Read Under Western Eyes Page 1

  Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger

  UNDER WESTERN EYES

  by JOSEPH CONRAD

  "I would take liberty from any hand as a hungry man would snatch a pieceof bread." Miss HALDIN

  PART FIRST

  To begin with I wish to disclaim the possession of those high gifts ofimagination and expression which would have enabled my pen to createfor the reader the personality of the man who called himself, after theRussian custom, Cyril son of Isidor--Kirylo Sidorovitch--Razumov.

  If I have ever had these gifts in any sort of living form they have beensmothered out of existence a long time ago under a wilderness of words.Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been formany years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at lengthbecomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insightan ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comesa time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears amere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

  This being so, I could not have observed Mr. Razumov or guessed at hisreality by the force of insight, much less have imagined him as he was.Even to invent the mere bald facts of his life would have been utterlybeyond my powers. But I think that without this declaration thereaders of these pages will be able to detect in the story the marks ofdocumentary evidence. And that is perfectly correct. It is based ona document; all I have brought to it is my knowledge of the Russianlanguage, which is sufficient for what is attempted here. The document,of course, is something in the nature of a journal, a diary, yet notexactly that in its actual form. For instance, most of it was notwritten up from day to day, though all the entries are dated. Some ofthese entries cover months of time and extend over dozens of pages. Allthe earlier part is a retrospect, in a narrative form, relating to anevent which took place about a year before.

  I must mention that I have lived for a long time in Geneva. A wholequarter of that town, on account of many Russians residing there,is called La Petite Russie--Little Russia. I had a rather extensiveconnexion in Little Russia at that time. Yet I confess that I haveno comprehension of the Russian character. The illogicality of theirattitude, the arbitrariness of their conclusions, the frequency of theexceptional, should present no difficulty to a student of many grammars;but there must be something else in the way, some special humantrait--one of those subtle differences that are beyond the ken of mereprofessors. What must remain striking to a teacher of languages is theRussians' extraordinary love of words. They gather them up; they cherishthem, but they don't hoard them in their breasts; on the contrary, theyare always ready to pour them out by the hour or by the night with anenthusiasm, a sweeping abundance, with such an aptness of applicationsometimes that, as in the case of very accomplished parrots, one can'tdefend oneself from the suspicion that they really understand what theysay. There is a generosity in their ardour of speech which removes it asfar as possible from common loquacity; and it is ever too disconnectedto be classed as eloquence.... But I must apologize for thisdigression.

  It would be idle to inquire why Mr. Razumov has left this record behindhim. It is inconceivable that he should have wished any human eye to seeit. A mysterious impulse of human nature comes into play here. Puttingaside Samuel Pepys, who has forced in this way the door of immortality,innumerable people, criminals, saints, philosophers, young girls,statesmen, and simple imbeciles, have kept self-revealing records fromvanity no doubt, but also from other more inscrutable motives. Theremust be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men haveused them for self-communion. Being myself a quiet individual I takeit that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only someformula of peace. Certainly they are crying loud enough for it at thepresent day. What sort of peace Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov expectedto find in the writing up of his record it passeth my understanding toguess.

  The fact remains that he has written it.

  Mr. Razumov was a tall, well-proportioned young man, quite unusuallydark for a Russian from the Central Provinces. His good looks would havebeen unquestionable if it had not been for a peculiar lack of finenessin the features. It was as if a face modelled vigorously in wax (withsome approach even to a classical correctness of type) had beenheld close to a fire till all sharpness of line had been lost inthe softening of the material. But even thus he was sufficientlygood-looking. His manner, too, was good. In discussion he was easilyswayed by argument and authority. With his younger compatriots he tookthe attitude of an inscrutable listener, a listener of the kind thathears you out intelligently and then--just changes the subject.

  This sort of trick, which may arise either from intellectualinsufficiency or from an imperfect trust in one's own convictions,procured for Mr. Razumov a reputation of profundity. Amongst a lot ofexuberant talkers, in the habit of exhausting themselves daily by ardentdiscussion, a comparatively taciturn personality is naturally creditedwith reserve power. By his comrades at the St. Petersburg University,Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov, third year's student in philosophy, waslooked upon as a strong nature--an altogether trustworthy man. This,in a country where an opinion may be a legal crime visited by death orsometimes by a fate worse than mere death, meant that he was worthyof being trusted with forbidden opinions. He was liked also for hisamiability and for his quiet readiness to oblige his comrades even atthe cost of personal inconvenience.

  Mr. Razumov was supposed to be the son of an Archpriest and to beprotected by a distinguished nobleman--perhaps of his own distantprovince. But his outward appearance accorded badly with such humbleorigin. Such a descent was not credible. It was, indeed, suggested thatMr. Razumov was the son of an Archpriest's pretty daughter--which, ofcourse, would put a different complexion on the matter. This theory alsorendered intelligible the protection of the distinguished nobleman. Allthis, however, had never been investigated maliciously or otherwise. Noone knew or cared who the nobleman in question was. Razumov receiveda modest but very sufficient allowance from the hands of an obscureattorney, who seemed to act as his guardian in some measure. Now andthen he appeared at some professor's informal reception. Apart fromthat Razumov was not known to have any social relations in the town.He attended the obligatory lectures regularly and was considered by theauthorities as a very promising student. He worked at home in the mannerof a man who means to get on, but did not shut himself up severely forthat purpose. He was always accessible, and there was nothing secret orreserved in his life.

