SSpring was rapidly drawing near; the snow melted and laid bare the mud and the soot of the factory chimneys. Mud, mud! Wherever the villagers looked—mud! Every day more mud! The entire village seemed unwashed and dressed in rags and tatters. During the day the water dripped monotonously from the roofs, and damp, weary exhalations emanated from the gray walls of the houses. Toward night whitish icicles glistened everywhere in dim outline. The sun appeared in the heavens more frequently, and the brooks began to murmur hesitatingly on their way to the marsh. At noon the throbbing song of spring hopes hung tremblingly and caressingly over the village.
Spring was rapidly drawing near; the snow melted and laid bare the mud and the soot of the factory chimneys. Mud, mud! Wherever the villagers looked—mud! Every day more mud! The entire village seemed unwashed and dressed in rags and tatters. During the day the water dripped monotonously from the roofs, and damp, weary exhalations emanated from the gray walls of the houses. Toward night whitish icicles glistened everywhere in dim outline. The sun appeared in the heavens more frequently, and the brooks began to murmur hesitatingly on their way to the marsh. At noon the throbbing song of spring hopes hung tremblingly and caressingly over the village.
They were preparing to celebrate the first of May. Leaflets appeared in the factory explaining the significance of this holiday, and even the young men not affected by the propaganda said, as they read them:
"Yes, we must arrange a holiday!"
Vyesovshchikov exclaimed with a sullen grin:
"It's time! Time we stopped playing hide and seek!"
Fedya Mazin was in high spirits. He had grown very thin. With his nervous, jerky gestures, and the trepidation in his speech, he was like a caged lark. He was always with Yakob Somov, taciturn and serious beyond his years.
Samoylov, who had grown still redder in prison,Vasily Gusev, curly-haired Dragunov, and a number of others argued that it was necessary to come out armed, but Pavel and the Little Russian, Somov, and others said it was not.
Yegor always came tired, perspiring, short of breath, but always joking.
"The work of changing the present order of things, comrades, is a great work, but in order to advance it more rapidly, I must buy myself a pair of boots!" he said, pointing to his wet, torn shoes. "My overshoes, too, are torn beyond the hope of redemption, and I get my feet wet every day. I have no intention of migrating from the earth even to the nearest planet before we have publicly and openly renounced the old order of things; and I am therefore absolutely opposed to comrade Samoylov's motion for an armed demonstration. I amend the motion to read that I be armed with a pair of strong boots, inasmuch as I am profoundly convinced that this will be of greater service for the ultimate triumph of socialism than even a grand exhibition of fisticuffs and black eyes!"
In the same playfully pretentious language, he told the workingmen the story of how in various foreign countries the people strove to lighten the burden of their lives. The mother loved to listen to his tales, and carried away a strange impression from them. She conceived the shrewdest enemies of the people, those who deceived them most frequently and most cruelly, as little, big-bellied, red-faced creatures, unprincipled and greedy, cunning and heartless. When life was hard for them under the domination of the czars, they would incite the common people against the ruler; and when the people arose and wrested the power from him, these little creatures got it into their own hands by deceit,and drove the people off to their holes; and if the people remonstrated, they killed them by the hundreds and thousands.
Once she summoned up courage and told him of the picture she had formed of life from his tales, and asked him:
"Is it so, Yegor Ivanovich?"
He burst into a guffaw, turned up his eyes, gasped for breath, and rubbed his chest.
"Exactly, granny! You caught the idea to a dot! Yes, yes! You've placed some ornaments on the canvas of history, you've added some flourishes, but that does not interfere with the correctness of the whole. It's these very little, pot-bellied creatures who are the chief sinners and deceivers and the most poisonous insects that harass the human race. The Frenchmen call them 'bourgeois.' Remember that word, dear granny—bourgeois! Brr! How they chew us and grind us and suck the life out of us!"
"The rich, you mean?"
"Yes, the rich. And that's their misfortune. You see, if you keep adding copper bit by bit to a child's food, you prevent the growth of its bones, and he'll be a dwarf; and if from his youth up you poison a man with gold, you deaden his soul."
Once, speaking about Yegor, Pavel said:
"Do you know, Andrey, the people whose hearts are always aching are the ones who joke most?"
