VI.
"I WILL not deceive you. 'Reality' got me so entrapped in its
meshes now and again during the past six months, that I forgot my
'sentence' (or perhaps I did not wish to think of it), and
actually busied myself with affairs.
"A word as to my circumstances. When, eight months since, I
became very ill, I threw up all my old connections and dropped
all my old companions. As I was always a gloomy, morose sort of
individual, my friends easily forgot me; of course, they would
have forgotten me all the same, without that excuse. My position
at home was solitary enough. Five months ago I separated myself
entirely from the family, and no one dared enter my room except
at stated times, to clean and tidy it, and so on, and to bring me
my meals. My mother dared not disobey me; she kept the children
quiet, for my sake, and beat them if they dared to make any noise
and disturb me. I so often complained of them that I should think
they must be very fond, indeed, of me by this time. I think I
must have tormented 'my faithful Colia' (as I called him) a
good deal too. He tormented me of late; I could see that he
always bore my tempers as though he had determined to 'spare the
poor invalid.' This annoyed me, naturally. He seemed to have
taken it into his head to imitate the prince in Christian
meekness! Surikoff, who lived above us, annoyed me, too. He was
so miserably poor, and I used to prove to him that he had no one
to blame but himself for his poverty. I used to be so angry that
I think I frightened him eventually, for he stopped coming to see
me. He was a most meek and humble fellow, was Surikoff. (N.B.--
They say that meekness is a great power. I must ask the prince
about this, for the expression is his.) But I remember one day in
March, when I went up to his lodgings to see whether it was true
that one of his children had been starved and frozen to death, I
began to hold forth to him about his poverty being his own fault,
and, in the course of my remarks, I accidentally smiled at the
corpse of his child. Well, the poor wretch's lips began to
tremble, and he caught me by the shoulder, and pushed me to the
door. 'Go out,' he said, in a whisper. I went out, of course, and
I declare I LIKED it. I liked it at the very moment when I was
turned out. But his words filled me with a strange sort of
feeling of disdainful pity for him whenever I thought of them--a
feeling which I did not in the least desire to entertain. At the
very moment of the insult (for I admit that I did insult him,
though I did not mean to), this man could not lose his temper.
His lips had trembled, but I swear it was not with rage. He had
taken me by the arm, and said, 'Go out,' without the least anger.
There was dignity, a great deal of dignity, about him, and it was
so inconsistent with the look of him that, I assure you, it was
quite comical. But there was no anger. Perhaps he merely began to
despise me at that moment.
"Since that time he has always taken off his hat to me on the
stairs, whenever I met him, which is a thing he never did before;
but he always gets away from me as quickly as he can, as though
he felt confused. If he did despise me, he despised me 'meekly,'
after his own fashion.
"I dare say he only took his hat off out of fear, as it were, to
the son of his creditor; for he always owed my mother money. I
thought of having an explanation with him, but I knew that if I
did, he would begin to apologize in a minute or two, so I decided
to let him alone.
"Just about that time, that is, the middle of March, I suddenly
felt very much better; this continued for a couple of weeks. I
used to go out at dusk. I like the dusk, especially in March,
when the night frost begins to harden the day's puddles, and the
gas is burning.
"Well, one night in the Shestilavochnaya, a man passed me with a
paper parcel under his arm. I did not take stock of him very
carefully, but he seemed to be dressed in some shabby summer
dust-coat, much too light for the season. When he was opposite
the lamp-post, some ten yards away, I observed something fall out
of his pocket. I hurried forward to pick it up, just in time, for
an old wretch in a long kaftan rushed up too. He did not dispute
the matter, but glanced at what was in my hand and disappeared.
"It was a large old-fashioned pocket-book, stuffed full; but I
guessed, at a glance, that it had anything in the world inside
it, except money.
"The owner was now some forty yards ahead of me, and was very
soon lost in the crowd. I ran after him, and began calling out;
but as I knew nothing to say excepting 'hey!' he did not turn
round. Suddenly he turned into the gate of a house to the left;
and when I darted in after him, the gateway was so dark that I
could see nothing whatever. It was one of those large houses
built in small tenements, of which there must have been at least
a hundred.