  I

  The origin of Mr. Razumov's record is connected with an eventcharacteristic of modern Russia in the actual fact: the assassinationof a prominent statesman--and still more characteristic of the moralcorruption of an oppressed society where the noblest aspirations ofhumanity, the desire of freedom, an ardent patriotism, the love ofjustice, the sense of pity, and even the fidelity of simple minds areprostituted to the lusts of hate and fear, the inseparable companions ofan uneasy despotism.

  The fact alluded to above is the successful attempt on the life of Mr.de P---, the President of the notorious Repressive Commission of someyears ago, the Minister of State invested with extraordinary powers. Thenewspapers made noise enough about that fanatical, narrow-chested figurein gold-laced uniform, with a face of crumpled parchment, insipid,bespectacled eyes, and the cross of the Order of St. Procopius hungunder the skinny throat. For a time, it may be remembered, not a monthpassed without his portrait appearing in some one of the illustratedpapers of Europe. He served the monarchy by imprisoning, exiling, orsending to the gallows men and women, young and old, with an equable,unwearied industry. In his mystic acceptance of the principle ofautocracy he was bent on extirpating from the land every vestige ofanything that resembled freedom in public institutions; and in hisruthless per
secution of the rising generation he seemed to aim at thedestruction of the very hope of liberty itself.

  It is said that this execrated personality had not enough imaginationto be aware of the hate he inspired. It is hardly credible; but it is afact that he took very few precautions for his safety. In the preambleof a certain famous State paper he had declared once that "the thoughtof liberty has never existed in the Act of the Creator. From themultitude of men's counsel nothing could come but revolt and disorder;and revolt and disorder in a world created for obedience and stabilityis sin. It was not Reason but Authority which expressed the DivineIntention. God was the Autocrat of the Universe...." It may be thatthe man who made this declaration believed that heaven itself was boundto protect him in his remorseless defence of Autocracy on this earth.

  No doubt the vigilance of the police saved him many times; but, as amatter of fact, when his appointed fate overtook him, the competentauthorities could not have given him any warning. They had no knowledgeof any conspiracy against the Minister's life, had no hint of any plotthrough their usual channels of information, had seen no signs, wereaware of no suspicious movements or dangerous persons.

  Mr. de P--- was being driven towards the railway station in a two-horseuncovered sleigh with footman and coachman on the box. Snow had beenfalling all night, making the roadway, uncleared as yet at this earlyhour, very heavy for the horses. It was still falling thickly. But thesleigh must have been observed and marked down. As it drew over to theleft before taking a turn, the footman noticed a peasant walkingslowly on the edge of the pavement with his hands in the pockets ofhis sheepskin coat and his shoulders hunched up to his ears under thefalling snow. On being overtaken this peasant suddenly faced about andswung his arm. In an instant there was a terrible shock, a detonationmuffled in the multitude of snowflakes; both horses lay dead and mangledon the ground and the coachman, with a shrill cry, had fallen off thebox mortally wounded. The footman (who survived) had no time to see theface of the man in the sheepskin coat. After throwing the bomb this lastgot away, but it is supposed that, seeing a lot of people surging up onall sides of him in the falling snow, and all running towards the sceneof the explosion, he thought it safer to turn back with them.

  In an incredibly short time an excited crowd assembled round the sledge.The Minister-President, getting out unhurt into the deep snow, stoodnear the groaning coachman and addressed the people repeatedly in hisweak, colourless voice: "I beg of you to keep off: For the love of God,I beg of you good people to keep off."

  It was then that a tall young man who had remained standing perfectlystill within a carriage gateway, two houses lower down, stepped out intothe street and walking up rapidly flung another bomb over the heads ofthe crowd. It actually struck the Minister-President on the shoulderas he stooped over his dying servant, then falling between his feetexploded with a terrific concentrated violence, striking him dead to theground, finishing the wounded man and practically annihilating the emptysledge in the twinkling of an eye. With a yell of horror the crowd brokeup and fled in all directions, except for those who fell dead or dyingwhere they stood nearest to the Minister-President, and one or twoothers who did not fall till they had run a little way.

  The first explosion had brought together a crowd as if by enchantment,the second made as swiftly a solitude in the street for hundreds ofyards in each direction. Through the falling snow people looked fromafar at the small heap of dead bodies lying upon each other near thecarcases of the two horses. Nobody dared to approach till some Cossacksof a street-patrol galloped up and, dismounting, began to turn over thedead. Amongst the innocent victims of the second explosion laid out onthe pavement there was a body dressed in a peasant's sheepskin coat; butthe face was unrecognisable, there was absolutely nothing found in thepockets of its poor clothing, and it was the only one whose identity wasnever established.

  That day Mr. Razumov got up at his usual hour and spent the morningwithin the University buildings listening to the lectures and workingfor some time in the library. He heard the first vague rumour ofsomething in the way of bomb-throwing at the table of the students'ordinary, where he was accustomed to eat his two o'clock dinner. Butthis rumour was made up of mere whispers, and this was Russia, whereit was not always safe, for a student especially, to appear too muchinterested in certain kinds of whispers. Razumov was one of thosemen who, living in a period of mental and political unrest, keep aninstinctive hold on normal, practical, everyday life. He was awareof the emotional tension of his time; he even responded to it in anindefinite way. But his main concern was with his work, his studies, andwith his own future.

  Officially and in fact without a family (for the daughter of theArchpriest had long been dead), no home influences had shaped hisopinions or his feelings. He was as lonely in the world as a manswimming in the deep sea. The word Razumov was the mere label ofa solitary individuality. There were no Razumovs belonging to himanywhere. His closest parentage was defined in the statement that hewas a Russian. Whatever good he expected from life would be given to orwithheld from his hopes by that connexion alone. This immense parentagesuffered from the throes of internal dissensions, and he shrank mentallyfrom the fray as a good-natured man may shrink from taking definitesides in a violent family quarrel.

