Ignaty, stroking his hair in confusion, announced:
"No, there isn't; I spilled it."
All three laughed. They spoke about milk, but the mother and Sofya felt
that they were thinking of something else, and without words were
wishing them well. This touched Sofya, and produced in her, too,
embarrassment and modest reserve, which prevented her from saying
anything more than a quiet and warm "Thank you, comrades."
They exchanged glances, as if the word "comrade" had given them a mild
shock. The dull cough of the sick man was heard. The embers of the
burning woodpile died out.
"Good-by," the peasants said in subdued tones; and the sad word rang in
the women's ears a long time.
They walked without haste, in the twilight of the dawn, along the wood
path. The mother striding behind Sofya said:
"All this is good, just as in a dream--so good! People want to know the
truth, my dear; yes, they want to know the truth. It's like being in a
church on the morning of a great holiday, when the priest has not yet
arrived, and it's dark and quiet; then it's raw, and the people are
already gathering. Here the candles are lighted before the images, and
there the lamps are lighted; and little by little, they drive away the
darkness, illumining the House of God."
"True," answered Sofya. "Only here the House of God is the whole earth."
"The whole earth," the mother repeated, shaking her head thoughtfully.
"It's so good that it's hard to believe."
They walked and talked about Rybin, about the sick man, about the young
peasants who were so attentively silent, and who so awkwardly but
eloquently expressed a feeling of grateful friendship by little
attentions to the women. They came out into the open field; the sun rose
to meet them. As yet invisible, he spread out over the sky a transparent
fan of rosy rays, and the dewdrops in the grass glittered with the
many-colored gems of brave spring joy. The birds awoke fresh from their
slumber, vivifying the morning with their merry, impetuous voices. The
crows flew about croaking, and flapping their wings heavily. The black
rooks jumped about in the winter wheat, conversing in abrupt accents.
Somewhere the orioles whistled mournfully, a note of alarm in their
song. The larks sang, soaring up to meet the sun. The distance opened
up, the nocturnal shadows lifting from the hills.
"Sometimes a man will speak and speak to you, and you won't understand
him until he succeeds in telling you some simple word; and this one word
will suddenly lighten up everything," the mother said thoughtfully.
"There's that sick man, for instance; I've heard and known myself how
the workingmen in the factories and everywhere are squeezed; but you get
used to it from childhood on, and it doesn't touch your heart much. But
he suddenly tells you such an outrageous, vile thing! O Lord! Can it be
that people give their whole lives away to work in order that the
masters may permit themselves pleasure? That's without justification."
The thoughts of the mother were arrested by this fact. Its dull,
impudent gleam threw light upon a series of similar facts, at one time
known to her, but now forgotten.
"It's evident that they are satiated with everything. I know one country
officer who compelled the peasants to salute his horse when it was led
through the village; and he arrested everyone who failed to salute it.
Now, what need had he of that? It's impossible to understand." After a
pause she sighed: "The poor people are stupid from poverty, and the rich
from greed."
Sofya began to hum a song bold as the morning.
CHAPTER V
The life of Nilovna flowed on with strange placidity. This calmness
sometimes astonished her. There was her son immured in prison. She knew
that a severe sentence awaited him, yet every time the idea of it came
to her mind her thoughts strayed to Andrey, Fedya, and an endless series
of other people she had never seen, but only heard of. The figure of her
son appeared to her absorbing all the people into his own destiny. The
contemplative feeling aroused in her involuntarily and unnoticeably
diverted her inward gaze away from him to all sides. Like thin, uneven
rays it touched upon everything, tried to throw light everywhere, and
make one picture of the whole. Her mind was hindered from dwelling upon
some one thing.
Sofya soon went off somewhere, and reappeared in about five days, merry
and vivacious. Then, in a few hours, she vanished again, and returned
within a couple of weeks. It seemed as if she were borne along in life
in wide circles.
Nikolay, always occupied, lived a monotonous, methodical existence. At
eight o'clock in the morning he drank tea, read the newspapers, and
recounted the news to the mother. He repeated the speeches of the
merchants in the Douma without malice, and clearly depicted the life in
the city.
Listening to him the mother saw with transparent clearness the mechanism
of this life pitilessly grinding the people in the millstones of money.
At nine o'clock he went off to the office.
She tidied the rooms, prepared dinner, washed herself, put on a clean
dress, and then sat in her room to examine the pictures and the books.
She had already learned to read, but the effort of reading quickly
exhausted her; and she ceased to understand the meaning of the words.
But the pictures were a constant astonishment to her. They opened up
before her a clear, almost tangible world of new and marvelous things.
Huge cities arose before her, beautiful structures, machines, ships,
monuments, and infinite wealth, created by the people, overwhelming the
mind by the variety of nature's products. Life widened endlessly; each
day brought some new, huge wonders. The awakened hungry soul of the
woman was more and more strongly aroused to the multitude of riches in
the world, its countless beauties. She especially loved to look through
the great folios of the zoölogical atlas, and although the text was
written in a foreign language, it gave her the clearest conception of
the beauty, wealth, and vastness of the earth.
"It's an immense world," she said to Nikolay at dinner.
"Yes, and yet the people are crowded for space."
The insects, particularly the butterflies, astonished her most.
"What beauty, Nikolay Ivanovich," she observed. "And how much of this
fascinating beauty there is everywhere, but all covered up from us; it
all flies by without our seeing it. People toss about, they know
nothing, they are unable to take delight in anything, they have no
inclination for it. How many could take happiness to themselves if they
knew how rich the earth is, how many wonderful things live in it!"
Nikolay listened to her raptures, smiled, and brought her new
illustrated books.
In the evening visitors often gathered in his house--Alexey Vasilyevich,
a handsome man, pale-faced, black-bearded, sedate, and taciturn; Roman
Petrovich, a pimply, round-headed individual always smacking his lips
regretfully; Ivan Danilovich, a short, lean fellow with a pointed beard
and thin hair, impetuous, vociferous, and sharp as an awl, and Yegor,
always joking with his comrades about his sickness. Sometimes other
people were present who had come from various distant cities. The long
conversations always turned on one and the same thing, on the working
people of the world. The comrades discussed the workingmen, got into
arguments about them, became heated, waved their hands, and drank much
tea; while Nikolay, in the noise of the conversation, silently composed
proclamations. Then he read them to the comrades, who copied them on the
spot in printed letters. The mother carefully collected the pieces of
the torn, rough copies, and burned them.
She poured out tea for them, and wondered at the warmth with which they
discussed life and the working-people, the means whereby to sow truth
among them the sooner and the better, and how to elevate their spirit.
These problems were always agitating the comrades; their lives revolved
about them. Often they angrily disagreed, blamed one another for
something, got offended, and again discussed.
The mother felt that she knew the life of the workingmen better than
these people, and saw more clearly than they the enormity of the task
they assumed. She could look upon them with the somewhat melancholy
indulgence of a grown-up person toward children who play man and wife
without understanding the drama of the relation.
Sometimes Sashenka came. She never stayed long, and always spoke in a
businesslike way without smiling. She did not once fail to ask on
leaving how Pavel Mikhaylovich was.
"Is he well?" she would ask.
"Thank God! So, so. He's in good spirits."
"Give him my regards," the girl would request, and then disappear.
Sometimes the mother complained to Sashenka because Pavel was detained
so long and no date was yet set for his trial. Sashenka looked gloomy,
and maintained silence, her fingers twitching. Nilovna was tempted to
say to her: "My dear girl, why, I know you love him, I know." But
Sashenka's austere face, her compressed lips, and her dry, businesslike
manner, which seemed to betoken a desire for silence as soon as
possible, forbade any demonstration of sentiment. With a sigh the mother
mutely clasped the hand that the girl extended to her, and thought: "My
unhappy girl!"
Once Natasha came. She showed great delight at seeing the mother, kissed
her, and among other things announced to her quietly, as if she had just
thought of the thing:
"My mother died. Poor woman, she's dead!" She wiped her eyes with a
rapid gesture of her hands, and continued: "I'm sorry for her. She was
not yet fifty. She had a long life before her still. But when you look
at it from the other side you can't help thinking that death is easier
than such a life--always alone, a stranger to everybody, needed by no
one, scared by the shouts of my father. Can you call that living? People
live waiting for something good, and she had nothing to expect except
insults."
"You're right, Natasha," said the mother musingly. "People live
expecting some good, and if there's nothing to expect, what sort of a
life is it?" Kindly stroking Natasha's hand, she asked: "So you're alone
now?"
"Alone!" the girl rejoined lightly.
The mother was silent, then suddenly remarked with a smile:
"Never mind! A good person does not live alone. People will always
attach themselves to a good person."
Natasha was now a teacher in a little town where there was a textile
mill, and Nilovna occasionally procured illegal books, proclamations,
and newspapers for her. The distribution of literature, in fact, became
the mother's occupation. Several times a month, dressed as a nun or as a
peddler of laces or small linen articles, as a rich merchant's wife or a
religious pilgrim, she rode or walked about with a sack on her back, or
a valise in her hand. Everywhere, in the train, in the steamers, in
hotels and inns, she behaved simply and unobtrusively. She was the first
to enter into conversations with strangers, fearlessly drawing attention
to herself by her kind, sociable talk and the confident manner of an
experienced person who has seen and heard much.
She liked to speak to people, liked to listen to their stories of life,
their complaints, their perplexities, and lamentations. Her heart was
bathed in joy each time she noticed in anybody poignant discontent with
life, that discontent which, protesting against the blows of fate,
earnestly seeks to find an answer to its questions. Before her the
picture of human life unrolled itself ever wider and more varicolored,
that restless, anxious life passed in the struggle to fill the stomach.
Everywhere she clearly saw the coarse, bare striving, insolent in its
openness, deceiving man, robbing him, pressing out of him as much sap as
possible, draining him of his very life-blood. She realized that there
was plenty of everything upon earth, but that the people were in want,
and lived half starved, surrounded by inexhaustible wealth. In the
cities stood churches filled with gold and silver, not needed by God,
and at the entrance to the churches shivered the beggars vainly awaiting
a little copper coin to be thrust into their hands. Formerly she had
seen this, too--rich churches, priestly vestments sewed with gold
threads, and the hovels of the poor, their ignominious rags. But at that
time the thing had seemed natural; now the contrast was irreconcilable
and insulting to the poor, to whom, she knew, the churches were both
nearer and more necessary than to the rich.
From the pictures and stories of Christ, she knew also that he was a
friend of the poor, that he dressed simply. But in the churches, where
poverty came to him for consolation, she saw him nailed to the cross
with insolent gold, she saw silks and satins flaunting in the face of
want. The words of Rybin occurred to her: "They have mutilated even our
God for us, they have turned everything in their hands against us. In
the churches they set up a scarecrow before us. They have dressed God up
in falsehood and calumny; they have distorted His face in order to
destroy our souls!"
Without being herself aware of it, she prayed less; yet, at the same
time, she meditated more and more upon Christ and the people who,
without mentioning his name, as though ignorant of him, lived, it seemed
to her, according to his will, and, like him, regarded the earth as the
kingdom of the poor, and wanted to divide all the wealth of the earth
among the poor. Her reflections grew in her soul, deepening and
embracing everything she saw and heard. They grew and assumed the bright
aspect of a prayer, suffusing an even glow over the entire dark world,
the whole of life, and all people.
