“_Les gateaux_? Have you remembered to bring the cakes?”
Peter Ivanovitch, without a word, marched out on to the landing, and
returned instantly with a parcel wrapped up in white glazed paper, which
he must have extracted from the interior of his hat. With imperturbable
gravity he undid the string and smoothed the paper open on a part of the
table within reach of Madame de S--‘s hand. The lady companion poured
out the tea, then retired into a distant corner out of everybody’s
sight. From time to time Madame de S-- extended a claw-like hand,
glittering with costly rings, towards the paper of cakes, took up one
and devoured it, displaying her big false teeth ghoulishly. Meantime she
talked in a hoarse tone of the political situation in the Balkans. She
built great hopes on some complication in the peninsula for arousing
a great movement of national indignation in Russia against “these
thieves--thieves thieves.”
“You will only upset yourself,” Peter Ivanovitch interposed, raising
his glassy gaze. He smoked cigarettes and drank tea in silence,
continuously. When he had finished a glass, he flourished his hand
above his shoulder. At that signal the lady companion, ensconced in her
corner, with round eyes like a watchful animal, would dart out to the
table and pour him out another tumblerful.
Razumov looked at her once or twice. She was anxious, tremulous, though
neither Madame de S-- nor Peter Ivanovitch paid the slightest attention
to her. “What have they done between them to that forlorn creature?”
Razumov asked himself. “Have they terrified her out of her senses with
ghosts, or simply have they only been beating her?” When she gave him
his second glass of tea, he noticed that her lips trembled in the manner
of a scared person about to burst into speech. But of course she said
nothing, and retired into her corner, as if hugging to herself the smile
of thanks he gave her.
“She may be worth cultivating,” thought Razumov suddenly.
He was calming down, getting hold of the actuality into which he had
been thrown--for the first time perhaps since Victor Haldin had entered
his room...and had gone out again. He was distinctly aware of being
the object of the famous--or notorious--Madame de S--‘s ghastly
graciousness.
Madame de S-- was pleased to discover that this young man was different
from the other types of revolutionist members of committees, secret
emissaries, vulgar and unmannerly fugitive professors, rough students,
ex-cobblers with apostolic faces, consumptive and ragged enthusiasts,
Hebrew youths, common fellows of all sorts that used to come and go
around Peter Ivanovitch--fanatics, pedants, proletarians all. It was
pleasant to talk to this young man of notably good appearance--for
Madame de S-- was not always in a mystical state of mind. Razumov’s
taciturnity only excited her to a quicker, more voluble utterance. It
still dealt with the Balkans. She knew all the statesmen of that region,
Turks, Bulgarians, Montenegrins, Roumanians, Greeks, Armenians, and
nondescripts, young and old, the living and the dead. With some money an
intrigue could be started which would set the Peninsula in a blaze and
outrage the sentiment of the Russian people. A cry of abandoned brothers
could be raised, and then, with the nation seething with indignation, a
couple of regiments or so would be enough to begin a military revolution
in St. Petersburg and make an end of these thieves....
“Apparently I’ve got only to sit still and listen,” the silent Razumov
thought to himself. “As to that hairy and obscene brute” (in such terms
did Mr. Razumov refer mentally to the popular expounder of a feministic
conception of social state), “as to him, for all his cunning he too
shall speak out some day.”
Razumov ceased to think for a moment. Then a sombre-toned reflection
formulated itself in his mind, ironical and bitter. “I have the gift of
inspiring confidence.” He heard himself laughing aloud. It was like a
goad to the painted, shiny-eyed harridan on the sofa.
“You may well laugh!” she cried hoarsely. “What else can one do!
Perfect swindlers--and what base swindlers at that! Cheap
Germans--Holstein-Gottorps! Though, indeed, it’s hardly safe to say who
and what they are. A family that counts a creature like Catherine the
Great in its ancestry--you understand!”
“You are only upsetting yourself,” said Peter Ivanovitch, patiently but
in a firm tone. This admonition had its usual effect on the Egeria. She
dropped her thick, discoloured eyelids and changed her position on the
sofa. All her angular and lifeless movements seemed completely automatic
now that her eyes were closed. Presently she opened them very full.