"When I entered the yard I thought I saw a man going along on the
far side of it; but it was so dark I could not make out his
figure.
"I crossed to that corner and found a dirty dark staircase. I
heard a man mounting up above me, some way higher than I was, and
thinking I should catch him before his door would be opened to
him, I rushed after him. I heard a door open and shut on the
fifth storey, as I panted along; the stairs were narrow, and the
steps innumerable, but at last I reached the door I thought the
right one. Some moments passed before I found the bell and got it
to ring.
"An old peasant woman opened the door; she was busy lighting the
'samovar' in a tiny kitchen. She listened silently to my
questions, did not understand a word, of course, and opened
another door leading into a little bit of a room, low and
scarcely furnished at all, but with a large, wide bed in it, hung
with curtains. On this bed lay one Terentich, as the woman called
him, drunk, it appeared to me. On the table was an end of candle
in an iron candlestick, and a half-bottle of vodka, nearly
finished. Terentich muttered something to me, and signed towards
the next room. The old woman had disappeared, so there was
nothing for me to do but to open the door indicated. I did so,
and entered the next room.
"This was still smaller than the other, so cramped that I could
scarcely turn round; a narrow single bed at one side took up
nearly all the room. Besides the bed there were only three common
chairs, and a wretched old kitchen-table standing before a small
sofa. One could hardly squeeze through between the table and the
bed.
"On the table, as in the other room, burned a tallow candle-end
in an iron candlestick; and on the bed there whined a baby of
scarcely three weeks old. A pale-looking woman was dressing the
child, probably the mother; she looked as though she had not as
yet got over the trouble of childbirth, she seemed so weak and
was so carelessly dressed. Another child, a little girl of about
three years old, lay on the sofa, covered over with what looked
like a man's old dress-coat.
"At the table stood a man in his shirt sleeves; he had thrown off
his coat; it lay upon the bed; and he was unfolding a blue paper
parcel in which were a couple of pounds of bread, and some little
sausages.
"On the table along with these things were a few old bits of
black bread, and some tea in a pot. From under the bed there
protruded an open portmanteau full of bundles of rags. In a word,
the confusion and untidiness of the room were indescribable.
"It appeared to me, at the first glance, that both the man and
the woman were respectable people, but brought to that pitch of
poverty where untidiness seems to get the better of every effort
to cope with it, till at last they take a sort of bitter
satisfaction in it. When I entered the room, the man, who had
entered but a moment before me, and was still unpacking his
parcels, was saying something to his wife in an excited manner.
The news was apparently bad, as usual, for the woman began
whimpering. The man's face seemed tome to be refined and even
pleasant. He was dark-complexioned, and about twenty-eight years
of age; he wore black whiskers, and his lip and chin were shaved.
He looked morose, but with a sort of pride of expression. A
curious scene followed.
"There are people who find satisfaction in their own touchy
feelings, especially when they have just taken the deepest
offence; at such moments they feel that they would rather be
offended than not. These easily-ignited natures, if they are
wise, are always full of remorse afterwards, when they reflect
that they have been ten times as angry as they need have been.
"The gentleman before me gazed at me for some seconds in
amazement, and his wife in terror; as though there was something
alarmingly extraordinary in the fact that anyone could come to
see them. But suddenly he fell upon me almost with fury; I had
had no time to mutter more than a couple of words; but he had
doubtless observed that I was decently dressed and, therefore,
took deep offence because I had dared enter his den so
unceremoniously, and spy out the squalor and untidiness of it.
"Of course he was delighted to get hold of someone upon whom to
vent his rage against things in general.
"For a moment I thought he would assault me; he grew so pale that
he looked like a woman about to have hysterics; his wife was
dreadfully alarmed.
"'How dare you come in so? Be off!' he shouted, trembling all
over with rage and scarcely able to articulate the words.
