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.
