see now the faces of my listeners--good young faces, with an expression
of pure-souled attention and sympathy, and even of amazement. I mounted
the platform and read my lecture in a fever; I thought it would
fill more than an hour, but I had finished it in twenty minutes. The
inspector was sitting there--a dry old man in silver spectacles and
a short wig--he sometimes turned his head in my direction. When I had
finished, he jumped up from his seat and said to me, “Good, but rather
over their heads, obscure, and too little said about the subject.” But
the pupils followed me with appreciation in their looks--indeed they
did. Ah, that is how youth is so precious! I gave a second written
lecture, and a third. After that I began to lecture extempore.’
‘And you had success?’ asked Lezhnyov.
‘I had a great success. I gave my audience all that was in my soul.
Among them were two or three really remarkable boys; the rest did
not understand me much. I must confess though that even those who did
understand me sometimes embarrassed me by their questions. But I did
not lose heart. They all loved me; I gave them all full marks in
examinations. But then an intrigue was started against me--or no! it
was not an intrigue at all; it simply was, that I was not in my proper
place. I was a hindrance to the others, and they were a hindrance to me.
I lectured to the gymnasium pupils in a way lectures are not given
every day, even to students; they carried away very little from my
lectures.... I myself did not know the facts enough. Besides, I was
not satisfied with the limited sphere assigned to me--you know that is
always my weakness. I wanted radical reforms, and I swear to you that
these reforms were both sensible and easy to carry out. I hoped to carry
them through the director, a good and honest man, over whom I had at
first some influence. His wife aided me. I have not, brother, met many
women like her in my life. She was about forty; but she believed in
goodness, and loved everything fine with the enthusiasm of a girl of
fifteen, and was not afraid to give utterance to her convictions before
any one whatever. I shall never forget her generous enthusiasm and
goodness. By her advice I drew up a plan.... But then my influence
was undermined, I was misrepresented to her. My chief enemy was the
professor of mathematics, a little sour, bilious man who believed in
nothing, a character like Pigasov, but far more able than he was.... By
the way, how is Pigasov, is he living?’
‘Oh, yes; and only fancy, he is married to a peasant woman, who, they
say, beats him.’
‘Serve him right! And Natalya Alexyevna--is she well?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she happy?’
‘Yes.’
Rudin was silent for a little.
‘What was I talking about?... Oh yes! about the professor of
mathematics. He perfectly hated me; he compared my lectures to
fireworks, pounced upon every expression of mine that was not altogether
clear, once even put me to confusion over some monument of the
sixteenth century.... But the most important thing was, he suspected my
intentions; my last soap-bubble struck on him as on a spike, and burst.
The inspector, whom I had not got on with from the first, set the
director against me. A scene followed. I was not ready to give in; I got
hot; the matter came to the knowledge of the authorities; I was forced
to resign. I did not stop there; I wanted to prove that they could not
treat me like that.... But they could treat me as they liked.... Now I
am forced to leave the town.’
A silence followed. Both the friends sat with bowed heads.
Rudin was the first to speak.
‘Yes, brother,’ he began, ‘I can say now, in the words of Koltsov,
“Thou hast led me astray, my youth, till there is nowhere I can turn
my steps.”... And yet can it be that I was fit for nothing, that for me
there was, as it were, no work on earth to do? I have often put myself
this question, and, however much I tried to humble myself in my own
eyes, I could not but feel the existence of faculties within me which
are not given to every one! Why have these faculties remained fruitless?
And let me say more; you know, when I was with you abroad, Mihail, I
was conceited and full of erroneous ideas.... Certainly I did not then
realise clearly what I wanted; I lived upon words, and believed in
phantoms. But now, I swear to you, I could speak out before all men
every desire I feel. I have absolutely nothing to hide; I am absolutely,
in the fullest meaning of the word, a well-intentioned man. I am humble,
I am ready to adapt myself to circumstances; I want little; I want to
do the good that lies nearest, to be even a little use. But no! I never
succeed. What does it mean? What hinders me from living and working like
others?... I am only dreaming of it now. But no sooner do I get into
any definite position when fate throws the dice from me. I have come to
dread it--my destiny.... Why is it so? Explain this enigma to me!’