Suddenly, however, he observed his pocketbook in my hand.
"'I think you dropped this,' I remarked, as quietly and drily as
I could. (I thought it best to treat him so.) For some while he
stood before me in downright terror, and seemed unable to
understand. He then suddenly grabbed at his side-pocket, opened
his mouth in alarm, and beat his forehead with his hand.
"'My God!' he cried, 'where did you find it? How?' I explained in
as few words as I could, and as drily as possible, how I had seen
it and picked it up; how I had run after him, and called out to
him, and how I had followed him upstairs and groped my way to his
door.
"'Gracious Heaven!' he cried, 'all our papers are in it! My dear
sir, you little know what you have done for us. I should have
been lost--lost!'
"I had taken hold of the door-handle meanwhile, intending to
leave the room without reply; but I was panting with my run
upstairs, and my exhaustion came to a climax in a violent fit of
coughing, so bad that I could hardly stand.
"I saw how the man dashed about the room to find me an empty
chair, how he kicked the rags off a chair which was covered up by
them, brought it to me, and helped me to sit down; but my cough
went on for another three minutes or so. When I came to myself he
was sitting by me on another chair, which he had also cleared of
the rubbish by throwing it all over the floor, and was watching
me intently.
"'I'm afraid you are ill?' he remarked, in the tone which doctors
use when they address a patient. 'I am myself a medical man' (he
did not say 'doctor'), with which words he waved his hands
towards the room and its contents as though in protest at his
present condition. 'I see that you--'
"'I'm in consumption,' I said laconically, rising from my seat.
He jumped up, too.
"'Perhaps you are exaggerating--if you were to take proper
measures perhaps--"
"He was terribly confused and did not seem able to collect his
scattered senses; the pocket-book was still in his left hand.
"'Oh, don't mind me,' I said. 'Dr. B-- saw me last week' (I
lugged him in again), 'and my hash is quite settled; pardon me-'
I took hold of the door-handle again. I was on the point of
opening the door and leaving my grateful but confused medical
friend to himself and his shame, when my damnable cough got hold
of me again.
"My doctor insisted on my sitting down again to get my breath. He
now said something to his wife who, without leaving her place,
addressed a few words of gratitude and courtesy to me. She seemed
very shy over it, and her sickly face flushed up with confusion.
I remained, but with the air of a man who knows he is intruding
and is anxious to get away. The doctor's remorse at last seemed
to need a vent, I could see.
"'If I--' he began, breaking off abruptly every other moment, and
starting another sentence. 'I-I am so very grateful to you, and I
am so much to blame in your eyes, I feel sure, I--you see--' (he
pointed to the room again) 'at this moment I am in such a
position-'
"'Oh!' I said, 'there's nothing to see; it's quite a clear case--
you've lost your post and have come up to make explanations and
get another, if you can!'
"'How do you know that?' he asked in amazement.
"'Oh, it was evident at the first glance,' I said ironically, but
not intentionally so. 'There are lots of people who come up from
the provinces full of hope, and run about town, and have to live
as best they can.'
"He began to talk at once excitedly and with trembling lips; he
began complaining and telling me his story. He interested me, I
confess; I sat there nearly an hour. His story was a very
ordinary one. He had been a provincial doctor; he had a civil
appointment, and had no sooner taken it up than intrigues began.
Even his wife was dragged into these. He was proud, and flew into
a passion; there was a change of local government which acted in
favour of his opponents; his position was undermined, complaints
were made against him; he lost his post and came up to Petersburg
with his last remaining money, in order to appeal to higher
authorities. Of course nobody would listen to him for a long
time; he would come and tell his story one day and be refused
promptly; another day he would be fed on false promises; again he
would be treated harshly; then he would be told to sign some
documents; then he would sign the paper and hand it in, and they
would refuse to receive it, and tell him to file a formal
petition. In a word he had been driven about from office to
office for five months and had spent every farthing he had; his
wife's last rags had just been pawned; and meanwhile a child had
been born to them and--and today I have a final refusal to my
petition, and I have hardly a crumb of bread left--I have nothing
left; my wife has had a baby lately--and I-I--'
"He sprang up from his chair and turned away. His wife was crying
in the corner; the child had begun to moan again. I pulled out my
note-book and began writing in it. When I had finished and rose
from my chair he was standing before me with an expression of
alarmed curiosity.
