“I know I am but a reed. But I beg you to allow me the superiority of the thinking reed over the unthinking forces that are about to crush him out of existence. Practical thinking in the last instance is but criticism. I may perhaps be allowed to express my wonder at this action of the police being delayed for two full days during which, of course, I could have
annihilated everything compromising by burning it–let us say–and getting rid of the very ashes, for that matter.”
“You are angry,” remarked the official, with an unutterable simplicity of tone and manner. “Is that reasonable? “
Razumov felt himself colouring with annoyance.
“I am reasonable. I am even–permit me to say– a thinker, though to be sure, this name nowadays seems to be the monopoly of hawkers of
revolutionary wares, the slaves of some French or German thought–devil knows what foreign notions. But I am not an intellectual mongrel. I think like a Russian. I think faithfully–and I take the liberty to call myself a thinker. It is not a forbidden word, as far as I know.”
” No. Why should it be a forbidden word?” Councillor Mikulin turned in his seat with crossed legs and resting his elbow on the table propped his head on the knuckles of a half- closed hand. Razumov noticed a thick forefinger clasped by a massive gold band set with a blood- red stone–a signet ring that, looking as if it could weigh half a pound, was an appropriate ornament for that ponderous man with the accurate middle-parting of glossy hair above a rugged Socratic forehead.
“Could it be a wig?” Razumov detected himself wondering with an unexpected detachment. His self-confidence was much shaken. He resolved to chatter no more. Reserve ! Reserve ! All he had to do was to keep the Ziemianitch episode secret with absolute determination, when the questions came. Keep Ziemianitch strictly out of all the answers.
Councillor Mikulin looked at him dimly. Razumov’s self-confidence abandoned him
completely. It seemed impossible to keep Ziemianitch out. Every question would lead to that, because, of course, there was nothing else. He made an effort to brace himself up. It was a failure. But Councillor Mikulin was surprisingly detached too.
“Why should it be forbidden?” he repeated. “I too consider myself a thinking man, I assure you. The principal condition is to think correctly. I admit it is difficult sometimes at first for a young man abandoned to himself–with his generous impulses undisciplined, so to speak- -at the mercy of every wild wind that blows. Religious belief, of course, is a great. . . .”
Councillor Mikulin glanced down his beard, and Razumov, whose tension was relaxed by that unexpected and discursive turn, murmured with gloomy discontent-
“That man, Haldin, believed in God.”
“Ah! You are aware,” breathed out Councillor Mikulin, making the point softly, as if with discretion, but making it nevertheless plainly enough, as if he too were put off his guard by Razumov’s remark. The young man preserved an impassive, moody countenance, though he
reproached himself bitterly for a pernicious fool, to have given thus an utterly false impression of intimacy. He kept his eyes on the floor. “I must positively hold my tongue unless I am obliged to speak,” he admonished himself. And at once against his will the question, “Hadn’t I better tell him everything?”
presented itself with such force that he had to bite his lower lip. Councillor Mikulin could not, however, have nourished any hope of confession. He went on–
“You tell me more than his judges were able to get out of him. He was judged by a commission of three. He would tell them absolutely
nothing. I have the report of the
interrogatories here, by me. After every question there stands “Refuses to answer– refuses to answer.’ It’s like that page after page. You see, I have been entrusted with some further investigations around and about this affair. He has left me nothing to begin my investigations on. A hardened miscreant. And so, you say, he believed in. . . .”
Again Councillor Mikulin glanced down his beard with a faint grimace; but he did not pause for long. Remarking with a shade of scorn that blasphemers also had that sort of belief, he concluded by supposing that Mr. Razumov had conversed frequently with Haldin on the subject.
“No,” said Razumov loudly, without looking up. “He talked and I listened. That is not a conversation.”
“Listening is a great art,” observed Mikulin parenthetically.
“And getting people to talk is another,” mumbled Razumov.
“Well, no–that is not very difficult,” Mikulin said innocently, “except, of course, in special cases. For instance, this Haldin. Nothing could induce him to talk. He was brought four times before the delegated judges. Four secret interrogatories–and even during the last, when your personality was put forward. . . .”
“My personality put forward?” repeated Razumov, raising his head brusquely. “I don’t
understand.” Councillor Mikulin turned squarely to the table, and taking up some sheets of grey foolscap dropped them one after another, retaining only the last in his hand. He held it before his eyes while speaking.
“It was–you see–judged necessary. In a case of that gravity no means of action upon the culprit should be neglected. You understand that yourself, I am certain.”
Razumov stared with enormous wide eyes at the side view of Councillor Mikulin, who now was not looking at him at all.
“So it was decided (I was consulted by General T- –) that a certain question should be put to the accused. But in deference to the earnest wishes of Prince K— your name has been kept out of the documents and even from the very knowledge of the judges themselves. Prince K—
recognized the propriety, the necessity of what we proposed to do, but he was concerned for your safety. Things do leak out–that we can’t deny. One cannot always answer for the discretion of inferior officials. There was, of course, the secretary of the special tribunal–one or two gendarmes in the room. Moreover, as I have said, in deference to Prince K— even the judges themselves were to be left in ignorance. The question ready framed was sent to them by General T— (I wrote it out with my own hand) with instructions to put it to the prisoner the very last of all. Here it is.”
Councillor Mikulin threw back his head into proper focus and went on reading monotonously: “Question–Has the man well known to you, in whose rooms you remained for several hours on Monday and on whose information you have been arrested–has he had any previous knowledge of your intention to commit a political murder?. . . Prisoner refuses to reply.
“Question repeated. Prisoner preserves the same stubborn silence.
“The venerable Chaplain of the Fortress being then admitted and exhorting the prisoner to repentance, entreating him also to atone for his crime by an unreserved and full confession which should help to liberate from the sin of
rebellion against the Divine laws and the sacred Majesty of the Ruler, our Christ-loving land– the prisoner opens his lips for the first time during this morning’s audience and in a loud, clear voice rejects the venerable Chaplain’s ministrations.
“At eleven o’clock the Court pronounces in summary form the death sentence.
“The execution is fixed for four o’clock in the afternoon, subject to further instructions from superior authorities.”
Councillor Mikulin dropped the page of foolscap, glanced down his beard, and turning to Razumov, added in an easy, explanatory tone–
“We saw no object in delaying the execution. The order to carry out the sentence was sent by telegraph at noon. I wrote out the telegram myself. He was hanged at four o’clock this afternoon.”
The definite information of Haldin’s death gave Razumov the feeling of general lassitude which follows a great exertion or a great excitement. He kept very still on the sofa, but a murmur escaped him-
“He had a belief in a future existence.”
Councillor Mikulin shrugged his shoulders slightly, and Razumov got up with an effort. There was nothing now to stay for in that room. Haldin had been hanged at four o’clock. There could be no doubt of that. He had, it seemed, entered upon his future existence, long boots, Astrakhan fur cap and all, down to the very leather strap round his waist. A flickering, vanishing sort of existence. It was not his soul, it was his mere phantom he had left behind on this earth–thought Razumov, smiling
caustically to himself while he crossed the room, utterly forgetful of where he was and of Councillor Mikulin’s existence. The official could have set a lot of bells ringing all over the building without leaving his chair. He let Razumov go quite up to the door before he spoke.
“Come, Kirylo Sidorovitch–what are you doing?”
Razumov turned his head and looked at him in silence. He was not in the least disconcerted. Councillor Mikulin’s arms were stretched out on the table before him and his body leaned forward a little with an effort of his dim gaze.