And it seemed to her that Christ himself, whom she had always loved with
a perplexed love, with a complicated feeling in which fear was closely
bound up with hope, and joyful emotion with melancholy, now came nearer
to her, and was different from what he had been. His position was
loftier, and he was more clearly visible to her. His aspect turned
brighter and more cheerful. Now his eyes smiled on her with assurance,
and with a live inward power, as if he had in reality risen to life for
mankind, washed and vivified by the hot blood lavishly shed in his name.
Yet those who had lost their blood modestly refrained from mentioning
the name of the unfortunate friend of the people.
The mother always returned to Nikolay from her travels delightfully
exhilarated by what she had seen and heard on the road, bold and
satisfied with the work she had accomplished.
"It's good to go everywhere, and to see much," she said to Nikolay in
the evening. "You understand how life is arranged. They brush the people
aside and fling them to the edge. The people, hurt and wounded, keep
moving about, even though they don't want to, and though they keep
thinking: 'What for? Why do they drive us away? Why must we go hungry
when there is so much of everything? And how much intellect there is
everywhere! Nevertheless, we must remain in stupidity and darkness. And
where is He, the merciful God, in whose eyes there are no rich nor poor,
but all are children dear to His heart.' The people are gradually
revolting against this life. They feel that untruth will stifle them if
they don't take thought of themselves."
And in her leisure hours she sat down to the books, and again looked
over the pictures, each time finding something new, ever widening the
panorama of life before her eyes, unfolding the beauties of nature and
the vigorous creative capacity of man. Nikolay often found her poring
over the pictures. He would smile and always tell her something
wonderful. Struck by man's daring, she would ask him incredulously, "Is
it possible?"
Quietly, with unshakable confidence in the truth of his prophecies,
Nikolay peered with his kind eyes through his glasses into the mother's
face, and told her stories of the future.
"There is no measure to the desires of man; and his power is
inexhaustible," he said. "But the world, after all, is still very slow
in acquiring spiritual wealth. Because nowadays everyone desiring to
free himself from dependence is compelled to hoard, not knowledge but
money. However, when the people will have exterminated greed and will
have freed themselves from the bondage of enslaving labor----"
She listened to him with strained attention. Though she but rarely
understood the meaning of his words, yet the calm faith animating them
penetrated her more and more deeply.
"There are extremely few free men in the world--that's its misfortune,"
he said.
This the mother understood. She knew men who had emancipated themselves
from greed and evil; she understood that if there were more such people,
the dark, incomprehensible, and awful face of life would become more
kindly and simple, better and brighter.
"A man must perforce be cruel," said Nikolay dismally.
The mother nodded her head in confirmation. She recalled the sayings of
the Little Russian.
CHAPTER VI
Once Nikolay, usually so punctual, came from his work much later than
was his wont, and said, excitedly rubbing his hands: "Do you know,
Nilovna, to-day at the visiting hour one of our comrades disappeared
from prison? But we have not succeeded in finding out who."
The mother's body swayed, overpowered by excitement. She sat down on a
chair and asked with forced quiet:
"Maybe it's Pasha?"
"Possibly. But the question is how to find him, how to help him keep in
concealment. Just now I was walking about the streets to see if I
couldn't detect him. It was a stupid thing of me to do, but I had to do
something. I'm going out again."
"I'll go, too," said the mother, rising.
"You go to Yegor, and see if he doesn't know anything about it," Nikolay
suggested, and quickly walked away.
She threw a kerchief on her head, and, seized with hope, swiftly sped
along the streets. Her eyes dimmed and her heart beat faster. Her head
drooped; she saw nothing about her. It was hot. The mother lost breath,
and when she reached the stairway leading to Yegor's quarters, she
stopped, too faint to proceed farther. She turned around and uttered an
amazed, low cry, closing her eyes for a second. It seemed to her that
Nikolay Vyesovshchikov was standing at the gate, his hands thrust into
his pockets, regarding her with a smile. But when she looked again
nobody was there.
"I imagined I saw him," she said to herself, slowly walking up the steps
and listening. She caught the sound of slow steps, and stopping at a
turn in the stairway, she bent over to look below, and again saw the
pockmarked face smiling up at her.
"Nikolay! Nikolay!" she whispered, and ran down to meet him. Her heart,
stung by disappointment, ached for her son.
"Go, go!" he answered in an undertone, waving his hand.
She quickly ran up the stairs, walked into Yegor's room, and found him
lying on the sofa. She gasped in a whisper:
"Nikolay is out of prison!"
"Which Nikolay?" asked Yegor, raising his head from the pillow. "There
are two there."
"Vyesovshchikov. He's coming here!"
"Fine! But I can't rise to meet him."
Vyesovshchikov had already come into the room. He locked the door after
him, and taking off his hat laughed quietly, stroking his hair. Yegor
raised himself on his elbows.
"Please, signor, make yourself at home," he said with a nod.
Without saying anything, a broad smile on his face, Nikolay walked up to
the mother and grasped her hand.
"If I had not seen you I might as well have returned to prison. I know
nobody in the city. If I had gone to the suburbs they would have seized
me at once. So I walked about, and thought what a fool I was--why had I
escaped? Suddenly I see Nilovna running; off I am, after you."
"How did you make your escape?"
Vyesovshchikov sat down awkwardly on the edge of the sofa and pressed
Yegor's hand.
"I don't know how," he said in an embarrassed manner. "Simply a chance.
I was taking my airing, and the prisoners began to beat the overseer of
the jail. There's one overseer there who was expelled from the
gendarmerie for stealing. He's a spy, an informer, and tortures the life
out of everybody. They gave him a drubbing, there was a hubbub, the
overseers got frightened and blew their whistles. I noticed the gates
open. I walked up and saw an open square and the city. It drew me
forward and I went away without haste, as if in sleep. I walked a little
and bethought myself: 'Where am I to go?' I looked around and the gates
of the prison were already closed. I began to feel awkward. I was sorry
for the comrades in general. It was stupid somehow. I hadn't thought of
going away."
"Hm!" said Yegor. "Why, sir, you should have turned back, respectfully
knocked at the prison door, and begged for admission. 'Excuse me,' you
should have said,'I was tempted; but here I am.'"
"Yes," continued Nikolay, smiling; "that would have been stupid, too, I
understand. But for all that, it's not nice to the other comrades. I
walk away without saying anything to anybody. Well, I kept on going, and
I came across a child's funeral. I followed the hearse with my head bent
down, looking at nobody. I sat down in the cemetery and enjoyed the
fresh air. One thought came into my head----"
"One?" asked Yegor. Fetching breath, he added: "I suppose it won't feel
crowded there."
Vyesovshchikov laughed without taking offense, and shook his head.
"Well, my brain's not so empty now as it used to be. And you, Yegor
Ivanovich, still sick?"
"Each one does what he can. No one has a right to interfere with him."
Yegor evaded an answer; he coughed hoarsely. "Continue."
"Then I went to a public museum. I walked about there, looked around,
and kept thinking all the time: 'Where am I to go next?' I even began to
get angry with myself. Besides, I got dreadfully hungry. I walked into
the street and kept on trotting. I felt very down in the mouth. And then
I saw police officers looking at everybody closely. 'Well,' thinks I to
myself, 'with my face I'll arrive at God's judgment seat pretty soon.'
Suddenly Nilovna came running opposite me. I turned about, and off I
went after her. That's all."
"And I didn't even see you," said the mother guiltily.
"The comrades are probably uneasy about me. They must be wondering where
I am," said Nikolay, scratching his head.
"Aren't you sorry for the officials? I guess they're uneasy, too,"
teased Yegor. He moved heavily on the sofa, and said seriously and
solicitously: "However, jokes aside, we must hide you--by no means as
easy as pleasant. If I could get up--" His breath gave out. He clapped
his hand to his breast, and with a weak movement began to rub it.
"You've gotten very sick, Yegor Ivanovich," said Nikolay gloomily,
drooping his head. The mother sighed and cast an anxious glance about
the little, crowded room.
"That's my own affair. Granny, you ask about Pavel. No reason to feign
indifference," said Yegor.
Vyesovshchikov smiled broadly.
"Pavel's all right; he's strong; he's like an elder among us; he
converses with the officials and gives commands; he's respected. There's
good reason for it."
Vlasova nodded her head, listening, and looked sidewise at the swollen,
bluish face of Yegor, congealed to immobility, devoid of expression. It
seemed strangely flat, only the eyes flashed with animation and
cheerfulness.
"I wish you'd give me something to eat. I'm frightfully hungry," Nikolay
cried out unexpectedly, and smiled sheepishly.
"Granny, there's bread on the shelf--give it to him. Then go out in the
corridor, to the second door on the left, and knock. A woman will open
it, and you'll tell her to snatch up everything she has to eat and come
here."
"Why everything?" protested Nikolay.
"Don't get excited. It's not much--maybe nothing at all."
The mother went out and rapped at the door. She strained her ears for an
answering sound, while thinking of Yegor with dread and grief. He was
dying, she knew.
"Who is it?" somebody asked on the other side of the door.
"It's from Yegor Ivanovich," the mother whispered. "He asked you to come
to him."
"I'll come at once," the woman answered without opening the door. The
mother waited a moment, and knocked again. This time the door opened
quickly, and a tall woman wearing glasses stepped out into the hall,
rapidly tidying the ruffled sleeves of her waist. She asked the mother
harshly:
"What do you want?"
"I'm from Yegor Ivanovich."
"Aha! Come! Oh, yes, I know you!" the woman exclaimed in a low voice.
"How do you do? It's dark here."
Nilovna looked at her and remembered that this woman had come to
Nikolay's home on rare occasions.
"All comrades!" flashed through her mind.
The woman compelled Nilovna to walk in front.
"Is he feeling bad?"
"Yes; he's lying down. He asked you to bring something to eat."
"Well, he doesn't need anything to eat."
When they walked into Yegor's room they were met by the words:
"I'm preparing to join my forefathers, my friend. Liudmila Vasilyevna,
this man walked away from prison without the permission of the
authorities--a bit of shameless audacity. Before all, feed him, then
hide him somewhere for a day or two."
The woman nodded her head and looked carefully at the sick man's face.
"Stop your chattering, Yegor," she said sternly. "You know it's bad for
you. You ought to have sent for me at once, as soon as they came. And I
see you didn't take your medicine. What do you mean by such negligence?
You yourself say it's easier for you to breathe after a dose. Comrade,
come to my place. They'll soon call for Yegor from the hospital."
"So I'm to go to the hospital, after all?" asked Yegor, puckering up his
face.
"Yes, I'll be there with you."
"There, too?"
"Hush!"
As she talked she adjusted the blanket on Yegor's breast, looked fixedly
at Nikolay, and with her eyes measured the quantity of medicine in the
bottle. She spoke evenly, not loud, but in a resonant voice. Her
movements were easy, her face was pale, with large blue circles around
her eyes. Her black eyebrows almost met at the bridge of the nose,
deepening the setting of her dark, stern eyes. Her face did not please
the mother; it seemed haughty in its sternness and immobility, and her
eyes were rayless. She always spoke in a tone of command.
