Ivanovitch
something in my favour," said Razumov, with grim
playfulness. "Well, then, you can tell him that
I am very much in earnest about my mission. I
mean to succeed."
"You have been given a mission!" she exclaimed
quickly.
"It amounts to that. I have been told to bring
about a certain event."
She looked at him searchingly.
"A mission," she repeated, very grave and
interested all at once. "What sort of mission?"
"Something in the nature of propaganda work."
" Ah ! Far away from here?"
"No. Not very far," said Razumov, restraining a
sudden desire to laugh, although he did not feel
joyous in the least.
"So!" she said thoughtfully. "Well, I am not
asking questions. It's sufficient that Peter
Ivanovitch should know what each of us is doing.
Everything is bound to come right in the end."
"You think so?"
"I don't think, young man. I just simply
believe it."
"And is it to Peter Ivanovitch that you owe that
faith?"
She did not answer the question, and they stood
idle, silent, as if reluctant to part with each
other.
"That's just like a man," she murmured at last.
"As if it were possible to tell how a belief
comes to one." Her thin Mephistophelian
eyebrows moved a little. "Truly there are
millions of people in Russia who would envy the
life of dogs in this country. It is a horror
and a shame to confess this even between
ourselves. One must believe for very pity.
This can't go on. No! It can't go on. For
twenty years I have been coming and going,
looking neither to the left nor to the right. .
. . What are you smiling to yourself for? You
are only at the beginning. You have begun well,
but you just wait till you have trodden every
particle of yourself under your feet in your
comings and goings. For that is what it comes
to. You've got to trample down every particle
of your own feelings; for stop you cannot, you
must not. I have been young, too--but perhaps
you think that I am complaining-eh?"
"I don't think anything of the sort," protested
Razumov indifferently.
"I dare say you don't, you dear superior
creature. You don't care."
She plunged her fingers into the bunch of hair
on the left side, and that brusque movement had
the effect of setting the Tyrolese hat straight
on her head. She frowned under it without
animosity, in the manner of an investigator.
Razumov averted his face carelessly.
"You men are all alike. You mistake luck for
merit. You do it in good faith too! I would
not be too hard on you. It's masculine nature.
You men are ridiculously pitiful in your
aptitude to cherish childish illusions down to
the very grave. There are a lot of us who have
been at work for fifteen years--I mean
constantly--trying one way after another,
underground and above ground, looking neither to
the right nor to the left! I can talk about it.
I have been one of these that never rested. . .
. There! What's the use of talking. . . .
Look at my grey hairs! And here two babies come
along--I mean you and Haldin--you come along and
manage to strike a blow at the very first try."
At the name of Haldin falling from the rapid and
energetic lips of the woman revolutionist,
Razumov had the usual brusque consciousness of
the irrevocable. But in all the months which
had passed over his head he had become hardened
to the experience. The consciousness was no
longer accompanied by the blank dismay and the
blind anger of the early days. He had argued
himself into new beliefs; and he had made for
himself a mental atmosphere of gloomy and
sardonic reverie, a sort of murky medium through
which the event appeared like a featureless
shadow having vaguely the shape of a man; a
shape extremely familiar, yet utterly
inexpressive, except for its air of discreet
waiting in the dusk. It was not alarming.
"What was he like?" the woman revolutionist
asked unexpectedly.
"What was he like?" echoed Razumov, making a
painful effort not to turn upon her savagely.
But he relieved himself by laughing a little
while he stole a glance at her out of the
corners of his eyes. This reception of her
inquiry disturbed her.
"How like a woman," he went on. "What is the
good of concerning yourself with his appearance?
Whatever it was, he is removed beyond all
feminine influences now."
A frown, making three folds at the root of her
nose, accentuated the Mephistophelian slant of
her eyebrows.
"You suffer, Razumov," she suggested, in her
low, confident voice.
"What nonsense!" Razumov faced the woman
fairly. "But now I think of it, I am not sure
that he is beyond the influence of one woman at
least; the one over there--Madame de S---, you
know. Formerly the dead were allowed to rest,
but now it seems they are at the beck and call
of a crazy old harridan. We revolutionists make
wonderful discoveries. It is true that they are
not exactly our own. We have nothing of our
own. But couldn't the friend of Peter
Ivanovitch satisfy your feminine curiosity?
Couldn't she conjure him up for you?"--he jested
like a man in pain.
Her concentrated frowning expression relaxed,
and she said, a little wearily, "Let us hope she
will make an effort and conjure up some tea for
us. But that is by no means certain. I am
tired, Razumov."
"You tired! What a confession! Well, there has
been tea up there. I had some. If you hurry on
after Yakovlitch, instead of wasting your time
with such an unsatisfactory sceptical person as
myself, you may find the ghost of it--the cold
ghost of it--still lingering in the temple. But
as to you being tired I can hardly believe it.
We are not supposed to be. We mustn't, We
can't. The other day I read in some paper or
other an alarmist article on the tireless
activity of the revolutionary parties. It
impresses the world. It's our prestige."
"He flings out continually these flouts and
sneers;" the woman in the crimson blouse spoke
as if appealing quietly to a third person, but
her black eyes never left Razumov's face. "And
what for, pray? Simply because some of his
conventional notions are shocked, some of his
petty masculine standards. You might think he
was one of these nervous sensitives that come to
a bad end. And yet," she went on, after a
short, reflective pause and changing the mode of
her address, "and yet I have just learned
something which makes me think that you are a
man of character, Kirylo Sidorovitch. Yes!
indeed--you are."
The mysterious positiveness of this assertion
startled Razumov. Their eyes met. He looked
away and, through the bars of the rusty gate,
stared at the clean, wide road shaded by the
leafy trees. An electric tramcar, quite empty,
ran along the avenue with a metallic rustle. It
seemed to him he would have given anything to be
sitting inside all alone. He was inexpressibly
weary, weary in every fibre of his body, but he
had a reason for not being the first to break
off the conversation. At any instant, in the
visionary and criminal babble of revolutionists,
some momentous words might fall on his ear; from
her lips, from anybody's lips. As long as he
managed to preserve a clear mind and to keep
down his irritability there was nothing to fear.
The only condition of success and safety was
indomitable will-power, he reminded himself.
He longed to be on the other side of the bars,
as though he were actually a prisoner within the
grounds of this centre of revolutionary plots,
of this house of folly, of blindness, of
villainy and crime. Silently he indulged his
wounded spirit in a feeling of immense moral and
mental remoteness. He did not even smile when
he heard her repeat the words--
"Yes! A strong character."
He continued to gaze through the bars like a
moody prisoner, not thinking of escape, but
merely pondering upon the faded memories of
freedom.
"If you don't look out," he mumbled, still
looking away, "you shall certainly miss seeing
as much as the mere ghost of that tea."
She was not to be shaken off in such a way. As
a matter of fact he had not expected to succeed.
"Never mind, it will be no great loss. I mean
the missing of her tea and only the ghost of it
at that. As to the lady, you must understand
that she has her positive uses. See _that_,
Razumov."
He turned his head at this imperative appeal and
saw the woman revolutionist making the motions
of counting money into the palm of her hand.
"That's what it is. You see?"
Razumov uttered a slow "I see," and returned to
his prisoner-like gazing upon the neat and shady
road.
"Material means must be obtained in some way,
and this is easier than breaking into banks.
More certain too. There! I am joking. . . .
What is he muttering to himself now?" she cried
under her breath.
"My admiration of Peter Ivanovitch's devoted
self-sacrifice, that's all. It's enough to make
one sick."
"Oh, you squeamish, masculine creature. Sick!
Makes him sick! And what do you know of the
truth of it? There's no looking into the
secrets of the heart. Peter Ivanovitch knew her
years ago, in his worldly days, when he was a
young officer in the Guards. It is not for us
to judge an inspired person. That's where you
men have an advantage. You are inspired
sometimes both in thought and action. I have
always admitted that when you _are_ inspired,
when you manage to throw off your masculine
cowardice and prudishness you are not to be
equalled by us. Only, how seldom. . . .
Whereas the silliest woman can always be made of
use. And why? Because we have passion,
unappeasable passion. . . . I should like to
know what he is smiling at?"
"I am not smiling," protested Razumov gloomily.
"Well! How is one to call it? You made some
sort of face. Yes, I know! You men can love
here and hate there and desire something or
other--and you make a great to-do about it, and
you call it passion! Yes! While it lasts. But
we women are in love with love, and with hate,
with these very things I tell you, and with
desire itself. That's why we can't be bribed
off so easily as you men. In life, you see,
there is not much choice. You have either to
rot or to burn. And there is not one of us,
painted or unpainted, that would not rather burn
than rot."
She spoke with energy, but in a matter-of-fact
tone. Razumov's attention had wandered away on
a track of its own--outside the bars of the gate-
-but not out of earshot. He stuck his hands
into the pockets of his coat.
"Rot or burn! Powerfully stated. Painted or
unpainted. Very vigorous. Painted or. . . .
Do tell me--she would be infernally jealous of
him, wouldn't she?"
"Who? What? The Baroness? Eleanor Maximovna?
Jealous of Peter Ivanovitch? Heavens! Are
these the questions the man's mind is running
on? Such a thing is not to be thought of."
"Why? Can't a wealthy old woman be jealous?
Or, are they all pure spirits together?"
"But what put it into your head to ask such a
question?" she wondered.
"Nothing. I just asked. Masculine frivolity,
if you like."
"I don't like," she retorted at once. "It is
not the time to be frivolous. What are you
flinging your very heart against? Or, perhaps,
you are only playing a part."
Razumov had felt that woman's observation of him
like a physical contact, like a hand resting
lightly on his shoulder. At that moment he
received the mysterious impression of her having
made up her mind for a closer grip. He
stiffened himself inwardly to bear it without
betraying himself.
"Playing a Part," he repeated, presenting to her
an unmoved profile. "It must be done very badly
since you see through the assumption."
She watched him, her forehead drawn into
perpendicular folds, the thin black eyebrows
diverging upwards like tile antennae of an
insect. He added hardly audibly--
"You are mistaken. I am doing it no more than
the rest of us."
"Who is doing it?" she snapped out.
"Who? Everybody," he said impatiently. "You
are a materialist, aren't you?"
"Eh! My dear soul, I have outlived all that
nonsense."
"But you must remember the definition of
Cabanis: 'Man is a digestive tube.' I imagine
now. . . ."
"I spit on him."
"What? On Cabanis? All right. But you can't
ignore the importance of a good digestion. The
joy of life--you know the joy of life?--depends
on a sound stomach, whereas a bad digestion
inclines one to scepticism, breeds black fancies
and thoughts of death. These are facts
ascertained by physiologists. Well, I assure
you that ever since I came over from Russia I
have been stuffed with indigestible foreign
concoctions of the most nauseating kind--pah !"
"You are joking," she murmured incredulously.
He assented in a detached way.
"Yes. It is all a joke. It's hardly worth
while talking to a man like me. Yet for that
very reason men have been known to take their
own life."
"On the contrary, I think it is worth while
talking to you."
He kept her in the corner of his eye. She
seemed to be thinking out some scathing retort,
but ended by only shrugging her shoulders
slightly.
"Shallow talk! I suppose one must pardon this
weakness in you," she said, putting a special
accent on the last word. There was something
anxious in her indulgent conclusion.
Razumov noted the slightest shades in this
conversation, which he had not expected, for
which he was not prepared. That was it. "I was
not prepared," he said to himself. "It has
taken me unawares." It seemed to him that if he
only could allow himself to pant openly like a
dog for a time this oppression would pass away.
"I shall never be found prepared," he thought,
with despair. He laughed a little, saying as
lightly as he could--
"Thanks. I don't ask for mercy." Then
affecting a playful uneasiness, "But aren't you
afraid Peter Ivanovitch might suspect us of
plotting something unauthorized together by the
gate here?"
"No, I am not afraid. You are quite safe from
suspicions while you are with me, my dear young
man." The humorous gleam in her black eyes went
out. "Peter Ivanovitch trusts me," she went on,
quite austerely. "He takes my advice. I am his
right hand, as it were, in certain most
important things. . . . That amuses you what?
Do you think I am boasting?"
"God forbid. I was just only saying to myself
that Peter Ivanovitch seems to have solved the
woman question pretty completely."
Even as he spoke he reproached himself for his
words, for his tone. All day long he had been
saying the wrong things. It was folly, worse
than folly. It was weakness; it was this
disease of perversity overcoming his will. Was
this the way to meet speeches which certainly
contained the promise of future confidences from
that woman who apparently had a great store of
secret knowledge and so much influence? Why
give her this puzzling impression? But she did
not seem inimical. There was no anger in her
voice. It was strangely speculative.
"One does not know what to think, Razumov. You
must have bitten something bitter in your
cradle." Razumov gave her a sidelong glance.
"H'm! Something bitter? That's an
explanation," he muttered. "Only it was much
later. And don't you think, Sophia Antonovna,
that you and I come from the same cradle?"
The woman, whose name he had forced himself at
last to pronounce (he had experienced a strong
repugnance in letting it pass his lips), the
woman revolutionist murmured, after a pause--
"You mean--Russia?"
He disdained even to nod. She seemed softened,
her black eyes very still, as though she were
pursuing the simile in her thoughts to all its
tender associations. But suddenly she knitted
her brows in a Mephistophelian frown.
"Yes. Perhaps no wonder, then. Yes. One lies
there lapped up in evils, watched over by beings
that are worse than ogres, ghouls, and vampires.
They must be driven away, destroyed utterly.
In regard of that task nothing else matters if
men and women are determined and faithful.
That's how I came to feel in the end. The great
thing is not to quarrel amongst ourselves about
all sorts of conventional trifles. Remember
that, Razumov."
Razumov was not listening. He had even lost the
sense of being watched in a sort of heavy
tranquillity. His uneasiness, his exasperation,
his scorn were blunted at last by all these
trying hours. It seemed to him that now they
were blunted for ever. "I am a match for them
all," he thought, with a conviction too firm to
be exulting. The woman revolutionist had ceased
speaking; he was not looking at her; there was
no one passing along the road. He almost forgot
that he was not alone. He heard her voice
again, curt, businesslike, and yet betraying the
hesitation which had been the real reason of her
prolonged silence.
"I say, Razumov!"
Razumov, whose face was turned away from her,
made a grimace like a man who hears a false note.
"Tell me: is it true that on the very morning of
the deed you actually attended the lectures at
the University?"
An appreciable fraction of a second elapsed
before the real import of the question reached
him, like a bullet which strikes some time after
the flash of the fired shot. Luckily his
disengaged hand was ready to grip a bar of the
gate. He held it with a terrible force, but his
presence of mind was gone. He could make only a
sort of gurgling, grumpy sound.
"Come, Kirylo Sidorovitch!" she urged him. "I
know you are not a boastful man. _That_ one
must say for you. You are a silent man. Too
silent, perhaps. You are feeding on some
bitterness of your own. You are not an
enthusiast. You are, perhaps, all the stronger
for that. But you might tell me. One would
like to understand you a little more. I was so
immensely struck. . . . Have you really done
it?"
He got his voice back. The shot had missed him.
It had been fired at random, altogether, more
like a signal for coming to close quarters. It
was to be a plain struggle for self-
preservation. And she was a dangerous adversary
too. But he was ready for battle; he was so
ready that when he turned towards her not a
muscle of his face moved.
" Certainly," he said, without animation,
secretly strung up but perfectly sure of
himself. "Lectures--certainly, But what makes
you ask?"
It was she who was animated.
"I had it in a letter, written by a young man in
Petersburg; one of us, of course. You were seen-
-you were observed with your notebook,
impassible, taking notes. . . ."
He enveloped her with his fixed stare.
"What of that?"
"I call such coolness superb--that's all. It is
a proof of uncommon strength of character. The
young man writes that nobody could have guessed
from your face and manner the part you had
played only some two hours before--the great,
momentous, glorious part. . . ."
"Oh no. Nobody could have guessed," assented
Razumov gravely, "because, don't you see, nobody
at that time. . . ."
"Yes, yes. But all the same you are a man of
exceptional fortitude, it seems. You looked
exactly as usual. It was remembered afterwards
with wonder. . . ."
"It cost me no effort," Razumov declared, with
the same staring gravity.
"Then it's almost more wonderful still!" she
exclaimed, and fell silent while Razumov asked
himself whether he had not said there something
utterly unnecessary--or even worse.
She raised her head eagerly.
"Your intention was to stay in Russia? You had
planned. . . ."
"No," interrupted Razumov without haste. "I had
made no plans of any sort."
"You just simply walked away?" she struck in.
He bowed his head in slow assent. "Simply--
yes." He had gradually released his hold on the
bar of the gate, as though he had acquired the
conviction that no random shot could knock him
over now. And suddenly he was inspired to add,
"The snow was coming down very thick, you know."
She had a slight appreciative movement of the
head, like an expert in such enterprises, very
interested, capable of taking every point
professionally. Razumov remembered something he
had heard.
"I turned into a narrow side street, you
understand," he went on negligently, and paused
as if it were not worth talking about. Then he
remembered another detail and dropped it before
her, like a disdainful dole to her curiosity.
"I felt inclined to lie down and go to sleep
there."
She clicked her tongue at that symptom, very
struck indeed. Then--
"But the notebook! The amazing notebook, man.
You don't mean to say you had put it in your
pocket beforehand!" she cried.
Razumov gave a start. It might have been a sign
of impatience.
"I went home. Straight home to my rooms," he
said distinctly.
"The coolness of the man! You dared?"
"Why not? I assure you I was perfectly calm.
Ha! Calmer than I am now perhaps."
"I like you much better as you are now than when
you indulge that bitter vein of yours, Razumov.
And nobody in the house saw you return--eh?
That might have appeared queer."
"No one," Razumov said firmly. "Dvornik,
landlady, girl, all out of the way. I went up
like a shadow. It was a murky morning. The
stairs were dark. I glided up like a phantom.
Fate? Luck? What do you think?"
"I just see it!" The eyes of the woman
revolutionist snapped darkly. "Well--and then
you considered. . . ."
Razumov had it all ready in his head.
"No. I looked at my watch, since you want to
know. There was just time. I took that
notebook, and ran down the stairs on tiptoe.
Have you ever listened to the pit-pat of a man
running round and round the shaft of a deep
staircase? They have a gaslight at the bottom
burning night and day. I suppose it's gleaming
down there now. . . . The sound dies out--the
flame winks. . . ."
He noticed the vacillation of surprise passing
over the steady curiosity of the black eyes
fastened on his face as if the woman
revolutionist received the sound of his voice
into her pupils instead of her ears. He checked
himself, passed his hand over his forehead,
confused, like a man who has been dreaming aloud.
"Where could a student be running if not to his
lectures in the morning? At night it's another
matter. I did not care if all the house had
been there to look at me. But I don't suppose
there was anyone. It's best not to be seen or
heard. Aha! The people that are neither seen
nor heard are the lucky ones--in Russia. Don't
you admire my luck?"
"Astonishing," she said. "If you have luck as
well as determination, then indeed you are
likely to turn out an invaluable acquisition for
the work in hand."
Her tone was earnest; and it seemed to Razumov
that it was speculative, even as though she were
already apportioning him, in her mind, his share
of the work. Her eyes were cast down. He
waited, not very alert now, but with the grip of
the ever-present danger giving him an air of
attentive gravity. Who could have written about
him in that letter from Petersburg? A fellow
student, surely--some imbecile victim of
revolutionary propaganda, some foolish slave of
foreign, subversive ideals. A long, famine-
stricken, red-nosed figure presented itself to
his mental search. That must have been the
fellow!
He smiled inwardly at the absolute wrong-
headedness of the whole thing, the self-
deception of a criminal idealist shattering his
existence like a thunder-clap out of a clear
sky, and re-echoing amongst the wreckage in the
false assumptions of those other fools. Fancy
that hungry and piteous imbecile furnishing to
the curiosity of the revolutionist refugees this
utterly fantastic detail! He appreciated it as
by no means constituting a danger. On the
contrary. As things stood it was for his
advantage rather, a piece of sinister luck which
had only to be accepted with proper caution.
"And yet, Razumov," he heard the musing voice of
the woman, "you have not the face of a lucky
man." She raised her eyes with renewed
interest. "And so that
was the way of it. After doing your work you simply walked off and made for
your rooms. That sort of thing succeeds sometimes. I suppose it was agreed
beforehand that, once the business over, each of you would go his own way?"
Razumov preserved the seriousness of his expression and the deliberate, if
cautious, manner of speaking.
"Was not that the best thing to do?" he asked, in a dispassionate tone. "And
anyway," he added, after waiting a moment, " we did not give much thought to
what would come after. We never discussed formally any line of conduct. It
was understood, I think."
She approved his statement with slight nods.
"You, of course, wished to remain in Russia?"
"In St. Petersburg itself," emphasized Razumov. "It was the only safe course
for me. And, moreover, I had nowhere else to go."
"Yes! Yes! I know. Clearly. And the other--this wonderful Haldin appearing
only to be regretted--you don't know what he intended?"
Razumov had foreseen that such a question would certainly come to meet him
sooner or later. He raised his hands a little and let them fall helplessly by
his side--nothing more.
It was the white-haired woman conspirator who was the first to break the
silence.
"Very curious," she pronounced slowly. "And you did not think, Kirylo
Sidorovitch, that he might perhaps wish to get in touch with you again?"
Razumov discovered that he could not suppress the trembling of his lips. But
he thought that he owed it to himself to speak. A negative sign would not do
again. Speak he must, if only to get at the bottom of what that St. Petersburg
letter might have contained.
"I stayed at home next day," he said, bending down a little and plunging his
glance into the black eyes of the woman so that she should not observe the
trembling of his lips. "Yes, I stayed at home. As my actions are remembered
and written about, then perhaps you are aware that I was _not_ seen at the
lectures next day. Eh? You didn't know? Well, I stopped at home-the
live-long day."
As if moved by his agitated tone, she murmured a sympathetic "I see! It must
have been trying enough."
"You seem to understand one's feelings," said Razumov steadily. "It was
trying. It was horrible; it was an atrocious day. It was not the last."
"Yes, I understand. Afterwards, when you heard they had got him. Don't I know
how one feels after losing a comrade in the good fight? One's ashamed of being
left. And I can remember so many. Never mind. They shall be avenged before
long. And what is death? At any rate, it is not a shameful thing like some
kinds of life."
Razumov felt something stir in his breast, a sort of feeble and unpleasant
tremor.
"Some kinds of life?" he repeated, looking at her searchingly.
"The subservient, submissive life. Life? No! Vegetation on the filthy heap
of iniquity which the world is. Life, Razumov, not to be vile must be a
revolt--a pitiless protest--all the time."
She calmed down, the gleam of suffused tears in her eyes dried out instantly by
the heat of her passion, and it was in her capable, businesslike manner that
she went on--
"You understand me, Razumov. You are not an enthusiast, but there is an
immense force of revolt in you. I felt it from the first, directly I set my
eyes on you--you remember--in Zurich. Oh! You are full of bitter revolt.
That is good. Indignation flags sometimes, revenge itself may become a
weariness, but that uncompromising sense of necessity and justice which armed
your and Haldin's hands to strike down that fanatical brute. . . for it was
that--nothing but that! I have been thinking it out. It could have been
nothing else but that."
Razumov made a slight bow, the irony of which was concealed by an almost
sinister immobility of feature.
"I can't speak for the dead. As for myself, I can assure you that my conduct
was dictated by necessity and by the sense of--well--retributive justice."
"Good, that," he said to himself, while her eyes rested upon him, black and
impenetrable like the mental caverns where revolutionary thought should sit
plotting the violent way of its dream of changes. As if anything could be
changed! In this world of men nothing can be changed--neither happiness nor
misery. They can only be displaced at the cost of corrupted consciences and
broken lives--a futile game for arrogant philosophers and sanguinary triflers.