“Was I actually going to clear out like this?” Razumov wondered at himself with an impassive countenance. And he was aware of this
impassiveness concealing a lucid astonishment.
“Evidently I was going out if he had not spoken,” he thought. “What would he have done then? I must end this affair one way or
another. I must make him show his hand.”
For a moment longer he reflected behind the mask as it were, then let go the door-handle and came back to the middle of the room.
“I’ll tell you what you think,” he said explosively, but not raising his voice. “You think that you are dealing with a secret accomplice of that unhappy man. No, I do not know that he was unhappy. He did not tell me. He was a wretch from my point of view, because to keep alive a false idea is a greater crime than to kill a man. I suppose you will not deny that? I hated him! Visionaries work
everlasting evil on earth. Their Utopias inspire in the mass of mediocre minds a disgust of reality and a contempt for the secular logic of human development.”
Razumov shrugged his shoulders and stared. “What a tirade!” he thought. The silence and immobility of Councillor Mikulin impressed him. The bearded bureaucrat sat at his post,
mysteriously self-possessed like an idol with dim, unreadable eyes. Razumov’s voice changed involuntarily.
“If you were to ask me where is the necessity of my hate for such as Haldin, I would answer you– there is nothing sentimental in it. I did not hate him because he had committed the crime of murder. Abhorrence is not hate. I hated him simply because I am sane. It is in that
character that he outraged me. His death. . .”
Razumov felt his voice growing thick in his throat. The dimness of Councillor Mikulin’s eyes seemed to spread all over his face and made it indistinct to Razumov’s sight. He tried to disregard these phenomena.
“Indeed,” he pursued, pronouncing each word carefully, “what is his death to me? If he were lying here on the floor I could walk over his breast. . . . The fellow is a mere phantom. . . .”
Razumov’s voice died out very much against his will. Mikulin behind the table did not allow himself the slightest movement. The silence lasted for some little time before Razumov could go on again.
“He went about talking of me. Those
intellectual fellows sit in each other’s rooms and get drunk on foreign ideas in the same way young Guards’ officers treat each other with foreign wines. Merest debauchery. . . . Upon my Word,”–Razumov, enraged by a sudden
recollection of Ziemianitch, lowered his voice forcibly,–“upon my word, we Russians are a drunken lot. Intoxication of some sort we must have: to get ourselves wild with sorrow or maudlin with resignation; to lie inert like a log or set fire to the house. What is a sober man to do, I should like to know? To cut oneself entirely from one’s kind is impossible. To live in a desert one must be a saint. But if a drunken man runs out of the grog-shop, falls on your neck and kisses you on both cheeks because something about your appearance has taken his fancy, what then–kindly tell me? You may break, perhaps, a cudgel on his back and yet not succeed in beating him off. . . .”
Councillor Mikulin raised his hand and passed it down his face deliberately.
“That’s. . . of course,” he said in an undertone.
The quiet gravity of that gesture made Razumov pause. It was so unexpected, too. What did it mean? It had an alarming aloofness. Razumov remembered his intention of making him show his hand.
“I have said all this to Prince K—,” he began with assumed indifference, but lost it on seeing Councillor Mikulin’s slow nod of assent. “You know it? You’ve heard. . . . Then why should I be called here to be told of Haldin’s execution? Did you want to confront me with his silence now that the man is dead? What is his silence to me! This is incomprehensible. “You want in some way to shake my moral balance.”
“No. Not that,” murmured Councillor Mikulin, just audibly. “The service you have rendered is appreciated. . . .”
“Is it?” interrupted Razumov ironically.
“. . .and your position too.” Councillor Mikulin did not raise his voice. “But only think! You fall into Prince K—‘s study as if from the sky with your startling information. . . . You are studying yet, Mr. Razumov, but we are serving already–don’t forget that. . . . And naturally some curiosity was bound to. . . .”
Councillor Mikulin looked down his beard. Razumov’s lips trembled.
“An occurrence of that sort marks a man,” the homely murmur went on. “I admit I was curious to see you. General T— thought it would be useful, too. . . . Don’t think I am incapable of understanding your sentiments. When I was young like you I studied. . . .”
“Yes–you wished to see me,” said Razumov in a tone of profound distaste. “Naturally you have the right–I mean the power. It all amounts to the same thing. But it is perfectly useless, if you were to look at me and listen to me for a year. I begin to think there is something about me which people don’t seem able to make out. It’s unfortunate. I imagine, however, that Prince K— understands. He seemed to.”
Councillor Mikulin moved slightly and spoke.
“Prince K— is aware of everything that is being done, and I don’t mind informing you that he approved my intention of becoming personally acquainted with you.”
Razumov concealed an immense disappointment under the accents of railing surprise.
“So he is curious too!. . . Well–after all, Prince K— knows me very little. It is really very unfortunate for me, but–it is not exactly my fault.”
Councillor Mikulin raised a hasty deprecatory hand and inclined his head slightly over his shoulder.
“Now, Mr. Razumov–is it necessary to take it in that way? Everybody I am sure can. . . .”
He glanced rapidly down his beard, and when he looked up again there was for a moment an interested expression in his misty gaze. Razumov discouraged it with a cold, repellent smile.
“No. That’s of no importance to be sure–except that in respect of all this curiosity being aroused by a very simple matter. . . . What is to be done with it? It is unappeasable. I mean to say there is nothing to appease it with. I happen to have been born a Russian with
patriotic instincts–whether inherited or not I am not in a position to say.”
Razumov spoke consciously with elaborate steadiness.
“Yes, patriotic instincts developed by a faculty of independent thinking–of detached thinking. In that respect I am more free than any social democratic revolution could make me. It is more than probable that I don’t think exactly as you are thinking. Indeed, how could it be? You would think most likely at this moment that I am elaborately lying to cover up the track of my repentance.”
Razumov stopped. His heart had grown too big for his breast. Councillor Mikulin did not flinch.
“Why so?” he said simply. “I assisted personally at the search of your rooms. I looked through all the papers myself. I have been greatly impressed by a sort of political confession of faith. A very remarkable
document. Now may I ask for what purpose. . . .”
“To deceive the police naturally,” said Razumov savagely. . . . “What is all this mockery? Of course you can send me straight from this room to Siberia. That would be intelligible. To what is intelligible I can submit. But I protest against this comedy of persecution. The whole affair is becoming too comical altogether for my taste. A comedy of errors, phantoms, and suspicions. It’s positively indecent. . . .”
Councillor Mikulin turned an attentive ear. “Did you say phantoms?” he murmured.
“I could walk over dozens of them.” Razumov, with an impatient wave of his hand, went on headlong, “But, really, I must claim the right to be done once for all with that man. And in order to accomplish this I shall take the liberty. . . .”
Razumov on his side of the table bowed slightly to the seated bureaucrat.
“. . . To retire–simply to retire,” he finished with great resolution.
He walked to the door, thinking, “Now he must show his hand. He must ring and have me
arrested before I am out of the building, or he must let me go. And either way. . . .”
An unhurried voice said–
“Kirylo Sidorovitch.” Razumov at the door turned his head.
“To retire,” he repeated.
“Where to?” asked Councillor Mikulin softly.
PART SECOND
I
In the conduct of an invented story there are, no doubt, certain proprieties to be observed for the sake of clearness and effect. A man of imagination, however inexperienced in the art of narrative, has his instinct to guide him in the choice of his words, and in the development of the action. A grain of talent excuses many mistakes. But this is not a work of
imagination; I have no talent; my excuse for this undertaking lies not in its art, but in its artlessness. Aware of my limitations and strong in the sincerity of my purpose, I would not try (were I able) to invent anything. I push my scruples so far that I would not even invent a transition.