  Razumov, going home, reflected that having prepared all the matters ofthe forthcoming examination, he could now devote his time to the subjectof the prize essay. He hankered after the silver medal. The prize wasoffered by the Ministry of Education; the names of the competitors wouldbe submitted to the Minister himself. The mere fact of trying would beconsidered meritorious in the higher quarters; and the possessor of theprize would have a claim to an administrative appointment of the bettersort after he had taken his degree. The student Razumov in an access ofelation forgot the dangers menacing the stability of the institutionswhich give rewards and appointments. But remembering the medallist ofthe year before, Razumov, the young man of no parentage, was sobered. Heand some others happened to be assembled in their comrade's rooms at thevery time when that last received the official advice of his success.He was a quiet, unassuming young man: "Forgive me," he had said with afaint apologetic smile and taking up his cap, "I am going out to orderup some wine. But I must first send a telegram to my folk at home. Isay! Won't the old people make it a festive time for the neighbours fortwenty miles around our place."

  Razumov thought there was nothing of that sort for him in the world. Hissuccess would matter to no one. But he felt no bitterness againstthe nobleman his protector, who was not a provincial magnate as wasgenerally supposed. He was in fact nobody less than Prince K---, oncea great and splendid figure in the world and now, his day being over,a Senator and a gouty invalid, living in a still splendid but moredomestic manner. He had some young children and a wife as aristocraticand proud as himself.

  In all his life Razumov was allowed only once to come into personalcontact with the Prince.

  It had the air of a chance meeting in the little attorney's office.One day Razumov, coming in by appointment, found a stranger standingthere--a tall, aristocratic-looking Personage with silky, greysidewhiskers. The bald-headed, sly little lawyer-fellow called out,"Come in--come in, Mr. Razumov," with a sort of ironic heartiness. Thenturning deferentially to the stranger with the grand air, "A wardof mine, your Excellency. One of the most promising students of hisfaculty in the St. Petersburg University."

  To his intense surprise Razumov saw a white shapely hand extended tohim. He took it in great confusion (it was soft and passive) and heardat the same time a condescending murmur in which he caught only thewords "Satisfactory" and "Persevere." But the most amazing thing of allwas to feel suddenly a distinct pressure of the white shapely handjust before it was withdrawn: a light pressure like a secret sign. Theemotion of it was terrible. Razumov's heart seemed to leap into histhroat. When he raised his eyes the aristocratic personage, motioningthe little lawyer aside, had opened the door and was going out.

  The attorney rummaged amongst
the papers on his desk for a time. "Do youknow who that was?" he asked suddenly.

  Razumov, whose heart was thumping hard yet, shook his head in silence.

  "That was Prince K---. You wonder what he could be doing in the hole ofa poor legal rat like myself--eh? These awfully great people have theirsentimental curiosities like common sinners. But if I were you, KiryloSidorovitch," he continued, leering and laying a peculiar emphasis onthe patronymic, "I wouldn't boast at large of the introduction. It wouldnot be prudent, Kirylo Sidorovitch. Oh dear no! It would be in factdangerous for your future."

  The young man's ears burned like fire; his sight was dim. "That man!"Razumov was saying to himself. "He!"

  Henceforth it was by this monosyllable that Mr. Razumov got intothe habit of referring mentally to the stranger with grey silkyside-whiskers. From that time too, when walking in the more fashionablequarters, he noted with interest the magnificent horses and carriageswith Prince K---'s liveries on the box. Once he saw the Princess getout--she was shopping--followed by two girls, of which one was nearly ahead taller than the other. Their fair hair hung loose down their backsin the English style; they had merry eyes, their coats, muffs, andlittle fur caps were exactly alike, and their cheeks and noses weretinged a cheerful pink by the frost. They crossed the pavement in frontof him, and Razumov went on his way smiling shyly to himself. "His"daughters. They resembled "Him." The young man felt a glow of warmfriendliness towards these girls who would never know of his existence.Presently they would marry Generals or Kammerherrs and have girls andboys of their own, who perhaps would be aware of him as a celebrated oldprofessor, decorated, possibly a Privy Councillor, one of the glories ofRussia--nothing more!

  But a celebrated professor was a somebody. Distinction would convert thelabel Razumov into an honoured name. There was nothing strange inthe student Razumov's wish for distinction. A man's real life is thataccorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect ornatural love. Returning home on the day of the attempt on Mr. de P---'slife Razumov resolved to have a good try for the silver medal.

  Climbing slowly the four flights of the dark, dirty staircase in thehouse where he had his lodgings, he felt confident of success. Thewinner's name would be published in the papers on New Year's Day. And atthe thought that "He" would most probably read it there, Razumov stoppedshort on the stairs for an instant, then went on smiling faintly at hisown emotion. "This is but a shadow," he said to himself, "but the medalis a solid beginning."

  With those ideas of industry in his head the warmth of his room wasagreeable and encouraging. "I shall put in four hours of good work,"he thought. But no sooner had he closed the door than he was horriblystartled. All black against the usual tall stove of white tiles gleamingin the dusk, stood a strange figure, wearing a skirted, close-fitting,brown cloth coat strapped round the waist, in long boots, and with alittle Astrakhan cap on its head. It loomed lithe and martial. Razumovwas utterly confounded. It was only when the figure advancing two pacesasked in an untroubled, grave voice if the outer door was closed that heregained his power of speech.

  "Haldin!... Victor Victorovitch!... Is that you?... Yes. Theouter door is shut all right. But this is indeed unexpected."

