“It has been reproduced in parts by the Press here. There are files to
be seen in various places. My copy of the English newspaper I have left
with Miss Haldin, I remember, on the day after it reached me. I was
sufficiently worried by seeing it lying on a table by the side of the
poor mother’s chair for weeks. Then it disappeared. It was a relief, I
assure you.”
He had stopped short.
“I trust,” I continued, “that you will find time to see these ladies
fairly often--that you will make time.”
He stared at me so queerly that I hardly know how to define his aspect.
I could not understand it in this connexion at all. What ailed him? I
asked myself. What strange thought had come into his head? What vision
of all the horrors that can be seen in his hopeless country had come
suddenly to haunt his brain? If it were anything connected with the fate
of Victor Haldin, then I hoped earnestly he would keep it to himself
for ever. I was, to speak plainly, so shocked that I tried to conceal my
impression by--Heaven forgive me--a smile and the assumption of a light
manner.
“Surely,” I exclaimed, “that needn’t cost you a great effort.”
He turned away from me and leaned over the parapet of the bridge. For a
moment I waited, looking at his back. And yet, I assure you, I was not
anxious just then to look at his face again. He did not move at all. He
did not mean to move. I walked on slowly on my way towards the station,
and at the end of the bridge I glanced over my shoulder. No, he had not
moved. He hung well over the parapet, as if captivated by the smooth
rush of the blue water under the arch. The current there is swift,
extremely swift; it makes some people dizzy; I myself can never look at
it for any length of time without experiencing a dread of being suddenly
snatched away by its destructive force. Some brains cannot resist the
suggestion of irresistible power and of headlong motion.
It apparently had a charm for Mr. Razumov. I left him hanging far over
the parapet of the bridge. The way he had behaved to me could not be put
down to mere boorishness. There was something else under his scorn and
impatience. Perhaps, I thought, with sudden approach to hidden truth,
it was the same thing which had kept him over a week, nearly ten days
indeed, from coming near Miss Haldin. But what it was I could not tell.