‘An enigma!’ repeated Lezhnyov. ‘Yes, that’s true; you have always been
an enigma for me. Even in our young days, when, after some trifling
prank, you would suddenly speak as though you were pierced to the heart,
and then you would begin again... well you know what I mean... even then
I did not understand. That is why I grew apart from you.... You have so
much power, such unwearying striving after the ideal.’
‘Words, all words! There was nothing done!’ Rudin broke in.
‘Nothing done! What is there to do?’
‘What is there to do! To keep an old blind woman and all her family
by one’s work, as, do you remember, Mihail, Pryazhentsov did... That’s
doing something.’
‘Yes, but a good word--is also something done.’
Rudin looked at Lezhnyov without speaking and faintly shook his head.
Lezhnyov wanted to say something, and he passed his hand over his face.
‘And so you are going to your country place?’ he asked at last.
‘Yes.’
‘There you have some property left?’
‘Something is left me there. Two souls and a half. It is a corner to
die in. You are thinking perhaps at this moment: “Even now he cannot do
without fine words!” Words indeed have been my ruin; they have consumed
me, and to the end I cannot be free of them. But what I have said was
not mere words. These white hairs, brother, these wrinkles, these
ragged elbows--they are not mere words. You have always been hard on me,
Mihail, and you were right; but now is not a time to be hard, when all
is over, when there’s no oil left in the lamp, and the lamp itself is
broken, and the wick is just smouldering out. Death, brother, should
reconcile at last...’
Lezhnyov jumped up.
‘Rudin!’ he cried, ‘why do you speak like that to me? How have I
deserved it from you? Am I such a judge, and what kind of a man should
I be, if at the sight of your hollow cheeks and wrinkles, “mere words”
could occur to my mind? Do you want to know what I think of you, Dmitri?
Well! I think: here is a man--with his abilities, what might he not have
attained to, what worldly advantages might he not have possessed by now,
if he had liked!... and I meet him hungry and homeless....’
‘I rouse your compassion,’ Rudin murmured in a choked voice.
‘No, you are wrong. You inspire respect in me--that is what I feel. Who
prevented you from spending year after year at that landowner’s, who was
your friend, and who would, I am fully persuaded, have made provision
for you, if you had only been willing to humour him? Why could you not
live harmoniously at the gymnasium, why have you--strange man!--with
whatever ideas you have entered upon an undertaking, infallibly every
time ended by sacrificing your personal interests, ever refusing to take
root in any but good ground, however profitable it might be?’
‘I was born a rolling stone,’ Rudin said, with a weary smile. ‘I cannot
stop myself.’
‘That is true; but you cannot stop, not because there is a worm gnawing
you, as you said to me at first.... It is not a worm, not the spirit
of idle restlessness--it is the fire of the love of truth that burns in
you, and clearly, in spite of your failings; it burns in you more hotly
than in many who do not consider themselves egoists and dare to call
you a humbug perhaps. I, for one, in your place should long ago have
succeeded in silencing that worm in me, and should have given in to
everything; and you have not even been embittered by it, Dmitri. You are
ready, I am sure, to-day, to set to some new work again like a boy.’
‘No, brother, I am tired now,’ said Rudin. ‘I have had enough.’
‘Tired! Any other man would have been dead long ago. You say that death
reconciles; but does not life, don’t you think, reconcile? A man who has
lived and has not grown tolerant towards others does not deserve to meet
with tolerance himself. And who can say he does not need tolerance? You
have done what you could, Dmitri... you have struggled so long as you
could... what more? Our paths lay apart,’...
