XVII

From this night Romashov underwent a profound inward change. He cut

himself entirely adrift from the company of his comrades, usually took

his dinner at home, never frequented the _soirées dansantes_ of his

regiment, and ceased to indulge in drink. He had grown older, riper, and

more serious, and he noticed this himself in the calm resignation with

which he bore the trials and adversities of life. Often, too, he

recalled to mind the assertion he had long ago picked up from books or

in the way of conversation, that human life is made up of periods of

seven years, and that, in the course of each period, not only the

organism, but also the character, views taken of life, and inclinations

are completely renewed. And it was not so long since Romashov had

completed his twenty-first year.

The soldier Khliabnikov used to visit him, but at first, however, only

after being again urged to do so. Afterwards his visits became more and

more frequent. During the first period he put one in mind of a starved

and whipped dog which flinches from the hand held out caressingly; but

Romashov's kindness and goodness gradually drove away his fear and

embarrassment and restored to him the faculty of gratitude and

confidence. With something akin to remorse and shame, Romashov learned

more of Khliabnikov's sad conditions of life and family circumstances.

At home lived his mother, his father--a confirmed drunkard--a

semi-idiotic brother, and four young sisters. The family's little plot

of land had been confiscated, contrary to all law and justice, by the

commune, which afterwards was kind enough to shelter the poor wretches

in a miserable hut. The elder members were journeymen employed by

strange and occasional employers, the younger ones went out to beg.

Khliabnikov could, therefore, not reckon on any support from his people,

and, on account of his delicate health, was not in a position to

undertake any remunerative manual labour in such leisure as the service

left him. But the soldier's life is unendurable without money. He

receives twenty-two and a half copecks a month from the State, and out

of this he must defray the costs of tea, sugar, soap, etc., and in

addition, the indispensable presents to greedy and unconscionable

sergeants. Woe betide the soldier who cannot, by presents, money, or

schnapps, bribe his torturers. He becomes a helpless victim to insult

and gross maltreatment, and all the heavy and disgusting work in the

camp falls unmercifully to his lot.

With surprise, terror, and pain Romashov realized that Fate had daily

united him by the closest ties with hundreds of these grey

"Khliabnikovs," with those defenceless victims of their own ignorance

and brutal coarseness, of the officers' heartless indifference and

cruelty, of a humiliating, systematic slavery; but the most horrible of

all, however, was the fact that not a single officer--and, up to that

day, not even Romashov himself--saw in these stereotyped crowds of

slaves anything beyond mechanical quantities bracketed under the name of

companies, battalions, regiments, etc.

Romashov did his best to procure Khliabnikov, now and then, a little

income. Of course it was not very long before both this and other

unaccustomed marks of humanity on the part of an officer became noticed

in the company. Romashov noticed very frequently how the "non-coms." in

his presence acted towards Khliabnikov with comical, exaggerated

politeness in manner and tone. That even Captain Sliva had got scent of

Romashov's changed attitude as regards the treatment of soldiers was

palpable enough, and more than once, from remarks made by him--

"D-d-damned Liberals--come here to ruin the people--ought to be

thrashed--f-f-flayed alive, every man Jack of 'em!"

Now, as Romashov more and more abandoned himself to loneliness and

self-examination, those curious, entangling contemplations, which a

month previously, at the time of his arrest, had such a disturbing

effect on him, now assailed him with even greater frequency. These

generally happened after his duties for the day had been done, when he

strolled silently backwards and forwards, beneath the thick, slumbering

foliage of the trees near his dwelling, and when, lonely and oppressed,

he listened to the solemn bass of the booming beetles or, with dreamy

eyes, gazed at the roseate and rapidly darkening sky.

This new life of his surprised him by the richness of its shifting

impression. In days gone by he would never have even dared to entertain

a notion of what pure and calm joy, what potency and secret depths, lie

hidden in something so simple and common as human thought.

Romashov had already determined irrevocably not to remain on active

service, but to join the reserves as soon as his period of service as an

officer by examination had expired, but he did not yet know where he

would find suitable employment and an income on which he might exist. He

went over in his mind all possible occupations--post-office, customs,

telegraph service, railway, etc., etc. He pondered on whether he might

seek the post of estate-manager, or enter the Civil Service. And now he

was astounded at the thought of all the innumerable different trades and

professions that exist in the world. "How have they arisen," thought he,

"all these absurd, comical, wonderful and more or less repulsive

occupations--prison-warders, acrobats, chiropodists, professors, actors,

dog-barbers, policemen, jugglers, prostitutes, bath-men, veterinary

surgeons, grave-diggers, beadles, etc., etc? And perhaps there's not a

human invention or caprice, however idiotic, paradoxical, barbarous, and

immoral it may be, that does not at once find ready and willing hands to

bring it to completion and realization."

So, too, in meditating more profoundly, it struck him what a countless

number of "intelligent" means of bread-winning there are, which are all

based on mistrust of the honour and morality of mankind--supervisors and

officials of all sorts, controllers, inspectors, policemen, custom-house

officers, bookkeepers, revising-officers, etc., whose existence has,

without exception, found justification in man's weakness for or lack of

resistance against crime and corruption.