Those thoughts darted through Razumov's head while he stood facing the old
revolutionary hand, the respected, trusted, and influential Sophia Antonovna,
whose word had such a weight in the "active" section of every party. She was
much more representative than the great Peter Ivanovitch. Stripped of
rhetoric, mysticism, and theories, she was the true spirit of destructive
revolution. And she was the personal adversary he had to meet. It gave him a
feeling of triumphant pleasure to deceive her out of her own mouth. The
epigrammatic saying that speech has been given to us for the purpose of
concealing our thoughts came into his mind. Of that cynical theory this was a
very subtle and a very scornful application, flouting in its own words the very
spirit of ruthless revolution, embodied in that woman with her white hair and
black eyebrows, like slightly sinuous lines of Indian ink, drawn together by
the perpendicular folds of a thoughtful frown.
"That's it. Retributive. No pity!" was the conclusion of her silence. And
this once broken, she went on impulsively in short, vibrating sentences--
"Listen to my story, Razumov! . . ." Her father was a clever but unlucky
artisan. No joy had lighted up his laborious days. He died at fifty; all the
years of his life he had panted under the thumb of masters whose rapacity
exacted from him the price of the water, of the salt, of the very air he
breathed; taxed the sweat of his brow and claimed the blood of his sons. No
protection, no guidance! What had society to say to him? Be submissive and be
honest. If you rebel I shall kill you. If you steal I shall imprison you.
But if you suffer I have nothing for you--nothing except perhaps a beggarly
dole of bread--but no consolation for your trouble, no respect for your
manhood, no pity for the sorrows of your miserable life.
And so he laboured, he suffered, and he died. He died in the hospital.
Standing by the common grave she thought of his tormented existence--she saw
it whole. She reckoned the simple joys of life, the birthright of the
humblest, of which his gentle heart had been robbed by the crime of a society
which nothing can absolve.
"Yes, Razumov," she continued, in an impressive, lowered voice, "it was like a
lurid light in which I stood, still almost a child, and cursed not the toil,
not the misery which had been his lot, but the great social iniquity of the
system resting on unrequited toil and unpitied sufferings. From that moment I
was a revolutionist."
Razumov, trying to raise himself above the dangerous weaknesses of contempt or
compassion, had preserved an impassive countenance. She, with an unaffected
touch of mere bitterness, the first he could notice since he had come in
contact with the woman, went on--
"As I could not go to the Church where the priests of the system exhorted such
unconsidered vermin as I to resignation, I went to the secret societies as soon
as I knew how to find my way. I was sixteen years old--no more, Razumov!
And--look at my white hair."
In these last words there was neither pride nor sadness. The bitterness too
was gone.
"There is a lot of it. I had always magnificent hair, even as a chit of a
girl. Only, at that time we were cutting it short and thinking that there was
the first step towards crushing the social infamy. Crush the Infamy! A fine
watchword! I would placard it on the walls of prisons and palaces, carve it on
hard rocks, hang it out in letters of fire on that empty sky for a sign of hope
and terror--a portent of the end. . . ."
"You are eloquent, Sophia Antonovna," Razumov interrupted suddenly. "Only, so
far you seem to have been writing it in water. . . ."
She was checked but not offended. "Who knows? Very soon it may become a fact
written all over that great land of ours," she hinted meaningly. "And then one
would have lived long enough. White hair won't matter."
Razumov looked at her white hair: and this mark of so many uneasy years seemed
nothing but a testimony to the invincible vigour of revolt. It threw out into
an astonishing relief the unwrinkled face, the brilliant black glance, the
upright compact figure, the simple, brisk self-possession of the mature
personality--as though in her revolutionary pilgrimage she had discovered the
secret, not of everlasting youth, but of everlasting endurance.
How un-Russian she looked, thought Razumov. Her mother might have been a
Jewess or an Armenian or devil knew what. He reflected that a revolutionist is
seldom true to the settled type. All revolt is the expression of strong
individualism--ran his thought vaguely. One can tell them a mile off in any
society, in any surroundings. It was astonishing that the police. . . .
"We shall not meet again very soon, I think," she was saying. "I am leaving
to-morrow."
"For Zurich?" Razumov asked casually, but feeling relieved, not from any
distinct apprehension, but from a feeling of stress as if after a wrestling
match.
"Yes, Zurich--and farther on, perhaps, much farther. Another journey. When I
think of all my journeys! The last must come some day. Never mind, Razumov.
We had to have a good long talk. I would have certainly tried to see you if
we had not met. Peter Ivanovitch knows where you live? Yes. I meant to have
asked him--but it's better like this. You see, we expect two more men; and I
had much rather wait here talking with you than up there at the house with. . .
."
Having cast a glance beyond the gate, she interrupted herself. "Here they
are," she said rapidly. "Well, Kirylo Sidorovitch, we shall have to say
good-bye, presently."
IV
In his incertitude of the ground on which he stood Razumov felt perturbed.
Turning his head quickly, he saw two men on the opposite side of the road.
Seeing themselves noticed by Sophia Antonovna, they crossed over at once, and
passed one after another through the little gate by the side of the empty
lodge. They looked hard at the stranger, but without mistrust, the crimson
blouse being a flaring safety signal. The first, great white hairless face,
double chin, prominent stomach, which he seemed to carry forward consciously
within a strongly distended overcoat, only nodded and averted his eyes
peevishly; his companion--lean, flushed cheekbones, a military red moustache
below a sharp, salient nose--approached at once Sophia Antonovna, greeting her
warmly. His voice was very strong but inarticulate. It sounded like a deep
buzzing. The woman revolutionist was quietly cordial.
"This is Razumov," she announced in a clear voice.
The lean new-comer made an eager half-turn. "He will want to embrace me,"
thought our young man with a deep recoil of all his being, while his limbs
seemed too heavy to move. But it was a groundless alarm. He had to do now
with a generation of conspirators who did not kiss each other on both cheeks;
and raising an arm that felt like lead he dropped his hand into a
largely-outstretched palm, fleshless and hot as if dried up by fever, giving a
bony pressure, expressive, seeming to say, "Between us there's no need of
words." The man had big, wide-open eyes. Razumov fancied he could see a smile
behind their sadness.
"This is Razumov," Sophia Antonovna repeated loudly for the benefit of the fat
man, who at some distance displayed the profile of his stomach.
No one moved. Everything, sounds, attitudes, movements, and immobility seemed
to be part of an experiment, the result of which was a thin voice piping with
comic peevishness--
"Oh yes! Razumov. We have been hearing of nothing but Mr. Razumov for months.
For my part, I confess I would rather have seen Haldin on this spot instead of
Mr. Razumov."
The squeaky stress put on the name "Razumov--Mr. Razumov" pierced the ear
ridiculously, like the falsetto of a circus clown beginning an elaborate joke.
Astonishment was Razumov's first response, followed by sudden indignation.
"What's the meaning of this?" he asked in a stern tone.
"Tut! Silliness. He's always like that." Sophia Antonovna was obviously
vexed. But she dropped the information, "Necator," from her lips just loud
enough to be heard by Razumov. The abrupt squeaks of the fat man seemed to
proceed from that thing like a balloon he carried under his overcoat. The
stolidity of his attitude, the big feet, the lifeless, hanging hands, the
enormous bloodless cheek, the thin wisps of hair straggling down the fat nape
of the neck, fascinated Razumov into a stare on the verge of horror and
laughter.
Nikita, surnamed Necator, with a sinister aptness of alliteration! Razumov had
heard of him. He had heard so much since crossing the frontier of these
celebrities of the militant revolution; the legends, the stories, the authentic
chronicle, which now and then peeps out before a half-incredulous world.
Razumov had heard of him. He was supposed to have killed more, gendarmes and
police agents than any revolutionist living. He had been entrusted with
executions.
The paper with the letters N.N., the very pseudonym of murder, found pinned on
the stabbed breast of a certain notorious spy (this picturesque detail of a
sensational murder case had got into the newspapers), was the mark of his
handiwork. "By order of the Committee.--N.N." A corner of the curtain lifted
to strike the imagination of the gaping world. He was said to have been
innumerable times in and out of Russia, the Necator of bureaucrats, of
provincial governors, of obscure informers. He lived between whiles, Razumov
had heard, on the shores of the Lake of Como, with a charming wife, devoted to
the cause, and two young children. But how could that creature, so grotesque
as to set town dogs barking at its mere sight, go about on those deadly errands
and slip through the meshes of the police?"
"What now? what now?" the voice squeaked. "I am only sincere. It's not denied
that the other was the leading spirit. Well, it would have been better if he
had been the one spared to us. More useful. I am not a sentimentalist. Say
what I think. . . only natural."
Squeak, squeak, squeak, without a gesture, without a stir--the horrible squeaky
burlesque of professional jealousy--this man of a sinister alliterative
nickname, this executioner of revolutionary verdicts, the terrifying N.N.
exasperated like a fashionable tenor by the attention attracted to the
performance of an obscure amateur. Sophia Antonovna shrugged her shoulders.
The comrade with the martial red moustache hurried towards Razumov full of
conciliatory intentions in his strong buzzing voice.
"Devil take it! And in this place, too, in the public street, so to speak.
But you can see yourself how it is. One of his fantastic sallies. Absolutely
of no consequence."
"Pray don't concern yourself," cried Razumov, going off into a long fit of
laughter. "Don't mention it."
The other, his hectic flush like a pair of burns on his cheek-bones, stared for
a moment and burst out laughing too. Razumov, whose hilarity died out all at
once, made a step forward.
"Enough of this," he began in a clear, incisive voice, though he could hardly
control the trembling of his legs. "I will have no more of it. I shall not
permit anyone. . . . I can see very well what you are at with those allusions.
. . . Inquire, investigate! I defy you, but I will not be played with."
He had spoken such words before. He had been driven to cry them out in the
face of other suspicions. It was an infernal cycle bringing round that protest
like a fatal necessity of his existence. But it was no use. He would be
always played with. Luckily life does not last for ever.
"I won't have it!" he shouted, striking his fist into the palm of his other
hand.
"Kirylo Sidorovitch--what has come to you?" The woman revolutionist interfered
with authority. They were all looking at Razumov now; the slayer of spies and
gendarmes had turned about, presenting his enormous stomach in full, like a
shield.
"Don't shout. There are people passing." Sophia Antonovna was apprehensive of
another outburst. A steam-launch from Monrepos had come to the landing-stage
opposite the gate, its hoarse whistle and the churning noise alongside all
unnoticed, had landed a small bunch of local passengers who were dispersing
their several ways. Only a specimen of early tourist in knickerbockers,
conspicuous by a brand-new yellow leather glass-case, hung about for a moment,
scenting something unusual about these four people within the rusty iron gates
of what looked the grounds run wild of an unoccupied private house. Ah! If he
had only known what the chance of commonplace travelling had suddenly put in
his way! But he was a well-bred person; he averted his gaze and moved off with
short steps along the avenue, on the watch for a tramcar.
A gesture from Sophia Antonovna, "Leave him to me," had sent the two men
away--the buzzing of the inarticulate voice growing fainter and fainter, and
the thin pipe of "What now? what's the matter?" reduced to the proportions of a
squeaking toy by the distance. They had left him to her. So many things could
be left safely to the experience of Sophia Antonovna. And at once, her black
eyes turned to Razumov, her mind tried to get at the heart of that outburst.
It had some meaning. No one is born an active revolutionist. The change
comes disturbingly, with the force of a sudden vocation, bringing in its train
agonizing doubts, assertive violences, an unstable state of the soul, till the
final appeasement of the convert in the perfect fierceness of conviction. She
had seen--often had only divined--scores of these young men and young women
going through an emotional crisis. This young man looked like a moody egotist.
And besides, it was a special--a unique case. She had never met an
individuality which interested and puzzled her so much.
"Take care, Razumov, my good friend. If you carry on like this you will go
mad. You are angry with everybody and bitter with yourself, and on the look
out for something to torment yourself with."
"It's intolerable!" Razumov could only speak in gasps. " You must admit that
I can have no illusions on the attitude which. . . it isn't clear. . . or
rather only too clear."
He made a gesture of despair. It was not his courage that failed him. The
choking fumes of falsehood had taken him by the throat--the thought of being
condemned to struggle on and on in that tainted atmosphere without the hope of
ever renewing his strength by a breath of fresh air.
"A glass of cold water is what you want." Sophia Antonovna glanced up the
grounds at the house and shook her head, then out of the gate at the brimful
placidity of the lake. With a half-comical shrug of the shoulders, she gave
the remedy up in the face of that abundance.
"It is you, my dear soul, who are flinging yourself at something which does not
exist. What is it? Self-reproach, or what? It's absurd. You couldn't have
gone and given yourself up because your comrade was taken."
She remonstrated with him reasonably, at some length too. He had nothing to
complain of in his reception. Every new-comer was discussed more or less.
Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted. No one that
she could remember had been shown from the first so much confidence. Soon,
very soon, perhaps sooner than he expected, he would be given an opportunity of
showing his devotion to the sacred task of crushing the Infamy.
Razumov, listening quietly, thought: "It may be that she is trying to lull my
suspicions to sleep. On the other hand, it is obvious that most of them are
fools." He moved aside a couple of paces and, folding his arms on his breast,
leaned back against the stone pillar of the gate.
"As to what remains obscure in the fate of that poor Haldin," Sophia Antonovna
dropped into a slowness of utterance which was to Razumov like the falling of
molten lead drop by drop; "as to that--though no one ever hinted that either
from fear or neglect your conduct has not been what it should have been--well,
I have a bit of intelligence. . . ."
Razumov could not prevent himself from raising his head, and Sophia Antonovna
nodded slightly.
"I have. You remember that letter from St. Petersburg I mentioned to you a
moment ago?"
"The letter? Perfectly. Some busybody has been reporting my conduct on a
certain day. It's rather sickening. I suppose our police are greatly edified
when they open these interesting and--and--superfluous letters."
"Oh dear no! The police do not get hold of our letters as easily as you
imagine. The letter in question did not leave St. Petersburg till the ice
broke up. It went by the first English steamer which left the Neva this
spring. They have a fireman on board--one of us, in fact. It has reached me
from Hull. . . ."
She paused as if she were surprised at the sullen fixity of Razumov's gaze, but
went on at once, and much faster.
"We have some of our people there who . . . but never mind. The writer of the
letter relates an incident which he thinks may possibly be connected with
Haldin's arrest. I was just going to tell you when those two men came along."
"That also was an incident," muttered Razumov, "of a very charming kind--for
me."
"Leave off that!" cried Sophia Antonovna." Nobody cares for Nikita's barking.
There's no malice in him. Listen to what I have to say. You may be able to
throw a light. There was in St. Petersburg a sort of town peasant--a man who
owned horses. He came to town years ago to work for some relation as a driver
and ended by owning a cab or two."
She might well have spared herself the slight effort of the gesture: "Wait!"
Razumov did not mean to speak; he could not have interrupted her now, not to
save his life. The contraction of his facial muscles had been involuntary, a
mere surface stir, leaving him sullenly attentive as before.
"He was not a quite ordinary man of his class--it seems," she went on. " The
people of the house--my informant talked with many of them--you know, one of
those enormous houses of shame and misery. . . ."
Sophia Antonovna need not have enlarged on the character of the house. Razumov
saw clearly, towering at her back, a dark mass of masonry veiled in snowflakes,
with the long row of windows of the eating-shop shining greasily very near the
ground. The ghost of that night pursued him. He stood up to it with rage and
with weariness.
"Did the late Haldin ever by chance speak to you of that house?" Sophia
Antonovna was anxious to know.
"Yes." Razumov, making that answer, wondered whether he were falling into a
trap. It was so humiliating to lie to these people that he probably could not
have said no. "He mentioned to me once," he added, as if making an effort of
memory, " a house of that sort. He used to visit some workmen there."
"Exactly."
Sophia Antonovna triumphed. Her correspondent had discovered that fact quite
accidentally from the talk of the people of the house, having made friends with
a workman who occupied a room there. They described Haldin's appearance
perfectly. He brought comforting words of hope into their misery. He came
irregularly, but he came very often, and--her correspondent wrote--sometimes he
spent a night in the house, sleeping, they thought, in a stable which opened
upon the inner yard.
"Note that, Razumov! In a stable."
Razumov had listened with a sort of ferocious but amused acquiescence.
"Yes. In the straw. It was probably the cleanest spot in the whole house."
"No doubt," assented the woman with that deep frown which seemed to draw closer
together her black eyes in a sinister fashion. No four-footed beast could
stand the filth and wretchedness so many human beings were condemned to suffer
from in Russia. The point of this discovery was that it proved Haldin to have
been familiar with that horse-owning peasant--a reckless, independent,
free-living fellow not much liked by the other inhabitants of the house. He
was believed to have been the associate of a band of housebreakers. Some of
these got captured. Not while he was driving them, however; but still there
was a suspicion against the fellow of having given a hint to the police and. .
. .
The woman revolutionist checked herself suddenly.
"And you? Have you ever heard your friend refer to a certain Ziemianitch?"
Razumov was ready for the name. He had been looking out for the question.
"When it comes I shall own up," he had said to himself. But he took his time.
"To be sure!" he began slowly. "Ziemianitch, a peasant owning a team of
horses. Yes. On one occasion. Ziemianitch! Certainly! Ziemianitch of the
horses. . . . How could it have slipped my memory like this? One of the last
conversations we had together."
"That means,"--Sophia Antonovna looked very grave,--"that means, Razumov, it
was very shortly before--eh?"
"Before what?" shouted Razumov, advancing at the woman, who looked astonished
but stood her ground. "Before. . . . Oh! Of course, it was before! How could
it have been after? Only a few hours before."
"And he spoke of him favourably?"
"With enthusiasm! The horses of Ziemianitch! The free soul of Ziemianitch!"
Razumov took a savage delight in the loud utterance of that name, which had
never before crossed his lips audibly. He fixed his blazing eyes on the woman
till at last her fascinated expression recalled him to himself.
"The late Haldin," he said, holding himself in, with downcast eyes, "was
inclined to take sudden fancies to people, on--on--what shall I
say--insufficient grounds."
"There!" Sophia Antonovna clapped her hands. "That, to my mind, settles it.
The suspicions of my correspondent were aroused. . . ."
"Aha! Your correspondent," Razumov said in an almost openly mocking tone. "
What suspicions? How aroused? By this Ziemianitch? Probably some drunken,
gabbling, plausible. . . ."
"You talk as if you had known him."
Razumov looked up.
"No. But I knew Haldin."
Sophia Antonovna nodded gravely.
"I see. Every word you say confirms to my mind the suspicion communicated to
me in that very interesting letter. This Ziemianitch was found one morning
hanging from a hook in the stable--dead."
Razumov felt a profound trouble. It was visible, because Sophia Antonovna was
moved to observe vivaciously--
"Aha! You begin to see."
He saw it clearly enough--in the light of a lantern casting spokes of shadow in
a cellar-like stable, the body in a sheepskin coat and long boots hanging
against the wall. A pointed hood, with the ends wound about up to the eyes,
hid the face. "But that does not concern me," he reflected. "It does not
affect my position at all. He never knew who had thrashed him. He could not
have known." Razumov felt sorry for the old lover of the bottle and women.
"Yes. Some of them end like that," he muttered. "What is your idea, Sophia
Antonovna?"
It was really the idea of her correspondent, but Sophia Antonovna had adopted
it fully. She stated it in one word--"Remorse." Razumov opened his eyes very
wide at that. Sophia Antonovna's informant, by listening to the talk of the
house, by putting this and that together, had managed to come very near to the
truth of Haldin's relation to Ziemianitch.
"It is I who can tell you what you were not certain of--that your friend had
some plan for saving himself afterwards, for getting out of St. Petersburg, at
any rate. Perhaps that and no more, trusting to luck for the rest. And that
fellow's horses were part of the plan."
"They have actually got at the truth," Razumov marvelled to himself, while he
nodded judicially. "Yes, that's possible, very possible." But the woman
revolutionist was very positive that it was so. First of all, a conversation
about horses between Haldin and Ziemianitch had been partly overheard. Then
there were the suspicions of the people in the house when their "young
gentleman" (they did not know Haldin by his name) ceased to call at the house.
Some of them used to charge Ziemianitch with knowing something of this
absence. He denied it with exasperation; but the fact was that ever since
Haldin's disappearance he was not himself, growing moody and thin. Finally,
during a quarrel with some woman (to whom he was making up), in which most of
the inmates of the house took part apparently, he was openly abused by his
chief enemy, an athletic pedlar, for an informer, and for having driven '' our
young gentleman to Siberia, the same as you did those young fellows who broke
into houses." In consequence of this there was a fight, and Ziemianitch got
flung down a flight of stairs. Thereupon he drank and moped for a week, and
then hanged himself.
Sophia Antonovna drew her conclusions from the tale. She charged Ziemianitch
either with drunken indiscretion as to a driving job on a certain date,
overheard by some spy in some low grog-shop--perhaps in the very eating-shop on
the ground floor of the house--or, maybe, a downright denunciation, followed by
remorse. A man like that would be capable of anything. People said he was a
flighty old chap. And if he had been once before mixed up with the police--as
seemed certain, though he always denied it--in connexion with these thieves, he
would be sure to be acquainted with some police underlings, always on the look
out for something to report. Possibly at first his tale was not made anything
of till the day that scoundrel de P--- got his deserts. Ah! But then every
bit and scrap of hint and information would be acted on, and fatally they were
bound to get Haldin.
Sophia Antonovna spread out her hands--" Fatally."
Fatality--chance! Razumov meditated in silent astonishment upon the queer
verisimilitude of these inferences. They were obviously to his advantage.
"It is right now to make this conclusive evidence known generally." Sophia
Antonovna was very calm and deliberate again. She had received the letter
three days ago, but did not write at once to Peter Ivanovitch. She knew then
that she would have the opportunity presently of meeting several men of action
assembled for an important purpose.
"I thought it would be more effective if I could show the letter itself at
large. I have it in my pocket now. You understand how pleased I was to come
upon you."
Razumov was saying to himself," She won't offer to show the letter to me. Not
likely. Has she told me everything that correspondent of hers has found out?"
He longed to see the letter, but he felt he must not ask.
"Tell me, please, was this an investigation ordered, as it were?"
"No, no," she protested. "There you are again with your sensitiveness. It
makes you stupid. Don't you see, there was no starting-point for an
investigation even if any one had thought of it. A perfect blank! That's
exactly what some people were pointing out as the reason for receiving you
cautiously. It was all perfectly accidental, arising from my informant
striking an acquaintance with an intelligent skindresser lodging in that
particular slum-house. A wonderful coincidence!"
"A pious person," suggested Razumov, with a pale smile, "would say that the
hand of God has done it all."
"My poor father would have said that." Sophia Antonovna did not smile. She
dropped her eyes." Not that his God ever helped him. It's a long time since
God has done anything for the people. Anyway, it's done."
"All this would be quite final," said Razumov, with every appearance of
reflective impartiality, "if there was any certitude that the 'our young
gentleman' of these people was Victor Haldin. Have we got that?"
"Yes. There's no mistake. My correspondent was as familiar with Haldin's
personal appearance as with your own," the woman affirmed decisively.
"It's the red-nosed fellow beyond a doubt," Razumov said to himself, with
reawakened uneasiness. Had his own visit to that accursed house passed
unnoticed? It was barely possible. Yet it was hardly probable. It was just
the right sort of food for the popular gossip that gaunt busybody had been
picking up. But the letter did not seem to contain any allusion to that.
Unless she had suppressed it. And, if so, why? If it had really escaped the
prying of that hunger-stricken democrat with a confounded genius for
recognizing people from description, it could only be for a time. He would
come upon it presently and hasten to write another letter--and then!
For all the envenomed recklessness of his temper, fed on hate and disdain,
Razumov shuddered inwardly. It guarded him from common fear, but it could not
defend him from disgust at being dealt with in any way by these people. It was
a sort of superstitious dread. Now, since his position had been made more
secure by their own folly at the cost of Ziemianitch, he felt the need of
perfect safety, with its freedom from direct lying, with its power of moving
amongst them silent, unquestioning, listening, impenetrable, like the very fate
of their crimes and their folly. Was this advantage his already? Or not yet?
Or never would be?