The Little Russian was silent a while, and then answered, blinking his eyes:
"No, that's not true. If it were, then the whole of Russia would split its sides with laughter."
Natasha made her appearance again. She, too, had been in prison, in another city, but she had not changed.The mother noticed that in her presence the Little Russian grew more cheerful, was full of jokes, poked fun at everybody, and kept her laughing merrily. But after she had left he would whistle his endless songs sadly, and pace up and down the room for a long time, wearily dragging his feet along the floor.
Sashenka came running in frequently, always gloomy, always in haste, and for some reason more and more angular and stiff. Once when Pavel accompanied her out onto the porch, the mother overheard their abrupt conversation.
"Will you carry the banner?" the girl asked in a low voice.
"Yes."
"Is it settled?"
"Yes, it's my right."
"To prison again?" Pavel was silent. "Is it not possible for you—" She stopped.
"What?"
"To give it up to somebody else?"
"No!" he said aloud.
"Think of it! You're a man of such influence; you are so much liked—you and Nakhodka are the two foremost revolutionary workers here. Think how much you could accomplish for the cause of freedom! You know that for this they'll send you off far, far, and for a long time!"
Nilovna thought she heard in the girl's voice the familiar sound of fear and anguish, and her words fell upon the mother's heart like heavy, icy drops of water.
"No, I have made up my mind. Nothing can make me give it up!"
"Not even if I beg you—if I——"
Pavel suddenly began to speak rapidly with a peculiar sternness.
"You ought not to speak that way. Why you? You ought not!"
"I am a human being!" she said in an undertone.
"A good human being, too!" he said also in an undertone, and in a peculiar voice, as if unable to catch his breath. "You are a dear human being to me, yes! And that's why—why you mustn't talk that way!"
"Good-by!" said the girl.
The mother heard the sound of her departing footsteps, and knew that she was walking away very fast, nay, almost running. Pavel followed her into the yard.
A heavy oppressive fear fell like a load on the mother's breast. She did not understand what they had been talking about, but she felt that a new misfortune was in store for her, a great and sad misfortune. And her thoughts halted at the question, "What does he want to do?" Her thoughts halted, and were driven into her brain like a nail. She stood in the kitchen by the oven, and looked through the window into the profound, starry heaven.
Pavel walked in from the yard with Andrey, and the Little Russian said, shaking his head:
"Oh, Isay, Isay! What's to be done with him?"
"We must advise him to give up his project," said Pavel glumly.
"Then he'll hand over those who speak to him to the authorities," said the Little Russian, flinging his hat away in a corner.
"Pasha, what do you want to do?" asked the mother, drooping her head.
"When? Now?"
"The first of May—the first of May."
"Aha!" exclaimed Pavel, lowering his voice. "You heard! I am going to carry our banner. I will march with it at the head of the procession. I suppose they'll put me in prison for it again."
The mother's eyes began to burn. An unpleasant, dry feeling came into her mouth. Pavel took her hand and stroked it.
"I must do it! Please understand me! It is my happiness!"
"I'm not saying anything," she answered, slowly raising her head; but when her eyes met the resolute gleam in his, she again lowered it. He released her hand, and with a sigh said reproachfully:
"You oughtn't to be grieved. You ought to feel rejoiced. When are we going to have mothers who will rejoice in sending their children even to death?"
"Hopp! Hopp!" mumbled the Little Russian. "How you gallop away!"
"Why; do I say anything to you?" the mother repeated. "I don't interfere with you. And if I'm sorry for you—well, that's a mother's way."
Pavel drew away from her, and she heard his sharp, harsh words:
"There is a love that interferes with a man's very life."
She began to tremble, and fearing that he might deal another blow at her heart by saying something stern, she rejoined quickly:
"Don't, Pasha! Why should you? I understand. You can't act otherwise, you must do it for your comrades."
"No!" he replied. "I am doing it for myself. For their sake I can go without carrying the banner, but I'm going to do it!"
Andrey stationed himself in the doorway. It was too low for him, and he had to bend his knees oddly. He stood there as in a frame, one shoulder leaning against the jamb, his head and other shoulder thrust forward.
"I wish you would stop palavering, my dear sir," he said with a frown, fixing his protuberant eyes on Pavel's face. He looked like a lizard in the crevice of a stone wall.