He also called to mind priests, schoolmasters, lawyers and judges--in

short, all those persons who, according to the nature of their work, are

in continual and intimate contact with other men's ideas, strivings,

sorrows, and sufferings. At the thought of these, Romashov came to the

tragic conclusion that these individuals become more quickly than

others hard, heartless egoists, who, wrapping themselves in the

dressing-gown of selfishness, very soon grow frozen for ever in dead

formalism. He knew that there also exists another class, i.e. those who

create and look after the external conditions of human luxury and

enjoyment--engineers, architects, inventors, manufacturers, and all

those who, by their united efforts, can render mankind inestimable

temporal services, and place themselves solely at the disposal of the

rich and powerful. They think only of their own skin, of their own nest,

of their own brood, and they become, in consequence of this, the slaves

of gold and tyranny. Who is there then to raise up, instruct, and

console the brutally used slave, Khliabnikov, and say to him, "Shake

hands with me, brother"?

Pondering over similar subjects, Romashov certainly probed slowly and

fumblingly, but more and more deeply, into the great problem of life.

Formerly everything seemed to him as simple as simple could be. The

world was divided into two categories very different in size and

importance. The one, the guild of officers, constituting the military

caste, which alone attains power, honour, and glory, the fine uniform of

which confers an uncontested monopoly of bravery, physical strength, and

unbounded contempt for all other living creatures; the other, the

civilian element of society--an enormous number of indeterminable petty

insects; another race, a pariah class hardly worthy to live, obscure

individuals to be thrashed and insulted without rhyme or reason, whose

nose every little gilded popinjay may tweak, unless he prefers, to the

huge delight of his comrades, to crush their tall silk hats over his

victims' ears.

When Romashov thought, he stood apart from reality; when he viewed

military life, as it were, from a secret corner through a chink in the

wall, he gradually began to understand that the army and all that

pertains to it, with its false glamour and borrowed plumes, came into

the world through a mad, cruel confusion of ideas in mankind. "How,"

Romashov asked himself, "can so large a class of society, in profound

peace, and without doing the country the least good, be suffered to

exist, to eat the bread of others, to walk in other men's clothes, to

dwell in other men's houses, only with the obligation, in the event of

war, to kill and maim living creatures of the same race as themselves?"

And more and more clearly it dawned on his mind that only the two

following domains of activity are worthy of man, viz. science and art

and free manual labour. And with new force the old dreams and hopes of a

future literary career arose in him. Now and again, when Chance put into

his hand a valuable book rich in noble and fructifying ideas, he thought

with bitter melancholy of himself: "Good gracious, how simple, clear and

true all this is which I myself, moreover, have known and experienced!

Why cannot I, too, compose something similar?" He wished he could write

a novel or a great romance, the _leitmotiv_ of which should be his

contempt and disgust for military life. In his imagination everything

fell so excellently into groups, his descriptions of scenery became true

and splendid, his puppets woke to life, the story developed, and his

treatment of it made him so boisterously cheerful and happy. But when he

sat down to write, everything suddenly became so pale and feeble, so

childish, so artificial and stereotyped. As long as his pen ran quickly

and boldly over the paper he noticed none of these defects; but

directly he compared his own work with that of some of the great Russian

authors--if only with a small, detached piece from them--he was seized

at once by a deep despair, and by shame and disgust at his own work.

He often wandered, harassed by such thoughts, about the streets in the

balmy nights of the latter part of May. Without noticing it himself, he

invariably selected for these promenades the same way--i.e. from the

Jewish cemetery to the great dam, and thence to the high railway bank.

It happened occasionally that, entirely absorbed in his dreams, he

failed to notice the way he took, and, suddenly waking up, he found

himself, much to his astonishment, in a wholly different part of the

town.

Every night he passed by Shurochka's window. With stealthy steps, bated

breath, and beating heart, he prowled along the opposite side of the

street. He felt like a thief who, in shame and anguish, tries hard to

leave the scene of his crime as unobserved as possible. When the lamp

was extinguished in the Nikoläiev's drawing-room, in the black

window-panes of which there was only a weak reflection of the moon's

faint rays, Romashov hid himself in the deep shade of the high hoarding,

pressed his crossed arms convulsively against his breast, and uttered in

a hot whisper--

"Sleep, sleep, my beloved one, my queen! I am here watching over you."

In such moments he felt tears in his eyes, but in his soul stirred,

besides love, tenderness and self-sacrificing affection, and also the

human animal's blind jealousy and lust.

One evening Nikoläiev was invited to a whist party at the commander's.

Romashov was aware of this. When, as usual of a night, he passed

Nikoläiev's dwelling, he smelt, from the little flower-bed behind the

hoarding, the fragrant, disturbing perfume of daffodils. He jumped over

the hedge, soiled his hands with the sticky mould of the bed, and

plucked a whole armful of soft, moist, pale flowers.

The window of Shurochka's bedroom was open. It was dark within, and not

a sound could be heard from it. With a boldness that astonished himself,

Romashov approached the wall, and threw the flowers into the room. Still

the same mysterious silence. He stood quite still for three minutes,

listening and waiting. His heart-beats, so it seemed to him, echoed

along the whole of the long, dead-silent street; but no answer. Not the

faintest sound reached the listener's ears. With bent back, and blushing

for shame, he stole away on tip-toe.

The next day he received the following curt and angry letter from

Shurochka--

Never dare to repeat what you did yesterday. Courting in the Romeo

and Juliet style is always absurd, particularly in this little hole

of a place.

In the daytime Romashov tried to obtain a distant glimpse of Shurochka

in the street, but he never succeeded. He often thought he recognized

the mistress of his heart in some lady walking along. With beating heart

and thrills of bliss he hurried nearer, but every time this turned out a

bitter disappointment; and when he found out his mistake he felt in his

soul an abandonment and deadly void that caused him pain.