"We are going away," she continued. "I'll return soon. Give Yegor a
tablespoon of this medicine."
"Very well," said the mother.
"And don't let him speak." She walked away, taking Nikolay with her.
"Admirable woman!" said Yegor with a sigh. "Magnificent woman! You ought
to be working with her, granny. You see, she gets very much worn out.
It's she that does all the printing for us."
"Don't speak. Here, you'd better take this medicine," the mother said
gently.
He swallowed the medicine and continued, for some reason screwing up one
eye:
"I'll die all the same, even if I don't speak."
He looked into the mother's face with his other eye, and his lips slowly
formed themselves into a smile. The mother bent her head, a sharp
sensation of pity bringing tears into her eyes.
"Never mind, granny. It's natural. The pleasure of living carries with
it the obligation to die."
The mother put her hand on his, and again said softly:
"Keep quiet, please!"
He shut his eyes as if listening to the rattle in his breast, and went
on stubbornly.
"It's senseless to keep quiet, granny. What'll I gain by keeping quiet?
A few superfluous seconds of agony. And I'll lose the great pleasure of
chattering with a good person. I think that in the next world there
aren't such good people as here."
The mother uneasily interrupted him.
"The lady will come, and she'll scold me because you talk."
"She's no lady. She's a revolutionist, the daughter of a village scribe,
a teacher. She is sure to scold you anyhow, granny. She scolds everybody
always." And, slowly moving his lips with an effort, Yegor began to
relate the life history of his neighbor. His eyes smiled. The mother saw
that he was bantering her purposely. As she regarded his face, covered
with a moist blueness, she thought distressfully that he was near to
death.
Liudmila entered, and carefully closing the door after her, said,
turning to Vlasova:
"Your friend ought to change his clothes without fail, and leave here as
soon as possible. So go at once; get him some clothes, and bring them
here. I'm sorry Sofya's not here. Hiding people is her specialty."
"She's coming to-morrow," remarked Vlasova, throwing her shawl over her
shoulders. Every time she was given a commission the strong desire
seized her to accomplish it promptly and well, and she was unable to
think of anything but the task before her. Now, lowering her brows with
an air of preoccupation, she asked zealously:
"How should we dress him, do you think?"
"It's all the same. It's night, you know."
"At night it's worse. There are less people on the street, and the
police spy around more; and, you know, he's rather awkward."
Yegor laughed hoarsely.
"You're a young girl yet, granny."
"May I visit you in the hospital?"
He nodded his head, coughing. Liudmila glanced at the mother with her
dark eyes and suggested:
"Do you want to take turns with me in attending him? Yes? Very well. And
now go quickly."
She vigorously seized Vlasova by the hand, with perfect good nature,
however, and led her out of the door.
"You mustn't be offended," she said softly, "because I dismiss you so
abruptly. I know it's rude; but it's harmful for him to speak, and I
still have hopes of his recovery." She pressed her hands together until
the bones cracked. Her eyelids drooped wearily over her eyes.
The explanation disturbed the mother. She murmured:
"Don't talk that way. The idea! Who thought of rudeness? I'm going;
good-by."
"Look out for the spies!" whispered the woman.
"I know," the mother answered with some pride.
She stopped for a minute outside the gate to look around sharply under
the pretext of adjusting her kerchief. She was already able to
distinguish spies in a street crowd almost immediately. She recognized
the exaggerated carelessness of their gait, their strained attempt to be
free in their gestures, the expression of tedium on their faces, the
wary, guilty glimmer of their restless, unpleasantly sharp gaze badly
hidden behind their feigned candor.
This time she did not notice any familiar faces, and walked along the
street without hastening. She took a cab, and gave orders to be driven
to the market place. When buying the clothes for Nikolay she bargained
vigorously with the salespeople, all the while scolding at her drunken
husband whom she had to dress anew every month. The tradespeople paid
little attention to her talk, but she herself was greatly pleased with
her ruse. On the road she had calculated that the police would, of
course, understand the necessity for Nikolay to change his clothes, and
would send spies to the market. With such naïve precautions, she
returned to Yegor's quarters; then she had to escort Nikolay to the
outskirts of the city. They took different sides of the street, and it
was amusing to the mother to see how Vyesovshchikov strode along
heavily, with bent head, his legs getting tangled in the long flaps of
his russet-colored coat, his hat falling over his nose. In one of the
deserted streets, Sashenka met them, and the mother, taking leave of
Vyesovshchikov with a nod of her head, turned toward home with a sigh of
relief.
"And Pasha is in prison with Andriusha!" she thought sadly.
Nikolay met her with an anxious exclamation:
"You know that Yegor is in a very bad way, very bad! He was taken to the
hospital. Liudmila was here. She asks you to come to her there."
"At the hospital?"
Adjusting his eyeglasses with a nervous gesture, Nikolay helped her on
with her jacket and pressed her hand in a dry, hot grasp. His voice was
low and tremulous. "Yes. Take this package with you. Have you disposed
of Vyesovshchikov all right?"
"Yes, all right."
"I'll come to Yegor, too!"
The mother's head was in a whirl with fatigue, and Nikolay's emotion
aroused in her a sad premonition of the drama's end.
"So he's dying--he's dying!" The dark thought knocked at her brain
heavily and dully.
But when she entered the bright, tidy little room of the hospital and
saw Yegor sitting on the pallet propped against the wide bosom of the
pillow, and heard him laugh with zest, she was at once relieved. She
paused at the door, smiling, and listened to Yegor talk with the
physician in a hoarse but lively voice.
"A cure is a reform."
"Don't talk nonsense!" the physician cried officiously in a thin voice.
"And I'm a revolutionist! I detest reforms!"
The physician, thoughtfully pulling his beard, felt the dropsical
swelling on Yegor's face. The mother knew him well. He was Ivan
Danilovich, one of the close comrades of Nikolay. She walked up to
Yegor, who thrust forth his tongue by way of welcome to her. The
physician turned around.
"Ah, Nilovna! How are you? Sit down. What have you in your hand?"
"It must be books."
"He mustn't read."
"The doctor wants to make an idiot of me," Yegor complained.
"Keep quiet!" the physician commanded, and began to write in a little
book.
The short, heavy breaths, accompanied by rattling in his throat, fairly
tore themselves from Yegor's breast, and his face became covered with
thin perspiration. Slowly raising his swollen hand, he wiped his
forehead with the palm. The strange immobility of his swollen cheeks
denaturalized his broad, good face, all the features of which
disappeared under the dead, bluish mask. Only his eyes, deeply sunk
beneath the swellings, looked out clear and smiling benevolently.
"Oh, Science, I'm tired! May I lie down?"
"No, you mayn't."
"But I'm going to lie down after you go."
"Nilovna, please don't let him. It's bad for him."
The mother nodded. The physician hurried off with short steps. Yegor
threw back his head, closed his eyes and sank into a torpor, motionless
save for the twitching of his fingers. The white walls of the little
room seemed to radiate a dry coldness and a pale, faceless sadness.
Through the large window peered the tufted tops of the lime trees, amid
whose dark, dusty foliage yellow stains were blazing, the cold touches
of approaching autumn.
"Death is coming to me slowly, reluctantly," said Yegor without moving
and without opening his eyes. "He seems to be a little sorry for me. I
was such a fine, sociable chap."
"You'd better keep quiet, Yegor Ivanovich!" the mother bade, quietly
stroking his hand.
"Wait, granny, I'll be silent soon."
Losing breath every once in a while, enunciating the words with a mighty
effort, he continued his talk, interrupted by long spells of faintness.
"It's splendid to have you with me. It's pleasant to see your face,
granny, and your eyes so alert, and your _naïveté_. 'How will it end?' I
ask myself. It's sad to think that the prison, exile, and all sorts of
vile outrages await you as everybody else. Are you afraid of prison?"
"No," answered the mother softly.
"But after all the prison is a mean place. It's the prison that knocked
me up. To tell you the truth, I don't want to die."
"Maybe you won't die yet," the mother was about to say, but a look at
his face froze the words on her lips.
"If I hadn't gotten sick I could have worked yet, not badly; but if you
can't work there's nothing to live for, and it's stupid to live."
"That's true, but it's no consolation." Andrey's words flashed into the
mother's mind, and she heaved a deep sigh. She was greatly fatigued by
the day, and hungry. The monotonous, humid, hoarse whisper of the sick
man filled the room and crept helplessly along the smooth, cold, shining
walls. At the windows the dark tops of the lime trees trembled quietly.
It was growing dusk, and Yegor's face on the pillow turned dark.
"How bad I feel," he said. He closed his eyes and became silent. The
mother listened to his breathing, looked around, and sat for a few
minutes motionless, seized by a cold sensation of sadness. Finally she
dozed off.
The muffled sound of a door being carefully shut awakened her, and she
saw the kind, open eyes of Yegor.
"I fell asleep; excuse me," she said quietly.
"And you excuse me," he answered, also quietly. At the door was heard a
rustle and Liudmila's voice.
"They sit in the darkness and whisper. Where is the knob?"
The room trembled and suddenly became filled with a white, unfriendly
light. In the middle of the room stood Liudmila, all black, tall,
straight, and serious. Yegor transferred his glance to her, and making a
great effort to move his body, raised his hand to his breast.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Liudmila, running up to him. He looked at
the mother with fixed eyes, and now they seemed large and strangely
bright.
"Wait!" he whispered.
Opening his mouth wide, he raised his head and stretched his hand
forward. The mother carefully held it up and caught her breath as she
looked into his face. With a convulsive and powerful movement of his
neck he flung his head back, and said aloud:
"Give me air!"
A quiver ran through his body; his head dropped limply on his shoulder,
and in his wide open eyes the cold light of the lamp burning over the
bed was reflected dully.
"My darling!" whispered the mother, firmly pressing his hand, which
suddenly grew heavy.
Liudmila slowly walked away from the bed, stopped at the window and
stared into space.
"He's dead!" she said in an unusually loud voice unfamiliar to Vlasova.
She bent down, put her elbows on the window sill, and repeated in dry,
startled tones: "He's dead! He died calmly, like a man, without
complaint." And suddenly, as if struck a blow on the head, she dropped
faintly on her knees, covered her face, and gave vent to dull, stifled
groans.
CHAPTER VII
The mother folded Yegor's hands over his breast and adjusted his head,
which was strangely warm, on the pillow. Then silently wiping her eyes,
she went to Liudmila, bent over her, and quietly stroked her thick hair.
The woman slowly turned around to her, her dull eyes widened in a sickly
way. She rose to her feet, and with trembling lips whispered:
"I've known him for a long time. We were in exile together. We went
there together on foot, we sat in prison together; at times it was
intolerable, disgusting; many fell in spirit."