Dropping then Mr. Razumov’s record at the point where Councillor Mikulin’s question “Where to?” comes in with the force of an insoluble problem, I shall simply say that I made the acquaintance of these ladies about six months before that time. By “these ladies” I mean, of course, the mother and the sister of the unfortunate Haldin.
By what arguments he had induced his mother to sell their little property and go abroad for an indefinite time, I cannot tell precisely. I have an idea that Mrs. Haldin, at her son’s wish, would have set fire to her house and emigrated to the moon without any sign of surprise or apprehension; and that Miss Haldin– Nathalie, caressingly Natalka–would have given her assent to the scheme.
Their proud devotion to that young man became clear to me in a very short time. Following his directions they went straight to Switzerland–to Zurich–where they remained the best part of a year. From Zurich, which they did not like, they came to Geneva. A friend of mine in Lausanne, a lecturer in history at the
University (he had married a Russian lady, a distant connection of Mrs. Haldin’s), wrote to me suggesting I should call on these ladies. It was a very kindly meant business suggestion. Miss Haldin wished to go through a course of reading the best English authors with a
competent teacher.
Mrs. Haldin received me very kindly. Her bad French, of which she was smilingly conscious, did away with the formality of the first interview. She was a tall woman in a black silk dress. A wide brow, regular features, and delicately cut lips, testified to her past beauty. She sat upright in an easy chair and in a rather weak, gentle voice told me that her Natalka simply thirsted after knowledge. Her thin hands were lying on her lap, her facial immobility had in it something monachal. “In Russia,” she went on, “all knowledge was tainted with falsehood. Not chemistry and all that, but education generally,” she explained. The Government corrupted the teaching for its own purposes. Both her children felt that. Her Natalka had obtained a diploma of a Superior School for Women and her son was a student at the St. Petersburg University. He had a
brilliant intellect, a most noble unselfish nature, and he was the oracle of his comrades. Early next year, she hoped he would join them and they would then go to Italy together. In any other country but their own she would have been certain of a great future for a man with the extraordinary abilities and the lofty character of her son–but in Russia. . . .
The young lady sitting by the window turned her head and said–
“Come, mother. Even with us things change with years.”
Her voice was deep, almost harsh, and yet caressing in its harshness. She had a dark complexion, with red lips and a full figure. She gave the impression of strong vitality. The old lady sighed.
“You are both young–you two. It is easy for you to hope. But I, too, am not hopeless. Indeed, how could I be with a son like this.”
I addressed Miss Haldin, asking her what authors she wished to read. She directed upon me her grey eyes shaded by black eyelashes, and I became aware, notwithstanding my years, how attractive physically her personality could be to a man capable of appreciating in a woman something else than the mere grace of
femininity. Her glance was as direct and trustful as that of a young man yet unspoiled by the world’s wise lessons. And it was intrepid, but in this intrepidity there was nothing aggressive. A naive yet thoughtful assurance is a better definition. She had reflected already (in Russia the young begin to think early), but she had never known deception as yet because obviously she had never yet fallen under the sway of passion. She was–to look at her was enough–very capable of being roused by an idea or simply by a person. At least, so I judged with I believe an unbiassed mind; for clearly my person could not be the person–and as to my ideas!. . .
We became excellent friends in the course of our reading. It was very pleasant. Without fear of provoking a smile, I shall confess that I became very much attached to that young girl. At the end of four months I told her that now she could very well go on reading English by herself. It was time for the teacher to depart. My pupil looked unpleasantly surprised.
Mrs. Haldin, with her immobility of feature and kindly expression of the eyes, uttered from her armchair in her uncertain French, “_Mais l’ami reviendra._” And so it was settled. I returned- -not four times a week as before, but pretty frequently. In the autumn we made some short excursions together in company with other Russians. My friendship with these ladies gave me a standing in the Russian colony which otherwise I could not have had.
The day I saw in the papers the news of Mr. de P- –‘s assassination–it was a Sunday–I met the two ladies in the street and walked with them for some distance. Mrs. Haldin wore a heavy grey cloak, I remember, over her black silk dress, and her fine eyes met mine with a very quiet expression.
“We have been to the late service,” she said. “Natalka came with me. Her girl-friends, the students here, of course don’t. . . . With us in Russia the church is so identified with oppression, that it seems almost necessary when one wishes to be free in this life, to give up all hope of a future existence. But I cannot give up praying for my son.”
She added with a sort of stony grimness, colouring slightly, and in French, “_Ce n’est peut etre qu’une habitude._” (“It may be only habit.”)
Miss Haldin was carrying the prayer-book. She did not glance at her mother.
“You and Victor are both profound believers,” she said.
I communicated to them the news from their country which I had just read in a cafe. For a whole minute we walked together fairly briskly in silence. Then Mrs. Haldin murmured–
“There will be more trouble, more persecutions for this. They may be even closing the
University. There is neither peace nor rest in Russia for one but in the grave.
“Yes. The way is hard,” came from the daughter, looking straight before her at the Chain of Jura covered with snow, like a white wall closing the end of the street. “But concord is not so very far off.”
“That is what my children think,” observed Mrs. Haldin to me.
I did not conceal my feeling that these were strange times to talk of concord. Nathalie Haldin surprised me by saying, as if she had thought very much on the subject, that the occidentals did not understand the situation. She was very calm and youthfully superior.
“You think it is a class conflict, or a conflict of interests, as social contests are with you in Europe. But it is not that at all. It is something quite different.”
“It is quite possible that I don’t understand,” I admitted.
That propensity of lifting every problem from the plane of the understandable by means of some sort of mystic expression, is very Russian. I knew her well enough to have discovered her scorn for all the practical forms of political liberty known to the western world. I suppose one must be a Russian to understand Russian simplicity, a terrible corroding simplicity in which mystic phrases clothe a naive and hopeless cynicism. I think sometimes that the
psychological secret of the profound difference of that people consists in this, that they detest life, the irremediable life of the earth as it is, whereas we westerners cherish it with perhaps an equal exaggeration of its sentimental value. But this is a digression indeed. . . .
I helped these ladies into the tramcar and they asked me to call in the afternoon. At least Mrs. Haldin asked me as she climbed up, and her Natalka smiled down at the dense westerner indulgently from the rear platform of the moving car. The light of the clear wintry forenoon was softened in her grey eyes.
Mr. Razumov’s record, like the open book of fate, revives for me the memory of that day as something startlingly pitiless in its freedom from all forebodings. Victor Haldin was still with the living, but with the living whose only contact with life is the expectation of death. He must have been already referring to the last of his earthly affections, the hours of that obstinate silence, which for him was to be prolonged into eternity. That afternoon the ladies entertained a good many of their
compatriots–more than was usual for them to receive at one time; and the drawing-room on the ground floor of a large house on the Boulevard des Philosophes was very much crowded.
I outstayed everybody; and when I rose Miss Haldin stood up too. I took her hand and was moved to revert to that morning’s conversation in the street.
“Admitting that we occidentals do not understand the character of your. . . .” I began.
It was as if she had been prepared for me by some mysterious fore-knowledge. She checked me gently–
“Their impulses–their. . . ” she sought the proper expression and found it, but in French. . .” their _mouvements d’ame._”
Her voice was not much above a whisper.
“Very well,” I said. ” But still we are looking at a conflict. You say it is not a conflict of classes and not a conflict of interests. Suppose I admitted that. Are antagonistic ideas then to be reconciled more easily–can they be cemented with blood and violence into that concord which you proclaim to be so near?”