"Well, Sophia Antonovna," his air of reluctant concession was genuine in so far
that he was really loath to part with her without testing her sincerity by a
question it was impossible to bring about in any way; "well, Sophia Antonovna,
if that is so, then--"
"The creature has done justice to himself," the woman observed, as if thinking
aloud.
"What? Ah yes! Remorse," Razumov muttered, with equivocal contempt.
"Don't be harsh, Kirylo Sidorovitch, if you have lost a friend." There was no
hint of softness in her tone, only the black glitter of her eyes seemed
detached for an instant from vengeful visions. "He was a man of the people.
The simple Russian soul is never wholly impenitent. It's something to know
that."
"Consoling?" insinuated Razumov, in a tone of inquiry.
"Leave off railing," she checked him explosively. "Remember, Razumov, that
women, children, and revolutionists hate irony, which is the negation of all
saving instincts, of all faith, of all devotion, of all action. Don't rail!
Leave off. . . . I don't know how it is, but there are moments when you are
abhorrent to me. . . ."
She averted her face. A languid silence, as if all the electricity of the
situation had been discharged in this flash of passion, lasted for some time.
Razumov had not flinched. Suddenly she laid the tips of her fingers on his
sleeve.
"Don't mind."
"I don't mind," he said very quietly.
He was proud to feel that she could read nothing on his face. He was really
mollified, relieved, if only for a moment, from an obscure oppression. And
suddenly he asked himself, "Why the devil did I go to that house? It was an
imbecile thing to do."
A profound disgust came over him. Sophia Antonovna lingered, talking in a
friendly manner with an evident conciliatory intention. And it was still about
the famous letter, referring to various minute details given by her informant,
who had never seen Ziemianitch. The "victim of remorse" had been buried
several weeks before her correspondent began frequenting the house. It--the
house--contained very good revolutionary material. The spirit of the heroic
Haldin had passed through these dens of black wretchedness with a promise of
universal redemption from all the miseries that oppress mankind. Razumov
listened without hearing, gnawed by the newborn desire of safety with its
independence from that degrading method of direct lying which at times he found
it almost impossible to practice.
No. The point he wanted to hear about could never come into this conversation.
There was no way of bringing it forward. He regretted not having composed a
perfect story for use abroad, in which his fatal connexion with the house might
have been owned up to. But when he left Russia he did not know that
Ziemianitch had hanged himself. And, anyway, who could have foreseen this
woman's "informant" stumbling upon that particular slum, of all the slums
awaiting destruction in the purifying flame of social revolution? Who could
have foreseen? Nobody! "It's a perfect, diabolic surprise," thought Razumov,
calm-faced in his attitude of inscrutable superiority, nodding assent to Sophia
Antonovna's remarks upon the psychology of "the people," "Oh yes--certainly,"
rather coldly, but with a nervous longing in his fingers to tear some sort of
confession out of her throat.
Then, at the very last, on the point of separating, the feeling of relaxed
tension already upon him, he heard Sophia Antonovna allude to the subject of
his uneasiness. How it came about he could only guess, his mind being absent
at the moment, but it must have sprung from Sophia Antonovna's complaints of
the illogical absurdity of the people. For instance--that Ziemianitch was
notoriously irreligious, and yet, in the last weeks of his life, he suffered
from the notion that he had been beaten by the devil.
"The devil," repeated Razumov, as though he had not heard aright.
"The actual devil. The devil in person. You may well look astonished, Kirylo
Sidorovitch. Early on the very night poor Haldin was taken, a complete
stranger turned up and gave Ziemianitch a most fearful thrashing while he was
lying dead-drunk in the stable. The wretched creature's body was one mass of
bruises. He showed them to the people in the house."
"But you, Sophia Antonovna, you don't believe in the actual devil?"
"Do you?" retorted the woman curtly. "Not but that there are plenty of men
worse than devils to make a hell of this earth," she muttered to herself.
Razumov watched her, vigorous and white-haired, with the deep fold between her
thin eyebrows, and her black glance turned idly away. It was obvious that she
did not make much of the story--unless, indeed, this was the perfection of
duplicity. "A dark young man," she explained further. "Never seen there
before, never seen afterwards. Why are you smiling, Razumov?"
"At the devil being still young after all these ages," he answered composedly.
"But who was able to describe him, since the victim, you say, was dead-drunk
at the time?"
"Oh! The eating-house keeper has described him. An overbearing, swarthy young
man in a student's cloak, who came rushing in, demanded Ziemianitch, beat him
furiously, and rushed away without a word, leaving the eating-house keeper
paralysed with astonishment."
"Does he, too, believe it was the devil?"
"That I can't say. I am told he's very reserved on the matter. Those sellers
of spirits are great scoundrels generally. I should think he knows more of it
than anybody."
"Well, and you, Sophia Antonovna, what's your theory?" asked Razumov in a tone
of great interest. "Yours and your informant's, who is on the spot."
"I agree with him. Some police-hound in disguise. Who else could beat a
helpless man so unmercifully? As for the rest, if they were out that day on
every trail, old and new, it is probable enough that they might have thought it
just as well to have Ziemianitch at hand for more information, or for
identification, or what not. Some scoundrelly detective was sent to fetch him
along, and being vexed at finding him so drunk broke a stable fork over his
ribs. Later on, after they had the big game safe in the net, they troubled
their heads no more about that peasant."
Such were the last words of the woman revolutionist in this conversation,
keeping so close to the truth, departing from it so far in the verisimilitude
of thoughts and conclusions as to give one the notion of the invincible nature
of human error, a glimpse into the utmost depths of self-deception. Razumov,
after shaking hands with Sophia Antonovna, left the grounds, crossed the road,
and walking out on the little steamboat pier leaned over the rail.
His mind was at ease; ease such as he had not known for many days, ever since
that night. . . the night. The conversation with the woman revolutionist had
given him the view of his danger at the very moment this danger vanished,
characteristically enough. "I ought to have foreseen the doubts that would
arise in those people's minds," he thought. Then his attention being attracted
by a stone of peculiar shape, which he could see clearly lying at the bottom,
he began to speculate as to the depth of water in that spot. But very soon,
with a start of wonder at this extraordinary instance of ill-timed detachment,
he returned to his train of thought. "I ought to have told very circumstantial
lies from the first," he said to himself, with a mortal distaste of the mere
idea which silenced his mental utterance for quite a perceptible interval.
"Luckily, that's all right now," he reflected, and after a time spoke to
himself, half aloud, "Thanks to the devil," and laughed a little.
The end of Ziemianitch then arrested his wandering thoughts. He was not
exactly amused at the interpretation, but he could not help detecting- in it a
certain piquancy. He owned to himself that, had he known of that suicide
before leaving Russia, he would have been incapable of making such excellent
use of it for his own purposes. He ought to be infinitely obliged to the
fellow with the red nose for his patience and ingenuity, "A wonderful
psychologist apparently," he said to himself sarcastically. Remorse, indeed!
It was a striking example of your true conspirator's blindness, of the stupid
subtlety of people with one idea. This was a drama of love, not of conscience,
Razumov continued to himself mockingly. A woman the old fellow was making up
to! A robust pedlar, clearly a rival, throwing him down a flight of stairs. .
. . And at sixty, for a lifelong lover, it was not an easy matter to get over.
That was a feminist of a different stamp from Peter Ivanovitch. Even the
comfort of the bottle might conceivably fail him in this supreme crisis. At
such an age nothing but a halter could cure the pangs of an unquenchable
passion. And, besides, there was the wild exasperation aroused by the unjust
aspersions and the contumely of the house, with the maddening impossibility to
account for that mysterious thrashing, added to these simple and bitter
sorrows. "Devil, eh?" Razumov exclaimed, with mental excitement, as if he had
made an interesting discovery. "Ziemianitch ended by falling into mysticism.
So many of our true Russian souls end in that way! Very characteristic." He
felt pity for Ziemianitch, a large neutral pity, such as one may feel for an
unconscious multitude, a great people seen from above--like a community of
crawling ants working out its destiny. It was as if this Ziemianitch could not
possibly have done anything else. And Sophia Antonovna's cocksure and
contemptuous "some police-hound" was characteristically Russian in another way.
But there was no tragedy there. This was a comedy of errors. It was as if
the devil himself were playing a game with all of them in turn. First with
him, then with Ziemianitch, then with those revolutionists. The devil's own
game this. . . . He interrupted his earnest mental soliloquy with a jocular
thought at his own expense. "Hallo! I am falling into mysticism too."
His mind was more at ease than ever. Turning about he put his back against the
rail comfortably. "All this fits with marvellous aptness," he continued to
think. "The brilliance of my reputed exploit is no longer darkened by the fate
of my supposed colleague. The mystic Ziemianitch accounts for that. An
incredible chance has served me. No more need of lies. I shall have only to
listen and to keep my scorn from getting the upper hand of my caution."
He sighed, folded his arms, his chin dropped on his breast, and it was a long
time before he started forward from that pose, with the recollection that he
had made up his mind to do something important that day. What it was he could
not immediately recall, yet he made no effort of memory, for he was uneasily
certain that he would remember presently.
He had not gone more than a hundred yards towards the town when he slowed down,
almost faltered in his walk, at the sight of a figure walking in the contrary
direction, draped in a cloak, under a soft, broad-brimmed hat, picturesque but
diminutive, as if seen through the big end of an opera-glass. It was
impossible to avoid that tiny man, for there was no issue for retreat.
"Another one going to that mysterious meeting," thought Razumov. He was right
in his surmise, only _this_ one, unlike the others who came from a distance,
was known to him personally. Still, he hoped to pass on with a mere bow, but
it was impossible to ignore the little thin hand with hairy wrist and knuckles
protruded in a friendly wave from under the folds of the cloak, worn
Spanish-wise, in disregard of a fairly warm day, a corner flung over the
shoulder.
"And how is Herr Razumov?" sounded the greeting in German, by that alone made
more odious to the object of the affable recognition. At closer quarters the
diminutive personage looked like a reduction of an ordinary-sized man, with a
lofty brow bared for a moment by the raising of the hat, the great pepper-and
salt full beard spread over the proportionally broad chest. A fine bold nose
jutted over a thin mouth hidden in the mass of fine hair. All this, accented
features, strong limbs in their relative smallness, appeared delicate without
the slightest sign of debility. The eyes alone, almond-shaped and brown, were
too big, with the whites slightly bloodshot by much pen labour under a lamp.
The obscure celebrity of the tiny man was well known to Razumov. Polyglot, of
unknown parentage, of indefinite nationality, anarchist, with a pedantic and
ferocious temperament, and an amazingly inflammatory capacity for invective, he
was a power in the background, this violent pamphleteer clamouring for
revolutionary justice, this Julius Laspara, editor of the _Living Word_,
confidant of conspirators, inditer of sanguinary menaces and manifestos,
suspected of being in the secret of every plot. Laspara lived in the old town
in a sombre, narrow house presented to him by a naive middle-class admirer of
his humanitarian eloquence. With him lived his two daughters, who overtopped
him head and shoulders, and a pasty-faced, lean boy of six, languishing in the
dark rooms in blue cotton overalls and clumsy boots, who might have belonged to
either one of them or to neither. No stranger could tell. Julius Laspara no
doubt knew which of his girls it was who, after casually vanishing for a few
years, had as casually returned to him possessed of that child; but, with
admirable pedantry, he had refrained from asking her for details--no, not so
much as the name of the father, because maternity should be an anarchist
function. Razumov had been admitted twice to that suite of several small dark
rooms on the top floor: dusty window-panes, litter of all sorts of sweepings
all over the place, half-full glasses of tea forgotten on every table, the two
Laspara daughters prowling about enigmatically silent, sleepy-eyed, corsetless,
and generally, in their want of shape and the disorder of their rumpled attire,
resembling old dolls; the great but obscure Julius, his feet twisted round his
three-legged stool, always ready to receive the visitors, the pen instantly
dropped, the body screwed round with a striking display of the lofty brow and
of the great austere beard. When he got down from his stool it was as though
he had descended from the heights of Olympus. He was dwarfed by his daughters,
by the furniture, by any caller of ordinary stature. But he very seldom left
it, and still more rarely was seen walking in broad daylight.
It must have been some matter of serious importance which had driven him out in
that direction that afternoon. Evidently he wished to be amiable to that young
man whose arrival had made some sensation in the world of political refugees.
In Russian now, which he spoke, as he spoke and wrote four or five other
European languages, without distinction and without force (other than that of
invective), he inquired if Razumov had taken his inscriptions at the University
as yet. And the young man, shaking his head negatively--
"There's plenty of time for that. But, meantime, are you not going to write
something for us?"
He could not understand how any one could refrain from writing on anything,
social, economic, historical--anything. Any subject could be treated in the
right spirit, and for the ends of social revolution. And, as it happened, a
friend of his in London had got in touch with a review of advanced ideas. "We
must educate, educate everybody--develop the great thought of absolute liberty
and of revolutionary justice."
Razumov muttered rather surlily that he did not even know English.
"Write in Russian. We'll have it translated There can be no difficulty. Why,
without seeking further, there is Miss Haldin. My daughters go to see her
sometimes." He nodded significantly. " She does nothing, has never done
anything in her life. She would be quite competent, with a little assistance.
Only write. You know you must. And so good-bye for the present."
He raised his arm and went on. Razumov backed against the low wall, looked
after him, spat violently, and went on his way with an angry mutter--
"Cursed Jew!"
He did not know anything about it. Julius Laspara might have been a
Transylvanian, a Turk, an Andalusian, or a citizen of one of the Hanse towns
for anything he could tell to the contrary. But this is not a story of the
West, and this exclamation must be recorded, accompanied by the comment that it
was merely an expression of hate and contempt, best adapted to the nature of
the feelings Razumov suffered from at the time. He was boiling with rage, as
though he had been grossly insulted. He walked as if blind, following
instinctively the shore of the diminutive harbour along the quay, through a
pretty, dull garden, where dull people sat on chairs under the trees, till, his
fury abandoning him, he discovered himself in the middle of a long, broad
bridge. He slowed down at once. To his right, beyond the toy-like jetties, he
saw the green slopes framing the Petit Lac in all the marvellous banality of
the picturesque made of painted cardboard, with the more distant stretch of
water inanimate and shining like a piece of tin.
He turned his head away from that view for the tourists, and walked on slowly,
his eyes fixed on the ground. One or two persons had to get out of his way,
and then turned round to give a surprised stare to his profound absorption.
The insistence of the celebrated subversive journalist rankled in his mind
strangely. Write. Must write! He! Write! A sudden light flashed upon him.
To write was the very thing he had made up his mind to do that day. He had
made up his mind irrevocably to that step and then had forgotten all about it.
That incorrigible tendency to escape from the grip of the situation was
fraught with serious danger. He was ready to despise himself for it. What was
it? Levity, or deep-seated weakness? Or an unconscious dread?"
"Is it that I am shrinking? It can't be! It's impossible. To shrink now
would be worse than moral suicide; it would be nothing less than moral
damnation," he thought. "Is it possible that I have a conventional conscience?
"
He rejected that hypothesis with scorn, and, checked on the edge of the
pavement, made ready to cross the road and proceed up the wide street facing
the head of the bridge; and that for no other reason except that it was there
before him. But at the moment a couple of carriages and a slow-moving cart
interposed, and suddenly he turned sharp to the left, following the quay again,
but now away from the lake.
"It may be just my health," he thought, allowing himself a very unusual doubt
of his soundness; for, with the exception of a childish ailment or two, he had
never been ill in his life. But that was a danger, too. Only, it seemed as
though he were being looked after in a specially remarkable way. "If I
believed in an active Providence," Razumov said to himself, amused grimly, "I
would see here the working of an ironical finger. To have a Julius Laspara put
in my way as if expressly to remind me of my purpose is-- Write, he had said.
I must write--I must, indeed! I shall write--never fear. Certainly. That's
why I am here. And for the future I shall have something to write about."
He was exciting himself by this mental soliloquy. But the idea of writing
evoked the thought of a place to write in, of shelter, of privacy, and
naturally of his lodgings, mingled with a distaste for the necessary exertion
of getting there, with a mistrust as of some hostile influence awaiting him
within those odious four walls.
"Suppose one of these revolutionists," he asked himself, "were to take a fancy
to call on me while I am writing?" The mere prospect of such an interruption
made him shudder. One could lock one's door, or ask the tobacconist downstairs
(some sort of a refugee himself) to tell inquirers that one was not in. Not
very good precautions those. The manner of his life, he felt, must be kept
clear of every cause for suspicion or even occasion for wonder, down to such
trifling occurrences as a delay in opening a locked door. "I wish I were in
the middle of some field miles away from everywhere," he thought.
He had unconsciously turned to the left once more and now was aware of being on
a bridge again. This one was much narrower than the other, and instead of
being straight, made a sort of elbow or angle. At the point of that angle a
short arm joined it to a hexagonal islet with a soil of gravel and its shores
faced with dressed stone, a perfection of puerile neatness. A couple of tall
poplars and a few other trees stood grouped on the clean, dark gravel, and
under them a few garden benches and a bronze effigy of Jean Jacques Rousseau
seated on its pedestal.
On setting his foot on it Razumov became aware that, except for the woman in
charge of the refreshment chalet, he would be alone on the island. There was
something of naive, odious, and inane simplicity about that unfrequented tiny
crumb of earth named after Jean Jacques Rousseau. Something pretentious and
shabby, too. He asked for a glass of milk, which he drank standing, at one
draught (nothing but tea had passed his lips since the morning), and was going
away with a weary, lagging step when a thought stopped him short. He had found
precisely what he needed. If solitude could ever be secured in the open air in
the middle of a town, he would have it there on this absurd island, together
with the faculty of watching the only approach.
He went back heavily to a garden seat, dropped into it. This was the place for
making a beginning of that writing which had to be done. The materials he had
on him. "I shall always come here," he said to himself, and afterwards sat for
quite a long time motionless, without thought and sight and hearing, almost
without life. He sat long enough for the declining sun to dip behind the roofs
of the town at his back, and throw the shadow of the houses on the lake front
over the islet, before he pulled out of his pocket a fountain pen, opened a
small notebook on his knee, and began to write quickly, raising his eyes now
and then at the connecting arm of the bridge. These glances were needless;
the people crossing over in the distance seemed unwilling even to look at the
islet where the exiled effigy of the author of the _Social Contract_ sat
enthroned above the bowed head of Razumov in the sombre immobility of bronze.
After finishing his scribbling, Razumov, with a sort of feverish haste, put
away the pen, then rammed the notebook into his pocket, first tearing out the
written pages with an almost convulsive brusqueness. But the folding of the
flimsy batch on his knee was executed with thoughtful nicety. That done, he
leaned back in his seat and remained motionless, the papers holding in his left
hand. The twilight had deepened. He got up and began to pace to and fro
slowly under the trees.
"There can be no doubt that now I am safe," he thought. His fine ear could
detect the faintly accentuated murmurs of the current breaking against the
point of the island, and he forgot himself in listening to them with interest.
But even to his acute sense of hearing the sound was too elusive.
"Extraordinary occupation I am giving myself up to," he murmured. And it
occurred to him that this was about the only sound he could listen to
innocently, and for his own pleasure, as it were. Yes, the sound of water, the
voice of the wind--completely foreign to human passions. All the other sounds
of this earth brought contamination to the solitude of a soul.
This was Mr. Razumov's feeling, the soul, of course, being his own, and the
word being used not in the theological sense, but standing, as far as I can
understand it, for that part of Mr. Razumov which was not his body, and more
specially in danger from the fires of this earth. And it must be admitted that
in Mr. Razumov's case the bitterness of solitude from which he suffered was not
an altogether morbid phenomenon.
PART FOUR
I
That I should, at the beginning of this retrospect, mention again that Mr.
Razumov's youth had no one in the world, as literally no one as it can be
honestly affirmed of any human being, is but a statement of fact from a man who
believes in the psychological value of facts. There is also, perhaps, a desire
of punctilious fairness. Unidentified with anyone in this narrative where the
aspects of honour and shame are remote from the ideas of the Western world, and
taking my stand on the ground of common humanity, it is for that very reason
that I feel a strange reluctance to state baldly here what every reader has
most likely already discovered himself. Such reluctance may appear absurd if
it were not for the thought that because of the imperfection of language there
is always something ungracious (and even disgraceful) in the exhibition of
naked truth. But the time has come when Councillor of State Mikulin can no
longer be ignored. His simple question "Where to?" on which we left Mr.
Razumov in St. Petersburg, throws a light on the general meaning of this
individual case.
"Where to?" was the answer in the form of a gentle question to what we may call
Mr. Razumov's declaration of independence. The question was not menacing in
the least and, indeed, had the ring of innocent inquiry. Had it been taken in
a merely topographical sense, the only answer to it would have appeared
sufficiently appalling to Mr Razumov. Where to? Back to his rooms, where the
Revolution had sought him out to put to a sudden test his dormant instincts,
his half-conscious thoughts and almost wholly unconscious ambitions, by the
touch as of some furious and dogmatic religion, with its call to frantic
sacrifices, its tender resignations, its dreams and hopes uplifting the soul by
the side of the most sombre moods of despair. And Mr. Razumov had let go the
door-handle and had come back to the middle of the room, asking Councillor
Mikulin angrily, "What do you mean by it"
As far as I can tell, Councillor Mikulin did not answer that question. He drew
Mr. Razumov into familiar conversation. It is the peculiarity of Russian
natures that, however strongly engaged in the drama of action, they are still
turning their ear to the murmur of abstract ideas. This conversation (and
others later on) need not be recorded. Suffice it to say that it brought Mr.
Razumov as we know him to the test of another faith. There was nothing
official in its expression, and Mr. Razumov was led to defend his attitude of
detachment. But Councillor Mikulin would have none of his arguments. "For a
man like you," were his last weighty words in the discussion, "such a position
is impossible. Don't forget that I have seen that interesting piece of paper.
I understand your liberalism. I have an intellect of that kind myself.
Reform for me is mainly a question of method. But the principle of revolt is
a physical intoxication, a sort of hysteria which must be kept away from the
masses. You agree to this without reserve, don't you? Because, you see,
Kirylo Sidorovitch, abstention, reserve, in certain situations, come very near
to political crime. The ancient Greeks understood that very well."
Mr. Razumov, listening with a faint smile, asked Councillor Mikulin point-blank
if this meant that he was going to have him watched.
The high official took no offence at the cynical inquiry.
"No, Kirylo Sidorovitch," he answered gravely. "I don't mean to have you
watched."
Razumov, suspecting a lie, affected yet the greatest liberty of mind during the
short remainder of that interview. The older man expressed himself throughout
in familiar terms, and with a sort of shrewd simplicity. Razumov concluded
that to get to the bottom of that mind was an impossible feat. A great
disquiet made his heart beat quicker. The high official, issuing from behind
the desk, was actually offering to shake hands with him.
"Good-bye, Mr Razumov. An understanding between intelligent men is always a
satisfactory occurrence. Is it not? And, of course, these rebel gentlemen
have not the monopoly of intelligence."
"I presume that I shall not be wanted any more?" Razumov brought out that
question while his hand was still being grasped. Councillor Mikulin released
it slowly.
"That, Mr. Razumov," he said with great earnestness, "is as it may be. God
alone knows the future. But you may rest assured that I never thought of
having you watched. You are a young man of great independence. Yes. You are
going away free as air, but you shall end by coming back to us."
"I! I!" Razumov exclaimed in an appalled murmur of protest. "What for?" he
added feebly.
"Yes! You yourself, Kirylo Sidorovitch," the high police functionary insisted
in a low, severe tone of conviction. "You shall be coming back to us. Some of
our greatest minds had to do that in the end."
You have no better friend than Prince K---, and as to myself it is a long time
now since I've been honoured by his. . . ."
He glanced down his beard.
"I won't detain you any longer. We live in difficult times, in times of
monstrous chimeras and evil dreams and criminal follies. We shall certainly
meet once more. It may be some little time, though, before we do. Till then
may Heaven send you fruitful reflections!" Once in the street, Razumov started
off rapidly, without caring for the direction. At first he thought of nothing;
but in a little while the consciousness of his position presented itself to him
as something so ugly, dangerous, and absurd, the difficulty of ever freeing
himself from the toils of that complication so insoluble, that the idea of
going back and, as he termed it to himself, confessing to Councillor Mikulin
flashed through his mind.