Her dry, loud groans stuck in her throat. She overcame them with an
effort, and bringing her face nearer to the mother's she continued in a
quick whisper, moaning without tears:
"Yet he was unconquerably jolly. He joked and laughed, and covered up
his suffering in a manly way, always striving to encourage the weak. He
was always good, alert, kind. There, in Siberia, idleness depraves
people, and often calls forth ugly feelings toward life. How he mastered
such feelings! What a comrade he was! If you only knew. His own life was
hard and tormented; but I know that nobody ever heard him complain, not
a soul--never! Here was I, nearer to him than others. I'm greatly
indebted to his heart, to his mind. He gave me all he could of it; and
though exhausted, he never asked either kindness or attention in
return."
She walked up to Yegor, bent down and kissed him. Her voice was husky as
she said mournfully:
"Comrade, my dear, dear friend, I thank you with all my heart! Good-by.
I shall work as you worked--unassailed by doubt--all my life--good-by!"
The dry, sharp groans shook her body, and gasping for breath she laid
her head on the bed at Yegor's feet. The mother wept silent tears which
seared her cheeks. For some reason she tried to restrain them. She
wanted to fondle Liudmila, and wanted to speak about Yegor with words of
love and grief. She looked through her tears at his swollen face, at his
eyes calmly covered by his drooping eyelids as in sleep, and at his dark
lips set in a light, serene smile. It was quiet, and a bleak brightness
pervaded the room.
Ivan Danilovich entered, as always, with short, hasty steps. He suddenly
stopped in the middle of the room, and thrust his hands into his pockets
with a quick gesture.
"Did it happen long ago?" His voice was loud and nervous.
Neither woman replied. He quietly swung about, and wiping his forehead
went to Yegor, pressed his hand, and stepped to one side.
"It's not strange--with his heart. It might have happened six months
ago."
His voice, high-pitched and jarringly loud for the occasion, suddenly
broke off. Leaning his back against the wall, he twisted his beard with
nimble fingers, and winking his eyes, rapidly looked at the group by the
bed.
"One more!" he muttered.
Liudmila rose and walked over to the window. The mother raised her head
and glanced around with a sigh. A minute afterwards they all three stood
at the open window, pressing close against one another, and looked at
the dusky face of the autumn night. On the black tops of the trees
glittered the stars, endlessly deepening the distance of the sky.
Liudmila took the mother by the hand, and silently pressed her head to
her shoulders. The physician nervously bit his lips and wiped his
eyeglasses with his handkerchief. In the stillness beyond the window the
nocturnal noise of the city heaved wearily, and cold air blew on their
faces and shoulders. Liudmila trembled; the mother saw tears running
down her cheeks. From the corridor of the hospital floated confused,
dismal sounds. The three stood motionless at the window, looking
silently into the darkness.
The mother felt herself not needed, and carefully freeing her hand, went
to the door, bowing to Yegor.
"Are you going?" the physician asked softly without looking around.
"Yes."
In the street she thought with pity of Liudmila, remembering her scant
tears. She couldn't even have a good cry. Then she pictured to herself
Liudmila and the physician in the extremely light white room, the dead
eyes of Yegor behind them. A compassion for all people oppressed her.
She sighed heavily, and hastened her pace, driven along by her
tumultuous feelings.
"I must hurry," she thought in obedience to a sad but encouraging power
that jostled her from within.
The whole of the following day the mother was busy with preparations for
the funeral. In the evening when she, Nikolay, and Sofya were drinking
tea, quietly talking about Yegor, Sashenka appeared, strangely brimming
over with good spirits, her cheeks brilliantly red, her eyes beaming
happily. She seemed to be filled with some joyous hope. Her animation
contrasted sharply with the mournful gloom of the others. The discordant
note disturbed them and dazzled them like a fire that suddenly flashes
in the darkness. Nikolay thoughtfully struck his fingers on the table
and smiled quietly.
"You're not like yourself to-day, Sasha."
"Perhaps," she laughed happily.
The mother looked at her in mute remonstrance, and Sofya observed in a
tone of admonishment:
"And we were talking about Yegor Ivanovich."
"What a wonderful fellow, isn't he?" she exclaimed. "Modest, proof
against doubt, he probably never yielded to sorrow. I have never seen
him without a joke on his lips; and what a worker! He is an artist of
the revolution, a great master, who skillfully manipulates revolutionary
thoughts. With what simplicity and power he always draws his pictures of
falsehood, violence and untruth! And what a capacity he has for
tempering the horrible with his gay humor which does not diminish the
force of facts but only the more brightly illumines his inner thought!
Always droll! I am greatly indebted to him, and I shall never forget his
merry eyes, his fun. And I shall always feel the effect of his ideas
upon me in the time of my doubts--I love him!"
She spoke in a moderated voice, with a melancholy smile in her eyes. But
the incomprehensible fire of her gaze was not extinguished; her
exultation was apparent to everybody.
People love their own feelings--sometimes the very feelings that are
harmful to them--are enamored of them, and often derive keen pleasure
even from grief, a pleasure that corrodes the heart. Nikolay, the
mother, and Sofya were unwilling to let the sorrowful mood produced by
the death of their comrade give way to the joy brought in by Sasha.
Unconsciously defending their melancholy right to feed on their sadness,
they tried to impose their feelings on the girl.
"And now he's dead," announced Sofya, watching her carefully.
Sasha glanced around quickly, with a questioning look. She knit her
eyebrows and lowered her head. She was silent for a short time,
smoothing her hair with slow strokes of her hand.
"He's dead?" She again cast a searching glance into their faces. "It's
hard for me to reconcile myself to the idea."
"But it's a fact," said Nikolay with a smile.
Sasha arose, walked up and down the room, and suddenly stopping, said in
a strange voice:
"What does 'to die' signify? What died? Did my respect for Yegor die? My
love for him, a comrade? The memory of his mind's labor? Did that labor
die? Did all our impressions of him as of a hero disappear without
leaving a trace? Did all this die? This best in him will never die out
of me, I know. It seems to me we're in too great a hurry to say of a man
'he's dead.' That's the reason we too soon forget that a man never dies
if we don't wish our impressions of his manhood, his self-denying toil
for the triumph of truth and happiness to disappear. We forget that
everything should always be alive in living hearts. Don't be in a hurry
to bury the eternally alive, the ever luminous, along with a man's body.
The church is destroyed, but God is immortal."
Carried away by her emotions she sat down, leaning her elbows on the
table, and continued more thoughtfully in a lower voice, looking
smilingly through mist-covered eyes at the faces of the comrades:
"Maybe I'm talking nonsense. But life intoxicates me by its wonderful
complexity, by the variety of its phenomena, which at times seem like a
miracle to me. Perhaps we are too sparing in the expenditure of our
feelings. We live a great deal in our thoughts, and that spoils us to a
certain extent. We estimate, but we don't feel."
"Did anything good happen to you?" asked Sofya with a smile.
"Yes," said Sasha, nodding her head. "I had a whole night's talk with
Vyesovshchikov. I didn't use to like him. He seemed rude and dull.
Undoubtedly that's what he was. A dark, immovable irritation at
everybody lived in him. He always used to place himself, as it were,
like a dead weight in the center of things, and wrathfully say, 'I, I,
I.' There was something bourgeois in this, low, and exasperating." She
smiled, and again took in everybody with her burning look.
"Now he says: 'Comrades'--and you ought to hear how he says it, with
what a stirring, tender love. He has grown marvelously simple and
open-hearted, and possessed with a desire to work. He has found himself,
he has measured his power, and knows what he is not. But the main thing
is, a true comradely feeling has been born in him, a broad, loving
comradeship, which smiles in the face of every difficulty in life."
Vlasova listened to Sasha attentively. She was glad to see this girl,
always so stern, now softened, cheerful, and happy. Yet from some deeps
of her soul arose the jealous thought: "And how about Pasha?"
"He's entirely absorbed in thoughts of the comrades," continued Sasha.
"And do you know of what he assures me? Of the necessity of arranging an
escape for them. He says it's a very simple, easy matter."
Sofya raised her head, and said animatedly:
"And what do _you_ think, Sasha? Is it feasible?"
The mother trembled as she set a cup of tea on the table. Sasha knit her
brows, her animation gone from her. After a moment's silence, she said
in a serious voice, but smiling in joyous confusion:
"_He's_ convinced. If everything is really as he says, we ought to try.
It's our duty." She blushed, dropped into a chair, and lapsed into
silence.
"My dear, dear girl!" the mother thought, smiling. Sofya also smiled,
and Nikolay, looking tenderly into Sasha's face, laughed quietly. The
girl raised her head with a stern glance for all. Then she paled, and
her eyes flashed, and she said dryly, the offense she felt evident in
her voice:
"You're laughing. I understand you. You consider me personally
interested in the case, don't you?"
"Why, Sasha?" asked Sofya, rising and going over to her.
Agitated, pale, the girl continued:
"But I decline. I'll not take any part in deciding the question if you
consider it."
"Stop, Sasha," said Nikolay calmly.
The mother understood the girl. She went to her and kissed her silently
on her head. Sasha seized her hand, leaned her cheek on it, and raised
her reddened face, looking into the mother's eyes, troubled and happy.
The mother silently stroked her hair. She felt sad at heart. Sofya
seated herself at Sasha's side, her arm over her shoulder, and said,
smiling into the girl's eyes:
"You're a strange person."
"Yes, I think I've grown foolish," Sasha acknowledged. "But I don't like
shadows."
"That'll do," said Nikolay seriously, but immediately followed up the
admonition by the businesslike remark: "There can't be two opinions as
to the escape, if it's possible to arrange it. But before everything, we
must know whether the comrades in prison want it."
Sasha drooped her head. Sofya, lighting a cigarette, looked at her
brother, and with a broad sweep of her arm dropped the match in a
corner.
"How is it possible they should not want it?" asked the mother with a
sigh. Sofya nodded to her, smiling, and walked over to the window. The
mother could not understand the failure of the others to respond, and
looked at them in perplexity. She wanted so much to hear more about the
possibility of an escape.
"I must see Vyesovshchikov," said Nikolay.
"All right. To-morrow I'll tell you when and where," replied Sasha.
"What is he going to do?" asked Sofya, pacing through the room.
"It's been decided to make him compositor in a new printing place. Until
then he'll stay with the forester."
Sasha's brow lowered. Her face assumed its usual severe expression. Her
voice sounded caustic. Nikolay walked up to the mother, who was washing
cups, and said to her:
"You'll see Pasha day after to-morrow. Hand him a note when you're
there. Do you understand? We must know."
"I understand. I understand," the mother answered quickly. "I'll deliver
it to him all right. That's my business."
"I'm going," Sasha announced, and silently shook hands with everybody.
She strode away, straight and dry-eyed, with a peculiarly heavy tread.
"Poor girl!" said Sofya softly.
"Ye-es," Nikolay drawled. Sofya put her hand on the mother's shoulder
and gave her a gentle little shake as she sat in the chair.
"Would you love such a daughter?" and Sofya looked into the mother's
face.
"Oh! If I could see them together, if only for one day!" exclaimed
Nilovna, ready to weep.
"Yes, a bit of happiness is good for everybody."
"But there are no people who want only a bit of happiness," remarked
Nikolay; "and when there's much of it, it becomes cheap."
Sofya sat herself at the piano, and began to play something low and
doleful.