She looked at me searchingly with her clear grey eyes, without answering my reasonable question– my obvious, my unanswerable question.
“It is inconceivable,” I added, with something like annoyance.
“Everything is inconceivable,” she said. “The whole world is inconceivable to the strict logic of ideas. And yet the world exists to our senses, and we exist in it. There must be a necessity superior to our conceptions. It is a very miserable and a very false thing to belong to the majority. We Russians shall find some better form of national freedom than an
artificial conflict of parties–which is wrong because it is a conflict and contemptible because it is artificial. It is left for us Russians to discover a better way.”
Mrs. Haldin had been looking out of the window. She turned upon me the almost lifeless beauty of her face, and the living benign glance of her big dark eyes.
“That’s what my children think,” she declared.
“I suppose,” I addressed Miss Haldin, “that you will be shocked if I tell you that I haven’t understood–I won’t say a single word; I’ve understood all the words. . . . But what can be this era of disembodied concord you are looking forward to. Life is a thing of form. It has its plastic shape and a definite intellectual aspect. The most idealistic conceptions of love and forbearance must be clothed in flesh as it were before they can be made understandable.”
I took my leave of Mrs. Haldin, whose beautiful lips never stirred. She smiled with her eyes only. Nathalie Haldin went with me as far as the door, very amiable.
“Mother imagines that I am the slavish echo of my brother Victor. It is not so. He
understands me better than I can understand him. When he joins us and you come to know him you will see what an exceptional soul it is.” She paused. “He is not a strong man in the
conventional sense, you know,” she added. “But his character is without a flaw”
“I believe that it will not be difficult for me to make friends with your brother Victor.”
“Don’t expect to understand him quite,” she said, a little maliciously. “He is not at all– at all–western at bottom.”
And on this unnecessary warning I left the room with another bow in the doorway to Mrs. Haldin in her armchair by the window. The shadow of autocracy all unperceived by me had already fallen upon the Boulevard des Philosophes, in the free, independent and democratic city of Geneva, where there is a quarter called “La Petite Russie.” Whenever two Russians come together, the shadow of autocracy is with them, tinging their thoughts, their views, their most intimate feelings, their private life, their public utterances–haunting the secret of their silences.
What struck me next in the course of a week or so was the silence of these ladies. I used to meet them walking in the public garden near the University. They greeted me with their usual friendliness, but I could not help noticing their taciturnity. By that time it was
generally known that the assassin of M. de P— had been caught, judged, and executed. So much had been declared officially to the news agencies. But for the world at large he
remained anonymous. The official secrecy had withheld his name from the public. I really cannot imagine for what reason.
One day I saw Miss Haldin walking alone in the main valley of the Bastions under the naked trees.
“Mother is not very well,” she explained.
As Mrs.Haldin had, it seemed, never had a day’s illness in her life, this indisposition was disquieting. It was nothing definite, too.
“I think she is fretting because we have not heard from my brother for rather a long time.”
“No news–good news,” I said cheerfully, and we began to walk slowly side by side.
“Not in Russia,” she breathed out so low that I only just caught the words. I looked at her with more attention.
“You too are anxious? “
She admitted after a moment of hesitation that she was.
“It is really such a long time since we heard. . . .”
And before I could offer the usual banal suggestions she confided in me.
“Oh! But it is much worse than that. I wrote to a family we know in Petersburg. They had not seen him for more than a month. They thought he was already with us. They were even offended a little that he should have left Petersburg without calling on them. The husband of the lady went at once to his lodgings. Victor had left there and they did not know his address.”
I remember her catching her breath rather pitifully. Her brother had not been seen at lectures for a very long time either. He only turned up now and then at the University gate to ask the porter for his letters. And the
gentleman friend was told that the student Haldin did not come to claim the last two letters for him. But the police came to inquire if the student Haldin ever received any
correspondence at the University and took them away.
“My two last letters,” she said.
We faced each other. A few snow-flakes fluttered under the naked boughs. The sky was dark.
“What do you think could have happened?” I asked.
Her shoulders moved slightly.
“One can never tell–in Russia.”
I saw then the shadow of autocracy lying upon Russian lives in their submission or their revolt. I saw it touch her handsome open face nestled in a fur collar and darken her clear eyes that shone upon me brilliantly grey in the murky light of a beclouded, inclement afternoon.
“Let us move on,” she said.” It is cold standing–to-day.”
She shuddered a little and stamped her little feet. We moved briskly to the end of the alley and back to the great gates of the garden.
“Have you told your mother? ” I ventured to ask.
“No. Not yet. I came out to walk off the impression of this letter.”
I heard a rustle of paper somewhere. It came from her muff. She had the letter with her in there.
“What is it that you are afraid of?” I asked.
To us Europeans of the West, all ideas of political plots and conspiracies seem childish, crude inventions for the theatre or a novel. I did not like to be more definite in my inquiry.
“For us–for my mother specially, what I am afraid of is incertitude. People do disappear. Yes, they do disappear. I leave you to imagine what it is–the cruelty of the dumb weeks– months–years! This friend of ours has
abandoned his inquiries when he heard of the police getting hold of the letters. I suppose he was afraid of compromising himself. He has a wife and children–and why should he, after all. . . . Moreover, he is without influential connections and not rich. What could he do?. . . Yes, I am afraid of silence–for my poor mother. She won’t be able to bear it. For my brother I am afraid of. . .” she became almost indistinct, “of anything.”
We were now near the gate opposite the theatre. She raised her voice.
“But lost people do turn up even in Russia. Do you know what my last hope is? Perhaps the next thing we know, we shall see him walking into our rooms.”
I raised my hat and she passed out of the gardens, graceful and strong, after a slight movement of the head to me, her hands in the muff, crumpling the cruel Petersburg letter.
On returning home I opened the newspaper I receive from London, and glancing down the correspondence from Russia–not the telegrams but the correspondence–the first thing that caught my eye was the name of Haldin. Mr. de P– -‘s death was no longer an actuality, but the enterprising correspondent was proud of having ferreted out some unofficial information about that fact of modern history. He had got hold of Haldin’s name, and had picked up the story of the midnight arrest in the street. But the sensation from a journalistic point of view was already well in the past. He did not allot to it more than twenty lines out of a full column. It was quite enough to give me a sleepless night. I perceived that it would have been a sort of treason to let Miss Haldin come without preparation upon that journalistic discovery which would infallibly be reproduced on the morrow by French and Swiss newspapers. I had a very bad time of it till the morning, wakeful with nervous worry and night-marish with the feeling of being mixed up with something theatrical and morbidly affected. The
incongruity of such a complication in those two women’s lives was sensible to me all night in the form of absolute anguish. It seemed due to their refined simplicity that it should remain concealed from them for ever. Arriving at an unconscionably early hour at the door of their apartment, I felt as if I were about to commit an act of vandalism. . . .
The middle-aged servant woman led me into the drawing-room where there was a duster on a chair and a broom leaning against the centre table. The motes danced in the sunshine; I regretted I had not written a letter instead of coming myself, and was thankful for the brightness of the day. Miss Haldin in a plain black dress came lightly out of her mother’s room with a fixed uncertain smile on her lips.
