_P.S._—Our people are asleep.... But I have a feeling that if anything
does wake them, it will not be what we think....
After writing the last line, Nejdanov flung down the pen. “Well, now
you must try and sleep and forget all this nonsense, scribbler!” he
exclaimed, and lay down on the bed. But it was long before he fell
asleep.
The next morning Mariana woke him passing through his room on her way to
Tatiana. He had scarcely dressed when she came back. She seemed excited,
her face expressing delight and anxiety at the same time.
“Do you know, Aliosha, they say that in the province of T., quite near
here, it has already begun!”
“What? What has begun? Who said so?”
“Pavel. They say the peasants are rising, refusing to pay taxes,
collecting in mobs.”
“Have you heard that yourself?”
“Tatiana told me. But here is Pavel himself. You had better ask him.”
Pavel came in and confirmed what Mariana had said.
“There is certainly some disturbance in T.,” he began, shaking his beard
and screwing up his bright black eyes. “Sergai Mihailovitch must have
had a hand in it. He hasn’t been home for five days.”
Nejdanov took his cap.
“Where are you off to?” Mariana asked.
“Why there of course,” he replied, not raising his eyes and frowning, “I
am going to T.”
“Then I will come with you. You’ll take me, won’t you? Just let me get a
shawl.”
“It’s not a woman’s work,” Nejdanov said irritably with his eyes still
fixed on the floor.
“No, no! You do well to go, or Markelov would think you a coward ... but
I’m coming with you.”
“I am not a coward,” Nejdanov observed gloomily.
“I meant to say that he would have thought us both cowards. I am coming
with you.”
Mariana went into her own room to get a shawl, while Pavel gave an
inward ha, ha, and quickly vanished. He ran to warn Solomin.
Mariana had not yet appeared, when Solomin came into Nejdanov’s room.
The latter was standing with his face to the window, his forehead
resting on the palm of his hand and his elbow on the window-pane.
Solomin touched him on the shoulder. He turned around quickly;
dishevelled and unwashed, Nejdanov had a strange wild look. Solomin,
too, had changed during the last days. His face was yellow and drawn and
his upper front teeth showed slightly—he, too, seemed agitated as far
as it was possible for his well-balanced temperament to be so.
“Markelov could not control himself after all,” he began. “This may turn
out badly both for him and for others.”
“I want to go and see what’s going on there,” Nejdanov observed.
“And I too,” Mariana added as she appeared in the doorway.
Solomin turned to her quickly.
“I would not advise you to go, Mariana. You may give yourself away—and
us, without meaning to, and without the slightest necessity. Let
Nejdanov go and see how the land lies, if he wants to—and the sooner
he’s back the better! But why should you go?”
“I don’t want to be parted from him.”
“You will be in his way.”
Mariana looked at Nejdanov. He was standing motionless with a set sullen
expression on his face.
“But supposing there should be danger?” she asked.
Solomin smiled.
“Don’t be afraid... when there’s danger I will let you go.”
Mariana took off her shawl without a word and sat down. Solomin then
turned to Nejdanov.
“It would be a good thing for you to look about a little, Alexai. I dare
say they exaggerate. Only do be careful. But, however, you will not
be going alone. Come back as quickly as you can. Will you promise?
Nejdanov? Will you promise?”
“Yes.”
“For certain?”
“I suppose so, since everybody here obeys you, including Mariana.”
Nejdanov went out without saying goodbye. Pavel appeared from somewhere
out of the darkness and ran down the stairs before him with a great
clatter of his hob-nailed boots. Was _he_ then to accompany Nejdanov?
Solomin sat down beside Mariana.
“You heard Nejdanov’s last word?”
“Yes. He is annoyed that I listen to you more than to him. But it’s
quite true. I love _him_ and listen to you. He is dear to me... and you
are near to me.”
Solomin stroked her hand gently.
“This is a very unpleasant business,” he observed at last. “If Markelov
is mixed up in it then he’s a lost man.”
Mariana shuddered.
“Lost?”
“Yes. He doesn’t do things by halves—and won’t hide things for the sake
of others.”
“Lost!” Mariana whispered again as the tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Oh, Vassily Fedotitch! I feel so sorry for him. But what makes you
think that he won’t succeed? Why must he inevitably be lost?”
“Because in such enterprises the first always perish even if they come
off victorious. And in this thing not only the first and second, but the
tenth and twentieth will perish—”
“Then we shall never live to see it?”
“What you have in your mind—never. We shall never see it with our eyes;
with these living eyes of ours. But with our spiritual ... but that
is another matter. We may see it in that way now; there is nothing to
hinder us.”
“Then why do you—”
“What?”
“Why do you follow this road?”
“Because there is no other. I mean that my aims are the same as
Markelov’s—but our paths are different.”
“Poor Sergai Mihailovitch!” Mariana exclaimed sadly. Solomin passed his
hand cautiously over hers.
“There, there, we know nothing as yet. We’ll see what news Pavel brings
back. In our calling one must be brave. The English have a proverb
‘Never say die.’ A very good proverb, I think, much better than our
Russian, ‘When trouble knocks, open the gates wide!’ We mustn’t meet
trouble half way.”
Solomin stood up.
“And the place you were going to find me?” Mariana asked suddenly. The
tears were still shining on her cheeks, but there was no sadness in her
eyes. Solomin sat down again.
“Are you in such a great hurry to get away from here?”
“Oh, no! Only I wanted to do something useful.”
“You are useful here, Mariana. Don’t leave us yet, wait a little longer.
What is it?” Solomin asked of Tatiana who was just coming in.
“Some sort of female is asking for Alexai Dmitritch,” Tatiana replied,
laughing and gesticulating with her hands.
“I said that there was no such person living here, that we did not know
him at all, when she—”
“Who is she?”
“Why the female of course. She wrote her name on this piece of paper
and asked me to bring it here and let her in, saying that if Alexai
Dmitritch was really not at home, she could wait for him.”
On the paper was written in large letters “Mashurina.”
“Show her in,” Solomin said. “You don’t mind my asking her in here,
Mariana, do you? She is also one of us.”
“Not at all.”
A few moments later Mashurina appeared in the doorway, in the same dress
in which we saw her at the beginning of the first chapter.