"'I have jotted down your name,' I told him, 'and all the rest of
it--the place you served at, the district, the date, and all. I
have a friend, Bachmatoff, whose uncle is a councillor of state
and has to do with these matters, one Peter Matveyevitch
Bachmatoff.'
"'Peter Matveyevitch Bachmatoff!' he cried, trembling all over
with excitement. 'Why, nearly everything depends on that very
man!'
"It is very curious, this story of the medical man, and my visit,
and the happy termination to which I contributed by accident!
Everything fitted in, as in a novel. I told the poor people not
to put much hope in me, because I was but a poor schoolboy myself--
(I am not really, but I humiliated myself as much as possible in
order to make them less hopeful)--but that I would go at once
to the Vassili Ostroff and see my friend; and that as I knew
for certain that his uncle adored him, and was absolutely devoted
to him as the last hope and branch of the family, perhaps the old
man might do something to oblige his nephew.
"'If only they would allow me to explain all to his excellency!
If I could but be permitted to tell my tale to him!" he cried,
trembling with feverish agitation, and his eyes flashing with
excitement. I repeated once more that I could not hold out much
hope--that it would probably end in smoke, and if I did not turn
up next morning they must make up their minds that there was no
more to be done in the matter.
"They showed me out with bows and every kind of respect; they
seemed quite beside themselves. I shall never forget the
expression of their faces!
"I took a droshky and drove over to the Vassili Ostroff at once.
For some years I had been at enmity with this young Bachmatoff,
at school. We considered him an aristocrat; at all events I
called him one. He used to dress smartly, and always drove to
school in a private trap. He was a good companion, and was always
merry and jolly, sometimes even witty, though he was not very
intellectual, in spite of the fact that he was always top of the
class; I myself was never top in anything! All his companions
were very fond of him, excepting myself. He had several times
during those years come up to me and tried to make friends; but I
had always turned sulkily away and refused to have anything to do
with him. I had not seen him for a whole year now; he was at the
university. When, at nine o'clock, or so, this evening, I arrived
and was shown up to him with great ceremony, he first received me
with astonishment, and not too affably, but he soon cheered up,
and suddenly gazed intently at me and burst out laughing.
"'Why, what on earth can have possessed you to come and see ME,
Terentieff?' he cried, with his usual pleasant, sometimes
audacious, but never offensive familiarity, which I liked in
reality, but for which I also detested him. 'Why what's the
matter?' he cried in alarm. 'Are you ill?'
"That confounded cough of mine had come on again; I fell into a
chair, and with difficulty recovered my breath. 'It's all right,
it's only consumption' I said. 'I have come to you with a
petition!'
"He sat down in amazement, and I lost no time in telling him the
medical man's history; and explained that he, with the influence
which he possessed over his uncle, might do some good to the poor
fellow.
"'I'll do it--I'll do it, of course!' he said. 'I shall attack my
uncle about it tomorrow morning, and I'm very glad you told me
the story. But how was it that you thought of coming to me about
it, Terentieff?'
"'So much depends upon your uncle,' I said. 'And besides we have
always been enemies, Bachmatoff; and as you are a generous sort
of fellow, I thought you would not refuse my request because I
was your enemy!' I added with irony.
"'Like Napoleon going to England, eh?' cried he, laughing. 'I'll
do it though--of course, and at once, if I can!' he added, seeing
that I rose seriously from my chair at this point.
"And sure enough the matter ended as satisfactorily as possible.