I pulled the paper out of my pocket. I did not imagine that a number of the _Standard_ could have the effect of Medusa’s head. Her face went stony in a moment–her eyes–her limbs. The most terrible thing was that being stony she remained alive. One was conscious of her palpitating heart. I hope she forgave me the delay of my clumsy circumlocution. It was not very prolonged; she could not have kept so still from head to foot for more than a second or two; and then I heard her draw a breath. As if the shock had paralysed her moral resistance, and affected the firmness of her muscles, the contours of her face seemed to have given way. She was frightfully altered. She looked aged– ruined. But only for a moment. She said with decision–
“I am going to tell my mother at once.”
“Would that be safe in her state?” I objected.
“What can be worse than the state she has been in for the last month? We understand this in another way. The crime is not at his door. Don’t imagine I am defending him before you.”
She went to the bedroom door, then came back to ask me in a low murmur not to go till she returned. For twenty interminable minutes not a sound reached me. At last Miss Haldin came out and walked across the room with her quick light step. When she reached the armchair she dropped into it heavily as if completely exhausted.
Mrs. Haldin, she told me, had not shed a tear. She was sitting up in bed, and her immobility, her silence, were very alarming. At last she lay down gently and had motioned her daughter away.
“She will call me in presently,” added Miss Haldin. “I left a bell near the bed.”
I confess that my very real sympathy had no standpoint. The Western readers for whom this story is written will understand what I mean. It was, if I may say so, the want of experience. Death is a remorseless spoliator. The anguish of irreparable loss is familiar to us all. There is no life so lonely as to be safe against that experience. But the grief I had brought to these two ladies had gruesome associations. It had the associations of bombs and gallows–a lurid, Russian colouring which made the
complexion of my sympathy uncertain.
I was grateful to Miss Haldin for not embarrassing me by an outward display of deep feeling. I admired her for that wonderful command over herself, even while I was a little frightened at it. It was the stillness of a great tension. What if it should suddenly snap? Even the door of Mrs. Haldin’s room, with the old mother alone in there, had a rather awful aspect.
Nathalie Haldin murmured sadly–
“I suppose you are wondering what my feelings are?”
Essentially that was true. It was that very wonder which unsettled my sympathy of a dense Occidental. I could get hold of nothing but of some commonplace phrases, those futile phrases that give the measure of our impotence before each other’s trials I mumbled something to the effect that, for the young, life held its hopes and compensations. It held duties too–but of that I was certain it was not necessary to remind her.
She had a handkerchief in her hands and pulled at it nervously.
“I am not likely to forget my mother,” she said. “We used to be three. Now we are two–two women. She’s not so very old. She may live quite a long time yet. What have we to look for in the future ? For what hope and what
consolation?”
“You must take a wider view,” I said resolutely, thinking that with this exceptional creature this was the right note to strike. She looked at me steadily for a moment, and then the tears she had been keeping down flowed unrestrained. She jumped up and stood in the window with her back to me.
I slipped away without attempting even to approach her. Next day I was told at the door that Mrs. Haldin was better. The middle-aged servant remarked that a lot of people–Russians– had called that day, but Miss Haldin bad not seen anybody. A fortnight later, when making my daily call, I was asked in and found Mrs. Haldin sitting in her usual place by the window.
At first one would have thought that nothing was changed. I saw across the room the familiar profile, a little sharper in outline and overspread by a uniform pallor as might have been expected in an invalid. But no disease could have accounted for the change in her black eyes, smiling no longer with gentle irony. She raised them as she gave me her hand. I observed the three weeks’ old number of the _Standard_ folded with the correspondence from Russia uppermost, lying on a little table by the side of the armchair. Mrs. Haldin’s voice was startlingly weak and colourless. Her first words to me framed a question.
“Has there been anything more in papers?”
I released her long emaciated hand, shook my head negatively, and sat down.
“The English press is wonderful. Nothing can be kept secret from it, and all the world must hear. Only our Russian news is not always easy to understand. Not always easy. . . . But English mothers do not look for news like that. . . .”
She laid her hand on the newspaper and took it away again. I said–
“We too have had tragic times in our history.”
“A long time ago. A very long time ago.”
“Yes.”
“There are nations that have made their bargain with fate,” said Miss Haldin, who had approached us. “We need not envy them.”
“Why this scorn?” I asked gently. “It may be that our bargain was not a very lofty one. But the terms men and nations obtain from Fate are hallowed by the price.”
Mrs. Haldin turned her head away and looked out of the window for a time, with that new, sombre, extinct gaze of her sunken eyes which so completely made another woman of her.
“That Englishman, this correspondent,” she addressed me suddenly, “do you think it is possible that he knew my son?”
To this strange question I could only say that it was possible of course. She saw my surprise.
“If one knew what sort of man he was one could perhaps write to him,” she murmured.
“Mother thinks,” explained Miss Haldin, standing between us, with one hand resting on the back of my chair, “that my poor brother perhaps did not try to save himself.”
I looked up at Miss Haldin in sympathetic consternation, but Miss Haldin was looking down calmly at her mother. The latter said–
“We do not know the address of any of his friends. Indeed, we know nothing of his
Petersburg comrades. He had a multitude of young friends, only he never spoke much of them. One could guess that they were his disciples and that they idolized him. But he was so modest. One would think that with so many devoted. . . .”
She averted her head again and looked down the Boulevard des Philosophes, a singularly arid and dusty thoroughfare, where nothing could be seen at the moment but two dogs, a little girl in a pinafore hopping on one leg, and in the distance a workman wheeling a bicycle.
“Even amongst the Apostles of Christ there was found a Judas,” she whispered as if to herself, but with the evident intention to be heard by me.
The Russian visitors assembled in little knots, conversed amongst themselves meantime, in low murmurs, and with brief glances in our
direction. It was a great contrast to the usual loud volubility of these gatherings. Miss Haldin followed me into the ante-room.
“People will come,” she said. “We cannot shut the door in their faces.”
While I was putting on my overcoat she began to talk to me of her mother. Poor Mrs. Haldin was fretting after more news. She wanted to go on hearing about her unfortunate son. She could not make up her mind to abandon him quietly to the dumb unknown. She would persist in pursuing him in there through the long days of motionless silence face to face with the empty Boulevard des Philosophes. She could not understand why he had not escaped–as so many other
revolutionists and conspirators had managed to escape in other instances of that kind. It was really inconceivable that the means of secret revolutionary organisations should have failed so inexcusably to preserve her son. But in reality the inconceivable that staggered her mind was nothing but the cruel audacity of Death passing over her head to strike at that young and precious heart.
Miss Haldin mechanically, with an absorbed look, handed me my hat. I understood from her that the poor woman was possessed by the sombre and simple idea that her son must have perished because he did not want to be saved. It could not have been that he despaired of his country’s future. That was impossible. Was it possible that his mother and sister had not known how to merit his confidence; and that, after having done what he was compelled to do, his spirit became crushed by an intolerable doubt, his mind distracted by a sudden mistrust.
I was very much shocked by this piece of ingenuity.
“Our three lives were like that!” Miss Haldin twined the fingers of both her hands together in demonstration, then separated them slowly, looking straight into my face. “That’s what poor mother found to torment herself and me with, for all the years to come,” added the strange girl. At that moment her indefinable charm was revealed to me in the conjunction of passion and stoicism. I imagined what her life was likely to be by the side of Mrs. Haldin’s terrible immobility, inhabited by that fixed idea. But my concern was reduced to silence by my ignorance of her modes of feeling.
Difference of nationality is a terrible obstacle for our complex Western natures. But Miss Haldin probably was too simple to suspect my embarrassment. She did not wait for me to say anything, but as if reading my thoughts on my face she went on courageously–
“At first poor mother went numb, as our peasants say; then she began to think and she will go on now thinking and thinking in that unfortunate strain. You see yourself how cruel that is. . . .”
