“The storm shall drive him in.”
“There’s going to be a storm?” I asked.
“Why, yes!”
As if to confirm his words we heard a very distant, deep rumbling noise.
Consulting Miss Haldin by a glance, I saw her so reluctant to give up
her quest that I asked the shopkeeper, in case Mr. Razumov came home
within half an hour, to beg him to remain downstairs in the shop. We
would look in again presently.
For all answer he moved his head imperceptibly. The approval of Miss
Haldin was expressed by her silence. We walked slowly down the street,
away from the town; the low garden walls of the modest villas doomed to
demolition were overhung by the boughs of trees and masses of foliage,
lighted from below by gas lamps. The violent and monotonous noise of the
icy waters of the Arve falling over a low dam swept towards us with a
chilly draught of air across a great open space, where a double line of
lamp-lights outlined a street as yet without houses. But on the other
shore, overhung by the awful blackness of the thunder-cloud, a solitary
dim light seemed to watch us with a weary stare. When we had strolled as
far as the bridge, I said--
“We had better get back....”
In the shop the sickly man was studying his smudgy newspaper, now spread
out largely on the counter. He just raised his head when I looked in and
shook it negatively, pursing up his lips. I rejoined Miss Haldin outside
at once, and we moved off at a brisk pace. She remarked that she would
send Anna with a note the first thing in the morning. I respected her
taciturnity, silence being perhaps the best way to show my concern.
The semi-rural street we followed on our return changed gradually to the
usual town thoroughfare, broad and deserted. We did not meet four people
altogether, and the way seemed interminable, because my companion’s
natural anxiety had communicated itself sympathetically to me. At last
we turned into the Boulevard des Philosophes, more wide, more empty,
more dead--the very desolation of slumbering respectability. At the
sight of the two lighted windows, very conspicuous from afar, I had
the mental vision of Mrs. Haldin in her armchair keeping a dreadful,
tormenting vigil under the evil spell of an arbitrary rule: a victim of
tyranny and revolution, a sight at once cruel and absurd.