A month or so later my medical friend was appointed to another
post. He got his travelling expenses paid, and something to help
him to start life with once more. I think Bachmatoff must have
persuaded the doctor to accept a loan from himself. I saw
Bachmatoff two or three times, about this period, the third time
being when he gave a farewell dinner to the doctor and his wife
before their departure, a champagne dinner.
"Bachmatoff saw me home after the dinner and we crossed the
Nicolai bridge. We were both a little drunk. He told me of his
joy, the joyful feeling of having done a good action; he said
that it was all thanks to myself that he could feel this
satisfaction; and held forth about the foolishness of the theory
that individual charity is useless
"I, too, was burning to have my say!
"'In Moscow,' I said, 'there was an old state counsellor, a civil
general, who, all his life, had been in the habit of visiting the
prisons and speaking to criminals. Every party of convicts on its
way to Siberia knew beforehand that on the Vorobeef Hills the
"old general" would pay them a visit. He did all he undertook
seriously and devotedly. He would walk down the rows of the
unfortunate prisoners, stop before each individual and ask after
his needs--he never sermonized them; he spoke kindly to them--he gave
them money; he brought them all sorts of necessaries for the
journey, and gave them devotional books, choosing those who could
read, under the firm conviction that they would read to those who
could not, as they went along.
"'He scarcely ever talked about the particular crimes of any of
them, but listened if any volunteered information on that point.
All the convicts were equal for him, and he made no distinction.
He spoke to all as to brothers, and every one of them looked upon
him as a father. When he observed among the exiles some poor
woman with a child, he would always come forward and fondle the
little one, and make it laugh. He continued these acts of mercy
up to his very death; and by that time all the criminals, all
over Russia and Siberia, knew him!
"'A man I knew who had been to Siberia and returned, told me that
he himself had been a witness of how the very most hardened
criminals remembered the old general, though, in point of fact,
he could never, of course, have distributed more than a few pence
to each member of a party. Their recollection of him was not
sentimental or particularly devoted. Some wretch, for instance,
who had been a murderer--cutting the throat of a dozen fellow-
creatures, for instance; or stabbing six little children for his
own amusement (there have been such men!)--would perhaps, without
rhyme or reason, suddenly give a sigh and say, "I wonder whether
that old general is alive still!" Although perhaps he had not
thought of mentioning him for a dozen years before! How can one
say what seed of good may have been dropped into his soul, never
to die?'
"I continued in that strain for a long while, pointing out to
Bachmatoff how impossible it is to follow up the effects of any
isolated good deed one may do, in all its influences and subtle
workings upon the heart and after-actions of others.
"'And to think that you are to be cut off from life!' remarked
Bachmatoff, in a tone of reproach, as though he would like to
find someone to pitch into on my account.
"We were leaning over the balustrade of the bridge, looking into
the Neva at this moment.
"'Do you know what has suddenly come into my head?' said I,
suddenly--leaning further and further over the rail.
"'Surely not to throw yourself into the river?' cried Bachmatoff
in alarm. Perhaps he read my thought in my face.
"'No, not yet. At present nothing but the following
consideration. You see I have some two or three months left me to
live--perhaps four; well, supposing that when I have but a month
or two more, I take a fancy for some "good deed" that needs both
trouble and time, like this business of our doctor friend, for
instance: why, I shall have to give up the idea of it and take to
something else--some LITTLE good deed, MORE WITHIN MY MEANS, eh?
Isn't that an amusing idea!'
"Poor Bachmatoff was much impressed--painfully so. He took me all
the way home; not attempting to console me, but behaving with the
greatest delicacy. On taking leave he pressed my hand warmly and
asked permission to come and see me. I replied that if he came to
me as a 'comforter,' so to speak (for he would be in that
capacity whether he spoke to me in a soothing manner or only kept
silence, as I pointed out to him), he would but remind me each
time of my approaching death! He shrugged his shoulders, but
quite agreed with me; and we parted better friends than I had
expected.