Peter Ivanovitch drank tea steadily, without haste.
“Well, I declare!” She addressed Razumov directly. “The people who have
seen you on your way here are right. You are very reserved. You haven’t
said twenty words altogether since you came in. You let nothing of your
thoughts be seen in your face either.”
“I have been listening, Madame,” said Razumov, using French for the
first time, hesitatingly, not being certain of his accent. But it seemed
to produce an excellent impression. Madame de S-- looked meaningly into
Peter Ivanovitch’s spectacles, as if to convey her conviction of this
young man’s merit. She even nodded the least bit in his direction, and
Razumov heard her murmur under her breath the words, “Later on in
the diplomatic service,” which could not but refer to the favourable
impression he had made. The fantastic absurdity of it revolted him
because it seemed to outrage his ruined hopes with the vision of a
mock-career. Peter Ivanovitch, impassive as though he were deaf, drank
some more tea. Razumov felt that he must say something.
“Yes,” he began deliberately, as if uttering a meditated opinion.
“Clearly. Even in planning a purely military revolution the temper of
the people should be taken into account.”
“You have understood me perfectly. The discontent should be
spiritualized. That is what the ordinary heads of revolutionary
committees will not understand. They aren’t capable of it. For instance,
Mordatiev was in Geneva last month. Peter Ivanovitch brought him here.
You know Mordatiev? Well, yes--you have heard of him. They call him
an eagle--a hero! He has never done half as much as you have. Never
attempted--not half....”
Madame de S-- agitated herself angularly on the sofa.
“We, of course, talked to him. And do you know what he said to me?
‘What have we to do with Balkan intrigues? We must simply extirpate the
scoundrels.’ Extirpate is all very well--but what then? The imbecile!
I screamed at him, ‘But you must spiritualize--don’t you
understand?--spiritualize the discontent.’...”
She felt nervously in her pocket for a handkerchief; she pressed it to
her lips.
“Spiritualize?” said Razumov interrogatively, watching her heaving
breast. The long ends of an old black lace scarf she wore over her head
slipped off her shoulders and hung down on each side of her ghastly rosy
cheeks.
“An odious creature,” she burst out again. “Imagine a man who takes five
lumps of sugar in his tea.... Yes, I said spiritualize! How else can
you make discontent effective and universal?”
“Listen to this, young man.” Peter Ivanovitch made himself heard
solemnly. “Effective and universal.”
Razumov looked at him suspiciously.
“Some say hunger will do that,” he remarked.
“Yes. I know. Our people are starving in heaps. But you can’t make
famine universal. And it is not despair that we want to create. There is
no moral support to be got out of that. It is indignation....”
Madame de S-- let her thin, extended arm sink on her knees.
“I am not a Mordatiev,” began Razumov.
“Bien sur!” murmured Madame de S--.
“Though I too am ready to say extirpate, extirpate! But in my ignorance
of political work, permit me to ask: A Balkan--well--intrigue, wouldn’t
that take a very long time?”
Peter Ivanovitch got up and moved off quietly, to stand with his face to
the window. Razumov heard a door close; he turned his head and perceived
that the lady companion had scuttled out of the room.
“In matters of politics I am a supernaturalist.” Madame de S-- broke
the silence harshly.
Peter Ivanovitch moved away from the window and struck Razumov lightly
on the shoulder. This was a signal for leaving, but at the same time he
addressed Madame de S-- in a peculiar reminding tone---
“Eleanor!”
Whatever it meant, she did not seem to hear him. She leaned back in the
corner of the sofa like a wooden figure. The immovable peevishness of
the face, framed in the limp, rusty lace, had a character of cruelty.
“As to extirpating,” she croaked at the attentive Razumov, “there is
only one class in Russia which must be extirpated. Only one. And that
class consists of only one family. You understand me? That one family
must be extirpated.”
Her rigidity was frightful, like the rigor of a corpse galvanized into
harsh speech and glittering stare by the force of murderous hate. The
sight fascinated Razumov--yet he felt more self-possessed than at
any other time since he had entered this weirdly bare room. He was
interested. But the great feminist by his side again uttered his
appeal--
“Eleanor!”
