"Pray don"t concern yourself," cried Razumov, going off into a long fit of laughter. "Don"t mention it."
The other, his hectic flush like a pair of burns on his cheek-bones, stared for a moment and burst out laughing too. Razumov, whose hilarity died out all at once, made a step forward.
"Enough of this," he began in a clear, incisive voice, though he could hardly control the trembling of his legs. "I will have no more of it. I shall not permit anyone.... I can see very well what you are at with those allusions.... Inquire, investigate! I defy you, but I will not be played with."
He had spoken such words before. He had been driven to cry them out in the face of other suspicions. It was an infernal cycle bringing round that protest like a fatal necessity of his existence. But it was no use.
He would be always played with. Luckily life does not last for ever.
"I won"t have it!" he shouted, striking his fist into the palm of his other hand.
"Kirylo Sidorovitch--what has come to you?" The woman revolutionist interfered with authority. They were all looking at Razumov now; the slayer of spies and gendarmes had turned about, presenting his enormous stomach in full, like a shield.
"Don"t shout. There are people pa.s.sing." Sophia Antonovna was apprehensive of another outburst. A steam-launch from Monrepos had come to the landing-stage opposite the gate, its hoa.r.s.e whistle and the churning noise alongside all unnoticed, had landed a small bunch of local pa.s.sengers who were dispersing their several ways. Only a specimen of early tourist in knickerbockers, conspicuous by a brand-new yellow leather gla.s.s-case, hung about for a moment, scenting something unusual about these four people within the rusty iron gates of what looked the grounds run wild of an unoccupied private house. Ah! If he had only known what the chance of commonplace travelling had suddenly put in his way! But he was a well-bred person; he averted his gaze and moved off with short steps along the avenue, on the watch for a tramcar.
A gesture from Sophia Antonovna, "Leave him to me," had sent the two men away--the buzzing of the inarticulate voice growing fainter and fainter, and the thin pipe of "What now? what"s the matter?" reduced to the proportions of a squeaking toy by the distance. They had left him to her. So many things could be left safely to the experience of Sophia Antonovna. And at once, her black eyes turned to Razumov, her mind tried to get at the heart of that outburst. It had some meaning. No one is born an active revolutionist. The change comes disturbingly, with the force of a sudden vocation, bringing in its train agonizing doubts, a.s.sertive violences, an unstable state of the soul, till the final appeas.e.m.e.nt of the convert in the perfect fierceness of conviction. She had seen--often had only divined--scores of these young men and young women going through an emotional crisis. This young man looked like a moody egotist. And besides, it was a special--a unique case. She had never met an individuality which interested and puzzled her so much.
"Take care, Razumov, my good friend. If you carry on like this you will go mad. You are angry with everybody and bitter with yourself, and on the look out for something to torment yourself with."
"It"s intolerable!" Razumov could only speak in gasps. "You must admit that I can have no illusions on the att.i.tude which...it isn"t clear...or rather only too clear."
He made a gesture of despair. It was not his courage that failed him.
The choking fumes of falsehood had taken him by the throat--the thought of being condemned to struggle on and on in that tainted atmosphere without the hope of ever renewing his strength by a breath of fresh air.
"A gla.s.s of cold water is what you want." Sophia Antonovna glanced up the grounds at the house and shook her head, then out of the gate at the brimful placidity of the lake. With a half-comical shrug of the shoulders, she gave the remedy up in the face of that abundance.
"It is you, my dear soul, who are flinging yourself at something which does not exist. What is it? Self-reproach, or what? It"s absurd. You couldn"t have gone and given yourself up because your comrade was taken."
She remonstrated with him reasonably, at some length too. He had nothing to complain of in his reception. Every new-comer was discussed more or less. Everybody had to be thoroughly understood before being accepted.
No one that she could remember had been shown from the first so much confidence. Soon, very soon, perhaps sooner than he expected, he would be given an opportunity of showing his devotion to the sacred task of crushing the Infamy.
Razumov, listening quietly, thought: "It may be that she is trying to lull my suspicions to sleep. On the other hand, it is obvious that most of them are fools." He moved aside a couple of paces and, folding his arms on his breast, leaned back against the stone pillar of the gate.
"As to what remains obscure in the fate of that poor Haldin," Sophia Antonovna dropped into a slowness of utterance which was to Razumov like the falling of molten lead drop by drop; "as to that--though no one ever hinted that either from fear or neglect your conduct has not been what it should have been--well, I have a bit of intelligence...."
Razumov could not prevent himself from raising his head, and Sophia Antonovna nodded slightly.
"I have. You remember that letter from St. Petersburg I mentioned to you a moment ago?"
