III
Razumov, thus left to himself, took the
direction of the gate. But on this day of many
conversations, he discovered that very probably
he could not leave the grounds without having to
hold another one.
Stepping in view from beyond the lodge appeared
the expected visitors of Peter Ivanovitch: a
small party composed of two men and a woman.
They noticed him too, immediately, and stopped
short as if to consult. But in a moment the
woman, moving aside, motioned with her arm to
the two men, who, leaving the drive at once,
struck across the large neglected lawn, or
rather grass-plot, and made directly for the
house. The woman remained on the path waiting
for Razumov's approach. She had recognized him.
He, too, had recognized her at the first
glance. He had been made known to her at
Zurich, where he had broken his journey while on
his way from Dresden. They had been much
together for the three days of his stay.
She was wearing the very same costume in which
he had seen her first. A blouse of crimson silk
made her noticeable at a distance. With that
she wore a short brown skirt and a leather belt.
Her complexion was the colour of coffee and
milk, but very clear; her eyes black and
glittering, her figure erect. A lot of thick
hair, nearly white, was done up loosely under a
dusty Tyrolese hat of dark cloth, which seemed
to have lost some of its trimmings.
The expression of her face was grave, intent; so
grave that Razumov, after approaching her close,
felt obliged to smile. She greeted him with a
manly hand-grasp.
"What! Are you going away?" she exclaimed.
"How is that, Razumov?"
"I am going away because I haven't been asked to
stay," Razumov answered, returning the pressure
of her hand with much less force than she had
put into it.
She jerked her head sideways like one who
understands. Meantime Razumov's eyes had
strayed after the two men. They were crossing
the grass-plot obliquely, without haste. The
shorter of the two was buttoned up in a narrow
overcoat of some thin grey material, which came
nearly to his heels. His companion, much taller
and broader, wore a short, close-fitting jacket
and tight trousers tucked into shabby top-boots.
The woman, who had sent them out of Razumov's
way apparently, spoke in a businesslike voice.
"I had to come rushing from Zurich on purpose to
meet the train and take these two along here to
see Peter Ivanovitch. I've just managed it."
"Ah! indeed," Razumov said perfunctorily, and
very vexed at her staying behind to talk to him
"From Zurich--yes, of course. And these two,
they come from. . . ."
She interrupted, without emphasis--
"From quite another direction. From a distance,
too. A considerable distance."
Razumov shrugged his shoulders. The two men
from a distance, after having reached the wall
of the terrace, disappeared suddenly at its foot
as if the earth had opened to swallow them up.
"Oh, well, they have just come from America."
The woman in the crimson blouse shrugged her
shoulders too a little before making that
statement. "The time is drawing near," she
interjected, as if speaking to herself. "I did
not tell them who you were. Yakovlitch would
have wanted to embrace you."
"Is that he with the wisp of hair hanging from
his chin, in the long coat?"
"You've guessed aright. That's Yakovlitch."
"And they could not find their way here from the
station without you coming on purpose from
Zurich to show it to them? Verily, without
women we can do nothing. So it stands written,
and apparently so it is."
He was conscious of an immense lassitude under
his effort to be sarcastic. And he could see
that she had detected it with those steady,
brilliant black eyes.
"What is the matter with you?"
"I don't know. Nothing. I've had a devil of a
day."
She waited, with her black eyes fixed on his
face. Then--
"What of that? You men are so impressionable
and self-conscious. One day is like another,
hard, hard--and there's an end of it, till the
great day comes. I came over for a very good
reason. They wrote to warn Peter Ivanovitch of
their arrival. But where from? Only from
Cherbourg on a bit of ship's notepaper. Anybody
could have done that. Yakovlitch has lived for
years and years in America. I am the only one
at hand who had known him well in the old days.
I knew him very well indeed. So Peter
Ivanovitch telegraphed, asking me to come. It's
natural enough, is it not?"
"You came to vouch for his identity?" inquired
Razumov.
"Yes. Something of the kind. Fifteen years of
a life like his make changes in a man. Lonely,
like a crow in a strange country. When I think
of Yakovlitch before he went to America--"
The softness of the low tone caused Razumov to
glance at her sideways. She sighed; her black
eyes were looking away; she had plunged the
fingers of her right hand deep into the mass of
nearly white hair, and stirred them there
absently. When she withdrew her hand the little
hat perched on the top of her head remained
slightly tilted, with a queer inquisitive
effect, contrasting strongly with the
reminiscent murmur that escaped her.
"We were not in our first youth even then. But
a man is a child always."
Razumov thought suddenly, "They have been living
together." Then aloud--
"Why didn't you follow him to America?" he asked
point-blank.
She looked up at him with a perturbed air.
"Don't you remember what was going on fifteen
years ago? It was a time of activity. The
Revolution has its history by this time. You
are in it and yet you don't seem to know it.