She disregarded it. Her carmine lips vaticinated with an extraordinary
rapidity. The liberating spirit would use arms before which rivers would
part like Jordan, and ramparts fall down like the walls of Jericho. The
deliverance from bondage would be effected by plagues and by signs, by
wonders and by war. The women....
“Eleanor!”
She ceased; she had heard him at last. She pressed her hand to her
forehead.
“What is it? Ah yes! That girl--the sister of....”
It was Miss Haldin that she meant. That young girl and her mother had
been leading a very retired life. They were provincial ladies--were they
not? The mother had been very beautiful--traces were left yet. Peter
Ivanovitch, when he called there for the first time, was greatly
struck....But the cold way they received him was really surprising.
“He is one of our national glories,” Madams de S-- cried out, with
sudden vehemence. “All the world listens to him.”
“I don’t know these ladies,” said Razumov loudly rising from his chair.
“What are you saying, Kirylo Sidorovitch? I understand that she was
talking to you here, in the garden, the other day.”
“Yes, in the garden,” said Razumov gloomily. Then, with an effort, “She
made herself known to me.”
“And then ran away from us all,” Madame de S-- continued, with ghastly
vivacity. “After coming to the very door! What a peculiar proceeding!
Well, I have been a shy little provincial girl at one time. Yes,
Razumov” (she fell into this familiarity intentionally, with an
appalling grimace of graciousness. Razumov gave a perceptible start),
“yes, that’s my origin. A simple provincial family.
“You are a marvel,” Peter Ivanovich uttered.
But it was to Razumov that she gave her death’s-head smile. Her tone was
quite imperious.
“You must bring the wild young thing here. She is wanted. I reckon upon
your success--mind!”
“She is not a wild young thing,” muttered Razumov, in a surly voice.
“Well, then--that’s all the same. She may be one of these young
conceited democrats. Do you know what I think? I think she is very much
like you in character. There is a smouldering fire of scorn in you. You
are darkly self-sufficient, but I can see your very soul.”
Her shiny eyes had a dry, intense stare, which, missing Razumov, gave
him an absurd notion that she was looking at something which was visible
to her behind him. He cursed himself for an impressionable fool, and
asked with forced calmness--
“What is it you see? Anything resembling me?”
She moved her rigidly set face from left to right, negatively.
“Some sort of phantom in my image?” pursued Razumov slowly. “For, I
suppose, a soul when it is seen is just that. A vain thing. There are
phantoms of the living as well as of the dead.”
The tenseness of Madame de S--‘s stare had relaxed, and now she looked
at Razumov in a silence that became disconcerting.
“I myself have had an experience,” he stammered out, as if compelled.
“I’ve seen a phantom once.” The unnaturally red lips moved to frame a
question harshly.
“Of a dead person?”
“No. Living.”
“A friend?”
“No.”
“An enemy?”
“I hated him.”
“Ah! It was not a woman, then?”
“A woman!” repeated Razumov, his eyes looking straight into the eyes
of Madame de S--. “Why should it have been a woman? And why this
conclusion? Why should I not have been able to hate a woman?”
As a matter of fact, the idea of hating a woman was new to him. At that
moment he hated Madame de S--. But it was not exactly hate. It was more
like the abhorrence that may be caused by a wooden or plaster figure of
a repulsive kind. She moved no more than if she were such a figure; even
her eyes, whose unwinking stare plunged into his own, though shining,
were lifeless, as though they were as artificial as her teeth. For the
first time Razumov became aware of a faint perfume, but faint as it was
it nauseated him exceedingly. Again Peter Ivanovitch tapped him slightly
on the shoulder. Thereupon he bowed, and was about to turn away when
he received the unexpected favour of a bony, inanimate hand extended to
him, with the two words in hoarse French--
“_Au revoir!_”
He bowed over the skeleton hand and left the room, escorted by the great
man, who made him go out first. The voice from the sofa cried after
them--
“You remain here, _Pierre_.”
“Certainly, _ma chere amie_.”