Go back! What for? Confess! To what? "I have been speaking to him with the
greatest openness," he said to himself with perfect truth. "What else could I
tell him? That I have undertaken to carry a message to that brute Ziemianitch?
Establish a false complicity and destroy what chance of safety I have won for
nothing--what folly!"
Yet he could not defend himself from fancying that Councillor Mikulin was,
perhaps, the only man in the world able to understand his conduct. To be
understood appeared extremely fascinating.
On the way home he had to stop several times; all his strength seemed to run
out of his limbs; and in the movement of the busy streets, isolated as if in a
desert, he remained suddenly motionless for a minute or so before he could
proceed on his way. He reached his rooms at last
Then came an illness, something in the nature of a low fever, which all at once
removed him to a great distance from the perplexing actualities, from his very
room, even. He never lost consciousness; he only seemed to himself to be
existing languidly somewhere very far away from everything that had ever
happened to him. He came out of this state slowly, with an effect, that is to
say, of extreme slowness, though the actual number of days was not very great.
And when he had got back into the middle of things they were all changed,
subtly and provokingly in their nature: inanimate objects, human faces, the
landlady, the rustic servant-girl, the staircase, the streets, the very air.
He tackled these changed conditions in a spirit of severity. He walked to and
fro to the University, ascended stairs, paced the passages, listened to
lectures, took notes, crossed courtyards in angry aloofness, his teeth set hard
till his jaws ached.
He was perfectly aware of madcap Kostia gazing like a young retriever from a
distance, of the famished student with the red drooping nose, keeping
scrupulously away as desired; of twenty others, perhaps, he knew well enough to
speak to. And they all had an air of curiosity and concern as if they expected
something to happen. "This can't last much longer," thought Razumov more than
once. On certain days he was afraid that anyone addressing him suddenly in a
certain way would make him scream out insanely a lot of filthy abuse. Often,
after returning home, he would drop into a chair in his cap and cloak and
remain still for hours holding some book he had got from the library in his
hand; or he would pick up the little penknife and sit there scraping his nails
endlessly and feeling furious all the time--simply furious. "This is
impossible," he would mutter suddenly to the empty room.
Fact to be noted: this room might conceivably have become physically repugnant
to him, emotionally intolerable, morally uninhabitable. But no. Nothing of
the sort (and he had himself dreaded it at first), nothing of the sort
happened. On the contrary, he liked his lodgings better than any other shelter
he, who had never known a home, had ever hired before. He liked his lodgings
so well that often, on that very account, he found a certain difficulty in
making up his mind to go out. It resembled a physical seduction such as, for
instance, makes a man reluctant to leave the neighbourhood of a fire on a cold
day.
For as, at that time, he seldom stirred except to go to the University (what
else was there to do?) it followed that whenever he went abroad he felt himself
at once closely involved in the moral consequences of his act. It was there
that the dark prestige of the Haldin mystery fell on him, clung to him like a
poisoned robe it was impossible to fling off. He suffered from it exceedingly,
as well as from the conversational, commonplace, unavoidable intercourse with
the other kind of students. "They must be wondering at the change in me," he
reflected anxiously. He had an uneasy recollection of having savagely told one
or two innocent, nice enough fellows to go to the devil. Once a married
professor he used to call upon formerly addressed him in passing: "How is it we
never see you at our Wednesdays now, Kirylo Sidorovitch?" Razumov was
conscious of meeting this advance with odious, muttering boorishness. The
professor was obviously too astonished to be offended. All this was bad. And
all this was Haldin, always Haldin--nothing but Haldin--everywhere Haldin: a
moral spectre infinitely more effective than any visible apparition of the
dead. It was only the room through which that man had blundered on his way
from crime to death that his spectre did not seem to be able to haunt. Not, to
be exact, that he was ever completely absent from it, but that there he had no
sort of power. There it was Razumov who had the upper hand, in a composed
sense of his own superiority. A vanquished phantom--nothing more. Often in
the evening, his repaired watch faintly ticking on the table by the side of the
lighted lamp, Razumov would look up from his writing and stare at the bed with
an expectant, dispassionate attention. Nothing was to be seen there. He never
really supposed that anything ever could be seen there. After a while he would
shrug his shoulders slightly and bend again over his work. For he had gone to
work and, at first, with some success. His unwillingness to leave that place
where he was safe from Haldin grew so strong that at last he ceased to go out
at all. From early morning till far into the night he wrote, he wrote for
nearly a week; never looking at the time, and only throwing himself on the bed
when he could keep his eyes open no longer. Then, one afternoon, quite
casually, he happened to glance at his watch. He laid down his pen slowly.
"At this very hour," was his thought, "the fellow stole unseen into this room
while I was out. And there he sat quiet as a mouse--perhaps in this very
chair." Razumov got up and began to pace the floor steadily, glancing at the
watch now and then. " This is the time when I returned and found him standing
against the stove," he observed to himself. When it grew dark he lit his lamp.
Later on he interrupted his tramping once more, only to wave away angrily the
girl who attempted to enter the room with tea and something to eat on a tray.
And presently he noted the watch pointing at the hour of his own going forth
into the falling snow on that terrible errand.
"Complicity," he muttered faintly, and resumed his pacing, keeping his eye on
the hands as they crept on slowly to the time of his return.
"And, after all," he thought suddenly, "I might have been the chosen instrument
of Providence. This is a manner of speaking, but there may be truth in every
manner of speaking. What if that absurd saying were true in its essence?"
He meditated for a while, then sat down, his legs stretched out, with stony
eyes, and with his arms hanging down on each side of the chair like a man
totally abandoned by Providence--desolate.
He noted the time of Haldin's departure and continued to sit still for another
half-hour; then muttering, "And now to work," drew up to the table, seized the
pen and instantly dropped it under the influence of a profoundly disquieting
reflection: "There's three weeks gone by and no word from Mikulin."
What did it mean! Was he forgotten? Possibly. Then why not remain
forgotten--creep in somewhere? Hide. But where? How? With whom? In what
hole? And was it to be for ever, or what?
But a retreat was big with shadowy dangers. The eye of the social revolution
was on him, and Razumov for a moment felt an unnamed and despairing dread,
mingled with an odious sense of humiliation. Was it possible that he no longer
belonged to himself? This was damnable. But why not simply keep on as before?
Study. Advance. Work hard as if nothing had happened (and first of all win
the Silver Medal), acquire distinction, become a great reforming servant of the
greatest of States. Servant, too, of the mightiest homogeneous mass of mankind
with a capability for logical, guided development in a brotherly solidarity of
force and aim such as the world had never dreamt of. . . the Russian nation!
Calm, resolved, steady in his great purpose, he was stretching his hand towards
the pen when he happened to glance towards the bed. He rushed at it, enraged,
with a mental scream: "it's you, crazy fanatic, who stands in the way!" He
flung the pillow on the floor violently, tore the blankets aside. . . .
Nothing there. And, turning away, he caught for an instant in the air, like a
vivid detail in a dissolving view of two heads, the eyes of General T--- and of
Privy-Councillor Mikulin side by side fixed upon him, quite different in
character, but with the same unflinching and weary and yet purposeful
expression. . . servants of the nation!
Razumov tottered to the washstand very alarmed about himself, drank some water
and bathed his forehead. "This will pass and leave no trace," he thought
confidently. "I am all right." But as to supposing that he had been forgotten
it was perfect nonsense. He was a marked man on that side. And that was
nothing. It was what that miserable phantom stood for which had to be got out
of the way. . . . "If one only could go and spit it all out at some of
them--and take the consequences."
He imagined himself accosting the red-nosed student and suddenly shaking his
fist in his face. "From that one, though," he reflected," there's nothing to
be got, because he has no mind of his own. He's living in a red democratic
trance. Ah! you want to smash your way into universal happiness, my boy. I
will give you universal happiness, you silly, hypnotized ghoul, you! And what
about my own happiness, eh? Haven't I got any right to it, just because I can
think for myself?. . ."
And again, but with a different mental accent, Razumov said to himself, "I am
young. Everything can be lived down." At that moment he was crossing the room
slowly, intending to sit down on the sofa and try to compose his thoughts. But
before he had got so far everything abandoned him--hope, courage, belief in
himself trust in men. His heart had, as it were, suddenly emptied itself. It
was no use struggling on. Rest, work, solitude, and the frankness of
intercourse with his kind were alike forbidden to him. Everything was gone.
His existence was a great cold blank, something like the enormous plain of the
whole of Russia levelled with snow and fading gradually on all sides into
shadows and mists.
He sat down, with swimming head, closed his eyes, and remained like that,
sitting bolt upright on the sofa and perfectly awake for the rest of the night;
till the girl bustling into the outer room with the samovar thumped with her
fist on the door, calling out," Kirylo Sidorovitch, please! It is time for you
to get up!"
Then, pale like a corpse obeying the dread summons of judgement, Razumov opened
his eyes and got up.
Nobody will be surprised to hear, I suppose, that when the summons came he went
to see Councillor Mikulin. It came that very morning, while, looking white and
shaky, like an invalid just out of bed, he was trying to shave himself. The
envelope was addressed in the little attorney's handwriting. That envelope
contained another, superscribed to Razumov, in Prince K---'s hand, with the
request "Please forward under cover at once" in a corner. The note inside was
an autograph of Councillor Mikulin. The writer stated candidly that nothing
had arisen which needed clearing up, but nevertheless appointed a meeting with
Mr. Razumov at a certain address in town which seemed to be that of an oculist.
Razumov read it, finished shaving, dressed, looked at the note again, and
muttered gloomily, "Oculist." He pondered over it for a time, lit a match, and
burned the two envelopes and the enclosure carefully. Afterwards he waited,
sitting perfectly idle and not even looking at anything in particular till the
appointed hour drew near--and then went out.
Whether, looking at the unofficial character of the summons, he might have
refrained from attending to it is hard to say. Probably not. At any rate, he
went; but, what's more, he went with a certain eagerness, which may appear
incredible till it is remembered that Councillor Mikulin was the only person on
earth with whom Razumov could talk, taking the Haldin adventure for granted.
And Haldin, when once taken for granted, was no longer a haunting,
falsehood-breeding spectre. Whatever troubling power he exercised in all the
other places of the earth, Razumov knew very well that at this oculist's
address he would be merely the hanged murderer of M. de P--- and nothing more.
For the dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality of the life
imparted to them by the living. So Mr. Razumov, certain of relief, went to
meet Councillor Mikulin with he eagerness of a pursued person welcoming any
sort of shelter.
This much said, there is no need to tell anything more of that first interview
and of the several others. To the morality of a Western reader an account of
these meetings would wear perhaps the sinister character of old legendary tales
where the Enemy of Mankind is represented holding subtly mendacious dialogues
with some tempted soul. It is not my part to protest. Let me but remark that
the Evil One, with his single passion of satanic pride for the only motive, is
yet, on a larger, modern view, allowed to be not quite so black as he used to
be painted. With what greater latitude, then, should we appraise the exact
shade of mere mortal man, with his many passions and his miserable ingenuity in
error, always dazzled by the base glitter of mixed motives, everlastingly
betrayed by a short-sighted wisdom.
Councillor Mikulin was one of those powerful officials who, in a position not
obscure, not occult, but simply inconspicuous, exercise a great influence over
the methods rather than over the conduct of affairs. A devotion to Church and
Throne is not in itself a criminal sentiment; to prefer the will of one to the
will of many does not argue the possession of a black heart or prove congenital
idiocy. Councillor Mikulin was not only a clever but also a faithful official.
Privately he was a bachelor with a love of comfort, living alone in an
apartment of five rooms luxuriously furnished; and was known by his intimates
to be an enlightened patron of the art of female dancing. Later on the larger
world first heard of him in the very hour of his downfall, during one of those
State trials which astonish and puzzle the average plain man who reads the
newspapers, by a glimpse of unsuspected intrigues. And in the stir of vaguely
seen monstrosities, in that momentary, mysterious disturbance of muddy waters,
Councillor Mikulin went under, dignified, with only a calm, emphatic protest of
his innocence--nothing more. No disclosures damaging to a harassed autocracy,
complete fidelity to the secrets of the miserable _arcana imperii_ deposited in
his patriotic breast, a display of bureaucratic stoicism in a Russian
official's ineradicable, almost sublime contempt for truth; stoicism of silence
understood only by the very few of the initiated, and not without a certain
cynical grandeur of self-sacrifice on the part of a sybarite. For the terribly
heavy sentence turned Councillor Mikulin civilly into a corpse, and actually
into something very much like a common convict.
It seems that the savage autocracy, no more than the divine democracy, does not
limit its diet exclusively to the bodies of its enemies. It devours its
friends and servants as well. The downfall of His Excellency Gregory
Gregorievitch Mikulin (which did not occur till some years later) completes all
that is known of the man. But at the time of M. de P---'s murder (or
execution) Councillor Mikulin, under the modest style of Head of Department at
the General Secretariat, exercised a wide influence as the confidant and
right-hand man of his former schoolfellow and lifelong friend, General T---.
One can imagine them talking over the case of Mr. Razumov, with the full sense
of their unbounded power over all the lives in Russia, with cursory disdain,
like two Olympians glancing at a worm. The relationship with Prince K--- was
enough to save Razumov from some carelessly arbitrary proceeding, and it is
also very probable that after the interview at the Secretariat he would have
been left alone. Councillor Mikulin would not have forgotten him (he forgot no
one who ever fell under his observation), but would have simply dropped him for
ever. Councillor Mikulin was a good-natured man and wished no harm to anyone.
Besides (with his own reforming tendencies) he was favourably impressed by
that young student, the son of Prince K---, and apparently no fool.
But as fate would have it, while Mr. Razumov was finding that no way of life
was possible to him, Councillor Mikulin's discreet abilities were rewarded by a
very responsible post--nothing less than the direction of the general police
supervision over Europe. And it was then, and then only, when taking in hand
the perfecting of the service which watches the revolutionist activities
abroad, that he thought again of Mr. Razumov. He saw great possibilities of
special usefulness in that uncommon young man on whom he had a hold already,
with his peculiar temperament, his unsettled mind and shaken conscience, a
struggling in the toils of a false position. . . . It was as if the
revolutionists themselves had put into his hand that tool so much finer than
the common base instruments, so perfectly fitted, if only vested with
sufficient credit, to penetrate into places inaccessible to common informers.
Providential! Providential! And Prince K---, taken into the secret, was
ready enough to adopt that mystical view too. "It will be necessary, though,
to make a career for him afterwards," he had stipulated anxiously. "Oh!
absolutely. We shall make that our affair," Mikulin had agreed. Prince K---'s
mysticism was of an artless kind; but Councillor Mikulin was astute enough for
two.
Things and men have always a certain sense, a certain side by which they must
be got hold of if one wants to obtain a solid grasp and a perfect command. The
power of Councillor Mikulin consisted in the ability to seize upon that sense,
that side in the men he used. It did not matter to him what it was--vanity,
despair, love, hate, greed, intelligent pride or stupid conceit, it was all one
to him as long as the man could be made to serve. The obscure, unrelated young
student Razumov, in the moment of great moral loneliness, was allowed to feel
that he was an object of interest to a small group of people of high position.
Prince K--- was persuaded to intervene personally, and on a certain occasion
gave way to a manly emotion which, all unexpected as it was, quite upset Mr.
Razumov. The sudden embrace of that man, agitated by his loyalty to a throne
and by suppressed paternal affection, was a revelation to Mr. Razumov of
something within his own breast.
"So that was it!" he exclaimed to himself. A sort of contemptuous tenderness
softened the young man's grim view of his position as he reflected upon that
agitated interview with Prince K---. This simpleminded, worldly ex-Guardsman
and senator whose soft grey official whiskers had brushed against his cheek,
his aristocratic and convinced father, was he a whit less estimable or more
absurd than that famine-stricken, fanatical revolutionist, the red-nosed
student?
And there was some pressure, too, besides the persuasiveness. Mr. Razumov was
always being made to feel that he had committed himself. There was no getting
away from that feeling, from that soft, unanswerable, "Where to?" of Councillor
Mikulin. But no susceptibilities were ever hurt. It was to be a dangerous
mission to Geneva for obtaining, at a critical moment, absolutely reliable
information from a very inaccessible quarter of the inner revolutionary circle.
There were indications that a very serious plot was being matured. . . . The
repose indispensable to a great country was at stake. . . . A great scheme of
orderly reforms would be endangered. . . . The highest personages in the land
were patriotically uneasy, and so on. In short, Councillor Mikulin knew what
to say. This skill is to be inferred clearly from the mental and psychological
self-confession, self-analysis of Mr. Razumov's written journal--the pitiful
resource of a young man who had near him no trusted intimacy, no natural
affection to turn to.
How all this preliminary work was concealed from observation need not be
recorded. The expedient of the oculist gives a sufficient instance.
Councillor Mikulin was resourceful, and the task not very difficult. Any
fellow-student, even the red-nosed one, was perfectly welcome to see Mr.
Razumov entering a private house to consult an oculist. Ultimate success
depended solely on the revolutionary self-delusion which credited Razumov with
a mysterious complicity in the Haldin affair. To be compromised in it was
credit enough-and it was their own doing. It was precisely _that_ which
stamped Mr. Razumov as a providential man, wide as poles apart from the usual
type of agent for "European supervision."
And it was _that_ which the Secretariat set itself the task to foster by a
course of calculated and false indiscretions.
It came at last to this, that one evening Mr. Razumov was unexpectedly called
upon by one of the "thinking" students whom formerly, before the Haldin affair,
he used to meet at various private gatherings; a big fellow with a quiet,
unassuming manner and a pleasant voice.
Recognizing his voice raised in the ante-room, "May one come in?" Razumov,
lounging idly on his couch, jumped up. "Suppose he were coming to stab me?" he
thought sardonically, and, assuming a green shade over his left eye, said in a
severe tone, "Come in."
The other was embarrassed; hoped he was not intruding.
"You haven't been seen for several days, and I've wondered." He coughed a
little. "Eye better?"
"Nearly well now."
" Good. I won't stop a minute; but you see I, that is, we--anyway, I have
undertaken the duty to warn you, Kirylo Sidorovitch, that you are living in
false security maybe."
Razumov sat still with his head leaning on his hand, which nearly concealed the
unshaded eye.
"I have that idea, too."
"That's all right, then. Everything seems quiet now, but those people are
preparing some move of general repression. That's of course. But it isn't
that I came to tell you." He hitched his chair closer, dropped his voice.
"You will be arrested before long--we fear."
An obscure scribe in the Secretariat had overheard a few words of a certain
conversation, and had caught a glimpse of a certain report. This intelligence
was not to be neglected.
Razumov laughed a little, and his visitor became very anxious.
"Ah! Kirylo Sidorovitch, this is no laughing matter. They have left you alone
for a while, but. . . ! Indeed, you had better try to leave the country,
Kirylo Sidorovitch, while there's yet time."
Razumov jumped up and began to thank him for the advice with mocking
effusiveness, so that the other, colouring up, took himself off with the notion
that this mysterious Razumov was not a person to be warned or advised by
inferior mortals.
Councillor Mikulin, informed the next day of the incident, expressed his
satisfaction. "H'm. Ha! Exactly what was wanted to. . ." and glanced down
his beard.
"I conclude," said Razumov," that the moment has come for me to start on my
mission."
"The psychological Moment," Councillor Mikulin insisted softly--very
gravely--as if awed.
All the arrangements to give verisimilitude to the appearance of a difficult
escape were made. Councillor Mikulin did not expect to see Mr. Razumov again
before his departure. These meetings were a risk, and there was nothing more
to settle.
"We have said everything to each other by now, Kirylo Sidorovitch, "said the
high official feelingly, pressing Razumov's hand with that unreserved
heartiness a Russian can convey in his manner. "There is nothing obscure
between us. And I will tell you what! I consider myself fortunate in
having--h'm--your. . . ."
He glanced down his beard, and, after a moment of thoughtful silence, handed to
Razumov a half-sheet of notepaper--an abbreviated note of matters already
discussed, certain points of inquiry, the line of conduct agreed on, a few
hints as to personalities, and so on. It was the only compromising document in
the case, but, as Councillor Mikulin observed, it could be easily destroyed.
Mr. Razumov had better not see any one now--till on the other side of the
frontier, when, of course, it will be just that. . . . See and hear and. . . ."
He glanced down his beard; but when Razumov declared his intention to see one
person at least before leaving St. Petersburg, Councillor Mikulin failed to
conceal a sudden uneasiness. The young man's studious, solitary, and austere
existence was well known to him. It was the greatest guarantee of fitness. He
became deprecatory. Had his dear Kirylo Sidorovitch considered whether, in
view of such a momentous enterprise, it wasn't really advisable to sacrifice
every sentiment. . . .
Razumov interrupted the remonstrance scornfully. It was not a young woman, it
was a young fool he wished to see for a certain purpose. Councillor Mikulin
was relieved, but surprised.
"Ah! And what for--precisely?"
"For the sake of improving the aspect of verisimilitude," said Razumov curtly,
in a desire to affirm his independence. "I must be trusted in what I do."
Councillor Mikulin gave way tactfully, murmuring, "Oh, certainly, certainly.
Your judgment. . ."
And with another handshake they parted.
The fool of whom Mr. Razumov had thought was the rich and festive student known
as madcap Kostia. Feather-headed, loquacious, excitable, one could make
certain of his utter and complete indiscretion. But that riotous youth, when
reminded by Razumov of his offers of service some time ago, passed from his
usual elation into boundless dismay.
"Oh, Kirylo Sidorovitch, my dearest friend--my saviour--what shall I do? I've
blown last night every rouble I had from my dad the other day. Can't you give
me till Thursday? I shall rush round to all the usurers I know. . . . No, of
course, you can't! Don't look at me like that. What shall I do? No use
asking the old man. I tell you he's given me a fistful of big notes three days
ago. Miserable wretch that I am."
He wrung his hands in despair. Impossible to confide in the old man. "They"
had given him a decoration, a cross on the neck only last year, and he had been
cursing the modern tendencies ever since. Just then he would see all the
intellectuals in Russia hanged in a row rather than part with a single rouble.
"Kirylo Sidorovitch, wait a moment. Don't despise me. I have it. I'll,
yes--I'll do it--I'll break into his desk. There's no help for it. I know the
drawer where he keeps his plunder, and I can buy a chisel on my way home. He
will be terribly upset, but, you know, the dear old duffer really loves me.
He'll have to get over it--and I, too. Kirylo, my dear soul, if you can only
wait for a few hours-till this evening--I shall steal all the blessed lot I can
lay my hands on! You doubt me! Why? You've only to say the word."
"Steal, by all means," said Razumov, fixing him stonily.
"To the devil with the ten commandments!" cried the other, with the greatest
animation. "It's the new future now."
But when he entered Razumov's room late in the evening it was with an
unaccustomed soberness of manner, almost solemnly.
"It's done," he said.
Razumov sitting bowed, his clasped hands hanging between his knees, shuddered
at the familiar sound of these words. Kostia deposited slowly in the circle of
lamplight a small brown-paper parcel tied with a piece of string.
"As I've said--all I could lay my hands on. The old boy'll think the end of
the world has come." Razumov nodded from the couch, and contemplated the
hare-brained fellow's gravity with a feeling of malicious pleasure.
"I've made my little sacrifice," sighed mad Kostia. "And I've to thank you,
Kirylo Sidorovitch, for the opportunity."
"It has cost you something?"
"Yes, it has. You see, the dear old duffer really loves me. He'll be hurt."
"And you believe all they tell you of the new future and the sacred will of the
people?"
"Implicitly. I would give my life. . . . Only, you see, I am like a pig at a
trough. I am no good. It's my nature."
Razumov, lost in thought, had forgotten his existence till the youth's voice,
entreating him to fly without loss of time, roused him unpleasantly.
