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.
