* * * * *
Half an hour later I was with Musa. On seeing me she held out her
hand, and, though she did not utter a word, a look of gratitude
flitted over her face. She was wearing the same clothes as on the
previous day; there was every sign that she had not been to bed or
slept all night. Her eyes were red, but from sleeplessness, not from
tears. She had not been crying. She was in no mood for weeping. She
wanted to act, wanted to struggle with the calamity that had fallen
upon them: the old, energetic, self-willed Musa had risen up in her
again. She had no time even to be indignant, though she was choking
with indignation. How to assist Baburin, to whom to appeal so as to
soften his lot--she could think of nothing else. She wanted to go
instantly, ... to petition, ... demand.... But where to go, whom to
petition, what to demand--this was what she wanted to hear from me,
this was what she wanted to consult me about.
I began by counselling her ... to have patience. For the first moment
there was nothing left to be done but to wait, and, as far as might be,
to make inquiries; and to take any decisive step now when the affair had
scarcely begun, and hardly yet taken shape, would be simply senseless,
irrational. To hope for any success was irrational, even if I had been a
person of much more importance and influence, ... but what could I, a
petty official, do? As for her, she was absolutely without any powerful
friends....
It was no easy matter to make all this plain to her ... but at last she
understood my arguments; she understood, too, that I was not prompted by
egoistic feeling, when I showed her the uselessness of all efforts. ‘But
tell me, Musa Pavlovna,’ I began, when she sank at last into a chair
(till then she had been standing up, as though on the point of setting
off at once to the aid of Baburin), ‘how Paramon Semyonitch, at his age,
comes to be mixed up in such an affair? I feel sure that there are none
but young people implicated in it, like the one who came in yesterday to
warn you....’
‘Those young people are our friends!’ cried Musa, and her eyes flashed
and darted as of old. Something strong, irrepressible, seemed, as it
were, to rise up from the bottom of her soul, ... and I suddenly recalled
the expression ‘a new type,’ which Tarhov had once used of her. ‘Years
are of no consequence when it is a matter of political principles!’ Musa
laid a special stress on these last two words. One might fancy that in
all her sorrow it was not unpleasing to her to show herself before me in
this new, unlooked-for character--in the character of a cultivated and
mature woman, fit wife of a republican! ... ‘Some old men are younger
than some young ones,’ she pursued, ‘more capable of sacrifice.... But
that’s not the point.’
‘I think, Musa Pavlovna,’ I observed, ‘that you are exaggerating a
little. Knowing the character of Paramon Semyonitch, I should have felt
sure beforehand that he would sympathise with every ... sincere
impulse; but, on the other hand, I have always regarded him as a man of
sense.... Surely he cannot fail to realise all the impracticability,
all the absurdity of conspiracies in Russia? In his position, in his
calling ...’
‘Oh, of course,’ Musa interrupted, with bitterness in her voice, ‘he is
a working man; and in Russia it is only permissible for noblemen to take
part in conspiracies, ... as, for instance, in that of the fourteenth of
December, ... that’s what you meant to say.’
‘In that case, what do you complain of now?’ almost broke from my
lips, ... but I restrained myself. ‘Do you consider that the result of
the fourteenth of December was such as to encourage other such
attempts?’ I said aloud.
Musa frowned. ‘It is no good talking to you about it,’ was what I read
in her downcast face.
‘Is Paramon Semyonitch very seriously compromised?’ I ventured to ask
her. Musa made no reply.... A hungry, savage mewing was heard from
the attic.
Musa started. ‘Ah, it is a good thing Nikander Vavilitch did not see all
this!’ she moaned almost despairingly. ‘He did not see how violently in
the night they seized his benefactor, our benefactor--maybe, the best
and truest man in the whole world,--he did not see how they treated that
noble man at his age, how rudely they addressed him, ... how they
threatened him, and the threats they used to him!--only because he was a
working man! That young officer, too, was no doubt just such an
unprincipled, heartless wretch as I have known in my life....’
Musa’s voice broke. She was quivering all over like a leaf.
Her long-suppressed indignation broke out at last; old memories stirred
up, brought to the surface by the general tumult of her soul, showed
themselves alive within her.... But the conviction I carried off at that
moment was that the ‘new type’ was still the same, still the same
passionate, impulsive nature.... Only the impulses by which Musa was
carried away were not the same as in the days of her youth. What on my
first visit I had taken for resignation, for meekness, and what really
was so--the subdued, lustreless glance, the cold voice, the quietness
and simplicity--all that had significance only in relation to the past,
to what would never return....
Now it was the present asserted itself.
I tried to soothe Musa, tried to put our conversation on a more
practical level. Some steps must be taken that could not be postponed;
we must find out exactly where Baburin was; and then secure both for him
and for Musa the means of subsistence. All this presented no
inconsiderable difficulty; what was needed was not to find money, but
work, which is, as we all know, a far more complicated problem....