"All right. Well--good-bye."
"I am not going to leave you till I've seen you out of St. Petersburg,"
declared Kostia unexpectedly, with calm determination. "You can't refuse me
that now. For God's sake, Kirylo, my soul, the police may be here any moment,
and when they get you they'll immure you somewhere for ages--till your hair
turns grey. I have down there the best trotter of dad's stables and a light
sledge. We shall do thirty miles before the moon sets, and find some roadside
station. . . ."
Razumov looked up amazed. The journey was decided--unavoidable. He had fixed
the next day for his departure on the mission. And now he discovered suddenly
that he had not believed in it. He had gone about listening, speaking,
thinking, planning his simulated flight, with the growing conviction that all
this was preposterous. As if anybody ever did such things! It was like a game
of make-believe. And now he was amazed! Here was somebody who believed in it
with desperate earnestness. "If I don't go now, at once," thought Razumov,
with a start of fear, "I shall never go." He rose without a word, and the
anxious Kostia thrust his cap on him, helped him into his cloak, or else he
would have left the room bareheaded as he stood. He was walking out silently
when a sharp cry arrested him.
"Kirylo!"
"What?" He turned reluctantly in the doorway. Upright, with a stiffly extended
arm, Kostia, his face set and white, was pointing an eloquent forefinger at the
brown little packet lying forgotten in the circle of bright light on the table.
Razumov hesitated, came back for it under the severe eyes of his companion, at
whom he tried to smile. But the boyish, mad youth was frowning. "It's a
dream," thought Razumov, putting the little parcel into his pocket and
descending the stairs; "nobody does such things." The other held him under the
arm, whispering of dangers ahead, and of what he meant to do in certain
contingencies. "Preposterous," murmured Razumov, as he was being tucked up in
the sledge. He gave himself up to watching the development of the dream with
extreme attention. It continued on foreseen lines, inexorably logical--the
long drive, the wait at the small station sitting by a stove. They did not
exchange half a dozen words altogether. Kostia, gloomy himself, did not care
to break the silence. At parting they embraced twice--it had to be done; and
then Kostia vanished out of the dream.
When dawn broke, Razumov, very still in a hot, stuffy railway-car full of
bedding and of sleeping people in all its dimly lighted length, rose quietly,
lowered the glass a few inches, and flung out on the great plain of snow a
small brown-paper parcel. Then he sat down again muffled up and motionless.
"For the people," he thought, staring out of the window. The great white
desert of frozen, hard earth glided past his eyes without a sign of human
habitation.
That had been a waking act; and then the dream had him again: Prussia, Saxony,
Wurtemberg, faces, sights, words--all a dream, observed with an angry,
compelled attention. Zurich, Geneva--still a dream, minutely followed, wearing
one into harsh laughter, to fury, to death--with the fear of awakening at the
end.
II
"Perhaps life is just that," reflected Razumov, pacing to and fro under the
trees of the little island, all alone with the bronze statue of Rousseau. "A
dream and a fear." The dusk deepened. The pages written over and torn out of
his notebook were the first-fruit of his "mission." No dream that. They
contained the assurance that he was on the eve of real discoveries. "I think
there is no longer anything in the way of my being completely accepted."
He had resumed his impressions in those pages, some of the conversations. He
even went so far as to write: "By the by, I have discovered the personality of
that terrible N.N. A horrible, paunchy brute. If I hear anything of his
future movements I shall send a warning."
The futility of all this overcame him like a curse. Even then he could not
believe in the reality of his mission. He looked round despairingly, as if for
some way to redeem his existence from that unconquerable feeling. He crushed
angrily in his hand the pages of the notebook. "This must be posted," he
thought.
He gained the bridge and returned to the north shore, where he remembered
having seen in one of the narrower streets a little obscure shop stocked with
cheap wood carvings, its walls lined with extremely dirty cardboard-bound
volumes of a small circulating library. They sold stationery there, too. A
morose, shabby old man dozed behind the counter. A thin woman in black, with a
sickly face, produced the envelope he had asked for without even looking at
him. Razumov thought that these people were safe to deal with because they no
longer cared for anything in the world. He addressed the envelope on the
counter with the German name of a certain person living in Vienna. But Razumov
knew that this, his first communication for Councillor Mikulin, would find its
way to the Embassy there, be copied in cypher by somebody trustworthy, and sent
on to its destination, all safe, along with the diplomatic correspondence.
That was the arrangement contrived to cover up the track of the information
from all unfaithful eyes, from all indiscretions, from all mishaps and
treacheries. It was to make him safe--absolutely safe.
He wandered out of the wretched shop and made for the post office. It was then
that I saw him for the second time that day. He was crossing the Rue Mont
Blanc with every appearance of an aimless stroller. He did not recognize me,
but I made him out at some distance. He was very good-looking, I thought, this
remarkable friend of Miss Haldin's brother. I watched him go up to the
letter-box and then retrace his steps. Again he passed me very close, but I am
certain he did not see me that time, either. He carried his head well up, but
he had the expression of a somnambulist struggling with the very dream which
drives him forth to wander in dangerous places. My thoughts reverted to
Natalia Haldin, to her mother. He was all that was left to them of their son
and brother.
The westerner in me was discomposed. There was something shocking in the
expression of that face. Had I been myself a conspirator, a Russian political
refugee, I could have perhaps been able to draw some practical conclusion from
this chance glimpse. As it was, it only discomposed me strongly, even to the
extent of awakening an indefinite apprehension in regard to Natalia Haldin.
All this is rather inexplicable, but such was the origin of the purpose I
formed there and then to call on these ladies in the evening, after my solitary
dinner. It was true that I had met Miss Haldin only a few hours before, but
Mrs. Haldin herself I had not seen for some considerable time. The truth is, I
had shirked calling of late.
Poor Mrs. Haldin! I confess she frightened me a little. She was one of those
natures, rare enough, luckily, in which one cannot help being interested,
because they provoke both terror and pity. One dreads their contact for
oneself, and still more for those one cares for, so clear it is that they are
born to suffer and to make others suffer, too. It is strange to think that, I
won't say liberty, but the mere liberalism of outlook which for us is a matter
of words, of ambitions, of votes (and if of feeling at all, then of the sort of
feeling which leaves our deepest affections untouched), may be for other beings
very much like ourselves and living under the same sky, a heavy trial of
fortitude, a matter of tears and anguish and blood. Mrs. Haldin had felt the
pangs of her own generation. There was that enthusiast brother of hers--the
officer they shot under Nicholas. A faintly ironic resignation is no armour
for a vulnerable heart. Mrs. Haldin, struck at through her children, was bound
to suffer afresh from the past, and to feel the anguish of the future. She was
of those who do not know how to heal themselves, of those who are too much
aware of their heart, who, neither cowardly nor selfish, look passionately at
its wounds--and count the cost.
Such thoughts as these seasoned my modest, lonely bachelor's meal. If anybody
wishes to remark that this was a roundabout way of thinking of Natalia Haldin,
I can only retort that she was well worth some concern. She had all her life
before her. Let it be admitted, then, that I was thinking of Natalia Haldin's
life in terms of her mother's character, a manner of thinking about a girl
permissible for an old man, not too old yet to have become a stranger to pity.
There was almost all her youth before her; a youth robbed arbitrarily of its
natural lightness and joy, overshadowed by an un-European despotism; a terribly
sombre youth given over to the hazards of a furious strife between equally
ferocious antagonisms.
I lingered over my thoughts more than I should have done. One felt so
helpless, and even worse--so unrelated, in a way. At the last moment I
hesitated as to going there at all. What was the good?
The evening was already advanced when, turning into the Boulevard des
Philosophes, I saw the light in the window at the corner. The blind was down,
but I could imagine behind it Mrs. Haldin seated in the chair, in her usual
attitude, looking out for some one, which had lately acquired the poignant
quality of mad expectation.
I thought that I was sufficiently authorized by the light to knock at the door.
The ladies had not retired as yet. I only hoped they would not have any
visitors of their own nationality. A broken-down, retired Russian official was
to be found there sometimes in the evening. He was infinitely forlorn and
wearisome by his mere dismal presence. I think these ladies tolerated his
frequent visits because of an ancient friendship with Mr. Haldin, the father,
or something of that sort. I made up my mind that if I found him prosing away
there in his feeble voice I should remain but a very few minutes.
The door surprised me by swinging open before I could ring the bell. I was
confronted by Miss Haldin, in hat and jacket, obviously on the point of going
out. At that hour! For the doctor, perhaps?
Her exclamation of welcome reassured me. It sounded as if I had been the very
man she wanted to see. My curiosity was awakened. She drew me in, and the
faithful Anna, the elderly German maid, closed the door, but did not go away
afterwards. She remained near it as if in readiness to let me out presently.
It appeared that Miss Haldin had been on the point of going out to find me.
She spoke in a hurried manner very unusual with her. She would have gone
straight and rung at Mrs. Ziegler's door, late as it was, for Mrs. Ziegler's
habits. . . .
Mrs. Ziegler, the widow of a distinguished professor who was an intimate friend
of mine, lets me have three rooms out of her very large and fine apartment,
which she didn't give up after her husband's death; but I have my own entrance
opening on the same landing. It was an arrangement of at least ten years'
standing. I said that I was very glad that I had the idea to. . . .
Miss Haldin made no motion to take off her outdoor things. I observed her
heightened colour, something pronouncedly resolute in her tone. Did I know
where Mr. Razumov lived?
Where Mr. Razumov lived? Mr. Razumov? At this hour--so urgently? I threw my
arms up in sign of utter ignorance. I had not the slightest idea where he
lived. If I could have foreseen her question only three hours ago, I might
have ventured to ask him on the pavement before the new post office building,
and possibly he would have told me, but very possibly, too, he would have
dismissed me rudely to mind my own business. And possibly, I thought,
remembering that extraordinary hallucined, anguished, and absent expression, he
might have fallen down in a fit from the shock of being spoken to. I said
nothing of all this to Miss Haldin, not even mentioning that I had a glimpse of
the young man so recently. The impression had been so extremely unpleasant
that I would have been glad to forget it myself.
"I don't see where I could make inquiries," I murmured helplessly. I would
have been glad to be of use in any way, and would have set off to fetch any
man, young or old, for I had the greatest confidence in her common sense.
"What made you think of coming to me for that information?" I asked.
"It wasn't exactly for that," she said, in a low voice. She had the air of
some one confronted by an unpleasant task.
"Am I to understand that you must communicate with Mr. Razumov this evening?"
Natalia Haldin moved her head affirmatively; then, after a glance at the door
of the drawing-room, said in French--
"_C'est maman_," and remained perplexed for a moment. Always serious, not a
girl to be put out by any imaginary difficulties, my curiosity was suspended on
her lips, which remained closed for a moment. What was Mr. Razumov's connexion
with this mention of her mother? Mrs. Haldin had not been informed of her
son's friend's arrival in Geneva.
"May I hope to see your mother this evening?" I inquired.
Miss Haldin extended her hand as if to bar the way.
"She is in a terrible state of agitation. Oh, you would not he able to detect.
. . . It's inward, but I who know mother, I am appalled. I haven't the
courage to face it any longer. It's all my fault; I suppose I cannot play a
part; I've never before hidden anything from mother. There has never been an
occasion for anything of that sort between us. But you know yourself the
reason why I refrained from telling her at once of Mr. Razumov's arrival here.
You understand, don't you? Owing to her unhappy state. And--there--I am no
actress. My own feelings being strongly engaged, I somehow . . . . I don't
know. She noticed something in my manner. She thought I was concealing
something from her. She noticed my longer absences, and, in fact, as I have
been meeting Mr. Razumov daily, I used to stay away longer than usual when I
went out. Goodness knows what suspicions arose in her mind. You know that she
has not been herself ever since. . . . So this evening she--who has been so
awfully silent: for weeks-began to talk all at once. She said that she did not
want to reproach me; that I had my character as she had her own; that she did
not want to pry into my affairs or even into my thoughts; for her part, she had
never had anything to conceal from her children. . . cruel things to listen to.
And all this in her quiet voice, with that poor, wasted face as calm as a
stone. It was unbearable."
Miss Haldin talked in an undertone and more rapidly than I had ever heard her
speak before. That in itself was disturbing. The ante-room being strongly
lighted, I could see under the veil the heightened colour of her face. She
stood erect, her left hand was resting lightly on a small table. The other
hung by her side without stirring. Now and then she caught her breath slightly.
"It was too startling. Just fancy! She thought that I was making preparations
to leave her without saying anything. I knelt by the side of her chair and
entreated her to think of what she was saying! She put her hand on my head,
but she persists in her delusion all the same. She had always thought that she
was worthy of her children's confidence, but apparently it was not so. Her son
could not trust her love nor yet her understanding--and now I was planning to
abandon her in the same cruel and unjust manner, and so on, and so on. Nothing
I could say. . . . It is morbid obstinacy. . . . She said that she felt there
was something, some change in me. . . . If my convictions were calling me
away, why this secrecy, as though she had been a coward or a weakling not safe
to trust? 'As if my heart could play traitor to my children,' she said. . . .
It was hardly to be borne. And she was smoothing my head all the time. . . .
It was perfectly useless to protest. She is ill. Her very soul is. . . ."
I did not venture to break the silence which fell between us. I looked into
her eyes, glistening through the veil.
"I! Changed!" she exclaimed in the same low tone. "My convictions calling me
away! It was cruel to hear this, because my trouble is that I am weak and
cannot see what I ought to do. You know that. And to end it all I did a
selfish thing. To remove her suspicions of myself I told her of Mr. Razumov.
It was selfish of me. You know we were completely right in agreeing to keep
the knowledge away from her. Perfectly right. Directly I told her of our poor
Victor's friend being here I saw how right we have been. She ought to have
been prepared; but in my distress I just blurted it out. Mother got terribly
excited at once. How long has he been here? What did he know, and why did he
not come to see us at once, this friend of her Victor? What did that mean?
Was she not to be trusted even with such memories as there were left of her
son?. . . Just think how I felt seeing her, white like a sheet, perfectly
motionless, with her thin hands gripping the arms of the chair. I told her it
was all my fault."
I could imagine the motionless dumb figure of the mother in her chair, there,
behind the door, near which the daughter was talking to me. The silence in
there seemed to call aloud for vengeance against an historical fact and the
modern instances of its working. That view flashed through my mind, but I
could not doubt that Miss Haldin had had an atrocious time of it. I quite
understood when she said that she could not face the night upon the impression
of that scene. Mrs. Haldin had given way to most awful imaginings, to most
fantastic and cruel suspicions. All this had to be lulled at all costs and
without loss of time. It was no shock to me to ]earn that Miss Haldin had said
to her, "I will go and bring him here at once." There was nothing absurd in
that cry, no exaggeration of sentiment. I was not even doubtful in my "Very
well, but how?"
It was perfectly right that she should think of me, but what could I do in my
ignorance of Mr. Razumov's quarters.
"And to think he may be living near by, within a stone's-throw, perhaps!" she
exclaimed.
I doubted it; but I would have gone off cheerfully to fetch him from the other
end of Geneva. I suppose she was certain of my readiness, since her first
thought was to come to me. But the service she meant to ask of me really was
to accompany her to the Chateau Borel.
I had an unpleasant mental vision of the dark road, of the sombre grounds, and
the desolately suspicious aspect of that home of necromancy and intrigue and
feminist adoration. I objected that Madame de S--- most likely would know
nothing of what we wanted to find out. Neither did I think it likely that the
young man would be found there. I remembered my glimpse of his face, and
somehow gained the conviction that a man who looked worse than if he had seen
the dead would want to shut himself up somewhere where he could be alone. I
felt a strange certitude that Mr. Razumov was going home when I saw him.
"It is really of Peter Ivanovitch that I was thinking," said Miss Haldin
quietly.
Ah! He, of course, would know. I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes
past nine only. . . . Still.
"I would try his hotel, then," I advised. "He has rooms at the Cosmopolitan,
somewhere on the top floor."
I did not offer to go by myself, simply from mistrust of the reception I should
meet with. But I suggested the faithful Anna, with a note asking for the
information.
Anna was still waiting by the door at the other end of the room, and we two
discussed the matter in whispers. Miss Haldin thought she must go herself.
Anna was timid and slow. Time would be lost in bringing back the answer, and
from that point of view it was getting late, for it was by no means certain
that Mr. Razumov lived near by.
"If I go myself," Miss Haldin argued, "I can go straight to him from the hotel.
And in any case I should have to go out, because I must explain to Mr. Razumov
personally--prepare him in a way. You have no idea of mother's state of mind."
Her colour came and went. She even thought that both for her mother's sake and
for her own it was better that they should not be together for a little time.
Anna, whom her mother liked, would be at hand.
"She could take her sewing into the room," Miss Haldin continued, leading the
way to the door. Then, addressing in German the maid who opened it before us,
"You may tell my mother that this gentleman called and is gone with me to find
Mr. Razumov. She must not be uneasy if I am away for some length of time."
We passed out quickly into the street, and she took deep breaths of the cool
night air. "I did not even ask you," she murmured.
"I should think not," I said, with a laugh. The manner of my reception by the
great feminist could not be considered now. That he would be annoyed to see
me, and probably treat me to some solemn insolence, I had no doubt, but I
supposed that he would not absolutely dare to throw me out. And that was all I
cared for. "Won't you take my arm?" I asked.
She did so in silence, and neither of us said anything worth recording till I
let her go first into the great hall of the hotel. It was brilliantly lighted,
and with a good many people lounging about.
"I could very well go up there without you," I suggested.
"I don't like to be left waiting in this place," she said in a low voice.
"I will come too."
I led her straight to the lift then. At the top floor the attendant directed
us to the right: "End of the corridor."
The walls were white, the carpet red, electric lights blazed in profusion, and
the emptiness, the silence, the closed doors all alike and numbered, made me
think of the perfect order of some severely luxurious model penitentiary on the
solitary confinement principle. Up there under the roof of that enormous pile
for housing travellers no sound of any kind reached us, the thick crimson felt
muffled our footsteps completely. We hastened on, not looking at each other
till we found ourselves before the very last door of that long passage. Then
our eyes met, and we stood thus for a moment lending ear to a faint murmur of
voices inside.
"I suppose this is it," I whispered unnecessarily. I saw Miss Haldin's lips
move without a sound, and after my sharp knock the murmur of voices inside
ceased. A profound stillness lasted for a few seconds, and then the door was
brusquely opened by a short, black-eyed woman in a red blouse, with a great lot
of nearly white hair, done up negligently in an untidy and unpicturesque
manner. Her thin, jetty eyebrows were drawn together. I learned afterwards
with interest that she was the famous--or the notorious--Sophia Antonovna, but
I was struck then by the quaint Mephistophelian character of her inquiring
glance, because it was so curiously evil-less, so--I may say--un-devilish. It
got softened still more as she looked up at Miss Haldin, who stated, in her
rich, even voice, her wish to see Peter Ivanovitch for a moment.
"I am Miss Haldin," she added.
At this, with her brow completely smoothed out now, but without a word in
answer, the woman in the red blouse walked away to a sofa and sat down, leaving
the door wide open.
And from the sofa, her hands lying on her lap, she watched us enter, with her
black, glittering eyes.
Miss Haldin advanced into the middle of the room; I, faithful to my part of
mere attendant, remained by the door after closing it behind me. The room,
quite a large one, but with a low ceiling, was scantily furnished, and an
electric bulb with a porcelain shade pulled low down over a big table (with a
very large map spread on it) left its distant parts in a dim, artificial
twilight. Peter Ivanovitch was not to be seen, neither was Mr. Razumov
present. But, on the sofa, near Sophia Antonovna, a bony-faced man with a
goatee beard leaned forward with his hands on his knees, staring hard with a
kindly expression. In a remote corner a broad, pale face and a bulky shape
could be made out, uncouth, and as if insecure on the low seat on which it
rested. The only person known to me was little Julius Laspara, who seemed to
have been poring over the map, his feet twined tightly round the chair-legs.
He got down briskly and bowed to Miss Haldin, looking absurdly like a
hooknosed boy with a beautiful false pepper-and-salt beard. He advanced,
offering his seat, which Miss Haldin declined. She had only come in for a
moment to say a few words to Peter Ivanovitch.
His high-pitched voice became painfully audible in the room.
"Strangely enough, I was thinking of you this very afternoon, Natalia
Victorovna. I met Mr. Razumov. I asked him to write me an article on anything
he liked. You could translate it into English--with such a teacher."
He nodded complimentarily in my direction. At the name of Razumov an
indescribable sound, a sort of feeble squeak, as of some angry small animal,
was heard in the corner occupied by the man who seemed much too large for the
chair on which he sat. I did not hear what Miss Haldin said. Laspara spoke
again.
"It's time to do something, Natalia Victorovna. But I suppose you have your
own ideas. Why not write something yourself? Suppose you came to see us soon?
We could talk it over. Any advice. . . .
Again I did not catch Miss Haldin's words. It was Laspara's voice once more.
"Peter Ivanovitch? He's retired for a moment into the other room. We are all
waiting for him." The great man, entering at that moment, looked bigger,
taller, quite imposing in a long dressing-gown of some dark stuff. It
descended in straight lines down to his feet. He suggested a monk or a
prophet, a robust figure of same desert-dweller--something Asiatic; and the
dark glasses in conjunction with this costume made him more mysterious than
ever in the subdued light.
Little Laspara went back to his chair to look at the map, the only brilliantly
lit object in the room. Even from my distant position by the door I could make
out, by the shape of the blue part representing the water, that it was a map of
the Baltic provinces. Peter Ivanovitch exclaimed slightly, advancing towards
Miss Haldin, checked himself on perceiving me, very vaguely no doubt; and
peered with his dark, bespectacled stare. He must have recognized me by my
grey hair, because, with a marked shrug of his broad shoulders, he turned to
Miss Haldin in benevolent indulgence. He seized her hand in his thick
cushioned palm, and put his other big paw over it like a lid.
While those two standing in the middle of the floor were exchanging a few
inaudible phrases no one else moved in the room: Laspara, with his back to us,
kneeling on the chair, his elbows propped on the big-scale map, the shadowy
enormity in the corner, the frankly staring man with the goatee on the sofa,
the woman in the red blouse by his side--not one of them stirred. I suppose
that really they had no time, for Miss Haldin withdrew her hand immediately
from Peter Ivanovitch and before I was ready for her was moving to the door. A
disregarded Westerner, I threw it open hurriedly and followed her out, my last
glance leaving them all motionless in their varied poses: Peter Ivanovitch
alone standing up, with his dark glasses like an enormous blind teacher, and
behind him the vivid patch of light on the coloured map, pored over by the
diminutive Laspara.
Later on, much later on, at the time of the newspaper rumours (they were vague
and soon died out) of an abortive military conspiracy in Russia, I remembered
the glimpse I had of that motionless group with its central figure. No details
ever came out, but it was known that the revolutionary parties abroad had given
their assistance, had sent emissaries in advance, that even money was found to
dispatch a steamer with a cargo of arms and conspirators to invade the Baltic
provinces. And while my eyes scanned the imperfect disclosures (in which the
world was not much interested) I thought that the old, settled Europe had been
given in my person attending that Russian girl something like a glimpse behind
the scenes. A short, strange glimpse on the top floor of a great hotel of all
places in the world: the great man himself; the motionless great bulk in the
corner of the slayer of spies and gendarmes; Yakovlitch, the veteran of ancient
terrorist campaigns; the woman, with her hair as white as mine and the lively
black eyes, all in a mysterious half-light, with the strongly lighted map of
Russia on the table. The woman I had the opportunity to see again. As we were
waiting for the lift she came hurrying along the corridor, with her eyes
fastened on Miss Haldin's face, and drew her aside as if for a confidential
communication. It was not long. A few words only.
Going down in the lift, Natalia Haldin did not break the silence. It was only
when out of the hotel and as we moved along the quay in the fresh darkness
spangled by the quay lights, reflected in the black water of the little port on
our left hand, and with lofty piles of hotels on our right, that she spoke.
"That was Sophia Antonovna--you know the woman?. . . ."