Yakovlitch went away then on a mission; I went
back to Russia. It had to be so. Afterwards
there was nothing for him to come back to."
"Ah! indeed," muttered Razumov, with affected
surprise. " Nothing!"
"What are you trying to insinuate " she
exclaimed quickly. " Well, and what then if he
did get discouraged a little. . . ."
"He looks like a Yankee, with that goatee
hanging from his chin. A regular Uncle Sam,"
growled Razumov. "Well, and you? You who went
to Russia? You did not get discouraged."
"Never mind. Yakovlitch is a man who cannot be
doubted. He, at any rate, is the right sort."
Her black, penetrating gaze remained fixed upon
Razumov while she spoke, and for a moment
afterwards.
"Pardon me, "Razumov inquired coldly, "but does
it mean that you, for instance, think that I am
not the right sort?"
She made no protest, gave no sign of having
heard the question; she continued looking at him
in a manner which he judged not to be absolutely
unfriendly. In Zurich when he passed through
she had taken him under her charge, in a way,
and was with him from morning till night during
his stay of two days. She took him round to see
several people. At first she talked to him a
great deal and rather unreservedly, but always
avoiding all reference to herself; towards the
middle of the second day she fell silent,
attending him zealously as before, and even
seeing him off at the railway station, where she
pressed his hand firmly through the lowered
carriage window, and, stepping back without a
word, waited till the train moved. He had
noticed that she was treated with quiet regard.
He knew nothing of her parentage, nothing of her
private history or political record; he judged
her from his own private point of view, as being
a distinct danger in his path. "Judged " is not
perhaps the right word. It was more of a
feeling, the summing up of slight impressions
aided by the discovery that he could not despise
her as he despised all the others. He had not
expected to see her again so soon.
No, decidedly; her expression was not
unfriendly. Yet he perceived an acceleration in
the beat of his heart. The conversation could
not be abandoned at that point. He went on in
accents of scrupulous inquiry--
"Is it perhaps because I don't seem to accept
blindly every development of the general
doctrine--such for instance as the feminism of
our great Peter Ivanovitch? If that is what
makes me suspect, then I can only say I would
scorn to be a slave even to an idea."
She had been looking at him all the time, not as
a listener looks at one, but as if the words he
chose to say were only of secondary interest.
When he finished she slipped her hand, by a
sudden and decided movement, under his arm and
impelled him gently towards the gate of the
grounds. He felt her firmness and obeyed the
impulsion at once, just as the other two men
had, a moment before, obeyed unquestioningly the
wave of her hand.
They made a few steps like this.
"No, Razumov, your ideas are probably all
right," she said. "You may be valuable--very
valuable. What's the matter with you is that
you don't like us."
She released him. He met her with a frosty
smile.
" Am I expected then to have love as well as
convictions?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"You know very well what I mean. People have
been thinking you not quite whole-hearted. I
have heard that opinion from one side and
another. But I have understood you at the end
of the first day. . . ."
Razumov interrupted her, speaking steadily.
"I assure you that your perspicacity is at fault
here."
"What phrases he uses!" she exclaimed
parenthetically. "Ah! Kirylo Sidorovitch, you
like other men are fastidious, full of self-love
and afraid of trifles. Moreover, you had no
training. What you want is to be taken in hand
by some woman. I am sorry I am not staying here
a few days. I am going back to Zurich to-
morrow, and shall take Yakovlitch with me most
likely."
This information relieved Razumov.
"I am sorry too," he said. "But, all the same,
I don't think you understand me."
He breathed more freely; she did not protest,
but asked, "And how did you get on with Peter
Ivanovitch? You have seen a good deal of each
other. How is it between you two?"
Not knowing what answer to make, the young man
inclined his head slowly.
Her lips had been parted in expectation. She
pressed them together, and seemed to reflect.
"That's all right."
This had a sound of finality, but she did not
leave him. It was impossible to guess what she
had in her mind. Razumov muttered--
"It is not of me that you should have asked that
question. In a moment you shall see Peter
Ivanovitch himself, and the subject will come up
naturally. He will be curious to know what has
delayed you so long in this garden."
"No doubt Peter Ivanovitch will have something
to say to me. Several things. He may even
speak of you--question me. Peter Ivanovitch is
inclined to trust me generally."
"Question you? That's very likely."
She smiled, half serious.
"Well--and what shall I say to him?"
"I don't know. You may tell him of your
discovery."
"What's that?"
"Why--my lack of love for. . . ."
"Oh! That's between ourselves," she
interrupted, it was hard to say whether in jest
or earnest.
"I see that you want to tell Peter Ivanovitch
something in my favour," said Razumov, with grim
playfulness. "Well, then, you can tell him that
I am very much in earnest about my mission. I
mean to succeed."
"You have been given a mission!" she exclaimed
quickly.
"It amounts to that. I have been told to bring
about a certain event."
She looked at him searchingly.