CHAPTER VIII
The next morning a number of men and women stood at the gate of the
hospital waiting for the coffin of their comrade to be carried out to
the street. Spies watchfully circled about, their ears alert to catch
each sound, noting faces, manners, and words. From the other side of the
street a group of policemen with revolvers at their belts looked on. The
impudence of the spies, the mocking smiles of the police ready to show
their power, were strong provocatives to the crowd. Some joked to cover
their excitement; others looked down on the ground sullenly, trying not
to notice the affronts; still others, unable to restrain their wrath,
laughed in sarcasm at the government, which feared people armed with
nothing but words. The pale blue sky of autumn gleamed upon the round,
gray paving stones of the streets, strewn with yellow leaves, which the
wind kept whirling about under the people's feet.
The mother stood in the crowd. She looked around at the familiar faces
and thought with sadness: "There aren't many of you, not many."
The gate opened, and the coffin, decorated with wreaths tied with red
ribbons, was carried out. The people, as if inspired with one will,
silently raised their hats. A tall officer of police with a thick black
mustache on a red face unceremoniously jostled his way through the
crowd, followed by the soldiers, whose heavy boots trampled loudly on
the stones. They made a cordon around the coffin, and the officer said
in a hoarse, commanding voice:
"Remove the ribbons, please!"
The men and women pressed closely about him. They called to him, waving
their hands excitedly and trying to push past one another. The mother
caught the flash of pale, agitated countenances, some of them with
quivering lips and tears.
"Down with violence!" a young voice shouted nervously. But the lonely
outcry was lost in the general clamor.
The mother also felt bitterness in her heart. She turned in indignation
to her neighbor, a poorly dressed young man.
"They don't permit a man's comrades even to bury him as they want to.
What do they mean by it?"
The hubbub increased and hostility waxed strong. The coffin rocked over
the heads of the people. The silken rustling of the ribbons fluttering
in the wind about the heads and faces of the carriers could be heard
amid the noise of the strife.
The mother was seized with a shuddering dread of the possible collision,
and she quickly spoke in an undertone to her neighbors on the right and
on the left:
"Why not let them have their way if they're like that? The comrades
ought to yield and remove the ribbons. What else can they do?"
A loud, sharp voice subdued all the other noises:
"We demand not to be disturbed in accompanying on his last journey one
whom you tortured to death!"
Somebody--apparently a girl--sang out in a high, piping voice:
"In mortal strife your victims fell."
"Remove the ribbons, please, Yakovlev! Cut them off!"
A saber was heard issuing from its scabbard. The mother closed her eyes,
awaiting shouts; but it grew quieter.
The people growled like wolves at bay; then silently drooping their
heads, crushed by the consciousness of impotence, they moved forward,
filling the street with the noise of their tramping. Before them swayed
the stripped cover of the coffin with the crumpled wreaths, and swinging
from side to side rode the mounted police. The mother walked on the
pavement; she was unable to see the coffin through the dense crowd
surrounding it, which imperceptibly grew and filled the whole breadth of
the street. Back of the crowd also rose the gray figures of the mounted
police; at their sides, holding their hands on their sabers, marched the
policemen on foot, and everywhere were the sharp eyes of the spies,
familiar to the mother, carefully scanning the faces of the people.
"Good-by, comrade, good-by!" plaintively sang two beautiful voices.
"Don't!" a shout was heard. "We will be silent, comrades--for the
present."
The shout was stern and imposing; it carried an assuring threat, and it
subdued the crowd. The sad songs broke off; the talking became lower;
only the noise of heavy tramping on the stones filled the street with
its dull, even sound. Over the heads of the people, into the transparent
sky, and through the air it rose like the first peal of distant thunder.
People silently bore grief and revolt in their breasts. Was it possible
to carry on the war for freedom peacefully? A vain illusion! Hatred of
violence, love of freedom blazed up and burned the last remnants of the
illusion to ashes in the hearts that still cherished it. The steps
became heavier, heads were raised, eyes looked cold and firm, and
feeling, outstripping thought, brought forth resolve. The cold wind,
waxing stronger and stronger, carried an unfriendly cloud of dust and
street litter in front of the people. It blew through their garments and
their hair, blinded their eyes and struck against their breasts.
The mother was pained by these silent funerals without priests and
heart-oppressing chants, with thoughtful faces, frowning brows, and the
heavy tramp of the feet. Her slowly circling thoughts formulated her
impression in the melancholy phrase:
"There are not many of you who stand up for the truth, not many; and yet
they fear you, they fear you!"
Her head bent, she strode along without looking around. It seemed to her
that they were burying, not Yegor, but something else unknown and
incomprehensible to her.
At the cemetery the procession for a long time moved in and out along
the narrow paths amid the tombs until an open space was reached, which
was sprinkled with wretched little crosses. The people gathered about
the graves in silence. This austere silence of the living among the dead
promised something strange, which caused the mother's heart to tremble
and sink with expectation. The wind whistled and sighed among the
graves. The flowers trembled on the lid of the coffin.
The police, stretching out in a line, assumed an attitude of guard,
their eyes on their captain. A tall, long-haired, black-browed, pale
young man without a hat stood over the fresh grave. At the same time the
hoarse voice of the captain was heard:
"Ladies and gentlemen!"
"Comrades!" began the black-browed man sonorously.
"Permit me!" shouted the police captain. "In pursuance of the order of
the chief of police I announce to you that I cannot permit a speech!"
"I will say only a few words," the young man said calmly. "Comrades!
over the grave of our teacher and friend let us vow in silence never to
forget his will; let each one of us continue without ceasing to dig the
grave for the source of our country's misfortune, the evil power that
crushes it--the autocracy!"
"Arrest him!" shouted the police captain. But his voice was drowned in
the confused outburst of shouts.
"Down with the autocracy!"
The police rushed through the crowd toward the orator who, closely
surrounded on all sides, shouted, waving his hand:
"Long live liberty! We will live and die for it!"
The mother shut her eyes in momentary fear. The boisterous tempest of
confused sounds deafened her. The earth rocked under her feet; terror
impeded her breathing. The startling whistles of the policemen pierced
the air. The rude, commanding voice of the captain was heard; the women
cried hysterically. The wooden fences cracked, and the heavy tread of
many feet sounded dully on the dry ground. A sonorous voice, subduing
all the other voices, blared like a war trumpet:
"Comrades! Calm yourselves! Have more respect for yourselves! Let me go!
Comrades, I insist, let me go!"
The mother looked up, and uttered a low exclamation. A blind impulse
carried her forward with outstretched hands. Not far from her, on a worn
path between the graves, the policemen were surrounding the long-haired
man and repelling the crowd that fell upon them from all sides. The
unsheathed bayonets flashed white and cold in the air, flying over the
heads of the people, and falling quickly again with a spiteful hiss.
Broken bits of the fence were brandished; the baleful shouts of the
struggling people rose wildly.
The young man lifted his pale face, and his firm, calm voice sounded
above the storm of irritated outcries:
"Comrades! Why do you spend your strength? Our task is to arm the
heads."
He conquered. Throwing away their sticks, the people dropped out of the
throng one after the other; and the mother pushed forward. She saw how
Nikolay, with his hat fallen back on his neck, thrust aside the people,
intoxicated with the commotion, and heard his reproachful voice:
"Have you lost your senses? Calm yourselves!"
It seemed to her that one of his hands was red.
"Nikolay Ivanovich, go away!" she shouted, rushing toward him.
"Where are you going? They'll strike you there!"
She stopped. Seizing her by the shoulder, Sofya stood at her side,
hatless, her jacket open, her other hand grasping a young, light-haired
man, almost a boy. He held his hands to his bruised face, and he
muttered with tremulous lips: "Let me go! It's nothing."
"Take care of him! Take him home to us! Here's a handkerchief. Bandage
his face!" Sofya gave the rapid orders, and putting his hand into the
mother's ran away, saying:
"Get out of this place quickly, else they'll arrest you!"
The people scattered all over the cemetery. After them the policemen
strode heavily among the graves, clumsily entangling themselves in the
flaps of their military coats, cursing, and brandishing their bayonets.
"Let's hurry!" said the mother, wiping the boy's face with the
handkerchief. "What's your name?"
"Ivan." Blood spurted from his mouth. "Don't be worried; I don't feel
hurt. He hit me over the head with the handle of his saber, and I gave
him such a blow with a stick that he howled," the boy concluded, shaking
his blood-stained fist. "Wait--it'll be different. We'll choke you
without a fight, when we arise, all the working people."
"Quick--hurry!" The mother urged him on, walking swiftly toward the
little wicket gate. It seemed to her that there, behind the fence in the
field, the police were lying in wait for them, ready to pounce on them
and beat them as soon as they went out. But on carefully opening the
gate, and looking out over the field clothed in the gray garb of autumn
dusk, its stillness and solitude at once gave her composure.
"Let me bandage your face."
"Never mind. I'm not ashamed to be seen with it as it is. The fight was
honorable--he hit me--I hit him----"
The mother hurriedly bandaged his wound. The sight of fresh, flowing
blood filled her breast with terror and pity. Its humid warmth on her
fingers sent a cold, fine tremor through her body. Then, holding his
hand, she silently and quickly conducted the wounded youth through the
field. Freeing his mouth of the bandage, he said with a smile:
"But where are you taking me, comrade? I can go by myself."
But the mother perceived that he was reeling with faintness, that his
legs were unsteady, and his hands twitched. He spoke to her in a weak
voice, and questioned her without waiting for an answer:
"I'm a tinsmith, and who are you? There were three of us in Yegor
Ivanovich's circle--three tinsmiths--and there were twelve men in all.
We loved him very much--may he have eternal life!--although I don't
believe in God--it's they, the dogs, that dupe us with God, so that we
should obey the authorities and suffer life patiently without kicking."
In one of the streets the mother hailed a cab and put Ivan into it. She
whispered, "Now be silent," and carefully wrapped his face up in the
handkerchief. He raised his hand to his face, but was no longer able to
free his mouth. His hand fell feebly on his knees; nevertheless he
continued to mutter through the bandages:
"I won't forget those blows; I'll score them against you, my dear sirs!
With Yegor there was another student, Titovich, who taught us political
economy--he was a very stern, tedious fellow--he was arrested."
The mother, drawing the boy to her, put his head on her bosom in order
to muffle his voice. It was not necessary, however, for he suddenly grew
heavy and silent. In awful fear, she looked about sidewise out of the
corners of her eyes. She felt that the policemen would issue from some
corner, would see Ivan's bandaged head, would seize him and kill him.
"Been drinking?" asked the driver, turning on the box with a benignant
smile.
"Pretty full."
"Your son?"
"Yes, a shoemaker. I'm a cook."
Shaking the whip over the horse, the driver again turned, and continued
in a lowered voice:
"I heard there was a row in the cemetery just now. You see, they were
burying one of the politicals, one of those who are against the
authorities. They have a crow to pick with the authorities. He was
buried by fellows like him, his friends, it must be; and they up and
begin to shout: 'Down with the authorities! They ruin the people.' The
police began to beat them. It's said some were hewed down and killed.
But the police got it, too." He was silent, shaking his head as if
afflicted by some sorrow, and uttered in a strange voice: "They don't
even let the dead alone; they even bother people in their graves."