The mother was overcome with a desire to weep, but she did not want her son to see her tears, and suddenly mumbled: "Oh, dear!—I forgot—" and walked out to the porch. There, her head in a corner, she wept noiselessly; and her copious tears weakened her, as though blood oozed from her heart along with them.
Through the door standing ajar the hollow sound of disputing voices reached her ear.
"Well, do you admire yourself for having tortured her?"
"You have no right to speak like that!" shouted Pavel.
"A fine comrade I'd be to you if I kept quiet when I see you making a fool of yourself. Why did you say all that to your mother?"
"A man must always speak firmly and without equivocation. He must be clear and definite when he says 'Yes.' He must be clear and definite when he says 'No.'"
"To her—to her must you speak that way?"
"To everybody! I want no love, I want no friendship which gets between my feet and holds me back."
"Bravo! You're a hero! Go say all this to Sashenka. You should have said that to her."
"I have!"
"You have! The way you spoke to your mother? You have not! To her you spoke softly; you spoke gently and tenderly to her. I did not hear you, but I know it! But you trot out your heroism before your mother. Of course! Your heroism is not worth a cent."
Vlasova began to wipe the tears from her face in haste. For fear a serious quarrel should break out between the Little Russian and Pavel, she quickly opened the door and entered the kitchen, shivering, terrified, and distressed.
"Ugh! How cold! And it's spring, too!"
She aimlessly removed various things in the kitchen from one place to another, and in order to drown the subdued voices in the room, she continued in a louder voice:
"Everything's changed. People have grown hotter and the weather colder. At this time of the year it used to get warm; the sky would clear, and the sun would be out."
Silence ensued in the room. The mother stood waiting in the middle of the floor.
"Did you hear?" came the low sound of the Little Russian's voice. "You must understand it, the devil take it! That's richer than yours."
"Will you have some tea?" the mother called with a trembling voice, and without waiting for an answer she exclaimed, in order to excuse the tremor in her voice:
"How cold I am!"
Pavel came up slowly to her, looking at her from the corners of his eyes, a guilty smile quivering on his lips.
"Forgive me, mother!" he said softly. "I am still a boy, a fool."
"You mustn't hurt me!" she cried in a sorrowful voice, pressing his head to her bosom. "Say nothing! God be with you. Your life is your own! But don't wound my heart. How can a mother help sorrowing for her son? Impossible! I am sorry for all of you. You are all dear to me as my own flesh and blood; you are all such good people! And who will be sorry for you if I am not? You go and others follow you. They have all left everything behind them, Pasha, and gone into this thing. It's just like a sacred procession."
A great ardent thought burned in her bosom, animating her heart with an exalted feeling of sad, tormenting joy; but she could find no words, and she waved her hands with the pang of muteness. She looked into her son's face with eyes in which a bright, sharp pain had lit its fires.
"Very well, mother! Forgive me. I see all now!" he muttered, lowering his head. Glancing at her with a light smile, he added, embarrassed but happy: "I will not forget this, mother, upon my word."
She pushed him from her, and looking into the room she said to Andrey in a good-natured tone of entreaty:
"Andriusha, please don't you shout at him so! Of course, you are older than he, and so you——"
The Little Russian was standing with his back toward her. He sang out drolly without turning around to face her:
"Oh, oh, oh! I'll bawl at him, be sure! And I'll beat him some day, too."
She walked up slowly to him, with outstretched hand, and said:
"My dear, dear man!"
The Little Russian turned around, bent his headlike an ox, and folding his hands behind his back walked past her into the kitchen. Thence his voice issued in a tone of mock sullenness:
"You had better go away, Pavel, so I shan't bite your head off! I am only joking, mother; don't believe it! I want to prepare the samovar. What coals these are! Wet, the devil take them!"
He became silent, and when the mother walked into the kitchen he was sitting on the floor, blowing the coals in the samovar. Without looking at her the Little Russian began again:
"Yes, mother, don't be afraid. I won't touch him. You know, I'm a good-natured chap, soft as a stewed turnip. And then—you hero out there, don't listen—I love him! But I don't like the waistcoat he wears. You see, he has put on a new waistcoat, and he likes it very much, so he goes strutting about, and pushes everybody, crying: 'See, see what a waistcoat I have on!' It's true, it's a fine waistcoat. But what's the use of pushing people? It's hot enough for us without it."