"A mission," she repeated, very grave and
interested all at once. "What sort of mission?"
"Something in the nature of propaganda work."
" Ah ! Far away from here?"
"No. Not very far," said Razumov, restraining a
sudden desire to laugh, although he did not feel
joyous in the least.
"So!" she said thoughtfully. "Well, I am not
asking questions. It's sufficient that Peter
Ivanovitch should know what each of us is doing.
Everything is bound to come right in the end."
"You think so?"
"I don't think, young man. I just simply
believe it."
"And is it to Peter Ivanovitch that you owe that
faith?"
She did not answer the question, and they stood
idle, silent, as if reluctant to part with each
other.
"That's just like a man," she murmured at last.
"As if it were possible to tell how a belief
comes to one." Her thin Mephistophelian
eyebrows moved a little. "Truly there are
millions of people in Russia who would envy the
life of dogs in this country. It is a horror
and a shame to confess this even between
ourselves. One must believe for very pity.
This can't go on. No! It can't go on. For
twenty years I have been coming and going,
looking neither to the left nor to the right. .
. . What are you smiling to yourself for? You
are only at the beginning. You have begun well,
but you just wait till you have trodden every
particle of yourself under your feet in your
comings and goings. For that is what it comes
to. You've got to trample down every particle
of your own feelings; for stop you cannot, you
must not. I have been young, too--but perhaps
you think that I am complaining-eh?"
"I don't think anything of the sort," protested
Razumov indifferently.
"I dare say you don't, you dear superior
creature. You don't care."
She plunged her fingers into the bunch of hair
on the left side, and that brusque movement had
the effect of setting the Tyrolese hat straight
on her head. She frowned under it without
animosity, in the manner of an investigator.
Razumov averted his face carelessly.
"You men are all alike. You mistake luck for
merit. You do it in good faith too! I would
not be too hard on you. It's masculine nature.
You men are ridiculously pitiful in your
aptitude to cherish childish illusions down to
the very grave. There are a lot of us who have
been at work for fifteen years--I mean
constantly--trying one way after another,
underground and above ground, looking neither to
the right nor to the left! I can talk about it.
I have been one of these that never rested. . .
. There! What's the use of talking. . . .
Look at my grey hairs! And here two babies come
along--I mean you and Haldin--you come along and
manage to strike a blow at the very first try."
At the name of Haldin falling from the rapid and
energetic lips of the woman revolutionist,
Razumov had the usual brusque consciousness of
the irrevocable. But in all the months which
had passed over his head he had become hardened
to the experience. The consciousness was no
longer accompanied by the blank dismay and the
blind anger of the early days. He had argued
himself into new beliefs; and he had made for
himself a mental atmosphere of gloomy and
sardonic reverie, a sort of murky medium through
which the event appeared like a featureless
shadow having vaguely the shape of a man; a
shape extremely familiar, yet utterly
inexpressive, except for its air of discreet
waiting in the dusk. It was not alarming.
"What was he like?" the woman revolutionist
asked unexpectedly.
"What was he like?" echoed Razumov, making a
painful effort not to turn upon her savagely.
But he relieved himself by laughing a little
while he stole a glance at her out of the
corners of his eyes. This reception of her
inquiry disturbed her.
"How like a woman," he went on. "What is the
good of concerning yourself with his appearance?
Whatever it was, he is removed beyond all
feminine influences now."
A frown, making three folds at the root of her
nose, accentuated the Mephistophelian slant of
her eyebrows.
"You suffer, Razumov," she suggested, in her
low, confident voice.
"What nonsense!" Razumov faced the woman
fairly. "But now I think of it, I am not sure
that he is beyond the influence of one woman at
least; the one over there--Madame de S---, you
know. Formerly the dead were allowed to rest,
but now it seems they are at the beck and call
of a crazy old harridan. We revolutionists make
wonderful discoveries. It is true that they are
not exactly our own. We have nothing of our
own. But couldn't the friend of Peter
Ivanovitch satisfy your feminine curiosity?
Couldn't she conjure him up for you?"--he jested
like a man in pain.
Her concentrated frowning expression relaxed,
and she said, a little wearily, "Let us hope she
will make an effort and conjure up some tea for
us. But that is by no means certain. I am
tired, Razumov."
"You tired! What a confession! Well, there has
been tea up there. I had some. If you hurry on
after Yakovlitch, instead of wasting your time
with such an unsatisfactory sceptical person as
myself, you may find the ghost of it--the cold
ghost of it--still lingering in the temple. But
as to you being tired I can hardly believe it.
We are not supposed to be. We mustn't, We
can't. The other day I read in some paper or
other an alarmist article on the tireless
activity of the revolutionary parties. It
impresses the world. It's our prestige."