The cab rattled over the stones. Ivan's head jostled softly against the
mother's bosom. The driver, sitting half-turned from his horse, mumbled
thoughtfully:
"The people are beginning to boil. Every now and then some disorder
crops out. Yes! Last night the gendarmes came to our neighbors, and kept
up an ado till morning, and in the morning they led away a blacksmith.
It's said they'll take him to the river at night and drown him. And the
blacksmith--well--he was a wise man--he understood a great deal--and to
understand, it seems, is forbidden. He used to come to us and say: 'What
sort of life is the cabman's life?' 'It's true,' we say, 'the life of a
cabman is worse than a dog's.'"
"Stop!" the mother said.
Ivan awoke from the shock of the sudden halt, and groaned softly.
"It shook him up!" remarked the driver. "Oh, whisky, whisky!"
Ivan shifted his feet about with difficulty. His whole body swaying, he
walked through the entrance, and said:
"Nothing--comrade, I can get along."
CHAPTER IX
Sofya was already at home when they reached the house. She met the
mother with a cigarette in her teeth. She was somewhat ruffled, but, as
usual, bold and assured of manner. Putting the wounded man on the sofa,
she deftly unbound his head, giving orders and screwing up her eyes from
the smoke of her cigarette.
"Ivan Danilovich!" she called out. "He's been brought here. You are
tired, Nilovna. You've had enough fright, haven't you? Well, rest now.
Nikolay, quick, give Nilovna some tea and a glass of port."
Dizzied by her experience, the mother breathing heavily and feeling a
sickly pricking in her breast, said: "Don't bother about me."
But her entire anxious being begged for attention and kindnesses.
From the next room entered Nikolay with a bandaged hand, and the doctor,
Ivan Danilovich, all disheveled, his hair standing on end like the
spines of a hedgehog. He quickly stepped to Ivan, bent over him, and
said:
"Water, Sofya Ivanovich, more water, clean linen strips, and cotton."
The mother walked toward the kitchen; but Nikolay took her by the arm
with his left hand, and led her into the dining room.
"He didn't speak to you; he was speaking to Sofya. You've had enough
suffering, my dear woman, haven't you?"
The mother met Nikolay's fixed, sympathetic glance, and, pressing his
head, exclaimed with a groan she could not restrain:
"Oh, my darling, how fearful it was! They mowed the comrades down! They
mowed them down!"
"I saw it," said Nikolay, giving her a glass of wine, and nodding his
head. "Both sides grew a little heated. But don't be uneasy; they used
the flats of their swords, and it seems only one was seriously wounded.
I saw him struck, and I myself carried him out of the crowd."
His face and voice, and the warmth and brightness of the room quieted
Vlasova. Looking gratefully at him, she asked:
"Did they hit you, too?"
"It seems to me that I myself through carelessness knocked my hand
against something and tore off the skin. Drink some tea. The weather is
cold and you're dressed lightly."
She stretched out her hand for the cup and saw that her fingers were
stained with dark clots of blood. She instinctively dropped her hands on
her knees. Her skirt was damp. Ivan Danilovich came in in his vest, his
shirt sleeves rolled up, and in response to Nikolay's mute question,
said in his thin voice:
"The wound on his face is slight. His skull, however, is fractured, but
not very badly. He's a strong fellow, but he's lost a lot of blood.
We'll take him over to the hospital."
"Why? Let him stay here!" exclaimed Nikolay.
"To-day he may; and--well--to-morrow, too; but after that it'll be more
convenient for us to have him at the hospital. I have no time to pay
visits. You'll write a leaflet about the affair at the cemetery, won't
you?"
"Of course!"
The mother rose quietly and walked into the kitchen.
"Where are you going, Nilovna?" Nikolay stopped her with solicitude.
"Sofya can get along by herself."
She looked at him and started and smiled strangely.
"I'm all covered with blood."
While changing her dress she once again thought of the calmness of these
people, of their ability to recover from the horrible, an ability which
clearly testified to their manly readiness to meet any demand made on
them for work in the cause of truth. This thought, steadying the mother,
drove fear from her heart.
When she returned to the room where the sick man lay, she heard Sofya
say, as she bent over him:
"That's nonsense, comrade!"
"Yes, I'll incommode you," he said faintly.
"You keep still. That's better for you."
The mother stood back of Sofya, and putting her hand on her shoulders
peered with a smile into the face of the sick man. She related how he
had raved in the presence of the cabman and frightened her by his lack
of caution. Ivan heard her; his eyes turned feverishly, he smacked his
lips, and at times exclaimed in a confused low voice: "Oh, what a fool I
am!"
"We'll leave you here," Sofya said, straightening out the blanket.
"Rest."
The mother and Sofya went to the dining room and conversed there in
subdued voices about the events of the day. They already regarded the
drama of the burial as something remote, and looked with assurance
toward the future in deliberating on the work of the morrow. Their faces
wore a weary expression, but their thoughts were bold.
They spoke of their dissatisfaction with themselves. Nervously moving in
his chair and gesticulating animatedly the physician, dulling his thin,
sharp voice with an effort, said:
"Propaganda! propaganda! There's too little of it now. The young
workingmen are right. We must extend the field of agitation. The
workingmen are right, I say."
Nikolay answered somberly:
"From everywhere come complaints of not enough literature, and we still
cannot get a good printing establishment. Liudmila is wearing herself
out. She'll get sick if we don't see that she gets assistance."
"And Vyesovshchikov?" asked Sofya.
"He cannot live in the city. He won't be able to go to work until he can
enter the new printing establishment. And one man is still needed for
it."
"Won't I do?" the mother asked quietly.
All three looked at her in silence for a short while.
"No, it's too hard for you, Nilovna," said Nikolay. "You'll have to live
outside the city and stop your visits to Pavel, and in general----"
With a sigh the mother said:
"For Pasha it won't be a great loss. And so far as I am concerned these
visits, too, are a torment; they tear out my heart. I'm not allowed to
speak of anything; I stand opposite my son like a fool. And they look
into my mouth and wait to see something come out that oughtn't."
Sofya groped for the mother's hand under the table and pressed it warmly
with her thin fingers. Nikolay looked at the mother fixedly while
explaining to her that she would have to serve in the new printing
establishment as a protection to the workers.
"I understand," she said. "I'll be a cook. I'll be able to do it; I can
imagine what's needed."
"How persistent you are!" remarked Sofya.
The events of the last few days had exhausted the mother; and now as she
heard of the possibility of living outside the city, away from its
bustle, she greedily grasped at the chance.
But Nikolay changed the subject of conversation.
"What are you thinking about, Ivan?" He turned to the physician.
Raising his head from the table, the physician answered sullenly:
"There are too few of us. That's what I'm thinking of. We positively
must begin to work more energetically, and we must persuade Pavel and
Andrey to escape. They are both too invaluable to be sitting there
idle."
Nikolay lowered his brows and shook his head in doubt, darting a glance
at the mother.
As she realized the embarrassment they must feel in speaking of her son
in her presence, she walked out into her own room.
There, lying in bed with open eyes, the murmur of low talking in her
ears, she gave herself up to anxious thoughts. She wanted to see her son
at liberty, but at the same time the idea of freeing him frightened her.
She felt that the struggle around her was growing keener and that a
sharp collision was threatening. The silent patience of the people was
wearing away, yielding to a strained expectation of something new. The
excitement was growing perceptibly. Bitter words were tossed about.
Something novel and stirring was wafted from all quarters; every
proclamation evoked lively discussions in the market place, in the
shops, among servants, among workingmen. Every arrest aroused a timid,
uncomprehending, and sometimes unconscious sympathy when judgment
regarding the causes of the arrest was expressed. She heard the words
that had once frightened her--riot, socialism, politics--uttered more
and more frequently among the simple folk, though accompanied by
derision. However, behind their ridicule it was impossible to conceal an
eagerness to understand, mingled with fear and hope, with hatred of the
masters and threats against them.
Agitation disturbed the settled, dark life of the people in slow but
wide circles. Dormant thoughts awoke, and men were shaken from their
usual forced calm attitude toward daily events. All this the mother saw
more clearly than others, because she, better than they, knew the
dismal, dead face of existence; she stood nearer to it, and now saw upon
it the wrinkles of hesitation and turmoil, the vague hunger for the new.
She both rejoiced over the change and feared it. She rejoiced because
she regarded this as the cause of her son; she feared because she knew
that if he emerged from prison he would stand at the head of all, in the
most dangerous place, and--he would perish.
She often felt great thoughts needful to everybody stirring in her
bosom, but scarcely ever was able to make them live in words; and they
oppressed her heart with a dumb, heavy sadness. Sometimes the image of
her son grew before her until it assumed the proportions of a giant in
the old fairy tales. He united within himself all the honest thoughts
she had heard spoken, all the people that she liked, everything heroic
of which she knew. Then, moved with delight in him, she exulted in quiet
rapture. An indistinct hope filled her. "Everything will be
well--everything!" Her love, the love of a mother, was fanned into a
flame, a veritable pain to her heart. Then the motherly affection
hindered the growth of the broader human feeling, burned it; and in
place of a great sentiment a small, dismal thought beat faint-heartedly
in the gray ashes of alarm: "He will perish; he will fall!"
Late that night the mother sank into a heavy sleep, but rose early, her
bones stiff, her head aching. At midday she was sitting in the prison
office opposite Pavel and looking through a mist in her eyes at his
bearded, swarthy face. She was watching for a chance to deliver to him
the note she held tightly in her hand.
"I am well and all are well," said Pavel in a moderated voice. "And how
are you?"
"So so. Yegor Ivanovich died," she said mechanically.
"Yes?" exclaimed Pavel, and dropped his head.
"At the funeral the police got up a fight and arrested one man," the
mother continued in her simple-hearted way.
The thin-lipped assistant overseer of the prison jumped from his chair
and mumbled quickly:
"Cut that out; it's forbidden! Why don't you understand? You know
politics are prohibited."
The mother also rose from her chair, and as if failing to comprehend
him, she said guiltily:
"I wasn't discussing politics. I was telling about a fight--and they did
fight; that's true. They even broke one fellow's head."
"All the same, please keep quiet--that is to say, keep quiet about
everything that doesn't concern you personally--your family; in general,
your home."
Aware that his speech was confused, he sat down in his chair and
arranged papers.
"I'm responsible for what you say," he said sadly and wearily.
The mother looked around and quickly thrust the note into Pavel's hand.
She breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"I don't know what to speak about."
Pavel smiled:
"I don't know either."
"Then why pay visits?" said the overseer excitedly. "They have nothing
to say, but they come here anyhow and bother me."
"Will the trial take place soon?" asked the mother after a pause.
"The procurator was here the other day, and he said it will come off
soon."
"You've been in prison half a year already!"
They spoke to each other about matters of no significance to either. The
mother saw Pavel's eyes look into her face softly and lovingly. Even and
calm as before, he had not changed, save that his wrists were whiter,
and his beard, grown long, made him look older. The mother experienced a
strong desire to do something pleasant for him--tell him about
Vyesovshchikov, for instance. So, without changing her tone, she
continued in the same voice in which she spoke of the needless and
uninteresting things.