"Yes, I know--the famous. . . ."
"The same. It appears that after we went out Peter Ivanovitch told them why I
had come. That was the reason she ran out after us. She named herself to me,
and then she said, 'You are the sister of a brave man who shall be remembered.
You may see better times.' I told her I hoped to see the time when all this
would be forgotten, even if the name of my brother were to be forgotten too.
Something moved me to say that, but you understand?"
"Yes," I said. "You think of the era of concord and justice."
"Yes. There is too much hate and revenge in that work. It must be done. It
is a sacrifice--and so let it be all the greater. Destruction is the work of
anger. Let the tyrants and the slayers be forgotten together, and only the
reconstructors be remembered.''
"And did Sophia Antonovna agree with you?" I asked sceptically.
"She did not say anything except, 'It is good for you to believe in love.' I
should think she understood me. Then she asked me if I hoped to see Mr.
Razumov presently. I said I trusted I could manage to bring him to see my
mother this evening, as my mother had learned of his being here and was
morbidly impatient to learn if he could tell us something of Victor. He was
the only friend of my brother we knew of, and a great intimate. She said, 'Oh!
Your brother--yes. Please tell Mr. Razumov that I have made public the story
which came to me from St. Petersburg. It concerns your brother's arrest,' she
added. 'He was betrayed by a man of the people who has since hanged himself.
Mr. Razumov will explain it all to you. I gave him the full information this
afternoon. And please tell Mr. Razumov that Sophia Antonovna sends him her
greetings. I am going away early in the morning--far away.'"
And Miss Haldin added, after a moment of silence-" I was so moved by what I
heard so unexpectedly that I simply could not speak to you before. . . . A man
of the people! Oh, our poor people!"
She walked slowly, as if tired out suddenly. Her head drooped; from the
windows of a building with terraces and balconies came the banal sound of hotel
music; before the low mean portals of the Casino two red posters blazed under
the electric lamps, with a cheap provincial effect.--and the emptiness of the
quays, the desert aspect of the streets, had an air of hypocritical
respectability and of inexpressible dreariness.
I had taken for granted she had obtained the address, and let myself be guided
by her. On the Mont Blanc bridge, where a few dark figures seemed lost in the
wide and long perspective defined by the lights, she said--
"It isn't very far from our house. I somehow thought it couldn't be. The
address is Rue de Carouge. I think it must be one of those big new houses for
artisans."
She took my arm confidingly, familiarly, and accelerated her pace. There was
something primitive in our proceedings. We did not think of the resources of
civilization. A late tramcar overtook us; a row of _fiacres_ stood by the
railing of the gardens. It never entered our heads to make use of these
conveyances. She was too hurried, perhaps, and as to myself--well, she had
taken my arm confidingly. As we were ascending the easy incline of the
Corraterie, all the shops shuttered and no light in any of the windows (as if
all the mercenary population had fled at the end of the day), she said
tentatively--
"I could run in for a moment to have a look at mother. It would not be much
out of the way."
I dissuaded her. If Mrs. Haldin really expected to see Razumov that night it
would have been unwise to show herself without him. The sooner we got hold of
the young man and brought him along to calm her mother's agitation the better.
She assented to my reasoning, and we crossed diagonally the Place de Theatre,
bluish grey with its floor of slabs of stone, under the electric light, and the
lonely equestrian statue all black in the middle. In the Rue de Carouge we
were in the poorer quarters and approaching the outskirts of the town. Vacant
building plots alternated with high, new houses. At the corner of a side
street the crude light of a whitewashed shop fell into the night, fan-like,
through a wide doorway. One could see from a distance the inner wall with its
scantily furnished shelves, and the deal counter painted brown. That was the
house. Approaching it along the dark stretch of a fence of tarred planks, we
saw the narrow pallid face of the cut angle, five single windows high, without
a gleam in them, and crowned by the heavy shadow of a jutting roof slope.
"We must inquire in the shop," Miss Haldin directed me.
A sallow, thinly whiskered man, wearing a dingy white collar and a frayed tie,
laid down a newspaper, and, leaning familiarly on both elbows far over the bare
counter, answered that the person I was inquiring for was indeed his
_locataire_ on the third floor, but that for the moment he was out.
"For the moment," I repeated, after a glance at Miss Haldin. "Does this mean
that you expect him back at once?"
He was very gentle, with ingratiating eyes and soft lips. He smiled faintly as
though he knew all about everything. Mr. Razumov, after being absent all day,
had returned early in the evening. He was very surprised about half an hour or
a little more since to see him come down again. Mr. Razumov left his key, and
in the course of some words which passed between them had remarked that he was
going out because he needed air.
>From behind the bare counter he went on smiling at us, his head held between
his hands. Air. Air. But whether that meant a long or a short absence it was
difficult to say. The night was very close, certainly.
After a pause, his ingratiating eyes turned to the door, he added--
"The storm shall drive him in."
"There's going to be a storm?" I asked.
"Why, yes!"
As if to confirm his words we heard a very distant, deep rumbling noise.
Consulting Miss Haldin by a glance, I saw her so reluctant to give up her quest
that I asked the shopkeeper, in case Mr. Razumov came home within half an hour,
to beg him to remain downstairs in the shop. We would look in again presently.
For all answer he moved his head imperceptibly. The approval of Miss Haldin
was expressed by her silence. We walked slowly down the street, away from the
town; the low garden walls of the modest villas doomed to demolition were
overhung by the boughs of trees and masses of foliage, lighted from below by
gas lamps. The violent and monotonous noise of the icy waters of the Arve
falling over a low dam swept towards us with a chilly draught of air across a
great open space, where a double line of lamp-lights outlined a street as yet
without houses. But on the other shore, overhung by the awful blackness of the
thunder-cloud, a solitary dim light seemed to watch us with a weary stare.
When we had strolled as far as the bridge, I said--
"We had better get back. . . ."
In the shop the sickly man was studying his smudgy newspaper, now spread out
largely on the counter. He just raised his head when I looked in and shook it
negatively, pursing up his lips. I rejoined Miss Haldin outside at once, and
we moved off at a brisk pace. She remarked that she would send Anna with a
note the first thing in the morning. I respected her taciturnity, silence
being perhaps the best way to show my concern.
The semi-rural street we followed on our return changed gradually to the usual
town thoroughfare, broad and deserted. We did not meet four people altogether,
and the way seemed interminable, because my companion's natural anxiety had
communicated itself sympathetically to me. At last we turned into the
Boulevard des Philosophes, more wide, more empty, more dead--the very
desolation of slumbering respectability. At the sight of the two lighted
windows, very conspicuous from afar, I had the mental vision of Mrs. Haldin in
her armchair keeping a dreadful, tormenting vigil under the evil spell of an
arbitrary rule: a victim of tyranny and revolution, a sight at once cruel and
absurd.
III
"You will come in for a moment?" said Natalia Haldin.
I demurred on account of the late hour. "You know mother likes you so much,"
she insisted.
"I will just come in to hear how your mother is."
She said, as if to herself, "I don't even know whether she will believe that I
could not find Mr. Razumov, since she has taken it into her head that I am
concealing something from her. You may be able to persuade her. . . ."
"Your mother may mistrust me too," I observed.
"You! Why? What could you have to conceal from her? You are not a Russian
nor a conspirator."
I felt profoundly my European remoteness, and said nothing, but I made up my
mind to play my part of helpless spectator to the end. The distant rolling of
thunder in the valley of the Rhone was coming nearer to the sleeping town of
prosaic virtues and universal hospitality. We crossed the street opposite the
great dark gateway, and Miss Haldin rang at the door of the apartment. It was
opened almost instantly, as if the elderly maid had been waiting in the
ante-room for our return. Her flat physiognomy had an air of satisfaction.
The gentleman was there, she declared, while closing the door.
Neither of us understood. Miss Haldin turned round brusquely to her. "Who?"
"Herr Razumov," she explained.
She had heard enough of our conversation before we left to know why her young
mistress was going out. Therefore, when the gentleman gave his name at the
door, she admitted him at once.
"No one could have foreseen that," Miss Haldin murmured, with her serious grey
eyes fixed upon mine. And, remembering the expression of the young man's face
seen not much more than four hours ago, the look of a haunted somnambulist, I
wondered with a sort of awe.
"You asked my mother first?" Miss Haldin inquired of the maid.
"No. I announced the gentleman," she answered, surprised at our troubled faces.
"Still," I said in an undertone, "your mother was prepared."
"Yes. But he has no idea. . . ."
It seemed to me she doubted his tact. To her question how long the gentleman
had been with her mother, the maid told us that Der Herr had been in the
drawing-room no more than a short quarter of an hour.
She waited a moment, then withdrew, looking a little scared. Miss Haldin gazed
at me in silence.
"As things have turned out," I said, "you happen to know exactly what your
brother's friend has to tell your mother. And surely after that. . . ."
"Yes," said Natalia Haldin slowly. " I only wonder, as I was not here when he
came, if it wouldn't be better not to interrupt now."
We remained silent, and I suppose we both strained our ears, but no sound
reached us through the closed door. The features of Miss Haldin expressed a
painful irresolution; she made a movement as if to go in, but checked herself.
She had heard footsteps on the other side of the door. It came open, and
Razumov, without pausing, stepped out into the ante-room. The fatigue of that
day and the struggle with himself had changed him so much that I would have
hesitated to recognize that face which, only a few hours before, when he
brushed against me in front of the post office, had been startling enough but
quite different. It had been not so livid then, and its eyes not so sombre.
They certainly looked more sane now, but there was upon them the shadow of
something consciously evil.
I speak of that, because, at first, their glance fell on me, though without any
sort of recognition or even comprehension. I was simply in the line of his
stare. I don't know if he had heard the bell or expected to see anybody. He
was going out, I believe, and I do not think that he saw Miss Haldin till she
advanced towards him a step or two. He disregarded the hand she put out.
"It's you, Natalia Victorovna. . . . Perhaps you are surprised. . . at this
late hour. But, you see, I remembered our conversations in that garden. I
thought really it was your wish that I should--without loss of time. . . so I
came. No other reason. Simply to tell. . . ."
He spoke with difficulty. I noticed that, and remembered his declaration to
the man in the shop that he was going out because he "needed air." If that was
his object, then it was clear that he had miserably failed. With downcast eyes
and lowered head he made an effort to pick up the strangled phrase.
"To tell what I have heard myself only to-day--to-day. . . ."
Through the door he had not closed I had a view of the drawing-room. It was
lighted only by a shaded lamp--Mrs. Haldin's eyes could not support either gas
or electricity. It was a comparatively big room, and in contrast with the
strongly lighted ante-room its length was lost in semi-transparent gloom backed
by heavy shadows; and on that ground I saw the motionless figure of Mrs.
Haldin, inclined slightly forward, with a pale hand resting on the arm of the
chair.
She did not move. With the window before her she had no longer that attitude
suggesting expectation. The blind was down; and outside there was only the
night sky harbouring a thunder-cloud, and the town indifferent and hospitable
in its cold, almost scornful, toleration--a respectable town of refuge to which
all these sorrows and hopes were nothing. Her white head was bowed.
The thought that the real drama of autocracy is not played on the great stage
of politics came to me as, fated to be a spectator, I had this other glimpse
behind the scenes, something more profound than the words and gestures of the
public play. I had the certitude that this mother, refused in her heart to
give her son up after all. It was more than Rachel's inconsolable mourning, it
was something deeper, more inaccessible in its frightful tranquillity. Lost in
the ill-defined mass of the high-backed chair, her white, inclined profile
suggested the contemplation of something in her lap, as though a beloved head
were resting there.
I had this glimpse behind the scenes, and then Miss Haldin, passing by the
young man, shut the door. It was not done without hesitation. For a moment I
thought that she would go to her mother, but she sent in only an anxious
glance. Perhaps if Mrs. Haldin had moved. . . but no. There was in the
immobility of that bloodless face the dreadful aloofness of suffering without
remedy.
Meantime the young man kept his eyes fixed on the floor. The thought that he
would have to repeat the story he had told already was intolerable to him. He
had expected to find the two women together. And then, he had said to himself,
it would be over for all time--for all time. "It's lucky I don't believe in
another world," he had thought cynically.
Alone in his room after having posted his secret letter, he had regained a
certain measure of composure by writing in his secret diary. He was aware of
the danger of that strange self-indulgence. He alludes to it himself, but he
could not refrain. It calmed him--it reconciled him to his existence. He sat
there scribbling by the light of a solitary candle, till it occurred to him
that having heard the explanation of Haldin's arrest, as put forward by Sophia
Antonovna, it behoved him to tell these ladies himself. They were certain to
hear the tale through some other channel, and then his abstention would look
strange, not only to the mother and sister of Haldin, but to other people also.
Having come to this conclusion, he did not discover in himself any marked
reluctance to face the necessity, and very soon an anxiety to be done with it
began to torment him. He looked at his watch. No; it was not absolutely too
late.
The fifteen minutes with Mrs. Haldin were like the revenge of the unknown: that
white face, that weak, distinct voice; that head, at first turned to him
eagerly, then, after a while, bowed again and motionless--in the dim, still
light of the room in which his words which he tried to subdue resounded so
loudly--had troubled him like some strange discovery. And there seemed to be a
secret obstinacy in that sorrow, something he could not understand; at any
rate, something he had not expected. Was it hostile? But it did not matter.
Nothing could touch him now; in the eyes of the revolutionists there was now
no shadow on his past. The phantom of Haldin had been indeed walked over, was
left behind lying powerless and passive on the pavement covered with snow. And
this was the phantom's mother consumed with grief and white as a ghost. He had
felt a pitying surprise. But that, of course, was of no importance. Mothers
did not matter. He could not shake off the poignant impression of that silent,
quiet, white-haired woman, but a sort of sternness crept into his thoughts.
These were the consequences. Well, what of it? " Am I then on a bed of
roses?" he had exclaimed to himself, sitting at some distance with his eyes
fixed upon that figure of sorrow. He had said all he had to say to her, and
when he had finished she had not uttered a word. She had turned away her head
while he was speaking. The silence which had fallen on his last words had
lasted for five minutes or more. What did it mean? Before its
incomprehensible character he became conscious of anger in his stern mood, the
old anger against Haldin reawakened by the contemplation of Haldin's mother.
And was it not something like enviousness which gripped his heart, as if of a
privilege denied to him alone of all the men that had ever passed through this
world? It was the other who had attained to repose and yet continued to exist
in the affection of that mourning old woman, in the thoughts of all these
people posing for lovers of humanity. It was impossible to get rid of him.
"It's myself whom I have given up to destruction," thought Razumov. "He has
induced me to do it. I can't shake him off."
Alarmed by that discovery, he got up and strode out of the silent, dim room
with its silent old woman in the chair, that mother! He never looked back. It
was frankly a flight. But on opening the door he saw his retreat cut off:
There was the sister. He had never forgotten the sister, only he had not
expected to see her then--or ever any more, perhaps. Her presence in the
ante-room was as unforeseen as the apparition of her brother had been. Razumov
gave a start as though he had discovered himself cleverly trapped. He tried to
smile, but could not manage it, and lowered his eyes. "Must I repeat that
silly story now?" he asked himself, and felt a sinking sensation. Nothing
solid had passed his lips since the day before, but he was not in a state to
analyse the origins of his weakness. He meant to take up his hat and depart
with as few words as possible, but Miss Haldin's swift movement to shut the
door took him by surprise. He half turned after her, but without raising his
eyes, passively, just as a feather might stir in the disturbed air. The next
moment she was back in the place she had started from, with another half-turn
on his part, so that they came again into the same relative positions.
"Yes, yes," she said hurriedly. "I am very grateful to you, Kirylo
Sidorovitch, for coming at once--like this. . . . Only, I wish I had. . . .
Did mother tell you?"
"I wonder what she could have told me that I did not know before," he said,
obviously to himself, but perfectly audible. "Because I always did know it,"
he added louder, as if in despair.
He hung his head. He had such a strong sense of Natalia Haldin's presence that
to look at her he felt would be a relief. It was she who had been haunting him
now. He had suffered that persecution ever since she had suddenly appeared
before him in the garden of the Villa Borel with an extended hand and the name
of her brother on her lips. . . . The ante-room had a row of hooks on the wall
nearest to the outer door, while against the wall opposite there stood a small
dark table and one chair. The paper, bearing a very faint design, was all but
white. The light of an electric bulb high up under the ceiling searched that
clear square box into its four bare corners, crudely, without shadows--a
strange stage for an obscure drama.
"What do you mean?" asked Miss Haldin. "What is it that you knew always?"
He raised his face, pale, full of unexpressed suffering. But that look in his
eyes of dull, absent obstinacy, which struck and surprised everybody he was
talking to, began to pass way. It was as though he were coming to himself in
the awakened consciousness of that marvellous harmony of feature, of lines, of
glances, of voice, which made of the girl before him a being so rare, outside,
and, as it were, above the common notion of beauty. He looked at her so long
that she coloured slightly.
"What is it that you knew?" she repeated vaguely.
That time he managed to smile.
"Indeed, if it had not been for a word of greeting or two, I would doubt
whether your mother was aware at all of my existence. You understand?"
Natalia Haldin nodded; her hands moved slightly by her side.
"Yes. Is it not heart-breaking? She has not shed a tear yet--not a single
tear."
"Not a tear! And you, Natalia Victorovna? You have been able to cry?"
"I have. And then I am young enough, Kirylo Sidorovitch, to believe in the
future. But when I see my mother so terribly distracted, I almost forget
everything. I ask myself whether one should feel proud--or only resigned. We
had such a lot of people coming to see us. There were utter strangers who
wrote asking for permission to call to present their respects. It was
impossible to keep our door shut for ever. You know that Peter Ivanovitch
himself. . . . Oh yes, there was much sympathy, but there were persons who
exulted openly at that death. Then, when I was left alone with poor mother,
all this seemed so wrong in spirit, something not worth the price she is paying
for it. But directly I heard you were here in Geneva, Kirylo Sidorovitch, I
felt that you were the only person who could assist me. . . ."
"In comforting a bereaved mother? Yes!" he broke in in a manner which made her
open her clear unsuspecting eyes. "But there is a question of fitness. Has
this occurred to you?"
There was a breathlessness in his utterance which contrasted with the monstrous
hint of mockery in his intention.
"Why!" whispered Natalia Haldin with feeling. "Who more fit than you?"
He had a convulsive movement of exasperation, but controlled himself.
"Indeed! Directly you heard that I was in Geneva, before even seeing me? It
is another proof of that confidence which. . . ."
All at once his tone changed, became more incisive and more detached.
"Men are poor creatures, Natalia Victorovna. They have no intuition of
sentiment. In order to speak fittingly to a mother of her lost son one must
have had some experience of the filial relation. It is not the case with
me--if you must know the whole truth. Your hopes have to deal here with 'a
breast unwarmed by any affection,' as the poet says. . . . That does not mean
it is insensible," he added in a lower tone.
"I am certain your heart is not unfeeling," said Miss Haldin softly.
"No. It is not as hard as a stone," he went on in the same introspective
voice, and looking as if his heart were lying as heavy as a stone in that
unwarmed breast of which he spoke. "No, not so hard. But how to prove what
you give me credit for--ah! that's another question. No one has ever expected
such a thing from me before. No one whom my tenderness would have been of any
use to. And now you come. You! Now! No, Natalia Victorovna. It's too late.
You come too late. You must expect nothing from me."
She recoiled from him a little, though he had made no movement, as if she had
seen some change in his face, charging his words with the significance of some
hidden sentiment they shared together. To me, the silent spectator, they
looked like two people becoming conscious of a spell which had been lying on
them ever since they first set eyes on each other. Had either of them cast a
glance then in my direction, I would have opened the door quietly and gone out.
But neither did; and I remained, every fear of indiscretion lost in the sense
of my enormous remoteness from their captivity within the sombre horizon of
Russian problems, the boundary of their eyes, of their feelings--the prison of
their souls.
Frank, courageous, Miss Haldin controlled her voice in the midst of her trouble.
"What can this mean?" she asked, as if speaking to herself.
"It may mean that you have given yourself up to vain imaginings while I have
managed to remain amongst the truth of things and the realities of life--our
Russian life--such as they are."
"They are cruel," she murmured.
"And ugly. Don't forget that--and ugly. Look where you like. Look near you,
here abroad where you are, and then look back at home, whence you came."
"One must look beyond the present." Her tone had an ardent conviction.
"The blind can do that best. I have had the misfortune to be born clear-eyed.
And if you only knew what strange things I have seen! What amazing and
unexpected apparitions!. . . But why talk of all this?"
"On the contrary, I want to talk of all this with you," she protested with
earnest serenity. The sombre humours of her brother's friend left her
unaffected, as though that bitterness, that suppressed anger, were the signs of
an indignant rectitude. She saw that he was not an ordinary person, and
perhaps she did not want him to be other than he appeared to her trustful eyes.
"Yes, with you especially," she insisted. "With you of all the Russian people
in the world. . . ." A faint smile dwelt for a moment on her lips. "I am like
poor mother in a way. I too seem unable to give up our beloved dead, who,
don't forget, was all in all to us. I don't want to abuse your sympathy, but
you must understand that it is in you that we can find all that is left of his
generous soul."
I was looking at him; not a muscle of his face moved in the least. And yet,
even at the time, I did not suspect him of insensibility. It was a sort of
rapt thoughtfulness. Then he stirred slightly.
"You are going, Kirylo Sidorovitch?" she asked.
"I! Going? Where? Oh yes, but I must tell you first. . . ." His voice was
muffled and he forced himself to produce it with visible repugnance, as if
speech were something disgusting or deadly. "That story, you know--the story I
heard this afternoon. . . ."
"I know the story already," she said sadly.
"You know it! Have you correspondents in St. Petersburg too?"
"No. It's Sophia Antonovna. I have seen her just now. She sends you her
greetings. She is going away to-morrow."
He had lowered at last his fascinated glance; she too was looking down, and
standing thus before each other in the glaring light, between the four bare
walls, they seemed brought out from the confused immensity of the Eastern
borders to be exposed cruelly to the observation of my Western eyes. And I
observed them. There was nothing else to do. My existence seemed so utterly
forgotten by these two that I dared not now make a movement. And I thought to
myself that, of course, they had to come together, the sister and the friend of
that dead man. The ideas, the hopes, the aspirations, the cause of Freedom,
expressed in their common affection for Victor Haldin, the moral victim of
autocracy,--all this must draw them to each other fatally. Her very ignorance
and his loneliness to which he had alluded so strangely must work to that end.
And, indeed, I saw that the work was done already. Of course. It was
manifest that they must have been thinking of each other for a long time before
they met. She had the letter from that beloved brother kindling her
imagination by the severe praise attached to that one name; and for him to see
that exceptional girl was enough. The only cause for surprise was his gloomy
aloofness before her clearly expressed welcome. But he was young, and however
austere and devoted to his revolutionary ideals, he was not blind. The period
of reserve was over; he was coming forward in his own way. I could not mistake
the significance of this late visit, for in what he had to say there was
nothing urgent. The true cause dawned upon me: he had discovered that he
needed her and she was moved by the same feeling. It was the second time that
I saw them together, and I knew that next time they met I would not be there,
either remembered or forgotten. I would have virtually ceased to exist for
both these young people.
I made this discovery in a very few moments. Meantime, Natalia Haldin was
telling Razumov briefly of our peregrinations from one end of Geneva to the
other. While speaking she raised her hands above her head to untie her veil,
and that movement displayed for an instant the seductive grace of her youthful
figure, clad in the simplest of mourning. In the transparent shadow the hat
rim threw on her face her grey eyes had an enticing lustre. Her voice, with
its unfeminine yet exquisite timbre, was steady, and she spoke quickly, frank,
unembarrassed. As she justified her action by the mental state of her mother,
a spasm of pain marred the generously confiding harmony of her features. I
perceived that with his downcast eyes he had the air of a man who is listening
to a strain of music rather than to articulated speech. And in the same way,
after she had ceased, he seemed to listen yet, motionless, as if under the
spell of suggestive sound. He came to himself, muttering--
"Yes, yes. She has not shed a tear. She did not seem to hear what I was
saying. I might have told her anything. She looked as if no longer belonging
to this world."