"The letter? Perfectly. Some busybody has been reporting my conduct on a certain day. It"s rather sickening. I suppose our police are greatly edified when they open these interesting and--and--superfluous letters."
"Oh dear no! The police do not get hold of our letters as easily as you imagine. The letter in question did not leave St. Petersburg till the ice broke up. It went by the first English steamer which left the Neva this spring. They have a fireman on board--one of us, in fact. It has reached me from Hull...."
She paused as if she were surprised at the sullen fixity of Razumov"s gaze, but went on at once, and much faster.
"We have some of our people there who...but never mind. The writer of the letter relates an incident which he thinks may possibly be connected with Haldin"s arrest. I was just going to tell you when those two men came along."
"That also was an incident," muttered Razumov, "of a very charming kind--for me."
"Leave off that!" cried Sophia Antonovna. "n.o.body cares for Nikita"s barking. There"s no malice in him. Listen to what I have to say. You may be able to throw a light. There was in St. Petersburg a sort of town peasant--a man who owned horses. He came to town years ago to work for some relation as a driver and ended by owning a cab or two."
She might well have spared herself the slight effort of the gesture: "Wait!" Razumov did not mean to speak; he could not have interrupted her now, not to save his life. The contraction of his facial muscles had been involuntary, a mere surface stir, leaving him sullenly attentive as before.
"He was not a quite ordinary man of his cla.s.s--it seems," she went on.
"The people of the house--my informant talked with many of them--you know, one of those enormous houses of shame and misery...."
Sophia Antonovna need not have enlarged on the character of the house.
Razumov saw clearly, towering at her back, a dark ma.s.s of masonry veiled in snowflakes, with the long row of windows of the eating-shop shining greasily very near the ground. The ghost of that night pursued him. He stood up to it with rage and with weariness.
"Did the late Haldin ever by chance speak to you of that house?" Sophia Antonovna was anxious to know.
"Yes." Razumov, making that answer, wondered whether he were falling into a trap. It was so humiliating to lie to these people that he probably could not have said no. "He mentioned to me once," he added, as if making an effort of memory, "a house of that sort. He used to visit some workmen there."
"Exactly."
Sophia Antonovna triumphed. Her correspondent had discovered that fact quite accidentally from the talk of the people of the house, having made friends with a workman who occupied a room there. They described Haldin"s appearance perfectly. He brought comforting words of hope into their misery. He came irregularly, but he came very often, and--her correspondent wrote--sometimes he spent a night in the house, sleeping, they thought, in a stable which opened upon the inner yard.
"Note that, Razumov! In a stable."
Razumov had listened with a sort of ferocious but amused acquiescence.
"Yes. In the straw. It was probably the cleanest spot in the whole house."
"No doubt," a.s.sented the woman with that deep frown which seemed to draw closer together her black eyes in a sinister fashion. No four-footed beast could stand the filth and wretchedness so many human beings were condemned to suffer from in Russia. The point of this discovery was that it proved Haldin to have been familiar with that horse-owning peasant--a reckless, independent, free-living fellow not much liked by the other inhabitants of the house. He was believed to have been the a.s.sociate of a band of housebreakers. Some of these got captured. Not while he was driving them, however; but still there was a suspicion against the fellow of having given a hint to the police and...
The woman revolutionist checked herself suddenly.
"And you? Have you ever heard your friend refer to a certain Ziemianitch?"
Razumov was ready for the name. He had been looking out for the question. "When it comes I shall own up," he had said to himself. But he took his time.
"To be sure!" he began slowly. "Ziemianitch, a peasant owning a team of horses. Yes. On one occasion. Ziemianitch! Certainly! Ziemianitch of the horses.... How could it have slipped my memory like this? One of the last conversations we had together."
"That means,"--Sophia Antonovna looked very grave,--"that means, Razumov, it was very shortly before--eh?"
"Before what?" shouted Razumov, advancing at the woman, who looked astonished but stood her ground. "Before.... Oh! Of course, it was before! How could it have been after? Only a few hours before."
"And he spoke of him favourably?"
"With enthusiasm! The horses of Ziemianitch! The free soul of Ziemianitch!"
Razumov took a savage delight in the loud utterance of that name, which had never before crossed his lips audibly. He fixed his blazing eyes on the woman till at last her fascinated expression recalled him to himself.
"The late Haldin," he said, holding himself in, with downcast eyes, "was inclined to take sudden fancies to people, on--on--what shall I say--insufficient grounds."
"There!" Sophia Antonovna clapped her hands. "That, to my mind, settles it. The suspicions of my correspondent were aroused...."
"Aha! Your correspondent," Razumov said in an almost openly mocking tone. "What suspicions? How aroused? By this Ziemianitch? Probably some drunken, gabbling, plausible..."