“I want to be understood.” The universal aspiration with all its
profound and melancholy meaning assailed heavily Razumov, who, amongst
eighty millions of his kith and kin, had no heart to which he could open
himself.
The attorney was not to be thought of. He despised the little agent of
chicane too much. One could not go and lay one’s conscience before the
policeman at the corner. Neither was Razumov anxious to go to the chief
of his district’s police--a common-looking person whom he used to see
sometimes in the street in a shabby uniform and with a smouldering
cigarette stuck to his lower lip. “He would begin by locking me up most
probably. At any rate, he is certain to get excited and create an awful
commotion,” thought Razumov practically.
An act of conscience must be done with outward dignity.
Razumov longed desperately for a word of advice, for moral support. Who
knows what true loneliness is--not the conventional word, but the naked
terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable
outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal
conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant
only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without
going mad.
Razumov had reached that point of vision. To escape from it he embraced
for a whole minute the delirious purpose of rushing to his lodgings
and flinging himself on his knees by the side of the bed with the dark
figure stretched on it; to pour out a full confession in passionate
words that would stir the whole being of that man to its innermost
depths; that would end in embraces and tears; in an incredible
fellowship of souls--such as the world had never seen. It was sublime!
Inwardly he wept and trembled already. But to the casual eyes that were
cast upon him he was aware that he appeared as a tranquil student in
a cloak, out for a leisurely stroll. He noted, too, the sidelong,
brilliant glance of a pretty woman--with a delicate head, and covered
in the hairy skins of wild beasts down to her feet, like a frail and
beautiful savage--which rested for a moment with a sort of mocking
tenderness on the deep abstraction of that good-looking young man.
Suddenly Razumov stood still. The glimpse of a passing grey whisker,
caught and lost in the same instant, had evoked the complete image of
Prince K---, the man who once had pressed his hand as no other man had
pressed it--a faint but lingering pressure like a secret sign, like a
half-unwilling caress.
And Razumov marvelled at himself. Why did he not think of him before!
“A senator, a dignitary, a great personage, the very man--He!”
A strange softening emotion came over Razumov--made his knees shake a
little. He repressed it with a new-born austerity. All that sentiment
was pernicious nonsense. He couldn’t be quick enough; and when he got
into a sledge he shouted to the driver--“to the K--- Palace. Get
on--you! Fly!” The startled moujik, bearded up to the very whites of
his eyes, answered obsequiously--
“I hear, your high Nobility.”
It was lucky for Razumov that Prince K--- was not a man of timid
character. On the day of Mr. de P---‘s murder an extreme alarm and
despondency prevailed in the high official spheres.
Prince K---, sitting sadly alone in his study, was told by his alarmed
servants that a mysterious young man had forced his way into the hall,
refused to tell his name and the nature of his business, and would not
move from there till he had seen his Excellency in private. Instead of
locking himself up and telephoning for the police, as nine out of ten
high personages would have done that evening, the Prince gave way to
curiosity and came quietly to the door of his study.
In the hall, the front door standing wide open, he recognised at once
Razumov, pale as death, his eyes blazing, and surrounded by perplexed
lackeys.
The Prince was vexed beyond measure, and even indignant. But his humane
instincts and a subtle sense of self-respect could not allow him to
let this young man be thrown out into the street by base menials.
He retreated unseen into his room, and after a little rang his bell.
Razumov heard in the hall an ominously raised harsh voice saying
somewhere far away--
“Show the gentleman in here.”
Razumov walked in without a tremor. He felt himself invulnerable--raised
far above the shallowness of common judgment. Though he saw the Prince
looking at him with black displeasure, the lucidity of his mind, of
which he was very conscious, gave him an extraordinary assurance. He was
not asked to sit down.
Half an hour later they appeared in the hall together. The lackeys stood
up, and the Prince, moving with difficulty on his gouty feet, was helped
into his furs. The carriage had been ordered before. When the great
double door was flung open with a crash, Razumov, who had been standing
silent with a lost gaze but with every faculty intensely on the alert,
heard the Prince’s voice--
“Your arm, young man.”
The mobile, superficial mind of the ex-Guards officer, man of showy
missions, experienced in nothing but the arts of gallant intrigue
and worldly success, had been equally impressed by the more obvious
difficulties of such a situation and by Razumov’s quiet dignity in
stating them.
He had said, “No. Upon the whole I can’t condemn the step you ventured
to take by coming to me with your story. It is not an affair for police
understrappers. The greatest importance is attached to.... Set
your mind at rest. I shall see you through this most extraordinary and
difficult situation.”
Then the Prince rose to ring the bell, and Razumov, making a short bow,
had said with deference--
“I have trusted my instinct. A young man having no claim upon anybody
in the world has in an hour of trial involving his deepest political
convictions turned to an illustrious Russian--that’s all.”