"He flings out continually these flouts and
sneers;" the woman in the crimson blouse spoke
as if appealing quietly to a third person, but
her black eyes never left Razumov's face. "And
what for, pray? Simply because some of his
conventional notions are shocked, some of his
petty masculine standards. You might think he
was one of these nervous sensitives that come to
a bad end. And yet," she went on, after a
short, reflective pause and changing the mode of
her address, "and yet I have just learned
something which makes me think that you are a
man of character, Kirylo Sidorovitch. Yes!
indeed--you are."
The mysterious positiveness of this assertion
startled Razumov. Their eyes met. He looked
away and, through the bars of the rusty gate,
stared at the clean, wide road shaded by the
leafy trees. An electric tramcar, quite empty,
ran along the avenue with a metallic rustle. It
seemed to him he would have given anything to be
sitting inside all alone. He was inexpressibly
weary, weary in every fibre of his body, but he
had a reason for not being the first to break
off the conversation. At any instant, in the
visionary and criminal babble of revolutionists,
some momentous words might fall on his ear; from
her lips, from anybody's lips. As long as he
managed to preserve a clear mind and to keep
down his irritability there was nothing to fear.
The only condition of success and safety was
indomitable will-power, he reminded himself.
He longed to be on the other side of the bars,
as though he were actually a prisoner within the
grounds of this centre of revolutionary plots,
of this house of folly, of blindness, of
villainy and crime. Silently he indulged his
wounded spirit in a feeling of immense moral and
mental remoteness. He did not even smile when
he heard her repeat the words--
"Yes! A strong character."
He continued to gaze through the bars like a
moody prisoner, not thinking of escape, but
merely pondering upon the faded memories of
freedom.
"If you don't look out," he mumbled, still
looking away, "you shall certainly miss seeing
as much as the mere ghost of that tea."
She was not to be shaken off in such a way. As
a matter of fact he had not expected to succeed.
"Never mind, it will be no great loss. I mean
the missing of her tea and only the ghost of it
at that. As to the lady, you must understand
that she has her positive uses. See _that_,
Razumov."
He turned his head at this imperative appeal and
saw the woman revolutionist making the motions
of counting money into the palm of her hand.
"That's what it is. You see?"
Razumov uttered a slow "I see," and returned to
his prisoner-like gazing upon the neat and shady
road.
"Material means must be obtained in some way,
and this is easier than breaking into banks.
More certain too. There! I am joking. . . .
What is he muttering to himself now?" she cried
under her breath.
"My admiration of Peter Ivanovitch's devoted
self-sacrifice, that's all. It's enough to make
one sick."
"Oh, you squeamish, masculine creature. Sick!
Makes him sick! And what do you know of the
truth of it? There's no looking into the
secrets of the heart. Peter Ivanovitch knew her
years ago, in his worldly days, when he was a
young officer in the Guards. It is not for us
to judge an inspired person. That's where you
men have an advantage. You are inspired
sometimes both in thought and action. I have
always admitted that when you _are_ inspired,
when you manage to throw off your masculine
cowardice and prudishness you are not to be
equalled by us. Only, how seldom. . . .
Whereas the silliest woman can always be made of
use. And why? Because we have passion,
unappeasable passion. . . . I should like to
know what he is smiling at?"
"I am not smiling," protested Razumov gloomily.
"Well! How is one to call it? You made some
sort of face. Yes, I know! You men can love
here and hate there and desire something or
other--and you make a great to-do about it, and
you call it passion! Yes! While it lasts. But
we women are in love with love, and with hate,
with these very things I tell you, and with
desire itself. That's why we can't be bribed
off so easily as you men. In life, you see,
there is not much choice. You have either to
rot or to burn. And there is not one of us,
painted or unpainted, that would not rather burn
than rot."
She spoke with energy, but in a matter-of-fact
tone. Razumov's attention had wandered away on
a track of its own--outside the bars of the gate-
-but not out of earshot. He stuck his hands
into the pockets of his coat.
"Rot or burn! Powerfully stated. Painted or
unpainted. Very vigorous. Painted or. . . .
Do tell me--she would be infernally jealous of
him, wouldn't she?"
"Who? What? The Baroness? Eleanor Maximovna?
Jealous of Peter Ivanovitch? Heavens! Are
these the questions the man's mind is running
on? Such a thing is not to be thought of."
"Why? Can't a wealthy old woman be jealous?
Or, are they all pure spirits together?"
"But what put it into your head to ask such a
question?" she wondered.
"Nothing. I just asked. Masculine frivolity,
if you like."
"I don't like," she retorted at once. "It is
not the time to be frivolous. What are you
flinging your very heart against? Or, perhaps,
you are only playing a part."
Razumov had felt that woman's observation of him
like a physical contact, like a hand resting
lightly on his shoulder. At that moment he
received the mysterious impression of her having
made up her mind for a closer grip. He
stiffened himself inwardly to bear it without
betraying himself.