I never spoke with greater sincerity than when I agreed with her that it would be deplorable in the highest degree. She took an anxious breath.
“But all these strange details in the English paper,” she exclaimed suddenly. “What is the meaning of them? I suppose they are true? But is it not terrible that my poor brother should be caught wandering alone, as if in despair, about the streets at night. . . .”
We stood so close to each other in the dark anteroom that I could see her biting her lower lip to suppress a dry sob. After a short pause she said–
“I suggested to mother that he may have been betrayed by some false friend or simply by some cowardly creature. It may be easier for her to believe that.”
I understood now the poor woman’s whispered allusion to Judas.
“It may be easier,” I admitted, admiring inwardly the directness and the subtlety of the girl’s outlook. She was dealing with life as it was made for her by the political conditions of her country. She faced cruel realities, not morbid imaginings of her own making. I could not defend myself from a certain feeling of respect when she added simply–
“Time they say can soften every sort of bitterness. But I cannot believe that it has any power over remorse. It is better that mother should think some person guilty of Victor’s death, than that she should connect it with a weakness of her son or a shortcoming of her own.”
“But you, yourself, don’t suppose that. . . .” I began.
She compressed her lips and shook her head. She harboured no evil thoughts against any one, she declared–and perhaps nothing that happened was unnecessary. On these words, pronounced low and sounding mysterious in the half obscurity of the ante-room, we parted with an expressive and warm handshake. The grip of her strong, shapely hand had a seductive frankness, a sort of exquisite virility. I do not know why she should have felt so friendly to me. It may be that she thought I understood her much better than I was able to do. The most precise of her sayings seemed always to me to have enigmatical
prolongations vanishing somewhere beyond my reach. I am reduced to suppose that she
appreciated my attention and my silence. The attention she could see was quite sincere, so that the silence could not be suspected of coldness. It seemed to satisfy her. And it is to be noted that if she confided in me it was clearly not with the expectation of receiving advice, for which, indeed she never asked.
II
Our daily relations were interrupted at this period for something like a fortnight. I had to absent myself unexpectedly from Geneva. On my return I lost no time in directing my steps up the Boulevard des Philosophes.
Through the open door of the drawing-room I was annoyed to hear a visitor holding forth steadily in an unctuous deep voice.
Mrs. Haldin’s armchair by the window stood empty. On the sofa, Nathalie Haldin raised her charming grey eyes in a glance of greeting accompanied by the merest hint of a welcoming smile. But she made no movement. With her strong white hands lying inverted in the lap of her mourning dress she faced a man who presented to me a robust back covered with black
broadcloth, and well in keeping with the deep voice. He turned his head sharply over his shoulder, but only for a moment.
“Ah! your English friend. I know. I know. That’s nothing.”
He wore spectacles with smoked glasses, a tall silk hat stood on the floor by the side of his chair. Flourishing slightly a big soft hand he went on with his discourse, precipitating his delivery a little more.
“I have never changed the faith I held while wandering in the forests and bogs of Siberia. It sustained me then–it sustains me now. The great Powers of Europe are bound to disappear– and the cause of their collapse will be very simple. They will exhaust themselves struggling against their proletariat. In Russia it is different. In Russia we have no classes to combat each other, one holding the power of wealth, and the other mighty with the strength of numbers. We have only an unclean bureaucracy in the face of a people as great and as
incorruptible as the ocean. No, we have no classes. But we have the Russian woman. The admirable Russian woman! I receive most
remarkable letters signed by women. So elevated in tone, so courageous, breathing such a noble ardour of service! The greatest part of our hopes rests on women. I behold their thirst for knowledge. It is admirable. Look how they absorb, how they are making it their own. It is miraculous. But what is knowledge? . . . I understand that you have not been studying anything especially–medicine for instance. No? That’s right. Had I been honoured by being asked to advise you on the use of your time when you arrived here I would have been strongly opposed to such a course. Knowledge in itself is mere dross.”
He had one of those bearded Russian faces without shape, a mere appearance of flesh and hair with not a single feature having any sort of character. His eyes being hidden by the dark glasses there was an utter absence of all expression. I knew him by sight. He was a Russian refugee of mark. All Geneva knew his burly black-coated figure. At one time all Europe was aware of the story of his life written by himself and translated into seven or more languages. In his youth he had led an idle, dissolute life. Then a society girl he was about to marry died suddenly and thereupon he abandoned the world of fashion, and began to conspire in a spirit of repentance, and, after that, his native autocracy took good care that the usual things should happen to him. He was imprisoned in fortresses, beaten within an inch of his life, and condemned to work in mines, with common criminals. The great success of his book, however, was the chain.
I do not remember now the details of the weight and length of the fetters riveted on his limbs by an “Administrative” order, but it was in the number of pounds and the thickness of links an appalling assertion of the divine right of autocracy. Appalling and futile too, because this big man managed to carry off that simple engine of government with him into the woods. The sensational clink of these fetters is heard all through the chapters describing his escape– a subject of wonder to two continents. He had begun by concealing himself successfully from his guard in a hole on a river bank. It was the end of the day; with infinite labour he managed to free one of his legs. Meantime night fell. He was going to begin on his other leg when he was overtaken by a terrible misfortune. He dropped his file.
All this is precise yet symbolic; and the file had its pathetic history. It was given to him unexpectedly one evening, by a quiet, pale-faced girl. The poor creature had come out to the mines to join one of his fellow convicts, a delicate young man, a mechanic and a social democrat, with broad cheekbones and large staring eyes. She had worked her way across half Russia and nearly the whole of Siberia to be near him, and, as it seems, with the hope of helping him to escape. But she arrived too late. Her lover had died only a week before.
Through that obscure episode, as he says, in the history of ideas in Russia, the file came into his hands, and inspired him with an ardent resolution to regain his liberty. When it slipped through his fingers it was as if it had gone straight into the earth. He could by no manner of means put his hand on it again in the dark. He groped systematically in the loose earth, in the mud, in the water; the night was passing meantime, the precious night on which he counted to get away into the forests, his only chance of escape. For a moment he was tempted by despair to give up; but recalling the quiet, sad face of the heroic girl, he felt profoundly ashamed of his weakness. She had selected him for the gift of liberty and he must show himself worthy of the favour conferred by her feminine, indomitable soul. It appeared to be a sacred trust. To fail would have been a sort of treason against the sacredness of self-sacrifice and womanly love.
There are in his book whole pages of self- analysis whence emerges like a white figure from a dark confused sea the conviction of woman’s spiritual superiority–his new faith confessed since in several volumes. His first tribute to it, the great act of his conversion, was his extraordinary existence in the endless forests of the Okhotsk Province, with the loose end of the chain wound about his waist. A strip torn off his convict shirt secured the end firmly. Other strips fastened it at intervals up his left leg to deaden the clanking and to prevent the slack links from getting hooked in the bushes. He became very fierce. He developed an unsuspected genius for the arts of a wild and hunted existence. He learned to creep into villages without betraying his presence by anything more than an occasional faint jingle. He broke into outhouses with an axe he managed to purloin in a wood-cutters’ camp. In the deserted tracts of country he lived on wild berries and hunted for honey. His clothing dropped off him gradually. His naked tawny figure glimpsed vaguely through the bushes with a cloud of mosquitoes and flies hovering about the shaggy head, spread tales of terror through whole districts. His temper grew savage as the days went by, and he was glad to discover that that there was so much of a brute in him. He had nothing else to put his trust in. For it was as though there had been two human beings indissolubly joined in that enterprise. The civilized man, the enthusiast of advanced humanitarian ideals thirsting for the triumph of spiritual love and political liberty; and the stealthy, primeval savage, pitilessly cunning in the preservation of his freedom from day to day, like a tracked wild beast.