"I saw your godchild." Pavel fixed a silent questioning look on her
eyes. She tapped her fingers on her cheeks to picture to him the
pockmarked face of Vyesovshchikov.
"He's all right! The boy is alive and well. He'll soon get his
position--you remember how he always asked for hard work?"
Pavel understood, and gratefully nodded his head. "Why, of course I
remember!" he answered, with a cheery smile in his eyes.
"Very well!" the mother uttered in a satisfied tone, content with
herself and moved by his joy.
On parting with her he held her hand in a firm clasp.
"Thank you, mamma!" The joyous feeling of hearty nearness to him mounted
to her head like a strong drink. Powerless to answer in words, she
merely pressed his hand.
At home she found Sasha. The girl usually came to Nilovna on the days
when the mother had visited Pavel.
"Well, how is he?"
"He's well."
"Did you hand him the note?"
"Of course! I stuck it into his hands very cleverly."
"Did he read it?"
"On the spot? How could he?"
"Oh, yes; I forgot! Let us wait another week, one week longer. Do you
think he'll agree to it?"
"I don't know--I think he will," the mother deliberated. "Why shouldn't
he if he can do so without danger?"
Sasha shook her head.
"Do you know what the sick man is allowed to eat? He's asked for some
food."
"Anything at all. I'll get him something at once." The mother walked
into the kitchen, slowly followed by Sasha.
"Can I help you?"
"Thank you! Why should you?"
The mother bent at the oven to get a pot. The girl said in a low voice:
"Wait!"
Her face paled, her eyes opened sadly and her quivering lips whispered
hotly with an effort:
"I want to beg you--I know he will not agree--try to persuade him. He's
needed. Tell him he's essential, absolutely necessary for the
cause--tell him I fear he'll get sick. You see the date of the trial
hasn't been set yet, and six months have already passed--I beg of you!"
It was apparent that she spoke with difficulty. She stood up straight,
in a tense attitude, and looked aside. Her voice sounded uneven, like
the snapping of a taut string. Her eyelids drooping wearily, she bit her
lips, and the fingers of her compressed hand cracked.
The mother was ruffled by her outburst; but she understood it, and a sad
emotion took possession of her. Softly embracing Sasha, she answered:
"My dear, he will never listen to anybody except himself--never!"
For a short while they were both silent in a close embrace. Then Sasha
carefully removed the mother's hands from her shoulders.
"Yes, you're right," she said in a tremble. "It's all stupidity and
nerves. One gets so tired." And, suddenly growing serious, she
concluded: "Anyway, let's give the sick man something to eat."
In an instant she was sitting at Ivan's bed, kindly and solicitously
inquiring, "Does your head ache badly?"
"Not very. Only everything is muddled up, and I'm weak," answered Ivan
in embarrassment. He pulled the blanket up to his chin, and screwed up
his eyes as if dazzled by too brilliant a light. Noticing that she
embarrassed him by her presence and that he could not make up his mind
to eat, Sasha rose and walked away. Then Ivan sat up in bed and looked
at the door through which she had left.
"Be-au-tiful!" he murmured.
His eyes were bright and merry; his teeth fine and compact; his young
voice was not yet steady as an adult's.
"How old are you?" the mother asked thoughtfully.
"Seventeen years."
"Where are your parents?"
"In the village. I've been here since I was ten years old. I got through
school and came here. And what is your name, comrade?"
This word, when applied to her, always brought a smile to the mother's
face and touched her.
"Why do you want to know?"
The youth, after an embarrassed pause, explained:
"You see, a student of our circle, that is, a fellow who used to read to
us, told us about Pavel's mother--a workingman, you know--and about the
first of May demonstration."
She nodded her head and pricked up her ears.
"He was the first one who openly displayed the banner of our party," the
youth declared with pride--a pride which found a response in the
mother's heart.
"I wasn't present; we were then thinking of making our own demonstration
here in the city, but it fizzled out; we were too few of us then. But
this year we will--you'll see!"
He choked from agitation, having a foretaste of the future event. Then
waving his spoon in the air, he continued:
"So Vlasova--the mother, as I was telling you--she, too, got into the
party after that. They say she's a wonder of an old woman."
The mother smiled broadly. It was pleasant for her to hear the boy's
enthusiastic praise--pleasant, yet embarrassing. She even had to
restrain herself from telling him that she was Vlasova, and she thought
sadly, in derision of herself: "Oh, you old fool!"
"Eat more! Get well sooner for the sake of the cause!" She burst out all
of a sudden, in agitation, bending toward him: "It awaits powerful young
hands, clean hearts, honest minds. It lives by these forces! With them
it holds aloof everything evil, everything mean!"
The door opened, admitting a cold, damp, autumn draught. Sofya entered,
bold, a smile on her face, reddened by the cold.
"Upon my word, the spies are as attentive to me as a bridegroom to a
rich bride! I must leave this place. Well, how are you, Vanya? All
right? How's Pavel, Nilovna? What! is Sasha here?"
Lighting a cigarette, she showered questions without waiting for
answers, caressing the mother and the youth with merry glances of her
gray eyes. The mother looked at her and smiled inwardly. "What good
people I'm among!" she thought. She bent over Ivan again and gave him
back his kindness twofold:
"Get well! Now I must give you wine." She rose and walked into the
dining room, where Sofya was saying to Sasha:
"She has three hundred copies prepared already. She'll kill herself
working so hard. There's heroism for you! Unseen, unnoticed, it finds
its reward and its praise in itself. Do you know, Sasha, it's the
greatest happiness to live among such people, to be their comrade, to
work with them?"
"Yes," answered the girl softly.
In the evening at tea Sofya said to the mother:
"Nilovna, you have to go to the village again."
"Well, what of it? When?"
"It would be good if you could go to-morrow. Can you?"
"Yes."
"Ride there," advised Nikolay. "Hire post horses, and please take a
different route from before--across the district of Nikolsk." Nikolay's
somber expression was alarming.
"The way by Nikolsk is long, and it's expensive if you hire horses."
"You see, I'm against this expedition in general. It's already begun to
be unquiet there--some arrests have been made, a teacher was taken.
Rybin escaped, that's certain. But we must be more careful. We ought to
have waited a little while still."
"That can't be avoided," said Nilovna.
Sofya, tapping her fingers on the table, remarked:
"It's important for us to keep spreading literature all the time. You're
not afraid to go, are you, Nilovna?"
The mother felt offended. "When have I ever been afraid? I was without
fear even the first time. And now all of a sudden--" She drooped her
head. Each time she was asked whether she was afraid, whether the thing
was convenient for her, whether she could do this or that--she detected
an appeal to her which placed her apart from the comrades, who seemed to
behave differently toward her than toward one another. Moreover, when
fuller days came, although at first disquieted by the commotion, by the
rapidity of events, she soon grew accustomed to the bustle and
responded, as it were, to the jolts she received from her impressions.
She became filled with a zealous greed for work. This was her condition
to-day; and, therefore, Sofya's question was all the more displeasing to
her.
"There's no use for you to ask me whether or not I'm afraid and various
other things," she sighed. "I've nothing to be afraid of. Those people
are afraid who have something. What have I? Only a son. I used to be
afraid for him, and I used to fear torture for his sake. And if there is
no torture--well, then?"
"Are you offended?" exclaimed Sofya.
"No. Only you don't ask each other whether you're afraid."
Nikolay removed his glasses, adjusted them to his nose again, and looked
fixedly at his sister's face. The embarrassed silence that followed
disturbed the mother. She rose guiltily from her seat, wishing to say
something to them, but Sofya stroked her hand, and said quietly:
"Forgive me! I won't do it any more."
The mother had to laugh, and in a few minutes the three were speaking
busily and amicably about the trip to the village.
CHAPTER X
The next day, early in the morning, the mother was seated in the post
chaise, jolting along the road washed by the autumn rain. A damp wind
blew on her face, the mud splashed, and the coachman on the box,
half-turned toward her, complained in a meditative snuffle:
"I say to him--my brother, that is--let's go halves. We began to
divide"--he suddenly whipped the left horse and shouted angrily: "Well,
well, play, your mother is a witch."
The stout autumn crows strode with a businesslike air through the bare
fields. The wind whistled coldly, and the birds caught its buffets on
their backs. It blew their feathers apart, and even lifted them off
their feet, and, yielding to its force, they lazily flapped their wings
and flew to a new spot.
"But he cheated me; I see I have nothing----"
The mother listened to the coachman's words as in a dream. A dumb
thought grew in her heart. Memory brought before her a long series of
events through which she had lived in the last years. On an examination
of each event, she found she had actively participated in it. Formerly,
life used to happen somewhere in the distance, remote from where she
was, uncertain for whom and for what. Now, many things were accomplished
before her eyes, with her help. The result in her was a confused
feeling, compounded of distrust of herself, complacency, perplexity, and
sadness.
The scenery about her seemed to be slowly moving. Gray clouds floated in
the sky, chasing each other heavily; wet trees flashed along the sides
of the road, swinging their bare tops; little hills appeared and swam
asunder. The whole turbid day seemed to be hastening to meet the sun--to
be seeking it.
The drawling voice of the coachman, the sound of the bells, the humid
rustle and whistle of the wind, blended in a trembling, tortuous stream,
which flowed on with a monotonous force, and roused the wind.
"The rich man feels crowded, even in Paradise. That's the way it is.
Once he begins to oppress, the government authorities are his friends,"
quoth the coachman, swaying on his seat.
While unhitching the horses at the station he said to the mother in a
hopeless voice:
"If you gave me only enough for a drink----"
She gave him a coin, and tossing it in the palm of his hand, he informed
her in the same hopeless tone:
"I'll take a drink for three coppers, and buy myself bread for two."
In the afternoon the mother, shaken up by the ride and chilled, reached
the large village of Nikolsk. She went to a tavern and asked for tea.
After placing her heavy valise under the bench, she sat at a window and
looked out into an open square, covered with yellow, trampled grass, and
into the town hall, a long, old building with an overhanging roof. Swine
were straggling about in the square, and on the steps of the town hall
sat a bald, thin-bearded peasant smoking a pipe. The clouds swam
overhead in dark masses, and piled up, one absorbing the other. It was
dark, gloomy, and tedious. Life seemed to be in hiding.
Suddenly the village sergeant galloped up to the square, stopped his
sorrel at the steps of the town hall, and waving his whip in the air,
shouted to the peasant. The shouts rattled against the window panes, but
the words were indistinguishable. The peasant rose and stretched his
hand, pointing to something. The sergeant jumped to the ground, reeled,
threw the reins to the peasant, and seizing the rails with his hands,
lifted himself heavily up the steps, and disappeared behind the doors of
the town hall.
Quiet reigned again. Only the horse struck the soft earth with the iron
of his shoes.
A girl came into the room. A short yellow braid lay on her neck, her
face was round, and her eyes kind. She bit her lips with the effort of
carrying a ragged-edged tray, with dishes, in her outstretched hands.
She bowed, nodding her head.
"How do you do, my good girl?" said the mother kindly.
"How do you do?"
Putting the plates and the china dishes on the table, she announced with
animation:
"They've just caught a thief. They're bringing him here."