Miss Haldin gave signs of profound distress. Her voice faltered. "You don't
know how bad it has come to be. She expects now to see _him_!" The veil
dropped from her fingers and she clasped her hands in anguish. "It shall end
by her seeing him," she cried.
Razumov raised his head sharply and attached on her a prolonged thoughtful
glance.
"H'm. That's very possible," he muttered in a peculiar tone, as if giving his
opinion on a matter of fact. "I wonder what. . . ." He checked himself.
"That would be the end. Her mind shall be gone then, and her spirit will
follow."
Miss Haldin unclasped her hands and let them fall by her side.
"You think so?" he queried profoundly. Miss Haldin's lips were slightly
parted. Something unexpected and unfathomable in that young man's character
had fascinated her from the first. "No! There's neither truth nor consolation
to be got from the phantoms of the dead," he added after a weighty pause. "I
might have told her something true; for instance, that your brother meant to
save his life--to escape. There can be no doubt of that. But I did not."
"You did not! But why?"
"I don't know. Other thoughts came into my head," he answered. He seemed to
me to be watching himself inwardly, as though he were trying to count his own
heart-beats, while his eyes never for a moment left the face of the girl. "You
were not there," he continued. "I had made up my mind never to see you again."
This seemed to take her breath away for a moment.
"You. . . . How is it possible?"
"You may well ask. . . . However, I think that I refrained from telling your
mother from prudence. I might have assured her that in the last conversation
he held as a free man he mentioned you both. . . ."
"That last conversation was with you," she struck in her deep, moving voice.
"Some day you must. . . ."
"It was with me. Of you he said that you had trustful eyes. And why I have
not been able to forget that phrase I don't know. It meant that there is in
you no guile, no deception, no falsehood, no suspicion--nothing in your heart
that could give you a conception of a living, acting, speaking lie, if ever it
came in your way. That you are a predestined victim. . . . Ha! what a
devilish suggestion!"
The convulsive, uncontrolled tone of the last words disclosed the precarious
hold he had over himself. He was like a man defying his own dizziness in high
places and tottering suddenly on the very edge of the precipice. Miss Haldin
pressed her hand to her breast. The dropped black veil lay on the floor
between them. Her movement steadied him. He looked intently on that hand till
it descended slowly, and then raised again his eyes to her face. But he did
not give her time to speak.
"No? You don't understand? Very well." He had recovered his calm by a
miracle of will. "So you talked with Sophia Antonovna?"
"Yes. Sophia Antonovna told me. . . ." Miss Haldin stopped, wonder growing in
her wide eyes.
"H'm. That's the respectable enemy," he muttered, as though he were alone.
"The tone of her references to you was extremely friendly," remarked Miss
Haldin, after waiting for a while.
"Is that your impression? And she the most intelligent of the lot, too.
Things then are going as well as possible. Everything conspires to. . . .
Ah! these conspirators," he said slowly, with an accent of scorn; "they would
get hold of you in no time! You know, Natalia Victorovna, I have the greatest
difficulty in saving myself from the superstition of an active Providence.
It's irresistible. . . . The alternative, of course, would be the personal
Devil of our simple ancestors. But, if so, he has overdone it altogether--the
old Father of Lies--our national patron--our domestic god, whom we take with us
when we go abroad. He has overdone it. It seems that I am not simple enough.
. . . That's it! I ought to have known. . . . And I did know it," he added
in a tone of poignant distress which overcame my astonishment.
"This man is deranged," I said to myself, very much frightened.
The next moment he gave me a very special impression beyond the range of
commonplace definitions. It was as though he had stabbed himself outside and
had come in there to show it; and more than that--as though he were turning the
knife in the wound and watching the effect. That was the impression, rendered
in physical terms. One could not defend oneself from a certain amount of pity.
But it was for Miss Haldin, already so tried in her deepest affections, that I
felt a serious concern. Her attitude, her face, expressed compassion
struggling with doubt on the verge of terror.
"What is it, Kirylo Sidorovitch?" There was a hint of tenderness in that cry.
He only stared at her in that complete surrender of all his faculties which in
a happy lover would have had the name of ecstasy.
"Why are you looking at me like this, Kirylo Sidorovitch? I have approached
you frankly. I need at this time to see clearly in myself. . . ." She ceased
for a moment as if to give him an opportunity to utter at last some word worthy
of her exalted trust in her brother's friend. His silence became impressive,
like a sign of a momentous resolution.
In the end Miss Haldin went on, appealingly--
"I have waited for you anxiously. But now that you have been moved to come to
us in your kindness, you alarm me. You speak obscurely. It seems as if you
were keeping back something from me."
"Tell me, Natalia Victorovna," he was heard at last in a strange unringing
voice, "whom did you see in that place?"
She was startled, and as if deceived in her expectations.
"Where? In Peter Ivanovitch's rooms? There was Mr. Laspara and three other
people."
"Ha! The vanguard--the forlorn hope of the great plot," he commented to
himself. "Bearers of the spark to start an explosion which is meant to change
fundamentally the lives of so many millions in order that Peter Ivanovitch
should be the head of a State."
"You are teasing me," she said. "Our dear one told me once to remember that
men serve always something greater than themselves--the idea."
"Our dear one," he repeated slowly. The effort he made to appear unmoved
absorbed all the force of his soul. He stood before her like a being with
hardly a breath of life. His eyes, even as under great physical suffering, had
lost all their fire. "Ah! your brother. . . . But on your lips, in your
voice, it sounds. . . and indeed in you everything is divine. . . . I wish I
could know the innermost depths of your thoughts, of your feelings."
"But why, Kirylo Sidorovitch?" she cried, alarmed by these words coming out of
strangely lifeless lips.
"Have no fear. It is not to betray you. So you went there? . . . And Sophia
Antonovna, what did she tell you, then?"
"She said very little, really. She knew that I should hear everything from
you. She had no time for more than a few words." Miss Haldin's voice dropped
and she became silent for a moment. "The man, it appears, has taken his life,"
she said sadly.
"Tell me, Natalia Victorovna," he asked after a pause, "do you believe in
remorse?"
"What a question!"
"What can _you_ know of it?" he muttered thickly. "It is not for such as you.
. . . What I meant to ask was whether you believed in the efficacy of remorse?"
She hesitated as though she had not understood, then her face lighted up.
"Yes," she said firmly.
"So he is absolved. Moreover, that Ziemianitch was a brute, a drunken brute."
A shudder passed through Natalia Haldin.
"But a man of the people," Razumov went on, "to whom they, the revolutionists,
tell a tale of sublime hopes. Well, the people must be forgiven. . . . And
you must not believe all you've heard from that source, either," he added, with
a sort of sinister reluctance.
"You are concealing something from me," she exclaimed.
"Do you, Natalia Victorovna, believe in the duty of revenge?"
"Listen, Kirylo Sidorovitch. I believe that the future shall be merciful to us
all. Revolutionist and reactionary, victim and executioner, betrayer and
betrayed, they shall all be pitied together when the light breaks on our black
sky at last. Pitied and forgotten; for without that there can be no union and
no love."
"I hear. No revenge for you, then? Never? Not the least bit?" He smiled
bitterly with his colourless lips. "You yourself are like the very spirit of
that merciful future. Strange that it does not make it easier. . . . No! But
suppose that the real betrayer of your brother--Ziemianitch had a part in it
too, but insignificant and quite involuntary--suppose that he was a young man,
educated, an intellectual worker, thoughtful, a man your brother might have
trusted lightly, perhaps, but still--suppose. . . . But there's a whole story
there."
"And you know the story! But why, then--"
"I have heard it. There is a staircase in it, and even phantoms, but that does
not matter if a man always serves something greater than himself--the idea. I
wonder who is the greatest victim in that tale?"
"In that tale!" Miss Haldin repeated. She seemed turned into stone.
"Do you know why I came to you? It is simply because there is no one anywhere
in the whole great world I could go to. Do you understand what I say? Not one
to go to. Do you conceive the desolation of the thought--no one--to--go--to?"
Utterly misled by her own enthusiastic interpretation of two lines in the
letter of a visionary, under the spell of her own dread of lonely days, in
their overshadowed world of angry strife, she was unable to see the truth
struggling on his lips. What she was conscious of was the obscure form of his
suffering. She was on the point of extending her hand to him impulsively when
he spoke again.
"An hour after I saw you first I knew how it would be. The terrors of remorse,
revenge, confession, anger, hate, fear, are like nothing to the atrocious
temptation which you put in my way the day you appeared before me with your
voice, with your face, in the garden of that accursed villa."
She looked utterly bewildered for a moment; then, with a sort of despairing
insight went straight to the point.
"The story, Kirylo Sidorovitch, the story!"
"There is no more to tell!" He made a movement forward, and she actually put
her hand on his shoulder to push him away; but her strength failed her, and he
kept his ground, though trembling in every limb. "It ends here--on this very
spot." He pressed a denunciatory finger to his breast with force, and became
perfectly still.
I ran forward, snatching up the chair, and was in time to catch hold of Miss
Haldin and lower her down. As she sank into it she swung half round on my arm,
and remained averted from us both, drooping over the back. He looked at her
with an appalling expressionless tranquillity. Incredulity, struggling with
astonishment, anger, and disgust, deprived me for a time of the power of
speech. Then I turned on him, whispering from very rage--
"This is monstrous. What are you staying for? Don't let her catch sight of
you again. Go away! . . ." He did not budge. "Don't you understand that your
presence is intolerable--even to me? If there's any sense of shame in you. . .
."
Slowly his sullen eyes moved ill my direction. "How did this old man come
here?" he muttered, astounded.
Suddenly Miss Haldin sprang up from the chair, made a few steps, and tottered.
Forgetting my indignation, and even the man himself, I hurried to her
assistance. I took her by the arm, and she let me lead her into the
drawing-room. Away from the lamp, in the deeper dusk of the distant end, the
profile of Mrs. Haldin, her hands, her whole figure had the stillness of a
sombre painting. Miss Haldin stopped, and pointed mournfully at the tragic
immobility of her mother, who seemed to watch a beloved head lying in her lap.
That gesture had an unequalled force of expression, so far-reaching in its
human distress that one could not believe that it pointed out merely the
ruthless working of political institutions. After assisting Miss Haldin to the
sofa, I turned round to go back and shut the door Framed in the opening, in the
searching glare of the white anteroom, my eyes fell on Razumov, still there,
standing before the empty chair, as if rooted for ever to the spot of his
atrocious confession. A wonder came over me that the mysterious force which
had torn it out of him had failed to destroy his life, to shatter his body. It
was there unscathed. I stared at the broad line of his shoulders, his dark
head, the amazing immobility of his limbs. At his feet the veil dropped by
Miss Haldin looked intensely black in the white crudity of the light. He was
gazing at it spell-bound. Next moment, stooping with an incredible, savage
swiftness, he snatched it up and pressed it to his face with both hands.
Something, extreme astonishment perhaps, dimmed my eyes, so that he seemed to
vanish before he moved.
The slamming of the outer door restored my sight, and I went on contemplating
the empty chair in the empty ante-room. The meaning of what I had seen reached
my mind with a staggering shock. I seized Natalia Haldin by the shoulder.
"That miserable wretch has carried off your veil!" I cried, in the scared,
deadened voice of an awful discovery. "He. . . ."
The rest remained unspoken. I stepped back and looked down at her, in silent
horror. Her hands were lying lifelessly, palms upwards, on her lap. She
raised her grey eyes slowly. Shadows seemed to come and go in them as if the
steady flame of her soul had been made to vacillate at last in the
cross-currents of poisoned air from the corrupted dark immensity claiming her
for its own, where virtues themselves fester into crimes in the cynicism of
oppression and revolt.
"It is impossible to be more unhappy. . . ." The languid whisper of her voice
struck me with dismay. "It is impossible. . . . I feel my heart becoming like
ice."
IV
Razumov walked straight home on the wet glistening pavement. A heavy shower
passed over him; distant lightning played faintly against the fronts of the
dumb houses with the shuttered shops all along the Rue de Carouge; and now and
then, after the faint flash, there was a faint, sleepy rumble; but the main
forces of the thunderstorm remained massed down the Rhone valley as if loath to
attack the respectable and passionless abode of democratic liberty, the
serious-minded town of dreary hotels, tendering the same indifferent,
hospitality to tourists of all nations and to international conspirators of
every shade.
The owner of the shop was making ready to close when Razumov entered and
without a word extended his hand for the key of his room. On reaching it for
him, from a shelf, the man was about to pass a small joke as to taking the air
in a thunderstorm, but, after looking at the face of his lodger, he only
observed, just to say something--
"You've got very wet."
"Yes, I am washed clean," muttered Razumov, who was dripping from head to foot,
and passed through the inner door towards the staircase leading to his room.
He did not change his clothes, but, after lighting the candle, took off his
watch and chain, laid them on the table, and sat down at once to write. The
book of his compromising record was kept in a locked drawer, which he pulled
out violently, and did not even trouble to push back afterwards.
In this queer pedantism of a man who had read, thought, lived, pen in hand,
there is the sincerity of the attempt to grapple by the same means with another
profounder knowledge. After some passages which have been already made use of
in the building up of this narrative, or add nothing new to the psychological
side of this disclosure (there is even one more allusion to the silver medal in
this last entry), comes a page and a half of incoherent writing where his
expression is baffled by the novelty and the mysteriousness of that side of our
emotional life to which his solitary existence had been a stranger. Then only
he begins to address directly the reader he had in his mind, trying to express
in broken sentences, full of wonder and awe, the sovereign (he uses that very
word) power of her person over his imagination, in which lay the dormant seed
of her brother's words.
". . . The most trustful eyes in the world--your brother said of you when he
was as well as a dead man already. And when you stood before me with your hand
extended, I remembered the very sound of his voice, and I looked into your
eyes--and that was enough. I knew that something had happened, but I did not
know then what. . . . But don't be deceived, Natalia Victorovna. I believed
that I had in my breast nothing but an inexhaustible fund of anger and hate for
you both. I remembered that he had looked to you for the perpetuation of his
visionary soul. He, this man who had robbed me of my hard-working, purposeful
existence. I, too, had my guiding idea; and remember that, amongst us, it is
more difficult to lead a life of toil and self-denial than to go out in the
street and kill from conviction. But enough of that. Hate or no hate, I felt
at once that, while shunning the sight of you, I could never succeed in driving
away your image. I would say, addressing that dead man, 'Is this the way you
are going to haunt me?' It is only later on that I understood--only to-day,
only a few hours ago. What could I have known of what was tearing me to pieces
and dragging the secret for ever to my lips? You were appointed to undo the
evil by making me betray myself back into truth and peace. You! And you have
done it in the same way, too, in which he ruined me: by forcing upon me your
confidence. Only what I detested him for, in you ended by appearing noble and
exalted. But, I repeat, be not deceived. I was given up to evil. I exulted
in having induced that silly innocent fool to steal his father's money. He was
a fool, but not a thief. I made him one. It was necessary. I had to confirm
myself in my contempt and hate for what I betrayed. I have suffered from as
many vipers in my heart as any social democrat of them all--vanity, ambitions,
jealousies, shameful desires, evil passions of envy and revenge. I had my
security stolen from me, years of good work, my best hopes. Listen--now comes
the true confession. The other was nothing. To save me, your trustful eyes
had to entice my thought to the very edge of the blackest treachery. I could
see them constantly looking at me with the confidence of your pure heart which
had not been touched by evil things. Victor Haldin had stolen the truth of my
life from me, who had nothing else in the world, and he boasted of living on
through you on this earth where I had no place to lay my head on. She will
marry some day, he had said--and your eyes were trustful. And do you know what
I said to myself? I shall steal his sister's soul from her. When we met that
first morning in the gardens, and you spoke to me confidingly in the generosity
of your spirit, I was thinking, 'Yes, he himself by talking of her trustful
eyes has delivered her into my hands!' If you could have looked then into my
heart, you would have cried out aloud with terror and disgust.
"Perhaps no one will believe the baseness of such an intention to be possible.
It's certain that, when we parted that morning, I gloated over it. I brooded
upon the best way. The old man you introduced me to insisted on walking with
me. I don't know who he is. He talked of you, of your lonely, helpless state,
and every word of that friend of yours was egging me on to the unpardonable sin
of stealing a soul. Could he have been the devil himself in the shape of an
old Englishman? Natalia Victorovna, I was possessed! I returned to look at
you every day, and drink in your presence the poison of my infamous intention.
But I foresaw difficulties. Then Sophia Antonovna, of whom I was not
thinking--I had forgotten her existence--appears suddenly with that tale from
St. Petersburg. . . . The only thing needed to make me safe--a trusted
revolutionist for ever.
"It was as if Ziemianitch had hanged himself to help me on to further crime.
The strength of falsehood seemed irresistible. These people stood doomed by
the folly and the illusion that was in them--they being themselves the slaves
of lies. Natalia Victorovna, I embraced the might of falsehood, I exulted in
it--I gave myself up to it for a time. Who could have resisted! You yourself
were the prize of it. I sat alone in my room, planning a life, the very
thought of which makes me shudder now, like a believer who had been tempted to
an atrocious sacrilege. But I brooded ardently over its images. The only
thing was that there seemed to be no air in it. And also I was afraid of your
mother. I never knew mine. I've never known any kind of love. There is
something in the mere word. . . . Of you, I was not afraid--forgive me for
telling you this. No, not of you. You were truth itself. You could not
suspect me. As to your mother, you yourself feared already that her mind had
given way from grief. Who could believe anything against me? Had not
Ziemianitch hanged himself from remorse? I said to myself, 'Let's put it to
the test, and be done with it once for all.' I trembled when I went in; but
your mother hardly listened to what I was saying to her, and, in a little
while, seemed to have forgotten my very existence. I sat looking at her.
There was no longer anything between you and me. You were defenceless--and
soon, very soon, you would be alone. . . . I thought of you. Defenceless.
For days you have talked with me--opening your heart. I remembered the shadow
of your eyelashes over your grey trustful eyes. And your pure forehead! It is
low like the forehead of statues--calm, unstained. It was as if your pure brow
bore a light which fell on me, searched my heart and saved me from ignominy,
from ultimate undoing. And it saved you too. Pardon my presumption. But
there was that in your glances which seemed to tell me that you. . . . Your
light! your truth! I felt that I must tell you that I had ended by loving you.
And to tell you that I must first confess. Confess, go out--and perish.
"Suddenly you stood before me! You alone in all the world to whom I must
confess. You fascinated me--you have freed me from the blindness of anger and
hate--the truth shining in you drew the truth out of me. Now I have done it;
and as I write here, I am in the depths depths of anguish, but there is air to
breathe at last--air! And, by the by, that old man sprang up from somewhere as
I was speaking to you, and raged at me like a disappointed devil. I suffer
horribly, but I am not in despair. There is only one more thing to do for me.
After that--if they let me--I shall go away and bury myself in obscure misery.
In giving Victor Haldin up, it was myself, after all, whom I have betrayed
most basely. You must believe what I say now, you can't refuse to believe
this. Most basely. It is through you that I came to feel this so deeply.
After all, it is they and not I who have the right on their side?--theirs is
the strength of invisible powers. So be it. Only don't be deceived, Natalia
Victorovna, I am not converted. Have I then the soul of a slave? No! I am
independent--and therefore perdition is my lot."
On these words, he stopped writing, shut the book, and wrapped it in the black
veil he had carried off. He then ransacked the drawers for paper and string,
made up a parcel which he addressed to Miss Haldin, Boulevard des Philosophes,
and then flung the pen away from him into a distant corner.
This done, he sat down with the watch before him. He could have gone out at
once, but the hour had not struck yet. The hour would be midnight. There was
no reason for that choice except that the facts and the words of a certain
evening in his past were timing his conduct in the present. The sudden power
Natalia Haldin had gained over him he ascribed to the same cause. "You don't
walk with impunity over a phantom's breast," he heard himself mutter. "Thus he
saves me," he thought suddenly. "He himself, the betrayed man." The vivid
image of Miss Haldin seemed to stand by him, watching him relentlessly. She
was not disturbing. He had done with life, and his thought even in her
presence tried to take an impartial survey. Now his scorn extended to himself.
"I had neither the simplicity nor the courage nor the self-possession to be a
scoundrel, or an exceptionally able man. For who, with us in Russia, is to
tell a scoundrel from an exceptionally able man? . . ."
He was the puppet of his past, because at the very stroke of midnight he jumped
up and ran swiftly downstairs as if confident that, by the power of destiny,
the house door would fly open before the absolute necessity of his errand. And
as a matter of fact, just as he got to the bottom of the stairs, it was opened
for him by some people of the house coming home late--two men and a woman. He
slipped out through them into the street, swept then by a fitful gust of wind.
They were, of course, very much startled. A flash of lightning enabled them
to observe him walking away quickly. One of the men shouted, and was starting
in pursuit, but the woman had recognized him. "It's all right. It's only that
young Russian from the third floor." The darkness returned with a single clap
of thunder, like a gun fired for a warning of his escape from the prison of
lies.
He must have heard at some time or other and now remembered unconsciously that
there was to be a gathering of revolutionists at the house of Julius Laspara
that evening. At any rate, he made straight for the Laspara house, and found
himself without surprise ringing at its street door, which, of course, was
closed. By that time the thunderstorm had attacked in earnest. The steep
incline of the street ran with water, the thick fall of rain enveloped him like
a luminous veil in the play of lightning. He was perfectly calm, and, between
the crashes, listened attentively to the delicate tinkling of the doorbell
somewhere within the house.
There was some difficulty before he was admitted. His person was not known to
that one of the guests who had volunteered to go downstairs and see what was
the matter. Razumov argued with him patiently. There could be no harm in
admitting a caller. He had something to communicate to the company upstairs.
"Something of importance?"
"That'll be for the hearers to judge."
"Urgent?"
"Without a moment's delay."
Meantime, one of the Laspara daughters descended the stairs, small lamp in
hand, in a grimy and crumpled gown, which seemed to hang on her by a miracle,
and looking more than ever like an old doll with a dusty brown wig, dragged
from under a sofa. She recognized Razumov at once.
"How do you do? Of course you may come in."
following her light, Razumov climbed two flights of stairs from the lower
darkness. Leaving the lamp on a bracket on the landing, she opened a door, and
went in, accompanied by the sceptical guest. Razumov entered last. He closed
the door behind him, and stepping on one side, put his back against the wall.
The three little rooms _en suite_, with low, smoky ceilings and lit by paraffin
lamps, were crammed with people. Loud talking was going on in all three, and
tea-glasses, full, half-full, and empty, stood everywhere, even on the floor.
The other Laspara girl sat, dishevelled and languid, behind an enormous
samovar. In the inner doorway Razumov had a glimpse of the protuberance of a
large stomach, which he recognized. Only a few feet from him Julius Laspara
was getting down hurriedly from his high stool.
The appearance of the midnight visitor caused no small sensation. Laspara is
very summary in his version of that night's happenings. After some words of
greeting, disregarded by Razumov, Laspara (ignoring purposely his guest's
soaked condition and his extraordinary manner of presenting himself) mentioned
something about writing an article. He was growing uneasy, and Razumov
appeared absent-minded. "I have written already all I shall ever write," he
said at last, with a little laugh.
The whole company's attention was riveted on the new-comer, dripping with
water, deadly pale, and keeping his position against the wall. Razumov put
Laspara gently aside, as though he wished to be seen from head to foot by
everybody. By then the buzz of conversations had died down completely, even in
the most distant of the three rooms. The doorway facing Razumov became blocked
by men and women, who craned their necks and certainly seemed to expect
something startling to happen.
A squeaky, insolent declaration was heard from that group.
"I know this ridiculously conceited individual."
"What individual?" asked Razumov, raising his bowed head, and searching with
his eyes all the eyes fixed upon him. An intense surprised silence lasted for
a time. "If it's me. . . ."
He stopped, thinking over the form of his confession, and found it suddenly,
unavoidably suggested by the fateful evening of his life.