The wild beast was making its way instinctively eastward to the Pacific coast, and the civilised humanitarian in fearful anxious dependence watched the proceedings with awe. Through all these weeks he could never make up his mind to appeal to human compassion. In the wary
primeval savage this shyness might have been natural, but the other too, the civilized creature, the thinker, the escaping “political” had developed an absurd form of morbid
pessimism, a form of temporary insanity, originating perhaps in the physical worry and discomfort of the chain. These links, he fancied, made him odious to the rest of mankind. It was a repugnant and suggestive load. Nobody could feel any pity at the disgusting sight of a man escaping with a broken chain. His
imagination became affected by his fetters in a precise, matter-of-fact manner. It seemed to him impossible that people could resist the temptation of fastening the loose end to a staple in the wall while they went for the nearest police official. Crouching in holes or hidden in thickets, he had tried to read the faces of unsuspecting free settlers working in the clearings or passing along the paths within a foot or two of his eyes. His feeling was that no man on earth could be trusted with the temptation of the chain.
One day, however, he chanced to come upon a solitary woman. It was on an open slope of rough grass outside the forest. She sat on the bank of a narrow stream; she had a red
handkerchief on her head and a small basket was lying on the ground near her hand. At a little distance could be seen a cluster of log cabins, with a water-mill over a dammed pool shaded by birch trees and looking bright as glass in the twilight. He approached her silently, his hatchet stuck in his iron belt, a thick cudgel in his hand; there were leaves and bits of twig in his tangled hair, in his matted beard; bunches of rags he had wound round the links fluttered from his waist. A faint clink of his fetters made the woman turn her head. Too terrified by this savage apparition to jump up or even to scream, she was yet too stout-hearted to faint. . . . Expecting nothing less than to be murdered on the spot she covered her eyes with her hands to avoid the sight of the descending axe. When at last she found courage to look again, she saw the shaggy wild man sitting on the bank six feet away from her. His thin, sinewy arms hugged his naked legs; the long beard covered the knees on which he rested his chin; all these clasped, folded limbs, the bare shoulders, the wild head with red staring eyes, shook and trembled violently while the bestial creature was making efforts to speak. It was six weeks since he had heard the sound of his own voice. It seemed as though he had lost the faculty of speech. He had become a dumb and despairing brute, till the woman’s sudden, unexpected cry of profound pity, the insight of her feminine compassion discovering the complex misery of the man under the terrifying aspect of the monster, restored him to the ranks of humanity. This point of view is presented in his book, with a very effective eloquence. She ended, he says, by shedding tears over him, sacred, redeeming tears, while he also wept with joy in the manner of a converted sinner. Directing him to hide in the bushes and wait patiently (a police patrol was expected in the Settlement) she went away towards the houses, promising to return at night.
As if providentially appointed to be the newly wedded wife of the village blacksmith, the woman persuaded her husband to come out with her, bringing some tools of his trade, a hammer, a chisel, a small anvil. . . . “My fetters”–the book says–” were struck off on the banks of the stream, in the starlight of a calm night by an athletic, taciturn young man of the people, kneeling at my feet, while the woman like a liberating genius stood by with clasped hands.” Obviously a symbolic couple. At the same time they furnished his regained humanity with some decent clothing, and put heart into the new man by the information that the seacoast of the Pacific was only a very few miles away. It could be seen, in fact, from the top of the next ridge. . . .
The rest of his escape does not lend itself to mystic treatment and symbolic interpretation. He ended by finding his way to the West by the Suez Canal route in the usual manner. Reaching the shores of South Europe he sat down to write his autobiography–the great literary success of its year. This book was followed by other books written with the declared purpose of elevating humanity. In these works he preached generally the cult of the woman. For his own part he practised it under the rites of special devotion to the transcendental merits of a certain Madame de S—, a lady of advanced views, no longer very young, once upon a time the intriguing wife of a now dead and forgotten diplomat. Her loud pretensions to be one of the leaders of modern thought and of modern sentiment, she sheltered (like Voltaire and Mme. de Stael) on the republican territory of Geneva. Driving through the streets in her big landau she exhibited to the indifference of the natives and the stares of the tourists a long-waisted, youthful figure of hieratic stiffness, with a pair of big gleaming eyes, rolling restlessly behind a short veil of black lace, which, coming down no further than her vividly red lips, resembled a mask. Usually the “heroic fugitive” (this name was bestowed upon him in a review of the English edition of his book)–the ” heroic fugitive ” accompanied her, sitting, portentously bearded and darkly bespectacled, not by her side, but opposite her, with his back to the horses. Thus, facing each other, with no one else in the roomy carriage, their airings suggested a conscious public manifestation. Or it may have been unconscious. Russian simplicity often marches innocently on the edge of cynicism for some lofty purpose. But it is a vain enterprise for sophisticated Europe to try and understand these doings. Considering the air of gravity extending even to the physiognomy of the coachman and the action of the showy horses, this quaint display might have possessed a mystic significance, but to the corrupt
frivolity of a Western mind, like my own, it seemed hardly decent.
However, it is not becoming for an obscure teacher of languages to criticize a “heroic fugitive” of worldwide celebrity. I was aware from hearsay that he was an industrious busy- body, hunting up his compatriots in hotels, in private lodgings, and–I was told–conferring upon them the honour of his notice in public gardens when a suitable opening presented itself. I was under the impression that after a visit or two, several months before, he had given up the ladies Haldin–no doubt
reluctantly, for there could be no question of his being a determined person. It was perhaps to be expected that he should reappear again on this terrible occasion, as a Russian and a revolutionist, to say the right thing, to strike the true, perhaps a comforting, note. But I did not like to see him sitting there. I trust that an unbecoming jealousy of my privileged position had nothing to do with it. I made no claim to a special standing for my silent friendship. Removed by the difference of age and nationality as if into the sphere of another existence, I produced, even upon myself, the effect of a dumb helpless ghost, of an anxious immaterial thing that could only hover about without the power to protect or guide by as much as a whisper. Since Miss Haldin with her sure instinct had refrained from introducing me to the burly celebrity, I would have retired quietly and returned later on, had I not met a peculiar expression in her eyes which I interpreted as a request to stay, with the view, perhaps, of shortening an unwelcome visit.
He picked up his hat, but only to deposit it on his knees.
“We shall meet again, Natalia Victorovna. To- day I have called only to mark those feelings towards your honoured mother and yourself, the nature of which you cannot doubt. I needed no urging, but Eleanor–Madame de S— herself has in a way sent me. She extends to you the hand of feminine fellowship. There is positively in all the range of human sentiments no joy and no sorrow that woman cannot understand, elevate, and spiritualize by her interpretation. That young man newly arrived from St. Petersburg, I have mentioned to you, is already under the charm.”
At this point Miss Haldin got up abruptly. I was glad. He did not evidently expect anything so decisive and, at first, throwing his head back, he tilted up his dark glasses with bland curiosity. At last, recollecting himself, he stood up hastily, seizing his hat off his knees with great adroitness.