But he left the room with Razumov, shutting the door behind him. The
landing was prolonged into a bare corridor, right and left, desolate
perspectives of white and gold decoration without a strip of carpet. The
very light, pouring through a large window at the end, seemed dusty; and
a solitary speck reposing on the balustrade of white marble--the silk
top-hat of the great feminist--asserted itself extremely, black and
glossy in all that crude whiteness.
Peter Ivanovitch escorted the visitor without opening his lips. Even
when they had reached the head of the stairs Peter Ivanovitch did not
break the silence. Razumov’s impulse to continue down the flight and out
of the house without as much as a nod abandoned him suddenly. He stopped
on the first step and leaned his back against the wall. Below him the
great hall with its chequered floor of black and white seemed absurdly
large and like some public place where a great power of resonance awaits
the provocation of footfalls and voices. As if afraid of awakening the
loud echoes of that empty house, Razumov adopted a low tone.
“I really have no mind to turn into a dilettante spiritualist.”
Peter Ivanovitch shook his head slightly, very serious.
“Or spend my time in spiritual ecstasies or sublime meditations upon the
gospel of feminism,” continued Razumov. “I made my way here for my share
of action--action, most respected Peter Ivanovitch! It was not the great
European writer who attracted me, here, to this odious town of liberty.
It was somebody much greater. It was the idea of the chief which
attracted me. There are starving young men in Russia who believe in
you so much that it seems the only thing that keeps them alive in their
misery. Think of that, Peter Ivanovitch! No! But only think of that!”
The great man, thus entreated, perfectly motionless and silent, was the
very image of patient, placid respectability.
“Of course I don’t speak of the people. They are brutes,” added Razumov,
in the same subdued but forcible tone. At this, a protesting murmur
issued from the “heroic fugitive’s” beard. A murmur of authority.
“Say--children.”
“No! Brutes!” Razumov insisted bluntly.
“But they are sound, they are innocent,” the great man pleaded in a
whisper.
“As far as that goes, a brute is sound enough.” Razumov raised his
voice at last. “And you can’t deny the natural innocence of a brute.
But what’s the use of disputing about names? You just try to give these
children the power and stature of men and see what they will be like.
You just give it to them and see.... But never mind. I tell you,
Peter Ivanovitch, that half a dozen young men do not come together
nowadays in a shabby student’s room without your name being whispered,
not as a leader of thought, but as a centre of revolutionary
energies--the centre of action. What else has drawn me near you, do you
think? It is not what all the world knows of you, surely. It’s precisely
what the world at large does not know. I was irresistibly drawn-let us
say impelled, yes, impelled; or, rather, compelled, driven--driven,”
repented Razumov loudly, and ceased, as if startled by the hollow
reverberation of the word “driven” along two bare corridors and in the
great empty hall.
Peter Ivanovitch did not seem startled in the least. The young man
could not control a dry, uneasy laugh. The great revolutionist remained
unmoved with an effect of commonplace, homely superiority.
“Curse him,” said Razumov to himself, “he is waiting behind his
spectacles for me to give myself away.” Then aloud, with a satanic
enjoyment of the scorn prompting him to play with the greatness of the
great man--
“Ah, Peter Ivanovitch, if you only knew the force which drew--no, which
_drove_ me towards you! The irresistible force.”
He did not feel any desire to laugh now. This time Peter Ivanovitch
moved his head sideways, knowingly, as much as to say, “Don’t I?” This
expressive movement was almost imperceptible. Razumov went on in secret
derision--
“All these days you have been trying to read me, Peter Ivanovitch. That
is natural. I have perceived it and I have been frank. Perhaps you may
think I have not been very expansive? But with a man like you it was not
needed; it would have looked like an impertinence, perhaps. And besides,
we Russians are prone to talk too much as a rule. I have always felt
that. And yet, as a nation, we are dumb. I assure you that I am not
likely to talk to you so much again--ha! ha!--”
Razumov, still keeping on the lower step, came a little nearer to the
great man.
“You have been condescending enough. I quite understood it was to lead
me on. You must render me the justice that I have not tried to please. I
have been impelled, compelled, or rather sent--let us say sent--towards
you for a work that no one but myself can do. You would call it a
harmless delusion: a ridiculous delusion at which you don’t even smile.