"I am come here," he began, in a clear voice, "to talk of an individual called
Ziemianitch. Sophia Antonovna has informed me that she would make public a
certain letter from St. Petersburg. . . ."
"Sophia Antonovna has left us early in the evening," said Laspara. "It's
quite correct. Everybody here has heard. . . ."
"Very well," Razumov interrupted, with a shade of impatience, for his heart was
beating strongly. Then, mastering his voice so far that there was even a touch
of irony in his clear, forcible enunciation--
"In justice to that individual, the much ill-used peasant, Ziemianitch, I now
declare solemnly that the conclusions of that letter calumniate a man of the
people--a bright Russian soul. Ziemianitch had nothing to do with the actual
arrest of Victor Haldin."
Razumov dwelt on the name heavily, and then waited till the faint, mournful
murmur which greeted it had died out.
"Victor Victorovitch Haldin," he began again, "acting with, no doubt,
noble-minded imprudence, took refuge with a certain student of whose opinions
he knew nothing but what his own illusions suggested to his generous heart. It
was an unwise display of confidence. But I am not here to appreciate the
actions of Victor Haldin. Am I to tell you of the feelings of that student,
sought out in his obscure solitude, and menaced by the complicity forced upon
him? Am I to tell you what he did? It's a rather complicated story. In the
end the student went to General T--- himself, and said, 'I have the man who
killed de P--- locked up in my room, Victor Haldin--a student like myself.'"
A great buzz arose, in which Razumov raised his voice.
"Observe--that man had certain honest ideals in view. But I didn't come here
to explain him."
"No. But you must explain how you know all this," came in grave tones from
somebody.
"A vile coward!" This simple cry vibrated with indignation. "Name him!"
shouted other voices.
"What are you clamouring for?" said Razumov disdainfully, in the profound
silence which fell on the raising of his hand. "Haven't you all understood
that I am that man?"
Laspara went away brusquely from his side and climbed upon his stool. In the
first forward surge of people towards him, Razumov expected to be torn to
pieces, but they fell back without touching him, and nothing came of it but
noise. It was bewildering. His head ached terribly. In the confused uproar
he made out several times the name of Peter Ivanovitch, the word "judgement,"
and the phrase, "But this is a confession," uttered by somebody in a desperate
shriek. In the midst of the tumult, a young man, younger than himself,
approached him with blazing eyes.
"I must beg you," he said, with venomous politeness, "to be good enough not to
move from this spot till you are told what you are to do."
Razumov shrugged his shoulders. "I came in voluntarily."
"Maybe. But you won't go out till you are permitted," retorted the other.
He beckoned with his hand, calling out, "Louisa! Louisa! come here, please";
and, presently, one of the Laspara girls (they had been staring at Razumov from
behind the samovar) came along, trailing a bedraggled tail of dirty flounces,
and dragging with her a chair, which she set against the door, and, sitting
down on it, crossed her legs. The young man thanked her effusively, and
rejoined a group carrying on an animated discussion in low tones. Razumov lost
himself for a moment.
A squeaky voice screamed, "Confession or no confession, you are a police spy!"
The revolutionist Nikita had pushed his way in front of Razumov, and faced him
with his big, livid cheeks, his heavy paunch, bull neck, and enormous hands.
Razumov looked at the famous slayer of gendarmes in silent disgust.
"And what are you?" he said, very low, then shut his eyes, and rested the back
of his head against the wall.
"It would be better for you to depart now." Razumov heard a mild, sad voice,
and opened his eyes. The gentle speaker was an elderly man, with a great brush
of fine hair making a silvery halo all round his keen, intelligent face.
"Peter Ivanovitch shall be informed of your confession--and you shall be
directed. . . ."
Then, turning to Nikita, nicknamed Necator, standing by, he appealed to him in
a murmur--
"What else can we do? After this piece of sincerity he cannot be dangerous any
longer."
The other muttered, "Better make sure of that before we let him go. Leave that
to me. I know how to deal with such gentlemen."
He exchanged meaning glances with two or three men, who nodded slightly, then
turning roughly to Razumov, "You have heard? You are not wanted here. Why
don't you get out?"
The Laspara girl on guard rose, and pulled the chair out of the way
unemotionally. She gave a sleepy stare to Razumov, who started, looked round
the room and passed slowly by her as if struck by some sudden thought.
"I beg you to observe," he said, already on the landing, "that I had only to
hold my tongue. To-day, of all days since I came amongst you, I was made safe,
and to-day I made myself free from falsehood, from remorse--independent of
every single human being on this earth."
He turned his back on the room, and walked towards the stairs, but, at the
violent crash of the door behind him, he looked over his shoulder and saw that
Nikita, with three others, had followed him out. "They are going to kill me,
after all," he thought.
Before he had time to turn round and confront them fairly, they set on him with
a rush. He was driven headlong against the wall. "I wonder how," he completed
his thought. Nikita cried, with a shrill laugh right in his face, "We shall
make you harmless. You wait a bit."
Razumov did not struggle. The three men held him pinned against the wall,
while Nikita, taking up a position a little on one side, deliberately swung off
his enormous arm. Razumov, looking for a knife in his hand, saw it come at him
open, unarmed, and received a tremendous blow on the side of his head over his
ear. At the same time he heard a faint, dull detonating sound, as if some one
had fired a pistol on the other side of the wall. A raging fury awoke in him
at this outrage. The people in Laspara's rooms, holding their breath, listened
to the desperate scuffling of four men all over the landing; thuds against the
walls, a terrible crash against the very door, then all of them went down
together with a violence which seemed to shake the whole house. Razumov,
overpowered, breathless, crushed under the weight of his assailants, saw the
monstrous Nikita squatting on his heels near his head, while the others held
him down, kneeling on his chest, gripping his throat, lying across his legs.
"Turn his face the other way," the paunchy terrorist directed, in an excited,
gleeful squeak.
Razumov could struggle no longer. He was exhausted; he had to watch passively
the heavy open hand of the brute descend again in a degrading blow over his
other ear. It seemed to split his head in two, and all at once the men holding
him became perfectly silent--soundless as shadows. In silence they pulled him
brutally to his feet, rushed with him noiselessly down the staircase, and,
opening the door, flung him out into the street.
He fell forward, and at once rolled over and over helplessly, going down the
short slope together with the rush of running rain water. He came to rest in
the roadway of the street at the bottom, lying on his back, with a great flash
of lightning over his face--a vivid, silent flash of lightning which blinded
him utterly. He picked himself up, and put his arm over his eyes to recover
his sight. Not a sound reached him from anywhere, and he began to walk,
staggering, down a long, empty street. The lightning waved and darted round
him its silent flames, the water of the deluge fell, ran, leaped,
drove--noiseless like the drift of mist. In this unearthly stillness his
footsteps fell silent on the pavement, while a dumb wind drove him on and on,
like a lost mortal in a phantom world ravaged by a soundless thunderstorm. God
only knows where his noiseless feet took him to that night, here and there, and
back again without pause or rest. Of one place, at least, where they did lead
him, we heard afterwards; and, in the morning, the driver of the first
south-shore tramcar, clanging his bell desperately, saw a bedraggled, soaked
man without a hat, and walking in the roadway unsteadily with his head down,
step right in front of his car, and go under.
When they picked him up, with two broken limbs and a crushed side, Razumov had
not lost consciousness. It was as though he had tumbled, smashing himself,
into a world of mutes. Silent men, moving unheard, lifted him up, laid him on
the sidewalk, gesticulating and grimacing round him their alarm, horror, and
compassion. A red face with moustaches stooped close over him, lips moving,
eyes rolling. Razumov tried hard to understand the reason of this dumb show.
To those who stood around him, the features of that stranger, so grievously
hurt, seemed composed in meditation. Afterwards his eyes sent out at them a
look of fear and closed slowly. They stared at him. Razumov made an effort to
remember some French words.
"_Je suis sourd_," he had time to utter feebly, before he fainted.
"He is deaf," they exclaimed to each other. "That's why he did not hear the
car."
They carried him off in that same car. Before it started on its journey, a
woman in a shabby black dress, who had run out of the iron gate of some private
grounds up the road, clambered on to the rear platform and would not be put off.
"I am a relation," she insisted, in bad French. "This young man is a Russian,
and I am his relation." On this plea they let her have her way. She sat down
calmly, and took his head on her lap; her scared faded eyes avoided looking at
his deathlike face. At the corner of a street, on the other side of the town,
a stretcher met the car. She followed it to the door of the hospital, where
they let her come in and see him laid on a bed. Razumov's new-found relation
never shed a tear, but the officials had some difficulty in inducing her to go
away. The porter observed her lingering on the opposite pavement for a long
time. Suddenly, as though she had remembered something, she ran off.
The ardent hater of all Finance ministers, the slave of Madame de S---, had
made up her mind to offer her resignation as lady companion to the Egeria of
Peter Ivanovitch. She had found work to do after her own heart.
But hours before, while the thunderstorm still raged in the night, there had
been in the rooms of Julius Laspara a great sensation. The terrible Nikita,
coming in from the landing, uplifted his squeaky voice in horrible glee before
all the company--
"Razumov! Mr. Razumov! The wonderful Razumov! He shall never be any use as a
spy on any one. He won't talk, because he will never hear anything in his
life--not a thing! I have burst the drums of his ears for him. Oh, you may
trust me. I know the trick. Ha! Ha! Ha! I know the trick."
V
It was nearly a fortnight after her mother's funeral that I saw Natalia Haldin
for the last time.
In those silent, sombre days the doors of the _appartement_ on the Boulevard
des Philosophes were closed to every one but myself. I believe I was of some
use, if only in this, that I alone was aware of the incredible part of the
situation. Miss Haldin nursed her mother alone to the last moment. If
Razumov's visit had anything to do with Mrs. Haldin's end (and I cannot help
thinking that it hastened it considerably), it is because the man, trusted
impulsively by the ill-fated Victor Haldin, had failed to gain the confidence
of Victor Haldin's mother. What tale, precisely, he told her cannot be
known--at any rate, I do not know it--but to me she seemed to die from the
shock of an ultimate disappointment borne in silence. She had not believed
him. Perhaps she could not longer believe any one, and consequently had
nothing to say to any one--not even to her daughter. I suspect that Miss
Haldin lived the heaviest hours of her life by that silent death-bed. I
confess I was angry with the broken-hearted old woman passing away in the
obstinacy of her mute distrust of her daughter.
When it was all over I stood aside. Miss Haldin had her compatriots round her
then. A great number of them attended the funeral. I was there too, but
afterwards managed to keep away from Miss Haldin, till I received a short note
rewarding my self-denial. "It is as you would have it. I am going back to
Russia at once. My mind is made up. Come and see me."
Verily, it was a reward of discretion. I went without delay to receive it.
The _appartement_ of the Boulevard des Philosophes presented the dreary signs
of impending abandonment. It looked desolate and as if already empty to my
eyes.
Standing, we exchanged a few words about her health, mine, remarks as to some
people of the Russian colony, and then Natalia Haldin, establishing me on the
sofa, began to talk openly of her future work, of her plans. It was all to be
as I had wished it. And it was to be for life. We should never see each other
again. Never!
I gathered this success to my breast. Natalia Haldin looked matured by her
open and secret experiences. With her arms folded she walked up and down the
whole length of the room, talking slowly, smooth-browed, with a resolute
profile. She gave me a new view of herself, and I marvelled at that something
grave and measured in her voice, in her movements, in her manner. It was the
perfection of collected independence. The strength of her nature had come to
surface because the obscure depths had been stirred.
"We two can talk of it now," she observed, after a silence and stopping short
before me. "Have you been to inquire at the hospital lately?"
"Yes, I have." And as she looked at me fixedly, "He will live, the doctors
say. But I thought that Tekla. . . ."
"Tekla has not been near me for several days," explained Miss Haldin quickly.
"As I never offered to go to the hospital with her, she thinks that I have no
heart. She is disillusioned about me."
And Miss Haldin smiled faintly.
"Yes. She sits with him as long and as often as they will let her," I said.
"She says she must never abandon him--never as long as she lives. He'll need
somebody--a hopeless cripple, and stone deaf with that."
"Stone deaf? I didn't know," murmured Natalia Haldin.
"He is. It seems strange. I am told there were no apparent injuries to the
head. They say, too, that it is not very likely that he will live so very long
for Tekla to take care of him."
Miss Haldin shook her head.
"While there are travellers ready to fall by the way our Tekla shall never be
idle. She is a good Samaritan by an irresistible vocation. The revolutionists
didn't understand her. Fancy a devoted creature like that being employed to
carry about documents sewn in her dress, or made to write from dictation."
"There is not much perspicacity in the world."
No sooner uttered, I regretted that observation. Natalia Haldin, looking me
straight in the face, assented by a slight movement of her head. She was not
offended, but turning away began to pace the room again. To my western eyes
she seemed to be getting farther and farther from me, quite beyond my reach
now, but undiminished in the increasing distance. I remained silent as though
it were hopeless to raise my voice. The sound of hers, so close to me, made me
start a little.
"Tekla saw him picked up after the accident. The good soul never explained to
me really how it came about. She affirms that there was some understanding
between them--some sort of compact--that in any sore need, in misfortune, or
difficulty, or pain, he was to come to her."
"Was there?" I said. "It is lucky for him that there was, then. He'll need
all the devotion of the good Samaritan."
It was a fact that Tekla, looking out of her window at five in the morning, for
some reason or other, had beheld Razumov in the grounds of the Chateau Borel,
standing stockstill, bare-headed in the rain, at the foot of the terrace. She
had screamed out to him, by name, to know what was the matter. He never even
raised his head. By the time she had dressed herself sufficiently to run
downstairs he was gone. She started in pursuit, and rushing out into the road,
came almost directly upon the arrested tramcar and the small knot of people
picking up Razumov. That much Tekla had told me herself one afternoon we
happened to meet at the door of the hospital, and without any kind of comment.
But I did not want to meditate very long on the inwardness of this peculiar
episode.
"Yes, Natalia Victorovna, he shall need somebody when they dismiss him, on
crutches and stone deaf from the hospital. But I do not think that when he
rushed like an escaped madman into the grounds of the Chateau Borel it was to
seek the help of that good Tekla."
"No," said Natalia, stopping short before me, "perhaps not." She sat down and
leaned her head on her hand thoughtfully. The silence lasted for several
minutes. During that time I remembered the evening of his atrocious
confession--the plaint she seemed to have hardly enough life left in her to
utter, "It is impossible to be more unhappy. . . ." The recollection would
have given me a shudder if I had not been lost in wonder at her force and her
tranquillity. There was no longer any Natalia Haldin, because she had
completely ceased to think of herself. It was a great victory, a
characteristically Russian exploit in self-suppression.
She recalled me to myself by getting up suddenly like a person who has come to
a decision. She walked to the writing-table, now stripped of all the small
objects associated with her by daily use--a mere piece of dead furniture; but
it contained something living, still, since she took from a recess a flat
parcel which she brought to me.
"It's a book," she said rather abruptly. "It was sent to me wrapped up in my
veil. I told you nothing at the time, but now I've decided to leave it with
you. I have the right to do that. It was sent to me. It is mine. You may
preserve it, or destroy it after you have read it. And while you read it,
please remember that I was defenceless. And that he. . . ."
"Defenceless!" I repeated, surprised, looking hard at her.
"You'll find the very word written there," she whispered. "Well, it's true! I
_was_ defenceless--but perhaps you were able to see that for yourself." Her
face coloured, then went deadly pale. "In justice to the man, I want you to
remember that I was. Oh, I was, I was!"
I rose, a little shakily.
" I am not likely to forget anything you say at this our last parting."
Her hand fell into mine.
"It's difficult to believe that it must be good-bye with us."
She returned my pressure and our hands separated.
"Yes. I am leaving here to-morrow. My eyes are open at last and my hands are
free now. As for the rest--which of us can fail to hear the stifled cry of our
great distress? It may be nothing to the world."
"The world is more conscious of your discordant voices," I said. "It is the
way of the world."
"Yes." She bowed her head in assent, and hesitated for a moment. "I must own
to you that I shall never give up looking forward to the day when all discord
shall be silenced. Try to imagine its dawn! The tempest of blows and of
execrations is over; all is still; the new sun is rising, and the weary men
united at last, taking count in their conscience of the ended contest, feel
saddened by their victory, because so many ideas have perished for the triumph
of one, so many beliefs have abandoned them without support. They feel alone
on the earth and gather close together. Yes, there must be many bitter hours!
But at last the anguish of hearts shall be extinguished in love."
And on this last word of her wisdom, a word so sweet, so bitter, so cruel
sometimes, I said good-bye to Natalia Haldin. It is hard to think I shall
never look any more into the trustful eyes of that girl--wedded to an
invincible belief in the advent of loving concord springing like a heavenly
flower from the soil of men's earth, soaked in blood, torn by struggles,
watered with tears.
It must be understood that at that time I didn't know anything of Mr. Razumov's
confession to the assembled revolutionists. Natalia Haldin might have guessed
what was the "one thing more" which remained for him to do; but this my western
eyes had failed to see.
Tekla, the ex-lady companion of Madame de S---, haunted his bedside at the
hospital. We met once or twice at the door of that establishment, but on these
occasions she was not communicative. She gave me news of Mr. Razumov as
concisely as possible. He was making a slow recovery, but would remain a
hopeless cripple all his life. Personally, I never went near him: I never saw
him again, after the awful evening when I stood by, a watchful but ignored
spectator of his scene with Miss Haldin. He was in due course discharged from
the hospital, and his "relative"--so I was told--had carried him off somewhere.
My information was completed nearly two years later. The opportunity,
certainly, was not of my seeking; it was quite accidentally that I met a
much-trusted woman revolutionist at the house of a distinguished Russian
gentleman of liberal convictions, who came to live in Geneva for a time.
He was a quite different sort of celebrity from Peter Ivanovitch--a dark-haired
man with kind eyes, high-shouldered, courteous, and with something hushed and
circumspect in his manner. He approached me, choosing the moment when there
was no one near, followed by a grey-haired, alert lady in a crimson blouse.
"Our Sophia Antonovna wishes to be made known to you," he addressed me, in his
guarded voice. "And so I leave you two to have a talk together."
"I would never have intruded myself upon your notice," the grey-haired lady
began at once, "if I had not been charged with a message for you."
It was a message of a few friendly words from Natalia Haldin. Sophia Antonovna
had just returned from a secret excursion into Russia, and had seen Miss
Haldin. She lived in a town "in the centre," sharing her compassionate labours
between the horrors of overcrowded jails, and the heartrending misery of
bereaved homes. She did not spare herself in good service, Sophia Antonovna
assured me.
"She has a faithful soul, an undaunted spirit and an indefatigable body," the
woman revolutionist summed it all up, with a touch of enthusiasm.
A conversation thus engaged was not likely to drop from want of interest on my
side. We went to sit apart in a corner where no one interrupted us. In the
course of our talk about Miss Haldin, Sophia Antonovna remarked suddenly--
"I suppose you remember seeing me before? That evening when Natalia came to
ask Peter Ivanovitch for the address of a certain Razumov, that young man who.
. . ."
"I remember perfectly," I said. When Sophia Antonovna learned that I had in my
possession that young man's journal given me by Miss Haldin she became
intensely interested. She did not conceal her curiosity to see the document.
I offered to show it to her, and she at once volunteered to call on me next day
for that purpose.
She turned over the pages greedily for an hour or more, and then handed me the
book with a faint sigh. While moving about Russia, she had seen Razumov too.
He lived, not "in the centre," but "in the south." She described to me a
little two-roomed wooden house, in the suburb of some very small town, hiding
within the high plank-fence of a yard overgrown with nettles. He was crippled,
ill, getting weaker every day, and Tekla the Samaritan tended him unweariedly
with the pure joy of unselfish devotion. There was nothing in that task to
become disillusioned about.
I did not hide from Sophia Antonovna my surprise that she should have visited
Mr. Razumov. I did not even understand the motive. But she informed me that
she was not the only one.
"Some of _us_ always go to see him when passing through. He is intelligent.
We has ideas. . . . He talks well, too."
Presently I heard for the first time of Razumov's public confession in
Laspara's house. Sophia Antonovna gave me a detailed relation of what had
occurred there. Razumov himself had told her all about it, most minutely.
Then, looking hard at me with her brilliant black eyes--
"There are evil moments in every life. A false suggestion enters one's brain,
and then fear is born--fear of oneself, fear for oneself. Or else a false
courage--who knows? Well, call it what you like ; but tell me, how many of
them would deliver themselves up deliberately to perdition (as he himself says
in that book) rather than go on living, secretly debased in their own eyes?
How many? . . . And please mark this--he was safe when he did it. It was
just when he believed himself safe and more--infinitely more--when the
possibility of being loved by that admirable girl first dawned upon him, that
he discovered that his bitterest railings, the worst wickedness, the devil work
of his hate and pride, could never cover up the ignominy of the existence
before him. There's character in such a discovery."
I accepted her conclusion in silence. Who would care to question the grounds
of forgiveness or compassion? However, it appeared later on, that there was
some compunction, too, in the charity extended by the revolutionary world to
Razumov the betrayer. Sophia Antonovna continued uneasily--
"And then, you know, he was the victim of an outrage. It was not authorized.
Nothing was decided as to what was to be done with him. He had confessed
voluntarily. And that Nikita who burst the drums of his ears purposely, out on
the landing, you know, as if carried away by indignation--well, he has turned
out to be a scoundrel of the worst kind--a traitor himself, a betrayer--a spy!
Razumov told me he had charged him with it by a sort of inspiration. . . ."
"I had a glimpse of that brute," I said. "How any of you could have been
deceived for half a day passes my comprehension!"
She interrupted me.
"There! There! Don't talk of it. The first time I saw him, I, too, was
appalled. They cried me down. We were always telling each other, 'Oh! you
mustn't mind his appearance.' And then he was always ready to kill. There was
no doubt of it. He killed--yes! in both camps. The fiend. . . ."
Then Sophia Antonovna, after mastering the angry trembling of her lips, told me
a very queer tale. It went that Councillor Mikulin, travelling in Germany
(shortly after Razumov's disappearance from Geneva), happened to meet Peter
Ivanovitch in a railway carriage. Being alone in the compartment, these two
talked together half the night, and it was then that Mikulin the Police Chief
gave a hint to the Arch-Revolutionist as to the true character of the
arch-slayer of gendarmes. It looks as though Mikulin had wanted to get rid of
that particular agent of his own! He might have grown tired of him, or
frightened of him. It must also be said that Mikulin had inherited the
sinister Nikita from his predecessor in office.
And this story, too, I received without comment in my character of a mute
witness of things Russian, unrolling their Eastern logic under my Western eyes.
But I permitted myself a question--
"Tell me, please, Sophia Antonovna, did Madame de S--- leave all her fortune to
Peter Ivanovitch?"
"Not a bit of it." The woman revolutionist shrugged her shoulders in disgust.
"She died without making a will. A lot of nephews and nieces came down from
St. Petersburg, like a flock of vultures, and fought for her money amongst
themselves. All beastly Kammerherrs and Maids of Honour--abominable court
flunkeys. Tfui!"
"One does not hear much of Peter Ivanovitch now," I remarked, after a pause.
"Peter Ivanovitch," said Sophia Antonovna gravely, "has united himself to a
peasant girl."
I was truly astonished.
"What! On the Riviera?"
"What nonsense! Of course not."
Sophia Antonovna's tone was slightly tart.
"Is he, then, living actually in Russia? It's a tremendous risk--isn't it?" I
cried. "And all for the sake of a peasant girl. Don't you think it's very
wrong of him?"
Sophia Antonovna preserved a mysterious silence
for a while, then made a statement. "He just
simply adores her."
"Does he? Well, then, I hope that she won't
hesitate to beat him."
Sophia Antonovna got up and wished me good-bye,
as though she had not heard a word of my impious
hope; but, in the very doorway, where I attended
her, she turned round for an instant, and
declared in a firm voice--
"Peter Ivanovitch is an inspired man."
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad