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.
