“You are quite right,” I said. “I think very highly of you”
“Don’t suppose I do not know it,” she began hurriedly. “Your friendship
has been very valuable.”
“I have done little else but look on.”
She was a little flushed under the eyes.
“There is a way of looking on which is valuable I have felt less lonely
because of it. It’s difficult to explain.”
“Really? Well, I too have felt less lonely. That’s easy to explain,
though. But it won’t go on much longer. The last thing I want to tell
you is this: in a real revolution--not a simple dynastic change or a
mere reform of institutions--in a real revolution the best characters
do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of
narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards
comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time.
Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left
out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane,
and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a
movement--but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of
a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of
disenchantment--often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals
caricatured--that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have
been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of
that. My meaning is that I don’t want you to be a victim.”
“If I could believe all you have said I still wouldn’t think of myself,”
protested Miss Haldin. “I would take liberty from any hand as a hungry
man would snatch at a piece of bread. The true progress must begin
after. And for that the right men shall be found. They are already
amongst us. One comes upon them in their obscurity, unknown, preparing
themselves....”
She spread out the letter she had kept in her hand all the time, and
looking down at it--
“Yes! One comes upon such men!” she repeated, and then read out the
words, “Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences.”
Folding up the letter, while I looked at her interrogatively, she
explained--
“These are the words which my brother applies to a young man he came to
know in St. Petersburg. An intimate friend, I suppose. It must be. His
is the only name my brother mentions in all his correspondence with me.
Absolutely the only one, and--would you believe it?--the man is here. He
arrived recently in Geneva.”
“Have you seen him?” I inquired. “But, of course; you must have seen
him.”
“No! No! I haven’t! I didn’t know he was here. It’s Peter Ivanovitch
himself who told me. You have heard him yourself mentioning a new
arrival from Petersburg.... Well, that is the man of ‘unstained,
lofty, and solitary existence.’ My brother’s friend!”
“Compromised politically, I suppose,” I remarked.
“I don’t know. Yes. It must be so. Who knows! Perhaps it was this very
friendship with my brother which.... But no! It is scarcely possible.
Really, I know nothing except what Peter Ivanovitch told me of him. He
has brought a letter of introduction from Father Zosim--you know, the
priest-democrat; you have heard of Father Zosim?”
“Oh yes. The famous Father Zosim was staying here in Geneva for some two
months about a year ago,” I said. “When he left here he seems to have
disappeared from the world.”
“It appears that he is at work in Russia again. Somewhere in the
centre,” Miss Haldin said, with animation. “But please don’t mention
that to any one--don’t let it slip from you, because if it got into the
papers it would be dangerous for him.”
“You are anxious, of course, to meet that friend of your brother?” I
asked.
Miss Haldin put the letter into her pocket. Her eyes looked beyond my
shoulder at the door of her mother’s room.
“Not here,” she murmured. “Not for the first time, at least.”
After a moment of silence I said good-bye, but Miss Haldin followed me
into the ante-room, closing the door behind us carefully.
“I suppose you guess where I mean to go tomorrow?”
“You have made up your mind to call on Madame de S--.”
“Yes. I am going to the Chateau Borel. I must.”
“What do you expect to hear there?” I asked, in a low voice.
I wondered if she were not deluding herself with some impossible hope.
It was not that, however.
“Only think--such a friend. The only man mentioned in his letters. He
would have something to give me, if nothing more than a few poor words.
It may be something said and thought in those last days. Would you want
me to turn my back on what is left of my poor brother--a friend?”
“Certainly not,” I said. “I quite understand your pious curiosity.”
“--Unstained, lofty, and solitary existences,” she murmured to herself.
“There are! There are! Well, let me question one of them about the loved
dead.”
“How do you know, though, that you will meet him there? Is he staying in
the Chateau as a guest--do you suppose?”
“I can’t really tell,” she confessed. “He brought a written introduction
from Father Zosim--who, it seems, is a friend of Madame de S-- too. She
can’t be such a worthless woman after all.”
“There were all sorts of rumours afloat about Father Zosim himself,” I
observed.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Calumny is a weapon of our government too. It’s well known. Oh yes! It
is a fact that Father Zosim had the protection of the Governor-General
of a certain province. We talked on the subject with my brother two
years ago, I remember. But his work was good. And now he is proscribed.
What better proof can one require. But no matter what that priest was
or is. All that cannot affect my brother’s friend. If I don’t meet him
there I shall ask these people for his address. And, of course, mother
must see him too, later on. There is no guessing what he may have to
tell us. It would be a mercy if mamma could be soothed. You know what
she imagines. Some explanation perhaps may be found, or--or even made
up, perhaps. It would be no sin.”
“Certainly,” I said, “it would be no sin. It may be a mistake, though.”
“I want her only to recover some of her old spirit. While she is like
this I cannot think of anything calmly.”
“Do you mean to invent some sort of pious fraud for your mother’s sake?”
I asked.
“Why fraud? Such a friend is sure to know something of my brother in
these last days. He could tell us.... There is something in the
facts which will not let me rest. I am certain he meant to join us
abroad--that he had some plans--some great patriotic action in view;
not only for himself, but for both of us. I trusted in that. I looked
forward to the time! Oh! with such hope and impatience. I could have
helped. And now suddenly this appearance of recklessness--as if he had
not cared....”