"But that evening and that night were sown the first seeds of my
'last conviction.' I seized greedily on my new idea; I thirstily
drank in all its different aspects (I did not sleep a wink that
night!), and the deeper I went into it the more my being seemed
to merge itself in it, and the more alarmed I became. A dreadful
terror came over me at last, and did not leave me all next day.
"Sometimes, thinking over this, I became quite numb with the
terror of it; and I might well have deduced from this fact, that
my 'last conviction' was eating into my being too fast and too
seriously, and would undoubtedly come to its climax before long.
And for the climax I needed greater determination than I yet
possessed.
"However, within three weeks my determination was taken, owing to
a very strange circumstance.
"Here on my paper, I make a note of all the figures and dates
that come into my explanation. Of course, it is all the same to
me, but just now--and perhaps only at this moment--I desire that
all those who are to judge of my action should see clearly out of
how logical a sequence of deductions has at length proceeded my
'last conviction.'
"I have said above that the determination needed by me for the
accomplishment of my final resolve, came to hand not through any
sequence of causes, but thanks to a certain strange circumstance
which had perhaps no connection whatever with the matter at
issue. Ten days ago Rogojin called upon me about certain business
of his own with which I have nothing to do at present. I had
never seen Rogojin before, but had often heard about him.
"I gave him all the information he needed, and he very soon took
his departure; so that, since he only came for the purpose of
gaining the information, the matter might have been expected to
end there.
"But he interested me too much, and all that day I was under the
influence of strange thoughts connected with him, and I
determined to return his visit the next day.
"Rogojin was evidently by no means pleased to see me, and hinted,
delicately, that he saw no reason why our acquaintance should
continue. For all that, however, I spent a very interesting hour,
and so, I dare say, did he. There was so great a contrast between
us that I am sure we must both have felt it; anyhow, I felt it
acutely. Here was I, with my days numbered, and he, a man in the
full vigour of life, living in the present, without the slightest
thought for 'final convictions,' or numbers, or days, or, in
fact, for anything but that which-which--well, which he was mad
about, if he will excuse me the expression--as a feeble author who
cannot express his ideas properly.
"In spite of his lack of amiability, I could not help seeing, in
Rogojin a man of intellect and sense; and although, perhaps,
there was little in the outside world which was of. interest to
him, still he was clearly a man with eyes to see.
"I hinted nothing to him about my 'final conviction,' but it
appeared to me that he had guessed it from my words. He remained
silent--he is a terribly silent man. I remarked to him, as I rose
to depart, that, in spite of the contrast and the wide
differences between us two, les extremites se touchent ('extremes
meet,' as I explained to him in Russian); so that maybe he was
not so far from my final conviction as appeared.
"His only reply to this was a sour grimace. He rose and looked
for my cap, and placed it in my hand, and led me out of the
house--that dreadful gloomy house of his--to all appearances, of
course, as though I were leaving of my own accord, and he were
simply seeing me to the door out of politeness. His house
impressed me much; it is like a burial-ground, he seems to like
it, which is, however, quite natural. Such a full life as he
leads is so overflowing with absorbing interests that he has
little need of assistance from his surroundings.
"The visit to Rogojin exhausted me terribly. Besides, I had felt
ill since the morning; and by evening I was so weak that I took
to my bed, and was in high fever at intervals, and even
delirious. Colia sat with me until eleven o'clock.
"Yet I remember all he talked about, and every word we said,
though whenever my eyes closed for a moment I could picture
nothing but the image of Surikoff just in the act of finding a
million roubles. He could not make up his mind what to do with
the money, and tore his hair over it. He trembled with fear that
somebody would rob him, and at last he decided to bury it in the
ground. I persuaded him that, instead of putting it all away
uselessly underground, he had better melt it down and make a
golden coffin out of it for his starved child, and then dig up
the little one and put her into the golden coffin. Surikoff
accepted this suggestion, I thought, with tears of gratitude, and
immediately commenced to carry out my design.
"I thought I spat on the ground and left him in disgust. Colia
told me, when I quite recovered my senses, that I had not been
asleep for a moment, but that I had spoken to him about Surikoff
the whole while.