“How is it, Natalia Victorovna, that you have kept aloof so long, from what after all is–let disparaging tongues say what they like–a unique centre of intellectual freedom and of effort to shape a high conception of our future? In the case of your honoured mother I understand in a measure. At her age new ideas–new faces are not perhaps. . . . But you! Was it mistrust– or indifference? You must come out of your reserve. We Russians have no right to be reserved with each other. In our circumstances it is almost a crime against humanity. The luxury of private grief is not for us. Nowadays the devil is not combated by prayers and fasting. And what is fasting after all but starvation. You must not starve yourself, Natalia Victorovna. Strength is what we want. Spiritual strength, I mean. As to the other kind, what could withstand us Russians if we only put it forth? Sin is different in our day, and the way of salvation for pure souls is different too. It is no longer to be found in monasteries but in the world, in the. . . .”
The deep sound seemed to rise from under the floor, and one felt steeped in it to the lips. Miss Haldin’s interruption resembled the effort of a drowning person to keep above water. She struck in with an accent of impatience–
“But, Peter Ivanovitch, I don’t mean to retire into a monastery. Who would look for salvation there?”
“I spoke figuratively,” he boomed.
“Well, then, I am speaking figuratively too. But sorrow is sorrow and pain is pain in the old way. They make their demands upon people. One has got to face them the best way one can. I know that the blow which has fallen upon us so unexpectedly is only an episode in the fate of a people. You may rest assured that I don’t forget that. But just now I have to think of my mother. How can you expect me to leave her to herself. . . ?”
“That is putting it in a very crude way,” he protested in his great effortless voice.
Miss Haldin did not wait for the vibration to die out.
“And run about visiting amongst a lot of strange people. The idea is distasteful for me; and I do not know what else you may mean?”
He towered before her, enormous, deferential, cropped as close as a convict and this big pinkish poll evoked for me the vision of a wild head with matted locks peering through parted bushes, glimpses of naked, tawny limbs slinking behind the masses of sodden foliage under a cloud of flies and mosquitoes. It was an involuntary tribute to the vigour of his writing. Nobody could doubt that he had
wandered in Siberian forests, naked and girt with a chain. The black broadcloth coat
invested his person with a character of austere decency–something recalling a missionary.
“Do you know what I want, Natalia Victorovna?” he uttered solemnly. “I want you to be a fanatic.”
“A fanatic?”
“Yes. Faith alone won’t do.”
His voice dropped to a still lower tone. He raised for a moment one thick arm; the other remained hanging down against his thigh, with the fragile silk hat at the end.
“I shall tell you now something which I entreat you to ponder over carefully. Listen, we need a force that would move heaven and earth–nothing less.”
The profound, subterranean note of this “nothing less” made one shudder, almost, like the deep muttering of wind in the pipes of an organ.
“And are we to find that force in the salon of Madame de S—? Excuse me, Peter Ivanovitch, if I permit myself to doubt it. Is not that lady a woman of the great world, an aristocrat?”
“Prejudice!” he cried. “You astonish me. And suppose she was all that! She is also a woman of flesh and blood. There is always something to weigh down the spiritual side in all of us. But to make of it a reproach is what I did not expect from you. No! I did not expect that. One would think you have listened to some malevolent scandal.”
“I have heard no gossip, I assure you. In our province how could we? But the world speaks of her. What can there be in common in a lady of that sort and an obscure country girl like me?”
“She is a perpetual manifestation of a noble and peerless spirit,” he broke in. “Her charm–no, I shall not speak of her charm. But, of course, everybody who approaches her falls under the spell. . . . Contradictions vanish, trouble falls away from one. . . . Unless I am mistaken- -but I never make a mistake in spiritual matters- -you are troubled in your soul, Natalia
Victorovna.”
Miss Haldin’s clear eyes looked straight at his soft enormous face; I received the impression that behind these dark spectacles of his he could be as impudent as he chose.
“Only the other evening walking back to town from Chateau Borel with our latest interesting arrival from Petersburg, I could notice the powerful soothing influence–I may say
reconciling influence. . . . There he was, all these kilometres along the shores of the lake, silent, like a man who has been shown the way of peace. I could feel the leaven working in his soul, you understand. For one thing he listened to me patiently. I myself was inspired that evening by the firm and exquisite genius of Eleanor–Madame de S—, you know. It was a full moon and I could observe his face. I cannot be deceived. . . .”
Miss Haldin, looking down, seemed to hesitate.
“Well! I will think of what you said, Peter Ivanovitch. I shall try to call as soon as I can leave mother for an hour or two safely.”
Coldly as these words were said I was amazed at the concession. He snatched her right hand with such fervour that I thought he was going to press it to his lips or his breast. But he only held it by the finger-tips in his great paw and shook it a little up and down while he delivered his last volley of words.
“That’s right. That’s right. I haven’t obtained your full confidence as yet, Natalia Victorovna, but that will come. All in good time. The sister of Viktor Haldin cannot be without importance. . . . It’s simply
impossible. And no woman can remain sitting on the steps. Flowers, tears, applause–that has had its time; it’s a mediaeval conception. The arena, the arena itself is the place for women!”
He relinquished her hand with a flourish, as if giving it to her for a gift, and remained still, his head bowed in dignified submission before her femininity.
“The arena! . . . You must descend into the arena, Natalia.”
He made one step backwards, inclined his enormous body, and was gone swiftly. The door fell to behind him. But immediately the
powerful resonance of his voice was heard addressing in the ante-room the middle-aged servant woman who was letting him out. Whether he exhorted her too to descend into the arena I cannot tell. The thing sounded like a lecture, and the slight crash of the outer door cut it short suddenly.
III
We remained looking at each other for a time.”
“Do you know who he is?”
Miss Haldin, coming forward, put this question to me in English.
I took her offered hand.
“Everybody knows. He is a revolutionary feminist, a great writer, if you like, and–how shall I say it–the–the familiar guest of Madame de S—‘s mystic revolutionary salon.”
Miss Haldin passed her hand over her forehead.
“You know, he was with me for more than an hour before you came in. I was so glad mother was lying down. She has many nights without sleep, and then sometimes in the middle of the day she gets a rest of several hours. It is sheer exhaustion–but still, I am thankful. . . . If it were not for these intervals. . . .”
She looked at me and, with that extraordinary penetration which used to disconcert me, shook her head.
“No. She would not go mad.”
“My dear young lady,” I cried, by way of protest, the more shocked because in my heart I was far from thinking Mrs. Haldin quite sane.
“You don’t know what a fine, lucid intellect mother had,” continued Nathalie Haldin, with her calm, clear-eyed simplicity, which seemed to me always to have a quality of heroism.
“I am sure. . . .” I murmured.
“I darkened mother’s room and came out here. I’ve wanted for so long to think quietly.”
She paused, then, without giving any sign of distress, added, “It’s so difficult,” and looked at me with a strange fixity, as if watching for a sign of dissent or surprise.
I gave neither. I was irresistibly impelled to say–
“The visit from that gentleman has not made it any easier, I fear.”
Miss Haldin stood before me with a peculiar expression in her eyes.
“I don’t pretend to understand completely. Some guide one must have, even if one does not wholly give up the direction of one’s conduct to him. I am an inexperienced girl, but I am not slavish, There has been too much of that in Russia. Why should I not listen to him? There is no harm in having one’s thoughts directed. But I don’t mind confessing to you that I have not been completely candid with Peter
Ivanovitch. I don’t quite know what prevented me at the moment. . . .”
She walked away suddenly from me to a distant part of the room; but it was only to open and shut a drawer in a bureau. She returned with a piece of paper in her hand. It was thin and blackened with close handwriting. It was obviously a letter.
“I wanted to read you the very words,” she said. “This is one of my poor brother’s letters. He never doubted. How could he doubt? They make