Pavel smiled and asked:
"How long do you mean to keep up your jabbering? You gave me one thrashing with your tongue. That's enough!"
Sitting on the floor, the Little Russian spread his legs around the samovar, and regarded Pavel. The mother stood at the door, and fixed a sad, affectionate gaze at Andrey's long, bent neck and the round back of his head. He threw his body back, supporting himself with his hands on the floor, looked at the mother and at the son with his slightly reddened and blinking eyes, and said in a low, hearty voice:
"You are good people, yes, you are!"
Pavel bent down and grasped his hand.
"Don't pull my hand," said the Little Russian gruffly. "You'll let go and I'll fall. Go away!"
"Why are you so shy?" the mother said pensively. "You'd better embrace and kiss. Press hard, hard!"
"Do you want to?" asked Pavel softly.
"We—ell, why not?" answered the Little Russian, rising.
Pavel dropped on his knees, and grasping each other firmly, they sank for a moment into each other's embrace—two bodies and one soul passionately and evenly burning with a profound feeling of friendship.
Tears ran down the mother's face, but this time they were easy tears. Drying them she said in embarrassment:
"A woman likes to cry. She cries when she is in sorrow; she cries when she is in joy!"
The Little Russian pushed Pavel away, and with a light movement, also wiping his eyes with his fingers, he said:
"Enough! When the calves have had their frolic, they must go to the shambles. What beastly coal this is! I blew and blew on it, and got some of the dust in my eyes."
Pavel sat at the window with bent head, and said mildly:
"You needn't be ashamed of such tears."
The mother walked up to him, and sat down beside him. Her heart was wrapped in a soft, warm, daring feeling. She felt sad, but pleasant and at ease.
"It's all the same!" she thought, stroking her son's hand. "It can't be helped; it must be so!"
She recalled other such commonplace words, to which she had been accustomed for a long time; but they didnot give adequate expression to all she had lived through that moment.
"I'll put the dishes on the table; you stay where you are, mother," said the Little Russian, rising from the floor, and going into the room. "Rest a while. Your heart has been worn out with such blows!"
And from the room his singing voice, raised to a higher pitch, was heard.
"It's not a nice thing to boast of, yet I must say we tasted the right life just now, real, human, loving life. It does us good."
"Yes," said Pavel, looking at the mother.
"It's all different now," she returned. "The sorrow is different, and the joy is different. I do not know anything, of course! I do not understand what it is I live by—and I can't express my feelings in words!"
"This is the way it ought to be!" said the Little Russian, returning. "Because, mark you, mother dear, a new heart is coming into existence, a new heart is growing up in life. All hearts are smitten in the conflict of interests, all are consumed with a blind greed, eaten up with envy, stricken, wounded, and dripping with filth, falsehood, and cowardice. All people are sick; they are afraid to live; they wander about as in a mist. Everyone feels only his own toothache. But lo, and behold! Here is a Man coming and illuminating life with the light of reason, and he shouts: 'Oh, ho! you straying roaches! It's time, high time, for you to understand that all your interests are one, that everyone has the need to live, everyone has the desire to grow!' The Man who shouts this is alone, and therefore he cries aloud; he needs comrades, he feels dreary in his loneliness, dreary and cold. And at his call the stanch hearts unite into one great, strong heart, deep and sensitive as a silver bell not yetcast. And hark! This bell rings forth the message: 'Men of all countries, unite into one family! Love is the mother of life, not hate!' My brothers! I hear this message sounding through the world!"
"And I do, too!" cried Pavel.
The mother compressed her lips to keep them from trembling, and shut her eyes tight so as not to cry.
"When I lie in bed at night or am out walking alone—everywhere I hear this sound, and my heart rejoices. And the earth, too—I know it—weary of injustice and sorrow, rings out like a bell, responding to the call, and trembles benignly, greeting the new sun arising in the breast of Man."
Pavel rose, lifted his hand, and was about to say something, but the mother took his other hand, and pulling him down whispered in his ear:
"Don't disturb him!"
"Do you know?" said the Little Russian, standing in the doorway, his eyes aglow with a bright flame, "there is still much suffering in store for the people, much of their blood will yet flow, squeezed out by the hands of greed; but all that—all my suffering, all my blood, is a small price for that which is already stirring in my breast, in my mind, in the marrow of my bones! I am already rich, as a star is rich in golden rays. And I will bear all, I will suffer all, because there is within me a joy which no one, which nothing can ever stifle! In this joy there is a world of strength!"
They drank tea and sat around the table until midnight, and conversed heart to heart and harmoniously about life, about people, and about the future.
WWhenever a thought was clear to the mother, she would find confirmation of the idea by drawing upon some of her rude, coarse experiences. She now felt as on that day when her father said to her roughly:
Whenever a thought was clear to the mother, she would find confirmation of the idea by drawing upon some of her rude, coarse experiences. She now felt as on that day when her father said to her roughly:
"What are you making a wry face about? A fool has been found who wants to marry you. Marry him! All girls must get husbands; all women must bear children, and all children become a burden to their parents!"
After these words she saw before her an unavoidable path running for some inexplicable reason through a dark, dreary waste. Thus it was at the present moment. In anticipation of a new approaching misfortune, she uttered speechless words, addressing some imaginary person.
This lightened her mute pain, which reverberated in her heart like a tight chord.
The next day, early in the morning, very soon after Pavel and Andrey had left, Korsunova knocked at the door alarmingly, and called out hastily:
"Isay is killed! Come, quick!"
The mother trembled; the name of the assassin flashed through her mind.
"Who did it?" she asked curtly, throwing a shawl over her shoulders.
"The man's not sitting out there mourning over Isay. He knocked him down and fled!"
On the street Marya said:
"Now they'll begin to rummage about again and look for the murderer. It's a good thing your folks were at home last night. I can bear witness to that. I walked past here after midnight and glanced into the window, and saw all of you sitting around the table."
"What are you talking about, Marya? Why, who could dream of such a thing about them?" the mother ejaculated in fright.
"Well, who killed him? Some one from among your people, of course!" said Korsunova, regarding the idea as a matter to be taken for granted. "Everybody knows he spied on them."
The mother stopped to fetch breath, and put her hand to her bosom.
"What are you going on that way for? Don't be afraid! Whoever it is will reap the harvest of his own rashness. Let's go quick, or else they'll take him away!"
The mother walked on without asking herself why she went, and shaken by the thought of Vyesovshchikov.
"There—he's done it!" Her mind was held fast by the one idea.
Not far from the factory walls, on the grounds of a building recently burned down, a crowd was gathered, tramping down the coal and stirring up ash dust. It hummed and buzzed like a swarm of bees. There were many women in the crowd, even more children, and storekeepers, tavern waiters, policemen, and the gendarme Petlin, a tall old man with a woolly, silvery beard, and decorations on his breast.
Isay half reclined on the ground, his back resting against a burned joist, his bare head hanging over his right shoulder, his right hand in his trousers' pocket, and the fingers of his left hand clutching the soil.
The mother looked at Isay's face. One eye, wide open, had its dim glance fixed upon his hat lying between his lazily outstretched legs. His mouth was half open in astonishment, his little shriveled body, with its pointed head and bony face, seemed to be resting. The mother crossed herself and heaved a sigh. He had been repulsive to her when alive, but now she felt a mild pity for him.
"No blood!" some one remarked in an undertone. "He was evidently knocked down with a fist blow."
A stout woman, tugging at the gendarme's hand, asked:
"Maybe he is still alive?"
"Go away!" the gendarme shouted not very loudly, withdrawing his hand.
"The doctor was here and said it was all over," somebody said to the woman.
A sarcastic, malicious voice cried aloud:
"They've choked up a denouncer's mouth. Serves him right!"
The gendarme pushed aside the women, who were crowded close about him, and asked in a threatening tone:
"Who was that? Who made that remark?"
The people scattered before him as he thrust them aside. A number took quickly to their heels, and some one in the crowd broke into a mocking laugh.
The mother went home.
"No one is sorry," she thought. The broad figure of Nikolay stood before her like a shadow, his narrow eyes had a cold, cruel look, and he wrung his right hand as if it had been hurt.
When Pavel and Andrey came to dinner, her first question was:
"Well? Did they arrest anybody for Isay's murder?"
"We haven't heard anything about it," answered the Little Russian.
She saw that they were both downhearted and sullen.
"Nothing is said about Nikolay?" the mother questioned again in a low voice.
Pavel fixed his stern eyes on the mother, and said distinctly:
"No, there is no talk of him. He is not even thought of in connection with this affair. He is away. He went off on the river yesterday, and hasn't returned yet. I inquired for him."
"Thank God!" said the mother with a sigh of relief. "Thank God!"
The Little Russian looked at her, and drooped his head.
"He lies there," the mother recounted pensively, "and looks as though he were surprised; that's the way his face looks. And no one pities him; no one bestows a good word on him. He is such a tiny bit of a fellow, such a wretched-looking thing, like a bit of broken china. It seems as if he had slipped on something and fallen, and there he lies!"
At dinner Pavel suddenly dropped his spoon and exclaimed:
"That's what I don't understand!"
"What?" asked the Little Russian, who had been sitting at the table dismal and silent.
"To kill anything living because one wants to eat, that's ugly enough. To kill a beast—a beast of prey—that I can understand. I think I myself could kill a man who had turned into a beast preying upon mankind. But to kill such a disgusting, pitiful creature—I don't understand how anyone could lift his hand for an act like that!"
The Little Russian raised his shoulders and dropped them again; then said:
"He was no less noxious than a beast."
"I know."
"We kill a mosquito for sucking just a tiny bit of our blood," the Little Russian added in a low voice.
"Well, yes, I am not saying anything about that. I only mean to say it's so disgusting."
"What can you do?" returned Andrey with another shrug of his shoulders.
After a long pause Pavel asked:
"Could you kill a fellow like that?"
The Little Russian regarded him with his round eyes, threw a glance at the mother, and said sadly, but firmly:
"For myself, I wouldn't touch a living thing. But for comrades, for the cause, I am capable of everything. I'd even kill. I'd kill my own son."
"Oh, Andriusha!" the mother exclaimed under her breath.
He smiled and said:
"It can't be helped! Such is our life!"
"Ye-es," Pavel drawled. "Such is our life."
With sudden excitation, as if obeying some impulse from within, Andrey arose, waved his hands, and said:
"How can a man help it? It so happens that we sometimes must abhor a certain person in order to hasten the time when it will be possible only to take delight in one another. You must destroy those who hinder the progress of life, who sell human beings for money in order to buy quiet or esteem for themselves. If a Judas stands in the way of honest people, lying in wait to betray them, I should be a Judas myself if I did not destroy him. It's sinful, you say? And do they, these masters of life, do they have the right to keep soldiersand executioners, public houses and prisons, places of penal servitude, and all that vile abomination by which they hold themselves in quiet security and in comfort? If it happens sometimes that I am compelled to take their stick into my own hands, what am I to do then? Why, I am going to take it, of course. I will not decline. They kill us out by the tens and hundreds. That gives me the right to raise my hand and level it against one of the enemy, against that one of their number who comes closest to me, and makes himself more directly noxious to the work of my life than the others. This is logic; but I go against logic for once. I do not need your logic now. I know that their blood can bring no results, I know that their blood is barren, fruitless! Truth grows well only on the soil irrigated with the copious rain of our own blood, and their putrid blood goes to waste, without a trace left. I know it! But I take the sin upon myself. I'll kill, if I see a need for it! I speak only for myself, mind you. My crime dies with me. It will not remain a blot upon the future. It will sully no one but myself—no one but myself."
He walked to and fro in the room, waving his hands in front of him, as if he were cutting something in the air out of his way. The mother looked at him with an expression of melancholy and alarm. She felt as though something had hit him, and that he was pained. The dangerous thoughts about murder left her. If Vyesovshchikov had not killed Isay, none of Pavel's comrades could have done the deed. Pavel listened to the Little Russian with drooping head, and Andrey stubbornly continued in a forceful tone:
"In your forward march it sometimes chances that you must go against your very own self. You must be able to give up everything—your heart and all. To giveyour life, to die for the cause—that's simple. Give more! Give that which is dearer to you than your life! Then you will see that grow with a vigorous growth which is dearest to you—your truth!"
He stopped in the middle of the room, his face grown pale and his eyes half closed. Raising his hand and shaking it, he began slowly in a solemn tone of assurance with faith and with strength:
"There will come a time, I know, when people will take delight in one another, when each will be like a star to the other, and when each will listen to his fellow as to music. The free men will walk upon the earth, men great in their freedom. They will walk with open hearts, and the heart of each will be pure of envy and greed, and therefore all mankind will be without malice, and there will be nothing to divorce the heart from reason. Then life will be one great service to man! His figure will be raised to lofty heights—for to free men all heights are attainable. Then we shall live in truth and freedom and in beauty, and those will be accounted the best who will the more widely embrace the world with their hearts, and whose love of it will be the profoundest; those will be the best who will be the freest; for in them is the greatest beauty. Then will life be great, and the people will be great who live that life."
He ceased and straightened himself. Then swinging to and fro like the tongue of a bell, he added in a resonant voice that seemed to issue from the depths of his breast:
"So for the sake of this life I am prepared for everything! I will tear my heart out, if necessary, and will trample it with my own feet!"
His face quivered and stiffened with excitement, and great, heavy tears rolled down one after the other.
Pavel raised his head and looked at him with a pale face and wide-open eyes. The mother raised herself a little over the table with a feeling that something great was growing and impending.
"What is the matter with you, Andrey?" Pavel asked softly.
The Little Russian shook his head, stretched himself like a violin string, and said, looking at the mother:
"I struck Isay."
She rose, and quickly walked up to him, all in a tremble, and seized his hands. He tried to free his right hand, but she held it firmly in her grasp and whispered hotly:
"My dear, my own, hush! It's nothing—it's nothing—nothing, Pasha! Andriushenka—oh, what a calamity! You sufferer! My darling heart!"
"Wait, mother," the Little Russian muttered hoarsely. "I'll tell you how it happened."
"Don't!" she whispered, looking at him with tears in her eyes. "Don't, Andriusha! It isn't our business. It's God's affair!"
Pavel came up to him slowly, looking at his comrade with moist eyes. He was pale, and his lips trembled. With a strange smile he said softly and slowly:
"Come, give me your hand, Andrey. I want to shake hands with you. Upon my word, I understand how hard it is for you!"
"Wait!" said the Little Russian without looking at them, shaking his head, and tearing himself away from their grasp. When he succeeded in freeing his right hand from the mother's, Pavel caught it, pressing it vigorously and wringing it.
"And you mean to tell me you killed that man?"said the mother. "No,youdidn't do it! If I saw it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe it."
"Stop, Andrey! Mother is right. This thing is beyond our judgment."
With one hand pressing Andrey's, Pavel laid the other on his shoulder, as if wishing to stop the tremor in his tall body. The Little Russian bent his head down toward him, and said in a broken, mournful voice:
"I didn't want to do it, you know, Pavel. It happened when you walked ahead, and I remained behind with Ivan Gusev. Isay came from around a corner and stopped to look at us, and smiled at us. Ivan walked off home, and I went on toward the factory—Isay at my side!" Andrey stopped, heaved a deep sigh, and continued: "No one ever insulted me in such an ugly way as that dog!"
The mother pulled the Little Russian by the hand toward the table, gave him a shove, and finally succeeded in seating him on a chair. She sat down at his side close to him, shoulder to shoulder. Pavel stood in front of them, holding Andrey's hand in his and pressing it.
"I understand how hard it is for you," he said.
"He told me that they know us all, that we are all on the gendarme's record, and that we are going to be dragged in before the first of May. I didn't answer, I laughed, but my blood boiled. He began to tell me that I was a clever fellow, and that I oughtn't to go on the way I was going, but that I should rather——"
The Little Russian stopped, wiped his face with his right hand, shook his head, and a dry gleam flashed in his eyes.
"I understand!" said Pavel.
"Yes," he said, "I should rather enter the service of the law." The Little Russian waved his hand, and swunghis clenched fist. "The law!—curse his soul!" he hissed between his teeth. "It would have been better if he had struck me in the face. It would have been easier for me, and better for him, perhaps, too! But when he spit his dirty thought into my heart that way, I could not bear it."
Andrey pulled his hand convulsively from Pavel's, and said more hoarsely with disgust in his face:
"I dealt him a back-hand blow like that, downward and aslant, and walked away. I didn't even stop to look at him; I heard him fall. He dropped and was silent. I didn't dream of anything serious. I walked on peacefully, just as if I had done no more than kick a frog with my foot. And then—what's all this? I started to work, and I heard them shouting: 'Isay is killed!' I didn't even believe it, but my hand grew numb—and I felt awkward in working with it. It didn't hurt me, but it seemed to have grown shorter."
He looked at his hand obliquely and said:
"All my life, I suppose, I won't be able to wash off that dirty stain from it."
"If only your heart is pure, my dear boy!" the mother said softly, bursting into tears.
"I don't regard myself as guilty; no, I don't!" said the Little Russian firmly. "But it's disgust. It disgusts me to carry such dirt inside of me. I had no need of it. It wasn't called for."
"What do you think of doing?" asked Pavel, giving him a suspicious look.
"What am I going to do?" the Little Russian repeated thoughtfully, drooping his head. Then raising it again he said with a smile: "I am not afraid, of course, to say that it was I who struck him. But I am ashamed to say it. I am ashamed to go to prison, and even tohard labor, maybe, for such a—nothing. If some one else is accused, then I'll go and confess. But otherwise, go all of my own accord—I cannot!"
He waved his hands, rose, and repeated:
"I cannot! I am ashamed!"
The whistle blew. The Little Russian, bending his head to one side, listened to the powerful roar, and shaking himself, said:
"I am not going to work."
"Nor I," said Pavel.
"I'll go to the bath house," said the Little Russian, smiling. He got ready in silence and walked off, sullen and low-spirited.
The mother followed him with a compassionate look.
"Say what you please, Pasha, I cannot believe him! And even if I did believe him, I wouldn't lay any blame on him. No, I would not. I know it's sinful to kill a man; I believe in God and in the Lord Jesus Christ, but still I don't think Andrey guilty. I'm sorry for Isay. He's such a tiny bit of a manikin. He lies there in astonishment. When I looked at him I remembered how he threatened to have you hanged. And yet I neither felt hatred toward him nor joy because he was dead. I simply felt sorry. But now that I know by whose hand he fell I am not even sorry for him."
She suddenly became silent, reflected a while, and with a smile of surprise, exclaimed:
"Lord Jesus Christ! Do you hear what I am saying, Pasha?"
Pavel apparently had not heard her. Slowly pacing up and down the room with drooping head, he said pensively and with exasperation:
"Andrey won't forgive himself soon, if he'll forgive himself at all! There is life for you, mother. You seethe position in which people are placed toward one another. You don't want to, but you must strike! And strike whom? Such a helpless being. He is more wretched even than you because he is stupid. The police, the gendarmes, the soldiers, the spies—they are all our enemies, and yet they are all such people as we are. Their blood is sucked out of them just as ours is, and they are no more regarded as human beings than we are. That's the way it is. But they have set one part of the people against the other, blinded them with fear, bound them all hand and foot, squeezed them, and drained their blood, and used some as clubs against the others. They've turned men into weapons, into sticks and stones, and called it civilization, government."
He walked up to his mother and said to her firmly:
"That's crime, mother! The heinous crime of killing millions of people, the murder of millions of souls! You understand—they kill the soul! You see the difference between them and us. He killed a man unwittingly. He feels disgusted, ashamed, sick—the main thing is he feels disgusted! But they kill off thousands calmly, without a qualm, without pity, without a shudder of the heart. They kill with pleasure and with delight. And why? They stifle everybody and everything to death merely to keep the timber of their houses secure, their furniture, their silver, their gold, their worthless papers—all that cheap trash which gives them control over the people. Think, it's not for their own selves, for their persons, that they protect themselves thus, using murder and the mutilation of souls as a means—it's not for themselves they do it, but for the sake of their possessions. They do not guard themselves from within, but from without."
He bent over to her, took her hands, and shaking them said:
"If you felt the abomination of it all, the disgrace and rottenness, you would understand our truth; you would then perceive how great it is, how glorious!"
The mother arose agitated, full of a desire to sink her heart into the heart of her son, and to join them in one burning, flaming torch.
"Wait, Pasha, wait!" she muttered, panting for breath. "I am a human being. I feel. Wait."
There was a loud noise of some one entering the porch. Both of them started and looked at each other.
"If it's the police coming for Andrey—" Pavel whispered.
"I know nothing—nothing!" the mother whispered back. "Oh, God!"