"Indeed? What sort of a thief?"
"I don't know."
"What did he do?"
"I don't know. I only heard that they caught him. The watchman of the
town hall ran off for the police commissioner, and shouted: 'They've
caught him. They're bringing him here.'"
The mother looked through the window. Peasants gathered in the square;
some walked slowly, some quickly, while buttoning their overcoats. They
stopped at the steps of the town hall, and all looked to the left. It
was strangely quiet. The girl also went to the window to see the street,
and then silently ran from the room, banging the door after her. The
mother trembled, pushed her valise farther under the bench, and throwing
her shawl over her head, hurried to the door. She had to restrain a
sudden, incomprehensible desire to run.
When she walked up the steps of the town hall a sharp cold struck her
face and breast. She lost breath, and her legs stiffened. There, in the
middle of the square, walked Rybin! His hands were bound behind his
back, and on each side of him a policeman, rhythmically striking the
ground with his club. At the steps stood a crowd waiting in silence.
Unconscious of the bearing of the thing, the mother's gaze was riveted
on Rybin. He said something; she heard his voice, but the words did not
reach the dark emptiness of her heart.
She recovered her senses, and took a deep breath. A peasant with a broad
light beard was standing at the steps looking fixedly into her face with
his blue eyes. Coughing and rubbing her throat with her hands, weak with
fear, she asked him with an effort:
"What's the matter?"
"Well, look." The peasant turned away. Another peasant came up to her
side.
"Oh, thief! How horrible you look!" shouted a woman's voice.
The policemen stepped in front of the crowd, which increased in size.
Rybin's voice sounded thick:
"Peasants, I'm not a thief; I don't steal; I don't set things on fire. I
only fight against falsehood. That's why they seized me. Have you heard
of the true books in which the truth is written about our peasant life?
Well, it's because of these writings that I suffer. It's I who
distributed them among the people."
The crowd surrounded Rybin more closely. His voice steadied the mother.
"Did you hear?" said a peasant in a low voice, nudging a blue-eyed
neighbor, who did not answer but raised his head and again looked into
the mother's face. The other peasant also looked at her. He was younger
than he of the blue eyes, with a dark, sparse beard, and a lean freckled
face. Then both of them turned away to the side of the steps.
"They're afraid," the mother involuntarily noted. Her attention grew
keener. From the elevation of the stoop she clearly saw the dark face of
Rybin, distinguished the hot gleam of his eyes. She wanted that he, too,
should see her, and raised herself on tiptoe and craned her neck.
The people looked at him sullenly, distrustfully, and were silent. Only
in the rear of the crowd subdued conversation was heard.
"Peasants!" said Rybin aloud, in a peculiar full voice. "Believe these
papers! I shall now, perhaps, get death on account of them. The
authorities beat me, they tortured me, they wanted to find out from
where I got them, and they're going to beat me more. For in these
writings the truth is laid down. An honest world and the truth ought to
be dearer to us than bread. That's what I say."
"Why is he doing this?" softly exclaimed one of the peasants near the
steps. He of the blue eyes answered:
"Now it's all the same. He won't escape death, anyhow. And a man can't
die twice."
The sergeant suddenly appeared on the steps of the town hall, roaring in
a drunken voice:
"What is this crowd? Who's the fellow speaking?"
Suddenly precipitating himself down the steps, he seized Rybin by the
hair, and pulled his head backward and forward. "Is it you speaking, you
damned scoundrel? Is it you?"
The crowd, giving way, still maintained silence. The mother, in impotent
grief, bowed her head; one of the peasants sighed. Rybin spoke again:
"There! Look, good people!"
"Silence!" and the sergeant struck his face.
Rybin reeled.
"They bind a man's hands and then torment him, and do with him whatever
they please."
"Policemen, take him! Disperse, people!" The sergeant, jumping and
swinging in front of Rybin, struck him in his face, breast, and stomach.
"Don't beat him!" some one shouted dully.
"Why do you beat him?" another voice upheld the first.
"Lazy, good-for-nothing beast!"
"Come!" said the blue-eyed peasant, motioning with his head; and without
hastening, the two walked toward the town hall, accompanied by a kind
look from the mother. She sighed with relief. The sergeant again ran
heavily up the steps, and shaking his fists in menace, bawled from his
height vehemently:
"Bring him here, officers, I say! I say----"
"Don't!" a strong voice resounded in the crowd, and the mother knew it
came from the blue-eyed peasant. "Boys! don't permit it! They'll take
him in there and beat him to death, and then they'll say we killed him.
Don't permit it!"
"Peasants!" the powerful voice of Rybin roared, drowning the shouts of
the sergeant. "Don't you understand your life? Don't you understand how
they rob you--how they cheat you--how they drink your blood? You keep
everything up; everything rests on you; you are all the power that is at
the bottom of everything on earth--its whole power. And what rights have
you? You have the right to starve--it's your only right!"
"He's speaking the truth, I tell _you_!"
Some men shouted:
"Call the commissioner of police! Where is the commissioner of police?"
"The sergeant has ridden away for him!"
"It's not our business to call the authorities!"
The noise increased as the crowd grew louder and louder.
"Speak! We won't let them beat you!"
"Officers, untie his hands!"
"No, brothers; that's not necessary!"
"Untie him!"
"Look out you don't do something you'll be sorry for!"
"I am sorry for my hands!" Rybin said evenly and resonantly, making
himself heard above all the other voices. "I'll not escape, peasants. I
cannot hide from my truth; it lives inside of me!"
Several men walked away from the crowd, formed different circles, and
with earnest faces and shaking their heads carried on conversations.
Some smiled. More and more people came running up--excited, bearing
marks of having dressed quickly. They seethed like black foam about
Rybin, and he rocked to and fro in their midst. Raising his hands over
his head and shaking them, he called into the crowd, which responded now
by loud shouts, now by silent, greedy attention, to the unfamiliar,
daring words:
"Thank you, good people! Thank you! I stood up for you, for your lives!"
He wiped his beard and again raised his blood-covered hand. "There's my
blood! It flows for the sake of truth!"
The mother, without considering, walked down the steps, but immediately
returned, since on the ground she couldn't see Mikhaïl, hidden by the
close-packed crowd. Something indistinctly joyous trembled in her bosom
and warmed it.
"Peasants! Keep your eyes open for those writings; read them. Don't
believe the authorities and the priests when they tell you those people
who carry truth to us are godless rioters. The truth travels over the
earth secretly; it seeks a nest among the people. To the authorities
it's like a knife in the fire. They cannot accept it. It will cut them
and burn them. Truth is your good friend and a sworn enemy of the
authorities--that's why it hides itself."
"That's so; he's speaking the gospel!" shouted the blue-eyed peasant.
"Ah, brother! You will perish--and soon, too!"
"Who betrayed you?"
"The priest!" said one of the police.
Two peasants gave vent to hard oaths.
"Look out, boys!" a somewhat subdued cry was heard in warning.
The commissioner of police walked into the crowd--a tall, compact man,
with a round, red face. His cap was cocked to one side; his mustache
with one end turned up the other drooping made his face seem crooked,
and it was disfigured by a dull, dead grin. His left hand held a saber,
his right waved broadly in the air. His heavy, firm tramp was audible.
The crowd gave way before him. Something sullen and crushed appeared in
their faces, and the noise died away as if it had sunk into the ground.
"What's the trouble?" asked the police commissioner, stopping in front
of Rybin and measuring him with his eyes. "Why are his hands not bound?
Officers, why? Bind them!" His voice was high and resonant, but
colorless.
"They were tied, but the people unbound them," answered one of the
policemen.
"The people! What people?" The police commissioner looked at the crowd
standing in a half-circle before him. In the same monotonous, blank
voice, neither elevating nor lowering it, he continued: "Who are the
people?"
With a back stroke he thrust the handle of his saber against the breast
of the blue-eyed peasant.
"Are you the people, Chumakov? Well, who else? You, Mishin?" and he
pulled somebody's beard with his right hand.
"Disperse, you curs!"
Neither his voice nor face displayed the least agitation or threat. He
spoke mechanically, with a dead calm, and with even movements of his
strong, long hands, pushed the people back. The semicircle before him
widened. Heads drooped, faces were turned aside.
"Well," he addressed the policeman, "what's the matter with you? Bind
him!" He uttered a cynical oath and again looked at Rybin, and said
nonchalantly: "Your hands behind your back, you!"
"I don't want my hands to be bound," said Rybin. "I'm not going to run
away, and I'm not fighting. Why should my hands be bound?"
"What?" exclaimed the police commissioner, striding up to him.
"It's enough that you torture the people, you beasts!" continued Rybin
in an elevated voice. "The red day will soon come for you, too. You'll
be paid back for everything."
The police commissioner stood before him, his mustached upper lip
twitching. Then he drew back a step, and with a whistling voice sang out
in surprise:
"Um! you damned scoundrel! Wha-at? What do you mean by your words?
People, you say? A-a----"
Suddenly he dealt Rybin a quick, sharp blow in the face.
"You won't kill the truth with your fist!" shouted Rybin, drawing on
him. "And you have no right to beat me, you dog!"
"I won't dare, I suppose?" the police commissioner drawled.
Again he waved his hand, aiming at Rybin's head; Rybin ducked; the blow
missed, and the police commissioner almost toppled over. Some one in the
crowd gave a jeering snort, and the angry shout of Mikhaïl was heard:
"Don't you dare to beat me, I say, you infernal devil! I'm no weaker
than you! Look out!"
The police commissioner looked around. The people shut down on him in a
narrower circle, advancing sullenly.
"Nikita!" the police commissioner called out, looking around. "Nikita,
hey!" A squat peasant in a short fur overcoat emerged from the crowd. He
looked on the ground, with his large disheveled head drooping.
"Nikita," the police commissioner said deliberately, twirling his
mustache, "give him a box on the ear--a good one!"
The peasant stepped forward, stopped in front of Rybin and raised his
hand. Staring him straight in the face, Rybin stammered out heavily:
"Now look, people, how the beasts choke you with your own hands! Look!
Look! Think! Why does he want to beat me--why? I ask."
The peasant raised his hand and lazily struck Mikhaïl's face.
"Ah, Nikita! don't forget God!" subdued shouts came from the crowd.
"Strike, I say!" shouted the police commissioner, pushing the peasant on
the back of his neck.
The peasant stepped aside, and inclining his head, said sullenly:
"I won't do it again."
"What?" The face of the police commissioner quivered. He stamped his
feet, and, cursing, suddenly flung himself upon Rybin. The blow whizzed
through the air; Rybin staggered and waved his arms; with the second
blow the police commissioner felled him to the ground, and, jumping
around with a growl, he began to kick him on his breast, his side, and
his head.
The crowd set up a hostile hum, rocked, and advanced upon the police
commissioner. He noticed it and jumped away, snatching his saber from
its scabbard.
"So that's what you're up to! You're rioting, are you?"
His voice trembled and broke; it had grown husky. And he lost his
composure along with his voice. He drew his shoulders up about his head,
bent over, and turning his blank, bright eyes on all sides, he fell
back, carefully feeling the ground behind him with his feet. As he
withdrew he shouted hoarsely in great excitement: