The gaze of the dark spectacles in its glossy steadfastness gave his face an air of absolute conviction. Razumov felt a momentary shrinking before that closed door.
“Penetration? Light,” he stammered out. “Do you mean some sort of thought-reading?”
Peter Ivanovitch seemed shocked.
“I mean something utterly different,” he retorted, with a faint, pitying smile.
Razumov began to feel angry, very much against his wish.
“This is very mysterious,” he muttered through his teeth.
“You don’t object to being understood, to being guided?” queried the great feminist. Razumov exploded in a fierce whisper.
“In what sense? Be pleased to understand that I am a serious person. Who do you take me for?”
They looked at each other very closely. Razumov’s temper was cooled by the impenetrable earnestness of the blue glasses meeting his stare. Peter Ivanovitch turned the handle at last.
“You shall know directly,” he said, pushing the door open.
A low-pitched grating voice was heard within the room.
“Enfin.”
In the doorway, his black-coated bulk blocking the view, Peter Ivanovitch boomed in a hearty tone with something boastful in it.
“Yes. Here I am!”
He glanced over his shoulder at Razumov, who waited for him to move on.
“And I am bringing you a proved conspirator—a real one this time.Un vrai celui la.”
This pause in the doorway gave the “proved conspirator” time to make sure that his face did not betray his angry curiosity and his mental disgust.
These sentiments stand confessed in Mr. Razumov’s memorandum of his first interview with Madame de S—. The very words I use in my narrative are written where their sincerity cannot be suspected. The record, which could not have been meant for anyone’s eyes but his own, was not, I think, the outcome of that strange impulse of indiscretion common to men who lead secret lives, and accounting for the invariable existence of “compromising documents” in all the plots and conspiracies of history. Mr. Razumov looked at it, I suppose, as a man looks at himself in a mirror, with wonder, perhaps with anguish, with anger or despair. Yes, as a threatened man may look fearfully at his own face in the glass, formulating to himself reassuring excuses for his appearance marked by the taint of some insidious hereditary disease.
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.
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, whichdroveme 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.
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. Seethat, 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 youareinspired, 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?”