"At moments I was in a state of dreadful weakness and misery, so
that Colia was greatly disturbed when he left me.
"When I arose to lock the door after him, I suddenly called to
mind a picture I had noticed at Rogojin's in one of his gloomiest
rooms, over the door. He had pointed it out to me himself as we
walked past it, and I believe I must have stood a good five
minutes in front of it. There was nothing artistic about it, but
the picture made me feel strangely uncomfortable. It represented
Christ just taken down from the cross. It seems to me that
painters as a rule represent the Saviour, both on the cross and
taken down from it, with great beauty still upon His face. This
marvellous beauty they strive to preserve even in His moments of
deepest agony and passion. But there was no such beauty in
Rogojin's picture. This was the presentment of a poor mangled
body which had evidently suffered unbearable anguish even before
its crucifixion, full of wounds and bruises, marks of the
violence of soldiers and people, and of the bitterness of the
moment when He had fallen with the cross--all this combined with
the anguish of the actual crucifixion.
"The face was depicted as though still suffering; as though the
body, only just dead, was still almost quivering with agony. The
picture was one of pure nature, for the face was not beautified
by the artist, but was left as it would naturally be, whosoever
the sufferer, after such anguish.
"I know that the earliest Christian faith taught that the Saviour
suffered actually and not figuratively, and that nature was
allowed her own way even while His body was on the cross.
"It is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled
corpse of the Saviour, and to put this question to oneself:
'Supposing that the disciples, the future apostles, the women who
had followed Him and stood by the cross, all of whom believed in
and worshipped Him--supposing that they saw this tortured body,
this face so mangled and bleeding and bruised (and they MUST have
so seen it)--how could they have gazed upon the dreadful sight
and yet have believed that He would rise again?'
"The thought steps in, whether one likes it or no, that death is
so terrible and so powerful, that even He who conquered it in His
miracles during life was unable to triumph over it at the last.
He who called to Lazarus, 'Lazarus, come forth!' and the dead
man lived--He was now Himself a prey to nature and death. Nature
appears to one, looking at this picture, as some huge,
implacable, dumb monster; or still better--a stranger simile--some
enormous mechanical engine of modern days which has seized and
crushed and swallowed up a great and invaluable Being, a Being
worth nature and all her laws, worth the whole earth, which was
perhaps created merely for the sake of the advent of that Being.
"This blind, dumb, implacable, eternal, unreasoning force is well
shown in the picture, and the absolute subordination of all men
and things to it is so well expressed that the idea unconsciously
arises in the mind of anyone who looks at it. All those faithful
people who were gazing at the cross and its mutilated occupant
must have suffered agony of mind that evening; for they must have
felt that all their hopes and almost all their faith had been
shattered at a blow. They must have separated in terror and dread that
night, though each perhaps carried away with him one great
thought which was never eradicated from his mind for ever
afterwards. If this great Teacher of theirs could have seen
Himself after the Crucifixion, how could He have consented to
mount the Cross and to die as He did? This thought also comes
into the mind of the man who gazes at this picture. I thought of
all this by snatches probably between my attacks of delirium--for
an hour and a half or so before Colia's departure.
"Can there be an appearance of that which has no form? And yet it
seemed to me, at certain moments, that I beheld in some strange
and impossible form, that dark, dumb, irresistibly powerful,
eternal force.
"I thought someone led me by the hand and showed me, by the light
of a candle, a huge, loathsome insect, which he assured me was
that very force, that very almighty, dumb, irresistible Power,
and laughed at the indignation with which I received this
information. In my room they always light the little lamp before
my icon for the night; it gives a feeble flicker of light, but it
is strong enough to see by dimly, and if you sit just under it
you can even read by it. I think it was about twelve or a little
past that night. I had not slept a wink, and was lying with my
eyes wide open, when suddenly the door opened, and in came
Rogojin.
"He entered, and shut the door behind him. Then he silently gazed
at me and went quickly to the corner of the room where the lamp
was burning and sat down underneath it.