‘You were utterly different from me,’ Rudin put in with a sigh.
‘Our paths lay apart,’ continued Lezhnyov, ‘perhaps exactly because,
thanks to my position, my cool blood, and other fortunate circumstances,
nothing hindered me from being a stay-at-home, and remaining a spectator
with folded hands; but you had to go out into the world, to turn up your
shirt-sleeves, to toil and labour. Our paths lay apart--but see how near
one another we are. We speak almost the same language, with half a hint
we understand one another, we grew up on the same ideas. There is little
left us now, brother; we are the last of the Mohicans! We might differ
and even quarrel in old days, when so much life still remained before
us; but now, when the ranks are thinned about us, when the younger
generation is coming upon us with other aims than ours, we ought to keep
close to one another! Let us clink glasses, Dmitri, and sing as of old,
_Gaudeamus igitur_!’
The friends clinked their glasses, and sang the old student song in
strained voices, all out of tune, in the true Russian style.
‘So you are going now to your country place,’ Lezhnyov began again. ‘I
don’t think you will stay there long, and I cannot imagine where and how
you will end.... But remember, whatever happens to you, you have always
a place, a nest where you can hide yourself. That is my home,--do you
hear, old fellow? Thought, too, has its veterans; they, too, ought to
have their home.’
Rudin got up.
‘Thanks, brother,’ he said, ‘thanks! I will not forget this in you.
Only I do not deserve a home. I have wasted my life, and have not served
thought, as I ought.’
‘Hush!’ said Lezhnyov. ‘Every man remains what Nature has made him,
and one cannot ask more of him! You have called yourself the Wandering
Jew.... But how do you know,--perhaps it was right for you to be ever
wandering, perhaps in that way you are fulfilling a higher calling than
you know; popular wisdom says truly that we are all in God’s hands. You
are going, Dmitri,’ continued Lezhnyov, seeing that Rudin was taking his
hat ‘You will not stop the night?’
‘Yes, I am going! Good-bye. Thanks.... I shall come to a bad end.’
‘God only knows.... You are resolved to go?’
‘Yes, I am going. Good-bye. Do not remember evil against me.’
‘Well, do not remember evil against me either,--and don’t forget what I
said to you. Good-bye.’...
The friends embraced one another. Rudin went quickly away.
Lezhnyov walked up and down the room a long while, stopped before the
window thinking, and murmured half aloud, ‘Poor fellow!’ Then sitting
down to the table, he began to write a letter to his wife.
But outside a wind had risen, and was howling with ill-omened moans, and
wrathfully shaking the rattling window-panes. The long autumn night came
on. Well for the man on such a night who sits under the shelter of
home, who has a warm corner in safety.... And the Lord help all homeless
wanderers!
On a sultry afternoon on the 26th of July in 1848 in Paris, when
the Revolution of the _ateliers nationaux_ had already been almost
suppressed, a line battalion was taking a barricade in one of the narrow
alleys of the Faubourg St Antoine. A few gunshots had already broken it;
its surviving defenders abandoned it, and were only thinking of their
own safety, when suddenly on the very top of the barricade, on the frame
of an overturned omnibus, appeared a tall man in an old overcoat, with
a red sash, and a straw hat on his grey dishevelled hair. In one hand he
held a red flag, in the other a blunt curved sabre, and as he scrambled
up, he shouted something in a shrill strained voice, waving his flag
and sabre. A Vincennes tirailleur took aim at him--fired. The tall man
dropped the flag--and like a sack he toppled over face downwards, as
though he were falling at some one’s feet. The bullet had passed through
his heart.
‘_Tiens_!’ said one of the escaping revolutionists to another, ‘_on
vient de tuer le Polonais_!’
‘_Bigre_!’ answered the other, and both ran into the cellar of a house,
the shutters of which were all closed, and its wall streaked with traces
of powder and shot.
This ‘Polonais’ was Dmitri Rudin.
THE END.