"Playing a Part," he repeated, presenting to her
an unmoved profile. "It must be done very badly
since you see through the assumption."
She watched him, her forehead drawn into
perpendicular folds, the thin black eyebrows
diverging upwards like tile antennae of an
insect. He added hardly audibly--
"You are mistaken. I am doing it no more than
the rest of us."
"Who is doing it?" she snapped out.
"Who? Everybody," he said impatiently. "You
are a materialist, aren't you?"
"Eh! My dear soul, I have outlived all that
nonsense."
"But you must remember the definition of
Cabanis: 'Man is a digestive tube.' I imagine
now. . . ."
"I spit on him."
"What? On Cabanis? All right. But you can't
ignore the importance of a good digestion. The
joy of life--you know the joy of life?--depends
on a sound stomach, whereas a bad digestion
inclines one to scepticism, breeds black fancies
and thoughts of death. These are facts
ascertained by physiologists. Well, I assure
you that ever since I came over from Russia I
have been stuffed with indigestible foreign
concoctions of the most nauseating kind--pah !"
"You are joking," she murmured incredulously.
He assented in a detached way.
"Yes. It is all a joke. It's hardly worth
while talking to a man like me. Yet for that
very reason men have been known to take their
own life."
"On the contrary, I think it is worth while
talking to you."
He kept her in the corner of his eye. She
seemed to be thinking out some scathing retort,
but ended by only shrugging her shoulders
slightly.
"Shallow talk! I suppose one must pardon this
weakness in you," she said, putting a special
accent on the last word. There was something
anxious in her indulgent conclusion.
Razumov noted the slightest shades in this
conversation, which he had not expected, for
which he was not prepared. That was it. "I was
not prepared," he said to himself. "It has
taken me unawares." It seemed to him that if he
only could allow himself to pant openly like a
dog for a time this oppression would pass away.
"I shall never be found prepared," he thought,
with despair. He laughed a little, saying as
lightly as he could--
"Thanks. I don't ask for mercy." Then
affecting a playful uneasiness, "But aren't you
afraid Peter Ivanovitch might suspect us of
plotting something unauthorized together by the
gate here?"
"No, I am not afraid. You are quite safe from
suspicions while you are with me, my dear young
man." The humorous gleam in her black eyes went
out. "Peter Ivanovitch trusts me," she went on,
quite austerely. "He takes my advice. I am his
right hand, as it were, in certain most
important things. . . . That amuses you what?
Do you think I am boasting?"
"God forbid. I was just only saying to myself
that Peter Ivanovitch seems to have solved the
woman question pretty completely."
Even as he spoke he reproached himself for his
words, for his tone. All day long he had been
saying the wrong things. It was folly, worse
than folly. It was weakness; it was this
disease of perversity overcoming his will. Was
this the way to meet speeches which certainly
contained the promise of future confidences from
that woman who apparently had a great store of
secret knowledge and so much influence? Why
give her this puzzling impression? But she did
not seem inimical. There was no anger in her
voice. It was strangely speculative.
"One does not know what to think, Razumov. You
must have bitten something bitter in your
cradle." Razumov gave her a sidelong glance.
"H'm! Something bitter? That's an
explanation," he muttered. "Only it was much
later. And don't you think, Sophia Antonovna,
that you and I come from the same cradle?"
The woman, whose name he had forced himself at
last to pronounce (he had experienced a strong
repugnance in letting it pass his lips), the
woman revolutionist murmured, after a pause--
"You mean--Russia?"
He disdained even to nod. She seemed softened,
her black eyes very still, as though she were
pursuing the simile in her thoughts to all its
tender associations. But suddenly she knitted
her brows in a Mephistophelian frown.
"Yes. Perhaps no wonder, then. Yes. One lies
there lapped up in evils, watched over by beings
that are worse than ogres, ghouls, and vampires.
They must be driven away, destroyed utterly.
In regard of that task nothing else matters if
men and women are determined and faithful.
That's how I came to feel in the end. The great
thing is not to quarrel amongst ourselves about
all sorts of conventional trifles. Remember
that, Razumov."
Razumov was not listening. He had even lost the
sense of being watched in a sort of heavy
tranquillity. His uneasiness, his exasperation,
his scorn were blunted at last by all these
trying hours. It seemed to him that now they
were blunted for ever. "I am a match for them
all," he thought, with a conviction too firm to
be exulting. The woman revolutionist had ceased
speaking; he was not looking at her; there was
no one passing along the road. He almost forgot
that he was not alone. He heard her voice
again, curt, businesslike, and yet betraying the
hesitation which had been the real reason of her
prolonged silence.
"I say, Razumov!"
Razumov, whose face was turned away from her,
made a grimace like a man who hears a false note.
"Tell me: is it true that on the very morning of
the deed you actually attended the lectures at
the University?"
An appreciable fraction of a second elapsed
before the real import of the question reached
him, like a bullet which strikes some time after
the flash of the fired shot. Luckily his
disengaged hand was ready to grip a bar of the
gate. He held it with a terrible force, but his
presence of mind was gone. He could make only a
sort of gurgling, grumpy sound.
"Come, Kirylo Sidorovitch!" she urged him. "I
know you are not a boastful man. _That_ one
must say for you. You are a silent man. Too
silent, perhaps. You are feeding on some
bitterness of your own. You are not an
enthusiast. You are, perhaps, all the stronger
for that. But you might tell me. One would
like to understand you a little more. I was so
immensely struck. . . . Have you really done
it?"
He got his voice back. The shot had missed him.
It had been fired at random, altogether, more
like a signal for coming to close quarters. It
was to be a plain struggle for self-
preservation. And she was a dangerous adversary
too. But he was ready for battle; he was so
ready that when he turned towards her not a
muscle of his face moved.
" Certainly," he said, without animation,
secretly strung up but perfectly sure of
himself. "Lectures--certainly, But what makes
you ask?"
It was she who was animated.
"I had it in a letter, written by a young man in
Petersburg; one of us, of course. You were seen-
-you were observed with your notebook,
impassible, taking notes. . . ."
He enveloped her with his fixed stare.
"What of that?"
"I call such coolness superb--that's all. It is
a proof of uncommon strength of character. The
young man writes that nobody could have guessed
from your face and manner the part you had
played only some two hours before--the great,
momentous, glorious part. . . ."
"Oh no. Nobody could have guessed," assented
Razumov gravely, "because, don't you see, nobody
at that time. . . ."
"Yes, yes. But all the same you are a man of
exceptional fortitude, it seems. You looked
exactly as usual. It was remembered afterwards
with wonder. . . ."
"It cost me no effort," Razumov declared, with
the same staring gravity.
"Then it's almost more wonderful still!" she
exclaimed, and fell silent while Razumov asked
himself whether he had not said there something
utterly unnecessary--or even worse.
She raised her head eagerly.
"Your intention was to stay in Russia? You had
planned. . . ."
"No," interrupted Razumov without haste. "I had
made no plans of any sort."
"You just simply walked away?" she struck in.
He bowed his head in slow assent. "Simply--
yes." He had gradually released his hold on the
bar of the gate, as though he had acquired the
conviction that no random shot could knock him
over now. And suddenly he was inspired to add,
"The snow was coming down very thick, you know."
She had a slight appreciative movement of the
head, like an expert in such enterprises, very
interested, capable of taking every point
professionally. Razumov remembered something he
had heard.
"I turned into a narrow side street, you
understand," he went on negligently, and paused
as if it were not worth talking about. Then he
remembered another detail and dropped it before
her, like a disdainful dole to her curiosity.
"I felt inclined to lie down and go to sleep
there."
She clicked her tongue at that symptom, very
struck indeed. Then--
"But the notebook! The amazing notebook, man.
You don't mean to say you had put it in your
pocket beforehand!" she cried.
Razumov gave a start. It might have been a sign
of impatience.
"I went home. Straight home to my rooms," he
said distinctly.
"The coolness of the man! You dared?"
"Why not? I assure you I was perfectly calm.
Ha! Calmer than I am now perhaps."
"I like you much better as you are now than when
you indulge that bitter vein of yours, Razumov.
And nobody in the house saw you return--eh?
That might have appeared queer."
"No one," Razumov said firmly. "Dvornik,
landlady, girl, all out of the way. I went up
like a shadow. It was a murky morning. The
stairs were dark. I glided up like a phantom.
Fate? Luck? What do you think?"
"I just see it!" The eyes of the woman
revolutionist snapped darkly. "Well--and then
you considered. . . ."
Razumov had it all ready in his head.
"No. I looked at my watch, since you want to
know. There was just time. I took that
notebook, and ran down the stairs on tiptoe.
Have you ever listened to the pit-pat of a man
running round and round the shaft of a deep
staircase? They have a gaslight at the bottom
burning night and day. I suppose it's gleaming
down there now. . . . The sound dies out--the
flame winks. . . ."
He noticed the vacillation of surprise passing
over the steady curiosity of the black eyes
fastened on his face as if the woman
revolutionist received the sound of his voice
into her pupils instead of her ears. He checked
himself, passed his hand over his forehead,
confused, like a man who has been dreaming aloud.
"Where could a student be running if not to his
lectures in the morning? At night it's another
matter. I did not care if all the house had
been there to look at me. But I don't suppose
there was anyone. It's best not to be seen or
heard. Aha! The people that are neither seen
nor heard are the lucky ones--in Russia. Don't
you admire my luck?"
"Astonishing," she said. "If you have luck as
well as determination, then indeed you are
likely to turn out an invaluable acquisition for
the work in hand."
Her tone was earnest; and it seemed to Razumov
that it was speculative, even as though she were
already apportioning him, in her mind, his share
of the work. Her eyes were cast down. He
waited, not very alert now, but with the grip of
the ever-present danger giving him an air of
attentive gravity. Who could have written about
him in that letter from Petersburg? A fellow
student, surely--some imbecile victim of
revolutionary propaganda, some foolish slave of
foreign, subversive ideals. A long, famine-
stricken, red-nosed figure presented itself to
his mental search. That must have been the
fellow!
He smiled inwardly at the absolute wrong-
headedness of the whole thing, the self-
deception of a criminal idealist shattering his
existence like a thunder-clap out of a clear
sky, and re-echoing amongst the wreckage in the
false assumptions of those other fools. Fancy
that hungry and piteous imbecile furnishing to
the curiosity of the revolutionist refugees this
utterly fantastic detail! He appreciated it as
by no means constituting a danger. On the
contrary. As things stood it was for his
advantage rather, a piece of sinister luck which
had only to be accepted with proper caution.
"And yet, Razumov," he heard the musing voice of
the woman, "you have not the face of a lucky
man." She raised her eyes with renewed
interest. "And so that
was the way of it. After doing your work you simply walked off and made for
your rooms. That sort of thing succeeds sometimes. I suppose it was agreed
beforehand that, once the business over, each of you would go his own way?"
Razumov preserved the seriousness of his expression and the deliberate, if
cautious, manner of speaking.
"Was not that the best thing to do?" he asked, in a dispassionate tone. "And
anyway," he added, after waiting a moment, " we did not give much thought to
what would come after. We never discussed formally any line of conduct. It
was understood, I think."
She approved his statement with slight nods.
"You, of course, wished to remain in Russia?"
"In St. Petersburg itself," emphasized Razumov. "It was the only safe course
for me. And, moreover, I had nowhere else to go."
"Yes! Yes! I know. Clearly. And the other--this wonderful Haldin appearing
only to be regretted--you don't know what he intended?"
Razumov had foreseen that such a question would certainly come to meet him
sooner or later. He raised his hands a little and let them fall helplessly by
his side--nothing more.
It was the white-haired woman conspirator who was the first to break the
silence.
"Very curious," she pronounced slowly. "And you did not think, Kirylo
Sidorovitch, that he might perhaps wish to get in touch with you again?"
Razumov discovered that he could not suppress the trembling of his lips. But
he thought that he owed it to himself to speak. A negative sign would not do
again. Speak he must, if only to get at the bottom of what that St. Petersburg
letter might have contained.
"I stayed at home next day," he said, bending down a little and plunging his
glance into the black eyes of the woman so that she should not observe the
trembling of his lips. "Yes, I stayed at home. As my actions are remembered
and written about, then perhaps you are aware that I was _not_ seen at the
lectures next day. Eh? You didn't know? Well, I stopped at home-the
live-long day."
As if moved by his agitated tone, she murmured a sympathetic "I see! It must
have been trying enough."
"You seem to understand one's feelings," said Razumov steadily. "It was
trying. It was horrible; it was an atrocious day. It was not the last."
"Yes, I understand. Afterwards, when you heard they had got him. Don't I know
how one feels after losing a comrade in the good fight? One's ashamed of being
left. And I can remember so many. Never mind. They shall be avenged before
long. And what is death? At any rate, it is not a shameful thing like some
kinds of life."
Razumov felt something stir in his breast, a sort of feeble and unpleasant
tremor.
"Some kinds of life?" he repeated, looking at her searchingly.
"The subservient, submissive life. Life? No! Vegetation on the filthy heap
of iniquity which the world is. Life, Razumov, not to be vile must be a
revolt--a pitiless protest--all the time."
She calmed down, the gleam of suffused tears in her eyes dried out instantly by
the heat of her passion, and it was in her capable, businesslike manner that
she went on--
"You understand me, Razumov. You are not an enthusiast, but there is an
immense force of revolt in you. I felt it from the first, directly I set my
eyes on you--you remember--in Zurich. Oh! You are full of bitter revolt.
That is good. Indignation flags sometimes, revenge itself may become a
weariness, but that uncompromising sense of necessity and justice which armed
your and Haldin's hands to strike down that fanatical brute. . . for it was
that--nothing but that! I have been thinking it out. It could have been
nothing else but that."
Razumov made a slight bow, the irony of which was concealed by an almost
sinister immobility of feature.
"I can't speak for the dead. As for myself, I can assure you that my conduct
was dictated by necessity and by the sense of--well--retributive justice."
"Good, that," he said to himself, while her eyes rested upon him, black and
impenetrable like the mental caverns where revolutionary thought should sit
plotting the violent way of its dream of changes. As if anything could be
changed! In this world of men nothing can be changed--neither happiness nor
misery. They can only be displaced at the cost of corrupted consciences and
broken lives--a futile game for arrogant philosophers and sanguinary triflers.
Those thoughts darted through Razumov's head while he stood facing the old
revolutionary hand, the respected, trusted, and influential Sophia Antonovna,
whose word had such a weight in the "active" section of every party. She was
much more representative than the great Peter Ivanovitch. Stripped of
rhetoric, mysticism, and theories, she was the true spirit of destructive
revolution. And she was the personal adversary he had to meet. It gave him a
feeling of triumphant pleasure to deceive her out of her own mouth. The
epigrammatic saying that speech has been given to us for the purpose of
concealing our thoughts came into his mind. Of that cynical theory this was a
very subtle and a very scornful application, flouting in its own words the very
spirit of ruthless revolution, embodied in that woman with her white hair and
black eyebrows, like slightly sinuous lines of Indian ink, drawn together by
the perpendicular folds of a thoughtful frown.
"That's it. Retributive. No pity!" was the conclusion of her silence. And
this once broken, she went on impulsively in short, vibrating sentences--
"Listen to my story, Razumov! . . ." Her father was a clever but unlucky
artisan. No joy had lighted up his laborious days. He died at fifty; all the
years of his life he had panted under the thumb of masters whose rapacity
exacted from him the price of the water, of the salt, of the very air he
breathed; taxed the sweat of his brow and claimed the blood of his sons. No
protection, no guidance! What had society to say to him? Be submissive and be
honest. If you rebel I shall kill you. If you steal I shall imprison you.
But if you suffer I have nothing for you--nothing except perhaps a beggarly
dole of bread--but no consolation for your trouble, no respect for your
manhood, no pity for the sorrows of your miserable life.
And so he laboured, he suffered, and he died. He died in the hospital.
Standing by the common grave she thought of his tormented existence--she saw
it whole. She reckoned the simple joys of life, the birthright of the
humblest, of which his gentle heart had been robbed by the crime of a society
which nothing can absolve.
"Yes, Razumov," she continued, in an impressive, lowered voice, "it was like a
lurid light in which I stood, still almost a child, and cursed not the toil,
not the misery which had been his lot, but the great social iniquity of the
system resting on unrequited toil and unpitied sufferings. From that moment I
was a revolutionist."
Razumov, trying to raise himself above the dangerous weaknesses of contempt or
compassion, had preserved an impassive countenance. She, with an unaffected
touch of mere bitterness, the first he could notice since he had come in
contact with the woman, went on--
"As I could not go to the Church where the priests of the system exhorted such
unconsidered vermin as I to resignation, I went to the secret societies as soon
as I knew how to find my way. I was sixteen years old--no more, Razumov!
And--look at my white hair."
In these last words there was neither pride nor sadness. The bitterness too
was gone.
"There is a lot of it. I had always magnificent hair, even as a chit of a
girl. Only, at that time we were cutting it short and thinking that there was
the first step towards crushing the social infamy. Crush the Infamy! A fine
watchword! I would placard it on the walls of prisons and palaces, carve it on
hard rocks, hang it out in letters of fire on that empty sky for a sign of hope
and terror--a portent of the end. . . ."
"You are eloquent, Sophia Antonovna," Razumov interrupted suddenly. "Only, so
far you seem to have been writing it in water. . . ."
She was checked but not offended. "Who knows? Very soon it may become a fact
written all over that great land of ours," she hinted meaningly. "And then one
would have lived long enough. White hair won't matter."
Razumov looked at her white hair: and this mark of so many uneasy years seemed
nothing but a testimony to the invincible vigour of revolt. It threw out into
an astonishing relief the unwrinkled face, the brilliant black glance, the
upright compact figure, the simple, brisk self-possession of the mature
personality--as though in her revolutionary pilgrimage she had discovered the
secret, not of everlasting youth, but of everlasting endurance.
How un-Russian she looked, thought Razumov. Her mother might have been a
Jewess or an Armenian or devil knew what. He reflected that a revolutionist is
seldom true to the settled type. All revolt is the expression of strong
individualism--ran his thought vaguely. One can tell them a mile off in any
society, in any surroundings. It was astonishing that the police. . . .
"We shall not meet again very soon, I think," she was saying. "I am leaving
to-morrow."
"For Zurich?" Razumov asked casually, but feeling relieved, not from any
distinct apprehension, but from a feeling of stress as if after a wrestling
match.
"Yes, Zurich--and farther on, perhaps, much farther. Another journey. When I
think of all my journeys! The last must come some day. Never mind, Razumov.
We had to have a good long talk. I would have certainly tried to see you if
we had not met. Peter Ivanovitch knows where you live? Yes. I meant to have
asked him--but it's better like this. You see, we expect two more men; and I
had much rather wait here talking with you than up there at the house with. . .
."
Having cast a glance beyond the gate, she interrupted herself. "Here they
are," she said rapidly. "Well, Kirylo Sidorovitch, we shall have to say
good-bye, presently."
