II
The Egeria of the "Russian Mazzini" produced, at
first view, a strong effect by the death-like
immobility of an obviously painted face. The
eyes appeared extraordinarily brilliant. The
figure, in a close-fitting dress, admirably
made, but by no means fresh, had an elegant
stiffness. The rasping voice inviting him to
sit down; the rigidity of the upright attitude
with one arm extended along the back of the
sofa, the white gleam of the big eyeballs
setting off the black, fathomless stare of the
enlarged pupils, impressed Razumov more than
anything he had seen since his hasty and secret
departure from St. Petersburg. A witch in
Parisian clothes, he thought. A portent! He
actually hesitated in his advance, and did not
even comprehend, at first, what the rasping
voice was saying.
"Sit down. Draw your chair nearer me. There--"
He sat down. At close quarters the rouged
cheekbones, the wrinkles, the fine lines on each
side of the vivid lips, astounded him. He was
being received graciously, with a smile which
made him think of a grinning skull.
"We have been hearing about you for some time."
He did not know what to say, and murmured some
disconnected words. The grinning skull effect
vanished.
"And do you know that the general complaint is
that you have shown yourself very reserved
everywhere?"
Razumov remained silent for a time, thinking of
his answer.
"I, don't you see, am a man of action," he said
huskily, glancing upwards.
Peter Ivanovitch stood in portentous expectant
silence by the side of his chair. A slight
feeling of nausea came over Razumov. What could
be the relations of these two people to each
other? She like a galvanized corpse out of some
Hoffman's Tale--he the preacher of feminist
gospel for all the world, and a super-
revolutionist besides! This ancient, painted
mummy with unfathomable eyes, and this burly,
bull-necked, deferential. . .what was it?
Witchcraft, fascination. . . . "It's for her
money," he thought. "She has millions!"
The walls, the floor of the room were bare like
a barn. The few pieces of furniture had been
discovered in the garrets and dragged down into
service without having been properly dusted,
even. It was the refuse the banker's widow had
left behind her. The windows without curtains
had an indigent, sleepless look. In two of them
the dirty yellowy-white blinds had been pulled
down. All this spoke, not of poverty, but of
sordid penuriousness.
The hoarse voice on the sofa uttered angrily-
"You are looking round, Kirylo Sidorovitch. I
have been shamefully robbed, positively ruined."
A rattling laugh, which seemed beyond her
control, interrupted her for a moment.
"A slavish nature would find consolation in the
fact that the principal robber was an exalted
and almost a sacrosanct person--a Grand Duke, in
fact. Do you understand, Mr. Razumov? A Grand
Duke--No! You have no idea what thieves those
people are! Downright thieves!"
Her bosom heaved, but her left arm remained
rigidly extended along the back of the couch.
"You will only upset yourself," breathed out a
deep voice, which, to Razumov's startled glance,
seemed to proceed from under the steady
spectacles of Peter Ivanovitch, rather than from
his lips, which had hardly moved.
"What of hat? I say thieves! _Voleurs!
Voleurs!_"
Razumov was quite confounded by this unexpected
clamour, which had in it something of wailing
and croaking, and more than a suspicion of
hysteria.
"_Voleurs! Voleurs! Vol_. . . ."
"No power on earth can rob you of your genius,"
shouted Peter Ivanovitch in an overpowering
bass, but without stirring, without a gesture of
any kind. A profound silence fell.
Razumov remained outwardly impassive. "What is
the meaning of this performance?" he was asking
himself. But with a preliminary sound of
bumping outside some door behind him, the lady
companion, in a threadbare black skirt and
frayed blouse, came in rapidly, walking on her
heels, and carrying in both hands a big Russian
samovar, obviously too heavy for her. Razumov
made an instinctive movement to help, which
startled her so much that she nearly dropped her
hissing burden. She managed, however, to land
it on the table, and looked so frightened that
Razumov hastened to sit down. She produced
then, from an adjacent room, four glass
tumblers, a teapot, and a sugar-basin, on a
black iron tray.
The rasping voice asked from the sofa abruptly--
"_Les gateaux_? Have you remembered to bring
the cakes?"
Peter Ivanovitch, without a word, marched out on
to the landing, and returned instantly with a
parcel wrapped up in white glazed paper, which
he must have extracted from the interior of his
hat. With imperturbable gravity he undid the
string and smoothed the paper open on a part of
the table within reach of Madame de S---'s hand.
The lady companion poured out the tea, then
retired into a distant corner out of everybody's
sight. From time to time Madame de S---
extended a claw-like hand, glittering with
costly rings, towards the paper of cakes, took
up one and devoured it, displaying her big false
teeth ghoulishly. Meantime she talked in a
hoarse tone of the political situation in the
Balkans. She built great hopes on some
complication in the peninsula for arousing a
great movement of national indignation in Russia
against "these thieves--thieves thieves."
"You will only upset yourself," Peter Ivanovitch
interposed, raising his glassy gaze. He smoked
cigarettes and drank tea in silence,
continuously. When he had finished a glass, he
flourished his hand above his shoulder. At that
signal the lady companion, ensconced in her
corner, with round eyes like a watchful animal,
would dart out to the table and pour him out
another tumblerful.
Razumov looked at her once or twice. She was
anxious, tremulous, though neither Madame de S---
nor Peter Ivanovitch paid the slightest
attention to her. "What have they done between
them to that forlorn creature?" Razumov asked
himself. "Have they terrified her out of her
senses with ghosts, or simply have they only
been beating her?" When she gave him his second
glass of tea, he noticed that her lips trembled
in the manner of a scared person about to burst
into speech. But of course she said nothing,
and retired into her corner, as if hugging to
herself the smile of thanks he gave her.
"She may be worth cultivating," thought Razumov
suddenly.
He was calming down, getting hold of the
actuality into which he had been thrown--for the
first time perhaps since Victor Haldin had
entered his room. . .and had gone out again. He
was distinctly aware of being the object of the
famous--or notorious--Madame de S---'s ghastly
graciousness.
Madame de S--- was pleased to discover that this
young man was different from the other types of
revolutionist members of committees, secret
emissaries, vulgar and unmannerly fugitive
professors, rough students, ex-cobblers with
apostolic faces, consumptive and ragged
enthusiasts, Hebrew youths, common fellows of
all sorts that used to come and go around Peter
Ivanovitch--fanatics, pedants, proletarians all.
It was pleasant to talk to this young man of
notably good appearance--for Madame de S--- was
not always in a mystical state of mind.
Razumov's taciturnity only excited her to a
quicker, more voluble utterance. It still dealt
with the Balkans. She knew all the statesmen of
that region, Turks, Bulgarians, Montenegrins,
Roumanians, Greeks, Armenians, and nondescripts,
young and old, the living and the dead. With
some money an intrigue could be started which
would set the Peninsula in a blaze and outrage
the sentiment of the Russian people. A cry of
abandoned brothers could be raised, and then,
with the nation seething with indignation, a
couple of regiments or so would be enough to
begin a military revolution in St. Petersburg
and make an end of these thieves. . . .
"Apparently I've got only to sit still and
listen," the silent Razumov thought to himself.
"As to that hairy and obscene brute" (in such
terms did Mr. Razumov refer mentally to the
popular expounder of a feministic conception of
social state), "as to him, for all his cunning
he too shall speak out some day."
Razumov ceased to think for a moment. Then a
sombre-toned reflection formulated itself in his
mind, ironical and bitter. "I have the gift of
inspiring confidence." He heard himself
laughing aloud. It was like a goad to the
painted, shiny-eyed harridan on the sofa.
"You may well laugh!" she cried hoarsely. "What
else can one do! Perfect swindlers--and what
base swindlers at that! Cheap Germans--Holstein-
Gottorps! Though, indeed, it's hardly safe to
say who and what they are. A family that counts
a creature like Catherine the Great in its
ancestry--you understand!"
"You are only upsetting yourself," said Peter
Ivanovitch, patiently but in a firm tone. This
admonition had its usual effect on the Egeria.
She dropped her thick, discoloured eyelids and
changed her position on the sofa. All her
angular and lifeless movements seemed completely
automatic now that her eyes were closed.
Presently she opened them very full. Peter
Ivanovitch drank tea steadily, without haste.
"Well, I declare!" She addressed Razumov
directly. "The people who have seen you on your
way here are right. You are very reserved. You
haven't said twenty words altogether since you
came in. You let nothing of your thoughts be
seen in your face either."
"I have been listening, Madame," said Razumov,
using French for the first time, hesitatingly,
not being certain of his accent. But it seemed
to produce an excellent impression. Madame de S-
-- looked meaningly into Peter Ivanovitch's
spectacles, as if to convey her conviction of
this young man's merit. She even nodded the
least bit in his direction, and Razumov heard
her murmur under her breath the words, " Later
on in the diplomatic service," which could not
but refer to the favourable impression he had
made. The fantastic absurdity of it revolted
him because it seemed to outrage his ruined
hopes with the vision of a mock-career. Peter
Ivanovitch, impassive as though he were deaf,
drank some more tea. Razumov felt that he must
say something.
"Yes," he began deliberately, as if uttering a
meditated opinion. "Clearly. Even in planning
a purely military revolution the temper of the
people should be taken into account."
"You have understood me perfectly. The
discontent should be spiritualized. That is
what the ordinary heads of revolutionary
committees will not understand. They aren't
capable of it. For instance, Mordatiev was in
Geneva last month. Peter Ivanovitch brought him
here. You know Mordatiev? Well, yes--you have
heard of him. They call him an eagle--a hero!
He has never done half as much as you have.
Never attempted--not half. . . ."
Madame de S--- agitated herself angularly on the
sofa.
"We, of course, talked to him. And do you know
what he said to me? 'What have we to do with
Balkan intrigues? We must simply extirpate the
scoundrels.' Extirpate is all very well--but
what then? The imbecile! I screamed at him,
'But you must spiritualize--don't you
understand?--spiritualize the discontent.'. . ."
She felt nervously in her pocket for a
handkerchief; she pressed it to her lips.
"Spiritualize?" said Razumov interrogatively,
watching her heaving breast. The long ends of
an old black lace scarf she wore over her head
slipped off her shoulders and hung down on each
side of her ghastly rosy cheeks.
"An odious creature," she burst out again.
"Imagine a man who takes five lumps of sugar in
his tea. . . . Yes, I said spiritualize! How
else can you make discontent effective and
universal?"
"Listen to this, young man." Peter Ivanovitch
made himself heard solemnly. "Effective and
universal."
Razumov looked at him suspiciously.
"Some say hunger will do that," he remarked.
"Yes. I know. Our people are starving in
heaps. But you can't make famine universal.
And it is not despair that we want to create.
There is no moral support to be got out of that.
It is indignation. . . ."
Madame de S--- let her thin, extended arm sink
on her knees.
"I am not a Mordatiev," began Razumov.
"Bien sur!" murmured Madame de S---.
"Though I too am ready to say extirpate,
extirpate! But in my ignorance of political
work, permit me to ask: A Balkan--well--
intrigue, wouldn't that take a very long time?"
Peter Ivanovitch got up and moved off quietly,
to stand with his face to the window. Razumov
heard a door close; he turned his head and
perceived that the lady companion had scuttled
out of the room.
"In matters of politics I am a supernaturalist."
Madame de S--- broke the silence harshly.
Peter Ivanovitch moved away from the window and
struck Razumov lightly on the shoulder. This
was a signal for leaving, but at the same time
he addressed Madame de S--- in a peculiar
reminding tone---
"Eleanor!"
Whatever it meant, she did not seem to hear him.
She leaned back in the corner of the sofa like
a wooden figure. The immovable peevishness of
the face, framed in the limp, rusty lace, had a
character of cruelty.
"As to extirpating," she croaked at the
attentive Razumov, "there is only one class in
Russia which must be extirpated. Only one. And
that class consists of only one family. You
understand me? That one family must be
extirpated."
Her rigidity was frightful, like the rigor of a
corpse galvanized into harsh speech and
glittering stare by the force of murderous hate.
The sight fascinated Razumov--yet he felt more
self-possessed than at any other time since he
had entered this weirdly bare room. He was
interested. But the great feminist by his side
again uttered his appeal--
"Eleanor!"
She disregarded it. Her carmine lips
vaticinated with an extraordinary rapidity. The
liberating spirit would use arms before which
rivers would part like Jordan, and ramparts fall
down like the walls of Jericho. The deliverance
from bondage would be effected by plagues and by
signs, by wonders and by war. The women. . . .
"Eleanor!"
She ceased; she had heard him at last. She
pressed her hand to her forehead.
"What is it? Ah yes! That girl--the sister of.
. . ."
It was Miss Haldin that she meant. That young
girl and her mother had been leading a very
retired life. They were provincial ladies--were
they not? The mother had been very beautiful--
traces were left yet. Peter Ivanovitch, when he
called there for the first time, was greatly
struck. . . . But the cold way they received
him was really surprising.
"He is one of our national glories," Madams de S-
-- cried out, with sudden vehemence. "All the
world listens to him."
"I don't know these ladies," said Razumov loudly
rising from his chair.
"What are you saying, Kirylo Sidorovitch? I
understand that she was talking to you here, in
the garden, the other day."
"Yes, in the garden," said Razumov gloomily.
Then, with an effort, "She made herself known to
me."
"And then ran away from us all," Madame de S---
continued, with ghastly vivacity. "After coming
to the very door! What a peculiar proceeding!
Well, I have been a shy little provincial girl
at one time. Yes, Razumov" (she fell into this
familiarity intentionally, with an appalling
grimace of graciousness. Razumov gave a
perceptible start), "yes, that's my origin. A
simple provincial family
"You are a marvel," Peter Ivanovich uttered in
his
But it was to Razumov that she gave her death's-
head smile. Her tone was quite imperious.
"You must bring the wild young thing here. She
is wanted. I reckon upon your success--mind!"
"She is not a wild young thing," muttered
Razumov, in a surly voice.
"Well, then--that's all the same. She may be
one of these young conceited democrats. Do you
know what I think? I think she is very much
like you in character. There is a smouldering
fire of scorn in you. You are darkly self-
sufficient, but I can see your very soul."
Her shiny eyes had a dry, intense stare, which,
missing Razumov, gave him an absurd notion that
she was looking at something which was visible
to her behind him. He cursed himself for an
impressionable fool, and asked with forced
calmness--
"What is it you see? Anything resembling me?"
She moved her rigidly set face from left to
right, negatively.
"Some sort of phantom in my image?" pursued
Razumov slowly. "For, I suppose, a soul when it
is seen is just that. A vain thing. There are
phantoms of the living as well as of the dead."
The tenseness of Madame de S---'s stare had
relaxed, and now she looked at Razumov in a
silence that became disconcerting.
"I myself have had an experience," he stammered
out, as if compelled. " I've seen a phantom
once." The unnaturally red lips moved to frame
a question harshly.
"Of a dead person?"
"No. Living."
"A friend?"
" No."
"An enemy?"
"I hated him."
"Ah! It was not a woman, then?"
"A woman!" repeated Razumov, his eyes looking
straight into the eyes of Madame de S---. "Why
should it have been a woman? And why this
conclusion? Why should I not have been able to
hate a woman?"
As a matter of fact, the idea of hating a woman
was new to him. At that moment he hated Madame
de S---. But it was not exactly hate. It was
more like the abhorrence that may be caused by a
wooden or plaster figure of a repulsive kind.
She moved no more than if she were such a
figure; even her eyes, whose unwinking stare
plunged into his own, though shining, were
lifeless, as though they were as artificial as
her teeth. For the first time Razumov became
aware of a faint perfume, but faint as it was it
nauseated him exceedingly. Again Peter
Ivanovitch tapped him slightly on the shoulder.
Thereupon he bowed, and was about to turn away
when he received the unexpected favour of a
bony, inanimate hand extended to him, with the
two words in hoarse French--
"_Au revoir!_"
He bowed over the skeleton hand and left the
room, escorted by the great man, who made him go
out first. The voice from the sofa cried after
them-
"You remain here, _Pierre_."
"Certainly, _ma chere amie_."
But he left the room with Razumov, shutting the
door behind him. The landing was prolonged into
a bare corridor, right and left, desolate
perspectives of white and gold decoration
without a strip of carpet. The very light,
pouring through a large window at the end,
seemed dusty; and a solitary speck reposing on
the balustrade of white marble--the silk top-hat
of the great feminist--asserted itself
extremely, black and glossy in all that crude
whiteness.
Peter Ivanovitch escorted the visitor without
opening his lips. Even when they had reached
the head of the stairs Peter Ivanovitch did not
break the silence. Razumov's impulse to
continue down the flight and out of the house
without as much as a nod abandoned him suddenly.
He stopped on the first step and leaned his
back against the wall. Below him the great hall
with its chequered floor of black and white
seemed absurdly large and like some public place
where a great power of resonance awaits the
provocation of footfalls and voices. As if
afraid of awakening the loud echoes of that
empty house, Razumov adopted a low tone.
"I really have no mind to turn into a dilettante
spiritualist."
Peter Ivanovitch shook his head slightly, very
serious.
"Or spend my time in spiritual ecstasies or
sublime meditations upon the gospel of
feminism," continued Razumov. "I made my way
here for my share of action--action, most
respected Peter Ivanovitch! It was not the
great European writer who attracted me, here, to
this odious town of liberty. It was somebody
much greater. It was the idea of the chief
which attracted me. There are starving young
men in Russia who believe in you so much that it
seems the only thing that keeps them alive in
their misery. Think of that, Peter Ivanovitch!
No! But only think of that!"
The great man, thus entreated, perfectly
motionless and silent, was the very image of
patient, placid respectability.
"Of course I don't speak of the people. They
are brutes," added Razumov, in the same subdued
but forcible tone. At this, a protesting murmur
issued from the "heroic fugitive's" beard. A
murmur of authority.
"Say--children."
"No! Brutes!" Razumov insisted bluntly.
"But they are sound, they are innocent," the
great man pleaded in a whisper.
"As far as that goes, a brute is sound enough."
Razumov raised his voice at last. "And you
can't deny the natural innocence of a brute.
But what's the use of disputing about names?
You just try to give these children the power
and stature of men and see what they will be
like. You just give it to them and see. . . .
But never mind. I tell you, Peter Ivanovitch,
that half a dozen young men do not come together
nowadays in a shabby student's room without your
name being whispered, not as a leader of
thought, but as a centre of revolutionary
energies--the centre of action. What else has
drawn me near you, do you think? It is not what
all the world knows of you, surely. It's
precisely what the world at large does not know.
I was irresistibly drawn-let us say impelled,
yes, impelled; or, rather, compelled, driven--
driven,'' repented Razumov loudly, and ceased,
as if startled by the hollow reverberation of
the word "driven" along two bare corridors and
in the great empty hall.
Peter Ivanovitch did not seem startled in the
least. The young man could not control a dry,
uneasy laugh. The great revolutionist remained
unmoved with an effect of commonplace, homely
superiority.
"Curse him," said Razumov to himself, "he is
waiting behind his spectacles for me to give
myself away." Then aloud, with a satanic
enjoyment of the scorn prompting him to play
with the greatness of the great man--
"Ah, Peter Ivanovitch, if you only knew the
force which drew--no, which _drove_ me towards
you! The irresistible force."
He did not feel any desire to laugh now. This
time Peter Ivanovitch moved his head sideways,
knowingly, as much as to say, "Don't I?" This
expressive movement was almost imperceptible.
Razumov went on in secret derision--
"All these days you have been trying to read me,
Peter Ivanovitch. That is natural. I have
perceived it and I have been frank. Perhaps you
may think I have not been very expansive? But
with a man like you it was not needed; it would
have looked like an impertinence, perhaps. And
besides, we Russians are prone to talk too much
as a rule. I have always felt that. And yet,
as a nation, we are dumb. I assure you that I
am not likely to talk to you so much again--ha!
ha!--"
Razumov, still keeping on the lower step, came a
little nearer to the great man.
"You have been condescending enough. I quite
understood it was to lead me on. You must
render me the justice that I have not tried to
please. I have been impelled, compelled, or
rather sent--let us say sent--towards you for a
work that no one but myself can do. You would
call it a harmless delusion: a ridiculous
delusion at which you don't even smile. It is
absurd of me to talk like this, yet some day you
shall remember these words, I hope. Enough of
this. Here I stand before you-confessed! But
one thing more I must add to complete it: a mere
blind tool I can never consent to be."
Whatever acknowledgment Razumov was prepared
for, he was not prepared to have both his hands
seized in the great man's grasp. The swiftness
of the movement was aggressive enough to
startle. The burly feminist could not have been
quicker had his purpose been to jerk Razumov
treacherously up on the landing and bundle him
behind one of the numerous closed doors near by.
This idea actually occurred to Razumov; his
hands being released after a darkly eloquent
squeeze, he smiled, with a beating heart,
straight at the beard and the spectacles hiding
that impenetrable man.
He thought to himself (it stands confessed in
his handwriting), "I won't move from here till
he either speaks or turns away. This is a
duel." Many seconds passed without a sign or
sound.
"Yes, yes," the great man said hurriedly, in
subdued tones, as if the whole thing had been a
stolen, breathless interview. "Exactly. Come
to see us here in a few days. This must be gone
into deeply--deeply, between you and me. Quite
to the bottom. To the. . . . And, by the by,
you must bring along Natalia Victorovna--you
know, the Haldin girl. . . .
"Am I to take this as my first instruction from
you?" inquired Razumov stiffly.
Peter Ivanovitch seemed perplexed by this new
attitude.
"Ah! h'm! You are naturally the proper person--
_la personne indiquee_. Every one shall be
wanted presently. Every one."
He bent down from the landing over Razumov, who
had lowered his eyes.
"The moment of action approaches,'' he murmured.
Razumov did not look up. He did not move till
he heard the door of the drawing-room close
behind the greatest of feminists returning to
his painted Egeria. Then he walked down slowly
into the hall. The door stood open, and the
shadow of the house was lying aslant over the
greatest part of the terrace. While crossing it
slowly, he lifted his hat and wiped his damp
forehead, expelling his breath with force to get
rid of the last vestiges of the air he had been
breathing inside. He looked at the palms of his
hands, and rubbed them gently against his thighs.
He felt, bizarre as it may seem, as though
another self, an independent sharer of his mind,
had been able to view his whole person very
distinctly indeed. "This is curious," he
thought. After a while he formulated his
opinion of it in the mental ejaculation:
"Beastly!" This disgust vanished before a
marked uneasiness. "This is an effect of
nervous exhaustion," he reflected with weary
sagacity. "How am I to go on day after day if I
have no more power of resistance--moral
resistance?"
He followed the path at the foot of the terrace.
"Moral resistance, moral resistance;" he kept
on repeating these words mentally. Moral
endurance. Yes, that was the necessity of the
situation. An immense longing to make his way
out of these grounds and to the other end of the
town, of throwing himself on his bed and going
to sleep for hours, swept everything clean out
of his mind for a moment. "Is it possible that
I am but a weak creature after all?" he asked
himself, in sudden alarm. "Eh! What's that?"
He gave a start as if awakened from a dream. He
even swayed a little before recovering himself.
"Ah! You stole away from us quietly to walk
about here," he said.
The lady companion stood before him, but how she
came there he had not the slightest idea. Her
folded arms were closely cherishing the cat.
"I have been unconscious as I walked, it's a
positive fact," said Razumov to himself in
wonder. He raised his hat with marked civility.
The sallow woman blushed duskily. She had her
invariably scared expression, as if somebody had
just disclosed to her some terrible news. But
she held her ground, Razumov noticed, without
timidity. "She is incredibly shabby," he
thought. In the sunlight her black costume
looked greenish, with here and there threadbare
patches where the stuff seemed decomposed by age
into a velvety, black, furry state. Her very
hair and eyebrows looked shabby. Razumov
wondered whether she were sixty years old. Her
figure, though, was young enough. He observed
that she did not appear starved, but rather as
if she had been fed on unwholesome scraps and
leavings of plates.
Razumov smiled amiably and moved out of her way.
She turned her head to keep her scared eyes on
him.
"I know what you have been told in there," she
affirmed, without preliminaries. Her tone, in
contrast with her manner, had an unexpectedly
assured character which put Razumov at his ease.
"Do you? You must have heard all sorts of talk
on many occasions in there."
She varied her phrase, with the same incongruous
effect of positiveness.
"I know to a certainty what you have been told
to do."
"Really?" Razumov shrugged his shoulders a
little. He was about to pass on with a bow,
when a sudden thought struck him. "Yes. To be
sure! In your confidential position you are
aware of many things," he murmured, looking at
the cat.
That animal got a momentary convulsive hug from
the lady companion.
"Everything was disclosed to me a long time
ago," she said.
"Everything," Razumov repeated absently.
"Peter Ivanovitch is an awful despot," she
jerked out.
Razumov went on studying the stripes on the grey
fur of the cat.
"An iron will is an integral part of such a
temperament. How else could he be a leader?
And I think that you are mistaken in--"
"There!" she cried. " You tell me that I am
mistaken. But I tell you all the same that he
cares for no one." She jerked her head up.
"Don't you bring that girl here. That's what
you have been told to do--to bring that girl
here. Listen to me; you had better tie a stone
round her neck and throw her into the lake."
Razumov had a sensation of chill and gloom, as
if a heavy cloud had passed over the sun.
"The girl?" he said. "What have I to do with
her?"
"But you have been told to bring Nathalie Haldin
here. Am I not right? Of course I am right. I
was not in the room, but I know. I know Peter
Ivanovitch sufficiently well. He is a great
man. Great men are horrible. Well, that's it.
Have nothing to do with her. That's the best
you can do, unless you want her to become like
me--disillusioned! Disillusioned!"
"Like you," repeated Razumov, glaring at her
face, as devoid of all comeliness of feature and
complexion as the most miserable beggar is of
money. He smiled, still feeling chilly: a
peculiar sensation which annoyed him."
Disillusioned as to Peter Ivanovitch! Is that
all you have lost?"
She declared, looking frightened, but with
immense conviction, "Peter Ivanovitch stands for
everything." Then she added, in another tone,
"Keep the girl away from this house."
"And are you absolutely inciting me to disobey
Peter Ivanovitch just because--because you are
disillusioned?"
She began to blink.
"Directly I saw you for the first time I was
comforted. You took your hat off to me. You
looked as if one could trust you. Oh!"
She shrank before Razumov's savage snarl of, "I
have heard something like this before."
She was so confounded that she could do nothing
but blink for a long time.
"It was your humane manner," she explained
plaintively. "I have been starving for, I won't
say kindness, but just for a little civility,
for I don't know how long. And now you are
angry. . . ."
"But no, on the contrary," he protested. " I am
very glad you trust me. It's possible that
later on I may. . . ."
"Yes, if you were to get ill," she interrupted
eagerly, " or meet some bitter trouble, you
would find I am not a useless fool. You have
only to let me know. I will come to you. I
will indeed. And I will stick to you. Misery
and I are old acquaintances--but this life here
is worse than starving."
She paused anxiously, then in a voice for the
first time sounding really timid, she added--
"Or if you were engaged in some dangerous work.
Sometimes a humble companion--I would not want
to know anything. I would follow you with joy.
I could carry out orders. I have the courage."
Razumov looked attentively at the scared round
eyes, at the withered, sallow, round cheeks.
They were quivering about the corners of the
mouth.
"She wants to escape from here," he thought.
"Suppose I were to tell you that I am engaged in
dangerous work?" he uttered slowly.
She pressed the cat to her threadbare bosom with
a breathless exclamation. "Ah!" Then not much
above a whisper: "Under Peter Ivanovitch?"
"No, not under Peter Ivanovitch."
He read admiration in her eyes, and made an
effort to smile.
"Then--alone?"
He held up his closed hand with the index
raised. "Like this finger," he said.
She was trembling slightly. But it occurred to
Razumov that they might have been observed from
the house, and he became anxious to be gone.
She blinked, raising up to him her puckered
face, and seemed to beg mutely to be told
something more, to be given a word of
encouragement for her starving, grotesque, and
pathetic devotion.
"Can we be seen from the house?" asked Razumov
confidentially.
She answered, without showing the slightest
surprise at the question--
"No, we can't, on account of this end of the
stables." And she added, with an acuteness
which surprised Razumov," But anybody looking
out of an upstairs window would know that you
have not passed through the gates yet."
"Who's likely to spy out of the window?" queried
Razumov. "Peter Ivanovitch?"
She nodded.
"Why should he trouble his head?"
"He expects somebody this afternoon."
"You know the person?"
"There's more than one."
She had lowered her eyelids. Razumov looked at
her curiously.
"Of course. You hear everything they say."
She murmured without any animosity--
"So do the tables and chairs."
He understood that the bitterness accumulated in
the heart of that helpless creature had got into
her veins, and, like some subtle poison, had
decomposed her fidelity to that hateful pair.
It was a great piece of luck for him, he
reflected; because women are seldom venal after
the manner of men, who can be bought for
material considerations. She would be a good
ally, though it was not likely that she was
allowed to hear as much as the tables and chairs
of the Chateau Borel. That could not be
expected. But still. . . . And, at any rate,
she could be made to talk.
When she looked up her eyes met the fixed stare
of Razumov, who began to speak at once.
"Well, well, dear. . .but upon my word, I
haven't the pleasure of knowing your name yet.
Isn't it strange?"
For the first time she made a movement of the
shoulders.
"Is it strange? No one is told my name. No one
cares. No one talks to me, no one writes to me.
My parents don't even know if I'm alive. I
have no use for a name, and I have almost
forgotten it myself."
Razumov murmured gravely, "Yes, but still. . ."
She went on much slower, with indifference--
"You may call me Tekla, then. My poor Andrei
called me so. I was devoted to him. He lived
in wretchedness and suffering, and died in
misery. That is the lot of all us Russians,
nameless Russians. There is nothing else for
us, and no hope anywhere, unless. . ."
"Unless what?"
"Unless all these people with names are done
away with," she finished, blinking and pursing
up her lips.
"It will be easier to call you Tekla, as you
direct me," said Razumov, "if you consent to
call me Kirylo, when we are talking like this--
quietly--only you and me."
And he said to himself, "Here's a being who must
be terribly afraid of the world, else she would
have run away from this situation before." Then
he reflected that the mere fact of leaving the
great man abruptly would make her a suspect.
She could expect no support or countenance from
anyone. This revolutionist was not fit for an
independent existence.
She moved with him a few steps, blinking and
nursing the cat with a small balancing movement
of her arms.
"Yes--only you and I. That's how I was with my
poor Andrei, only he was dying, killed by these
official brutes--while you! You are strong.
You kill the monsters. You have done a great
deed. Peter Ivanovitch himself must consider
you. Well--don't forget me--especially if you
are going back to work in Russia. I could
follow you, carrying anything that was wanted--
at a distance, you know. Or I could watch for
hours at the corner of a street if necessary,--
in wet or snow--yes, I could--all day long. Or
I could write for you dangerous documents, lists
of names or instructions, so that in case of
mischance the handwriting could not compromise
you. And you need not be afraid if they were to
catch me. I would know how to keep dumb. We
women are not so easily daunted by pain. I
heard Peter Ivanovitch say it is our blunt
nerves or something. We can stand it better.
And it's true; I would just as soon bite my
tongue out and throw it at them as not. What's
the good of speech to me? Who would ever want
to hear what I could say? Ever since I closed
the eyes of my poor Andrei I haven't met a man
who seemed to care for the sound of my voice. I
should never have spoken to you if the very
first time you appeared here you had not taken
notice of me so nicely. I could not help
speaking of you to that charming dear girl. Oh,
the sweet creature! And strong! One can see
that at once. If you have a heart don't let her
set her foot in here. Good-bye!"
Razumov caught her by the arm. Her emotion at
being thus seized manifested itself by a short
struggle, after which she stood still, not
looking at him.
"But you can tell me," he spoke in her ear, "why
they--these people in that house there--are so
anxious to get hold of her?"
She freed herself to turn upon him, as if made
angry by the question.
"Don't you understand that Peter Ivanovitch must
direct, inspire, influence? It is the breath of
his life. There can never be too many
disciples. He can't bear thinking of anyone
escaping him. And a woman, too! There is
nothing to be done without women, he says. He
has written it. He--"
The young man was staring at her passion when
she broke off suddenly and ran away behind the
stable.