"I was much surprised, and looked at him expectantly.
"Rogojin only leaned his elbow on the table and silently stared
at me. So passed two or three minutes, and I recollect that his
silence hurt and offended me very much. Why did he not speak?
"That his arrival at this time of night struck me as more or less
strange may possibly be the case; but I remember I was by no
means amazed at it. On the contrary, though I had not actually
told him my thought in the morning, yet I know he understood it;
and this thought was of such a character that it would not be
anything very remarkable, if one were to come for further talk
about it at any hour of night, however late.
"I thought he must have come for this purpose.
"In the morning we had parted not the best of friends; I remember
he looked at me with disagreeable sarcasm once or twice; and this
same look I observed in his eyes now--which was the cause of the
annoyance I felt.
"I did not for a moment suspect that I was delirious and that
this Rogojin was but the result of fever and excitement. I had
not the slightest idea of such a theory at first.
"Meanwhile he continued to sit and stare jeeringly at me.
"I angrily turned round in bed and made up my mind that I would
not say a word unless he did; so I rested silently on my pillow
determined to remain dumb, if it were to last till morning. I
felt resolved that he should speak first. Probably twenty minutes
or so passed in this way. Suddenly the idea struck me--what if
this is an apparition and not Rogojin himself?
"Neither during my illness nor at any previous time had I ever
seen an apparition;--but I had always thought, both when I was a
little boy, and even now, that if I were to see one I should die
on the spot--though I don't believe in ghosts. And yet NOW, when
the idea struck me that this was a ghost and not Rogojin at all,
I was not in the least alarmed. Nay--the thought actually
irritated me. Strangely enough, the decision of the question as
to whether this were a ghost or Rogojin did not, for some reason
or other, interest me nearly so much as it ought to have done;--I
think I began to muse about something altogether different. For
instance, I began to wonder why Rogojin, who had been in
dressing--gown and slippers when I saw him at home, had now put on
a dress-coat and white waistcoat and tie? I also thought to
myself, I remember--'if this is a ghost, and I am not afraid of
it, why don't I approach it and verify my suspicions? Perhaps I
am afraid--' And no sooner did this last idea enter my head than
an icy blast blew over me; I felt a chill down my backbone and my
knees shook.
"At this very moment, as though divining my thoughts, Rogojin
raised his head from his arm and began to part his lips as though
he were going to laugh--but he continued to stare at me as
persistently as before.
"I felt so furious with him at this moment that I longed to rush
at him; but as I had sworn that he should speak first, I
continued to lie still--and the more willingly, as I was still by
no means satisfied as to whether it really was Rogojin or not.
"I cannot remember how long this lasted; I cannot recollect,
either, whether consciousness forsook me at intervals, or not.
But at last Rogojin rose, staring at me as intently as ever, but
not smiling any longer,--and walking very softly, almost on tip-
toes, to the door, he opened it, went out, and shut it behind
him.
"I did not rise from my bed, and I don't know how long I lay with
my eyes open, thinking. I don't know what I thought about, nor
how I fell asleep or became insensible; but I awoke next morning
after nine o'clock when they knocked at my door. My general
orders are that if I don't open the door and call, by nine
o'clock, Matreona is to come and bring my tea. When I now opened
the door to her, the thought suddenly struck me--how could he have
come in, since the door was locked? I made inquiries and found
that Rogojin himself could not possibly have come in, because all
our doors were locked for the night.
"Well, this strange circumstance--which I have described with so
much detail--was the ultimate cause which led me to taking my
final determination. So that no logic, or logical deductions, had
anything to do with my resolve;--it was simply a matter of
disgust.
"It was impossible for me to go on living when life was full of
such detestable, strange, tormenting forms. This ghost had
humiliated me;--nor could I bear to be subordinate to that dark,
horrible force which was embodied in the form of the loathsome
insect. It was only towards evening, when I had quite made up my
mind on this point, that I began to feel easier.