It is absurd of me to talk like this, yet some day you shall remember
these words, I hope. Enough of this. Here I stand before you-confessed!
But one thing more I must add to complete it: a mere blind tool I can
never consent to be.”
Whatever acknowledgment Razumov was prepared for, he was not prepared
to have both his hands seized in the great man’s grasp. The swiftness of
the movement was aggressive enough to startle. The burly feminist could
not have been quicker had his purpose been to jerk Razumov treacherously
up on the landing and bundle him behind one of the numerous closed
doors near by. This idea actually occurred to Razumov; his hands being
released after a darkly eloquent squeeze, he smiled, with a beating
heart, straight at the beard and the spectacles hiding that impenetrable
man.
He thought to himself (it stands confessed in his handwriting), “I won’t
move from here till he either speaks or turns away. This is a duel.”
Many seconds passed without a sign or sound.
“Yes, yes,” the great man said hurriedly, in subdued tones, as if the
whole thing had been a stolen, breathless interview. “Exactly. Come
to see us here in a few days. This must be gone into deeply--deeply,
between you and me. Quite to the bottom. To the...And, by the by,
you must bring along Natalia Victorovna--you know, the Haldin girl....
“Am I to take this as my first instruction from you?” inquired Razumov
stiffly.
Peter Ivanovitch seemed perplexed by this new attitude.
“Ah! h’m! You are naturally the proper person--_la personne indiquee_.
Every one shall be wanted presently. Every one.”
He bent down from the landing over Razumov, who had lowered his eyes.
“The moment of action approaches,” he murmured.
Razumov did not look up. He did not move till he heard the door of the
drawing-room close behind the greatest of feminists returning to his
painted Egeria. Then he walked down slowly into the hall. The door stood
open, and the shadow of the house was lying aslant over the greatest
part of the terrace. While crossing it slowly, he lifted his hat and
wiped his damp forehead, expelling his breath with force to get rid of
the last vestiges of the air he had been breathing inside. He looked at
the palms of his hands, and rubbed them gently against his thighs.
He felt, bizarre as it may seem, as though another self, an independent
sharer of his mind, had been able to view his whole person very
distinctly indeed. “This is curious,” he thought. After a while he
formulated his opinion of it in the mental ejaculation: “Beastly!”
This disgust vanished before a marked uneasiness. “This is an effect of
nervous exhaustion,” he reflected with weary sagacity. “How am I to
go on day after day if I have no more power of resistance--moral
resistance?”
He followed the path at the foot of the terrace. “Moral resistance,
moral resistance;” he kept on repeating these words mentally. Moral
endurance. Yes, that was the necessity of the situation. An immense
longing to make his way out of these grounds and to the other end of the
town, of throwing himself on his bed and going to sleep for hours, swept
everything clean out of his mind for a moment. “Is it possible that I am
but a weak creature after all?” he asked himself, in sudden alarm. “Eh!
What’s that?”
He gave a start as if awakened from a dream. He even swayed a little
before recovering himself.
“Ah! You stole away from us quietly to walk about here,” he said.
The lady companion stood before him, but how she came there he had not
the slightest idea. Her folded arms were closely cherishing the cat.
“I have been unconscious as I walked, it’s a positive fact,” said
Razumov to himself in wonder. He raised his hat with marked civility.
The sallow woman blushed duskily. She had her invariably scared
expression, as if somebody had just disclosed to her some terrible news.
But she held her ground, Razumov noticed, without timidity. “She is
incredibly shabby,” he thought. In the sunlight her black costume looked
greenish, with here and there threadbare patches where the stuff seemed
decomposed by age into a velvety, black, furry state. Her very hair and
eyebrows looked shabby. Razumov wondered whether she were sixty years
old. Her figure, though, was young enough. He observed that she did not
appear starved, but rather as if she had been fed on unwholesome scraps
and leavings of plates.
Razumov smiled amiably and moved out of her way. She turned her head to
keep her scared eyes on him.
“I know what you have been told in there,” she affirmed, without
preliminaries. Her tone, in contrast with her manner, had an
unexpectedly assured character which put Razumov at his ease.
“Do you? You must have heard all sorts of talk on many occasions in
there.”
She varied her phrase, with the same incongruous effect of positiveness.
“I know to a certainty what you have been told to do.”
“Really?” Razumov shrugged his shoulders a little. He was about to pass
on with a bow, when a sudden thought struck him. “Yes. To be sure! In
your confidential position you are aware of many things,” he murmured,
looking at the cat.
That animal got a momentary convulsive hug from the lady companion.
“Everything was disclosed to me a long time ago,” she said.
“Everything,” Razumov repeated absently.
“Peter Ivanovitch is an awful despot,” she jerked out.
Razumov went on studying the stripes on the grey fur of the cat.
“An iron will is an integral part of such a temperament. How else could
he be a leader? And I think that you are mistaken in--”
“There!” she cried. “You tell me that I am mistaken. But I tell you all
the same that he cares for no one.” She jerked her head up. “Don’t you
bring that girl here. That’s what you have been told to do--to bring
that girl here. Listen to me; you had better tie a stone round her neck
and throw her into the lake.”
Razumov had a sensation of chill and gloom, as if a heavy cloud had
passed over the sun.
“The girl?” he said. “What have I to do with her?”
“But you have been told to bring Nathalie Haldin here. Am I not right?
Of course I am right. I was not in the room, but I know. I know Peter
Ivanovitch sufficiently well. He is a great man. Great men are horrible.
Well, that’s it. Have nothing to do with her. That’s the best you
can do, unless you want her to become like me--disillusioned!
Disillusioned!”
“Like you,” repeated Razumov, glaring at her face, as devoid of all
comeliness of feature and complexion as the most miserable beggar is
of money. He smiled, still feeling chilly: a peculiar sensation which
annoyed him. “Disillusioned as to Peter Ivanovitch! Is that all you have
lost?”
She declared, looking frightened, but with immense conviction, “Peter
Ivanovitch stands for everything.” Then she added, in another tone,
“Keep the girl away from this house.”
“And are you absolutely inciting me to disobey Peter Ivanovitch just
because--because you are disillusioned?”
She began to blink.
“Directly I saw you for the first time I was comforted. You took your
hat off to me. You looked as if one could trust you. Oh!”
She shrank before Razumov’s savage snarl of, “I have heard something
like this before.”
She was so confounded that she could do nothing but blink for a long
time.
“It was your humane manner,” she explained plaintively. “I have been
starving for, I won’t say kindness, but just for a little civility, for
I don’t know how long. And now you are angry....”
“But no, on the contrary,” he protested. “I am very glad you trust me.
It’s possible that later on I may...”
“Yes, if you were to get ill,” she interrupted eagerly, “or meet some
bitter trouble, you would find I am not a useless fool. You have only to
let me know. I will come to you. I will indeed. And I will stick to you.
Misery and I are old acquaintances--but this life here is worse than
starving.”
She paused anxiously, then in a voice for the first time sounding really
timid, she added--
“Or if you were engaged in some dangerous work. Sometimes a humble
companion--I would not want to know anything. I would follow you with
joy. I could carry out orders. I have the courage.”
Razumov looked attentively at the scared round eyes, at the withered,
sallow, round cheeks. They were quivering about the corners of the
mouth.
“She wants to escape from here,” he thought.
“Suppose I were to tell you that I am engaged in dangerous work?” he
uttered slowly.
She pressed the cat to her threadbare bosom with a breathless
exclamation. “Ah!” Then not much above a whisper: “Under Peter
Ivanovitch?”
“No, not under Peter Ivanovitch.”
He read admiration in her eyes, and made an effort to smile.
“Then--alone?”
He held up his closed hand with the index raised. “Like this finger,” he
said.
She was trembling slightly. But it occurred to Razumov that they might
have been observed from the house, and he became anxious to be gone. She
blinked, raising up to him her puckered face, and seemed to beg mutely
to be told something more, to be given a word of encouragement for her
starving, grotesque, and pathetic devotion.
“Can we be seen from the house?” asked Razumov confidentially.