  Victor Haldin, a student older than most of his contemporaries at theUniversity, was not one of the industrious set. He was hardly ever seenat lectures; the authorities had marked him as "restless" and "unsound"--very bad notes. But he had a great personal prestige with hiscomrades and influenced their thoughts. Razumov had never been intimatewith him. They had met from time to time at gatherings in otherstudents' houses. They had even had a discussion together--one of thosediscussions on first principles dear to the sanguine minds of youth.

  Razumov wished the man had chosen some other time to come for a chat. Hefelt in good trim to tackle the prize essay. But as Haldin could not beslightingly dismissed Razumov adopted the tone of hospitality, askinghim to sit down and smoke.

  "Kirylo Sidorovitch," said the other, flinging off his cap, "we are notperhaps in exactly the same camp. Your judgment is more philosophical.You are a man of few words, but I haven't met anybody who dared todoubt the generosity of your sentiments. There is a solidity about yourcharacter which cannot exist without courage."

  Razumov felt flattered and began to murmur shyly something about beingvery glad of his good opinion, when Haldin raised his hand.

  "That is what I was saying to myself," he continued, "as I dodged in thewoodyard down by the river-side. 'He has a strong character this youngman,' I said to myself. 'He does not throw his soul to the winds.' Yourreserve has always fascinated me, Kirylo Sidorovitch. So I tried toremember your address. But look here--it was a piece of luck. Yourdvornik was away from the gate talking to a sleigh-driver on the otherside of the street. I met no one on the stairs, not a soul. As I came upto your floor I caught sight of your landlady coming out of your rooms.But she did not see me. She crossed the landing to her own side, andthen I slipped in. I have been here two hours expecting you to come inevery moment."

  Razumov had listened in astonishment; but before he could open his mouthHaldin added, speaking deliberately, "It was I who removed de P--- thismorning." Razumov kept down a cry of dismay. The sentiment of his lifebeing utterly ruined by this contact with such a crime expressed itselfquaintly by a sort of half-derisive mental exclamation, "There goes mysilver medal!"

  Haldin continued after waiting a while--

  "You say nothing, Kirylo Sidorovitch! I understand your silence. To besure, I cannot expect you with your frigid English manner to embraceme. But never mind your manners. You have enough heart to have heard thesound of weeping and gnashing of teeth this man raised in the land. Thatwould be enough to get over any philosophical hopes. He was uprootingthe tender plant. He had to be stopped. He was a dangerous man--aconvinced man. Three more years of his work would have put us back fiftyyears into bondage--and look at all the lives wasted, at all the soulslost in that time."

  His curt, self-confident voice suddenly lost its ring and it was in adull tone that he added, "Yes, brother, I have killed him. It's wearywork."

  Razumov had sunk into a chair. Every moment he expected a crowd ofpolicemen to rush in. There must have been thousands of them out lookingfor that man walking up and down in his room. Haldin was talking againin a restrained, steady voice. Now and then he flourished an arm,slowly, without excitement.

  He told Razumov how he had brooded for a year; how he had not sleptproperly for weeks. He and "Another" had a warning of the Minister'smovements from "a certain person" late the evening before. He and that"Another" prepared their "engines" and resolved to have no sleep till"the deed" was done. They walked the streets under the falling snow withthe "engines" on them, exchanging not a word the livelong night. Whenthey happened to meet a police patrol they took each other by the armand pretended to be a couple of peasants on the spree. They reeled andtalked in drunken hoarse voices. Except for these strange outbreaks theykept silence, moving on ceaselessly. Their plans had been previouslyarranged. At daybreak they made their way to the spot which theyknew the sledge must pass. When it appeared in sight they exchanged amuttered good-bye and separated. The "other" remained at the corner,Haldin took up a position a little farther up the street....

  After throwing his "engine" he ran off and in a moment was overtakenby the panic-struck people flying away from the spot after the secondexplosion. They were wild with terror. He was jostled once or twice. Heslowed down for the rush to pass him and then turned to the left into anarrow street. There he was alone.

  He marvelled at this immediate escape. The work was done. He couldhardly believe it. He fought with an almost irresistible longing to liedown on the pavement and sleep. But this sort of faintness--a drowsyfaintness--passed off quickly. He walked faster, making his way to oneof the poorer parts of the town in order to look up Ziemianitch.

  This Ziemianitch, Razumov understood, was a sort of town-peasant who hadgot on; owner of a small number of sledges and horses f
or hire. Haldinpaused in his narrative to exclaim--

  "A bright spirit! A hardy soul! The best driver in St. Petersburg. Hehas a team of three horses there.... Ah! He's a fellow!"

  This man had declared himself willing to take out safely, at any time,one or two persons to the second or third railway station on one of thesouthern lines. But there had been no time to warn him the night before.His usual haunt seemed to be a low-class eating-house on the outskirtsof the town. When Haldin got there the man was not to be found. He wasnot expected to turn up again till the evening. Haldin wandered awayrestlessly.

  He saw the gate of a woodyard open and went in to get out of the windwhich swept the bleak broad thoroughfare. The great rectangular piles ofcut wood loaded with snow resembled the huts of a village. At first thewatchman who discovered him crouching amongst them talked in a friendlymanner. He was a dried-up old man wearing two ragged army coats one overthe other; his wizened little face, tied up under the jaw and over theears in a dirty red handkerchief, looked comical. Presently he grewsulky, and then all at once without rhyme or reason began to shoutfuriously.

  "Aren't you ever going to clear out of this, you loafer? We know allabout factory hands of your sort. A big, strong, young chap! You aren'teven drunk. What do you want here? You don't frighten us. Take yourselfand your ugly eyes away."

  Haldin stopped before the sitting Razumov. His supple figure, withthe white forehead above which the fair hair stood straight up, had anaspect of lofty daring.

  "He did not like my eyes," he said. "And so...here I am."

  Razumov made an effort to speak calmly.

  "But pardon me, Victor Victorovitch. We know each other so little....I don't see why you...."

  "Confidence," said Haldin.

  This word sealed Razumov's lips as if a hand had been clapped on hismouth. His brain seethed with arguments.

  "And so--here you are," he muttered through his teeth.

  The other did not detect the tone of anger. Never suspected it.

  "Yes. And nobody knows I am here. You are the last person that couldbe suspected--should I get caught. That's an advantage, you see. Andthen--speaking to a superior mind like yours I can well say all thetruth. It occurred to me that you--you have no one belonging to you--noties, no one to suffer for it if this came out by some means. Therehave been enough ruined Russian homes as it is. But I don't see how mypassage through your rooms can be ever known. If I should be got holdof, I'll know how to keep silent--no matter what they may be pleased todo to me," he added grimly.

  He began to walk again while Razumov sat still appalled.

  "You thought that--" he faltered out almost sick with indignation.

  "Yes, Razumov. Yes, brother. Some day you shall help to build. Yousuppose that I am a terrorist, now--a destructor of what is, Butconsider that the true destroyers are they who destroy the spirit ofprogress and truth, not the avengers who merely kill the bodies of thepersecutors of human dignity. Men like me are necessary to make room forself-contained, thinking men like you. Well, we have made the sacrificeof our lives, but all the same I want to escape if it can be done. Itis not my life I want to save, but my power to do. I won't live idle. Ohno! Don't make any mistake, Razumov. Men like me are rare. And, besides,an example like this is more awful to oppressors when the perpetratorvanishes without a trace. They sit in their offices and palaces andquake. All I want you to do is to help me to vanish. No great matterthat. Only to go by and by and see Ziemianitch for me at that placewhere I went this morning. Just tell him, 'He whom you know wants awell-horsed sledge to pull up half an hour after midnight at the seventhlamp-post on the left counting from the upper end of Karabelnaya. Ifnobody gets in, the sledge is to run round a block or two, so as to comeback past the same spot in ten minutes' time.'"

  Razumov wondered why he had not cut short that talk and told this man togo away long before. Was it weakness or what?

  He concluded that it was a sound instinct. Haldin must have been seen.It was impossible that some people should not have noticed the face andappearance of the man who threw the second bomb. Haldin was a noticeableperson. The police in their thousands must have had his descriptionwithin the hour. With every moment the danger grew. Sent out to wanderin the streets he could not escape being caught in the end.

  The police would very soon find out all about him. They would set aboutdiscovering a conspiracy. Everybody Haldin had ever known would be inthe greatest danger. Unguarded expressions, little facts in themselvesinnocent would be counted for crimes. Razumov remembered certain wordshe said, the speeches he had listened to, the harmless gatherings hehad attended--it was almost impossible for a student to keep out of thatsort of thing, without becoming suspect to his comrades.

  Razumov saw himself shut up in a fortress, worried, badgered, perhapsill-used. He saw himself deported by an administrative order, his lifebroken, ruined, and robbed of all hope. He saw himself--at best--leadinga miserable existence under police supervision, in some small, farawayprovincial town, without friends to assist his necessities or eventake any steps to alleviate his lot--as others had. Others had fathers,mothers, brothers, relations, connexions, to move heaven and earth ontheir behalf--he had no one. The very officials that sentenced him somemorning would forget his existence before sunset.

  He saw his youth pass away from him in misery and half starvation--hisstrength give way, his mind become an abject thing. He saw himselfcreeping, broken down and shabby, about the streets--dying unattendedin some filthy hole of a room, or on the sordid bed of a Governmenthospital.

  He shuddered. Then the peace of bitter calmness came over him. It wasbest to keep this man out of the streets till he could be got rid ofwith some chance of escaping. That was the best that could be done.Razumov, of course, felt the safety of his lonely existence to bepermanently endangered. This evening's doings could turn up againsthim at any time as long as this man lived and the present institutionsendured. They appeared to him rational and indestructible at thatmoment. They had a force of harmony--in contrast with the horriblediscord of this man's presence. He hated the man. He said quietly--

  "Yes, of course, I will go. 'You must give me precise directions, andfor the rest--depend on me."

  "Ah! You are a fellow! Collected--cool as a cucumber. A regularEnglishman. Where did you get your soul from? There aren't many likeyou. Look here, brother! Men like me leave no posterity, but their soulsare not lost. No man's soul is ever lost. It works for itself--or elsewhere would be the sense of self-sacrifice, of martyrdom, of conviction,of faith--the labours of the soul? What will become of my soul when Idie in the way I must die--soon--very soon perhaps? It shall not perish.Don't make a mistake, Razumov. This is not murder--it is war, war. Myspirit shall go on warring in some Russian body till all falsehood isswept out of the world. The modern civilization is false, but a newrevelation shall come out of Russia. Ha! you say nothing. You are asceptic. I respect your philosophical scepticism, Razumov, but don'ttouch the soul. The Russian soul that lives in all of us. It has afuture. It has a mission, I tell you, or else why should I have beenmoved to do this--reckless--like a butcher--in the middle of all theseinnocent people--scattering death--I! I!... I wouldn't hurt a fly!"

  "Not so loud," warned Razumov harshly.

  Haldin sat down abruptly, and leaning his head on his folded arms burstinto tears. He wept for a long time. The dusk had deepened in the room.Razumov, motionless in sombre wonder, listened to the sobs.

  The other raised his head, got up and with an effort mastered his voice.

  "Yes. Men like me leave no posterity," he repeated in a subdued tone,"I have a sister though. She's with my old mother--I persuaded them togo abroad this year--thank God. Not a bad little girl my sister. She hasthe most trustful eyes of any human being that ever walked this earth.She will marry well, I hope. She may have children--sons perhaps. Lookat me. My father was a Government official in the provinces, He had alittle land too. A simple servant of God--a true Russian in his way. Hiswas the soul of ob
edience. But I am not like him. They say I resemblemy mother's eldest brother, an officer. They shot him in '28. UnderNicholas, you know. Haven't I told you that this is war, war.... ButGod of Justice! This is weary work."

  Razumov, in his chair, leaning his head on his hand, spoke as if fromthe bottom of an abyss.

  "You believe in God, Haldin?"

  "There you go catching at words that are wrung from one. What does itmatter? What was it the Englishman said: 'There is a divine soul inthings...' Devil take him--I don't remember now. But he spoke thetruth. When the day of you thinkers comes don't you forget what'sdivine in the Russian soul--and that's resignation. Respect that in yourintellectual restlessness and don't let your arrogant wisdom spoil itsmessage to the world. I am speaking to you now like a man with a roperound his neck. What do you imagine I am? A being in revolt? No. It'syou thinkers who are in everlasting revolt. I am one of the resigned.When the necessity of this heavy work came to me and I understood thatit had to be done--what did I do? Did I exult? Did I take pride inmy purpose? Did I try to weigh its worth and consequences? No! I wasresigned. I thought 'God's will be done.'"

  He threw himself full length on Razumov's bed and putting the backs ofhis hands over his eyes remained perfectly motionless and silent. Noteven the sound of his breathing could be heard. The dead stillnessor the room remained undisturbed till in the darkness Razumov saidgloomily--

  "Haldin."

  "Yes," answered the other readily, quite invisible now on the bed andwithout the slightest stir.

  "Isn't it time for me to start?"

  "Yes, brother." The other was heard, lying still in the darkness asthough he were talking in his sleep. "The time has come to put fate tothe test."

  He paused, then gave a few lucid directions in the quiet impersonalvoice of a man in a trance. Razumov made ready without a word of answer.As he was leaving the room the voice on the bed said after him--

  "Go with God, thou silent soul."

  On the landing, moving softly, Razumov locked the door and put the keyin his pocket.

  II

  The words and events of that evening must have been graven as if witha steel tool on Mr. Razumov's brain since he was able to write hisrelation with such fullness and precision a good many months afterwards.

  The record of the thoughts which assailed him in the street is even moreminute and abundant. They seem to have rushed upon him with the greaterfreedom because his thinking powers were no longer crushed by Haldin'spresence--the appalling presence of a great crime and the stunning forceof a great fanaticism. On looking through the pages of Mr. Razumov'sdiary I own that a "rush of thoughts" is not an adequate image.

  The more adequate description would be a tumult of thoughts--thefaithful reflection of the state of his feelings. The thoughts inthemselves were not numerous--they were like the thoughts of most humanbeings, few and simple--but they cannot be reproduced here in alltheir exclamatory repetitions which went on in an endless and wearyturmoil--for the walk was long.

  If to the Western reader they appear shocking, inappropriate, or evenimproper, it must be remembered that as to the first this may be theeffect of my crude statement. For the rest I will only remark here thatthis is not a story of the West of Europe.

  Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governmentshave paid them back in the same coin. It is unthinkable that any youngEnglishman should find himself in Razumov's situation. This being so itwould be a vain enterprise to imagine what he would think. The only safesurmise to make is that he would not think as Mr. Razumov thought atthis crisis of his fate. He would not have an hereditary and personalknowledge or the means by which historical autocracy represses ideas,guards its power, and defends its existence. By an act of mentalextravagance he might imagine himself arbitrarily thrown into prison,but it would never occur to him unless he were delirious (and perhapsnot even then) that he could be beaten with whips as a practical measureeither of investigation or of punishment.

  This is but a crude and obvious example of the different conditions ofWestern thought. I don't know that this danger occurred, specially, toMr. Razumov. No doubt it entered unconsciously into the general dreadand the general appallingness of this crisis. Razumov, as has been seen,was aware of more subtle ways in which an individual may be undone bythe proceedings of a despotic Government. A simple expulsion fromthe University (the very least that could happen to him), with animpossibility to continue his studies anywhere, was enough to ruinutterly a young man depending entirely upon the development of hisnatural abilities for his place in the world. He was a Russian: and forhim to be implicated meant simply sinking into the lowest social depthsamongst the hopeless and the destitute--the night birds of the city.

  The peculiar circumstances of Razumov's parentage, or rather of his lackof parentage, should be taken into the account of his thoughts. And heremembered them too. He had been lately reminded of them in a peculiarlyatrocious way by this fatal Haldin. "Because I haven't that, musteverything else be taken away from me?" he thought.

  He nerved himself for another effort to go on. Along the roadway sledgesglided phantom-like and jingling through a fluttering whiteness on theblack face of the night. "For it is a crime," he was saying tohimself. "A murder is a murder. Though, of course, some sort of liberalinstitutions...."

  A feeling of horrible sickness came over him. "I must be courageous,"he exhorted himself mentally. All his strength was suddenly gone asif taken out by a hand. Then by a mighty effort of will it came backbecause he was afraid of fainting in the street and being picked up bythe police with the key of his lodgings in his pocket. They would findHaldin there, and then, indeed, he would be undone.

  Strangely enough it was this fear which seems to have kept him up to theend. The passers-by were rare. They came upon him suddenly, looming upblack in the snowflakes close by, then vanishing all at once-withoutfootfalls.

  It was the quarter of the very poor. Razumov noticed an elderly womantied up in ragged shawls. Under the street lamp she seemed a beggar offduty. She walked leisurely in the blizzard as though she had no home tohurry to, she hugged under one arm a round loaf of black bread withan air of guarding a priceless booty: and Razumov averting his glanceenvied her the peace of her mind and the serenity of her fate.

  To one reading Mr. Razumov's narrative it is really a wonder how hemanaged to keep going as he did along one interminable street afteranother on pavements that were gradually becoming blocked with snow.It was the thought of Haldin locked up in his rooms and the desperatedesire to get rid of his presence which drove him forward. No rationaldetermination had any part in his exertions. Thus, when on arriving atthe low eating-house he heard that the man of horses, Ziemianitch, wasnot there, he could only stare stupidly.

  The waiter, a wild-haired youth in tarred boots and a pink shirt,exclaimed, uncovering his pale gums in a silly grin, that Ziemianitchhad got his skinful early in the afternoon and had gone away with abottle under each arm to keep it up amongst the horses--he supposed.

  The owner of the vile den, a bony short man in a dirty cloth caftancoming down to his heels, stood by, his hands tucked into his belt, andnodded confirmation.

  The reek of spirits, the greasy rancid steam of food got Razumov by thethroat. He struck a table with his clenched hand and shouted violently--

  "You lie."

  Bleary unwashed faces were turned to his direction. A mild-eyed raggedtramp drinking tea at the next table moved farther away. A murmur ofwonder arose with an undertone of uneasiness. A laugh was heard too, andan exclamation, "There! there!" jeeringly soothing. The waiter lookedall round and announced to the room--

  "The gentleman won't believe that Ziemianitch is drunk."

  From a distant corner a hoarse voice belonging to a horrible,nondescript, shaggy being with a black face like the muzzle of a beargrunted angrily--

  "The cursed driver of thieves. What do we want with his gentlemen here?We are all honest folk in this place."

  Razumov, bit
ing his lip till blood came to keep himself from burstinginto imprecations, followed the owner of the den, who, whispering "Comealong, little father," led him into a tiny hole of a place behindthe wooden counter, whence proceeded a sound of splashing. A wet andbedraggled creature, a sort of sexless and shivering scarecrow, washedglasses in there, bending over a wooden tub by the light of a tallowdip.

  "Yes, little father," the man in the long caftan said plaintively. Hehad a brown, cunning little face, a thin greyish beard. Trying to lighta tin lantern he hugged it to his breast and talked garrulously thewhile.

  He would show Ziemianitch to the gentleman to prove there were no liestold. And he would show him drunk. His woman, it seems, ran away fromhim last night. "Such a hag she was! Thin! Pfui!" He spat. They werealways running away from that driver of the devil--and he sixty yearsold too; could never get used to it. But each heart knows sorrow afterits own kind and Ziemianitch was a born fool all his days. And then hewould fly to the bottle. "'Who could bear life in our land without thebottle?' he says. A proper Russian man--the little pig.... Be pleasedto follow me."

  Razumov crossed a quadrangle of deep snow enclosed between high wallswith innumerable windows. Here and there a dim yellow light hung withinthe four-square mass of darkness. The house was an enormous slum, a hiveof human vermin, a monumental abode of misery towering on the verge ofstarvation and despair.

  In a corner the ground sloped sharply down, and Razumov followed thelight of the lantern through a small doorway into a long cavernous placelike a neglected subterranean byre. Deep within, three shaggy littlehorses tied up to rings hung their heads together, motionless andshadowy in the dim light of the lantern. It must have been the famousteam of Haldin's escape. Razumov peered fearfully into the gloom. Hisguide pawed in the straw with his foot.

  "Here he is. Ah! the little pigeon. A true Russian man. 'No heavy heartsfor me,' he says. 'Bring out the bottle and take your ugly mug out of mysight.' Ha! ha! ha! That's the fellow he is."

  He held the lantern over a prone form of a man, apparently fully dressedfor outdoors. His head was lost in a pointed cloth hood. On the otherside of a heap of straw protruded a pair of feet in monstrous thickboots.

  "Always ready to drive," commented the keeper of the eating-house. "Aproper Russian driver that. Saint or devil, night or day is all one toZiemianitch when his heart is free from sorrow. 'I don't ask who youare, but where you want to go,' he says. He would drive Satan himself tohis own abode and come back chirruping to his horses. Many a one he hasdriven who is clanking his chains in the Nertchinsk mines by this time."

  Razumov shuddered.

  "Call him, wake him up," he faltered out.

  The other set down his light, stepped back and launched a kick at theprostrate sleeper. The man shook at the impact but did not move. At thethird kick he grunted but remained inert as before.

  The eating-house keeper desisted and fetched a deep sigh.

  "You see for yourself how it is. We have done what we can for you."

  He picked up the lantern. The intense black spokes of shadow swungabout in the circle of light. A terrible fury--the blind rage ofself-preservation--possessed Razumov.

  "Ah! The vile beast," he bellowed out in an unearthly tone which madethe lantern jump and tremble! "I shall wake you! Give me...giveme..."

  He looked round wildly, seized the handle of a stablefork and rushingforward struck at the prostrate body with inarticulate cries. After atime his cries ceased, and the rain of blows fell in the stillness andshadows of the cellar-like stable. Razumov belaboured Ziemianitch withan insatiable fury, in great volleys of sounding thwacks. Except for theviolent movements of Razumov nothing stirred, neither the beaten mannor the spoke-like shadows on the walls. And only the sound of blows washeard. It was a weird scene.

  Suddenly there was a sharp crack. The stick broke and half of it flewfar away into the gloom beyond the light. At the same time Ziemianitchsat up. At this Razumov became as motionless as the man with thelantern--only his breast heaved for air as if ready to burst.

  Some dull sensation of pain must have penetrated at last the consolingnight of drunkenness enwrapping the "bright Russian soul" of Haldin'senthusiastic praise. But Ziemianitch evidently saw nothing. His eyeballsblinked all white in the light once, twice--then the gleam went out.For a moment he sat in the straw with closed eyes with a strange air ofweary meditation, then fell over slowly on his side without making theslightest sound. Only the straw rustled a little. Razumov stared wildly,fighting for his breath. After a second or two he heard a light snore.

  He flung from him the piece of stick remaining in his grasp, and wentoff with great hasty strides without looking back once.

  After going heedlessly for some fifty yards along the street he walkedinto a snowdrift and was up to his knees before he stopped.

  This recalled him to himself; and glancing about he discovered he hadbeen going in the wrong direction. He retraced his steps, but now at amore moderate pace. When passing before the house he had just left heflourished his fist at the sombre refuge of misery and crime rearing itssinister bulk on the white ground. It had an air of brooding. He let hisarm fall by his side--discouraged.

  Ziemianitch's passionate surrender to sorrow and consolation had baffledhim. That was the people. A true Russian man! Razumov was glad he hadbeaten that brute--the "bright soul" of the other. Here they were: thepeople and the enthusiast.

  Between the two he was done for. Between the drunkenness of the peasantincapable of action and the dream-intoxication of the idealist incapableof perceiving the reason of things, and the true character of men. Itwas a sort of terrible childishness. But children had their masters."Ah! the stick, the stick, the stern hand," thought Razumov, longing forpower to hurt and destroy.

  He was glad he had thrashed that brute. The physical exertion had lefthis body in a comfortable glow. His mental agitation too was clarifiedas if all the feverishness had gone out of him in a fit of outwardviolence. Together with the persisting sense of terrible danger he wasconscious now of a tranquil, unquenchable hate.

  He walked slower and slower. And indeed, considering the guest he hadin his rooms, it was no wonder he lingered on the way. It was likeharbouring a pestilential disease that would not perhaps take your life,but would take from you all that made life worth living--a subtle pestthat would convert earth into a hell.

  What was he doing now? Lying on the bed as if dead, with the back of hishands over his eyes? Razumov had a morbidly vivid vision of Haldin onhis bed--the white pillow hollowed by the head, the legs in long boots,the upturned feet. And in his abhorrence he said to himself, "I'll killhim when I get home." But he knew very well that that was of no use.The corpse hanging round his neck would be nearly as fatal as the livingman. Nothing short of complete annihilation would do. And that wasimpossible. What then? Must one kill oneself to escape this visitation?

  Razumov's despair was too profoundly tinged with hate to accept thatissue.

  And yet it was despair--nothing less--at the thought of having to livewith Haldin for an indefinite number of days in mortal alarm at everysound. But perhaps when he heard that this "bright soul" of Ziemianitchsuffered from a drunken eclipse the fellow would take his infernalresignation somewhere else. And that was not likely on the face of it.

  Razumov thought: "I am being crushed--and I can't even run away."Other men had somewhere a corner of the earth--some little house inthe provinces where they had a right to take their troubles. A materialrefuge. He had nothing. He had not even a moral refuge--the refuge ofconfidence. To whom could he go with this tale--in all this great, greatland?

  Razumov stamped his foot--and under the soft carpet of snow felt thehard ground of Russia, inanimate, cold, inert, like a sullen and tragicmother hiding her face under a winding-sheet--his native soil!--his veryown--without a fireside, without a heart!

  He cast his eyes upwards and stood amazed. The snow had ceased to fall,and now, as if by a miracle, he saw above his head the clear black sk
yof the northern winter, decorated with the sumptuous fires of the stars.It was a canopy fit for the resplendent purity of the snows.

  Razumov received an almost physical impression of endless space and ofcountless millions.

  He responded to it with the readiness of a Russian who is born to aninheritance of space and numbers. Under the sumptuous immensity of thesky, the snow covered the endless forests, the frozen rivers, the plainsof an immense country, obliterating the landmarks, the accidents ofthe ground, levelling everything under its uniform whiteness, like amonstrous blank page awaiting the record of an inconceivable history.It covered the passive land with its lives of countless people likeZiemianitch and its handful of agitators like this Haldin--murderingfoolishly.

  It was a sort of sacred inertia. Razumov felt a respect for it. Avoice seemed to cry within him, "Don't touch it." It was a guarantee ofduration, of safety, while the travail of maturing destiny went on--awork not of revolutions with their passionate levity of action and theirshifting impulses--but of peace. What it needed was not the conflictingaspirations of a people, but a will strong and one: it wanted not thebabble of many voices, but a man--strong and one!

  Razumov stood on the point of conversion. He was fascinated by itsapproach, by its overpowering logic. For a train of thought is neverfalse. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence, insecret fears and half-formed ambitions, in the secret confidencecombined with a secret mistrust of ourselves, in the love of hope andthe dread of uncertain days.

  In Russia, the land of spectral ideas and disembodied aspirations, manybrave minds have turned away at last from the vain and endless conflictto the one great historical fact of the land. They turned to autocracyfor the peace of their patriotic conscience as a weary unbeliever,touched by grace, turns to the faith of his fathers for the blessingof spiritual rest. Like other Russians before him, Razumov, in conflictwith himself, felt the touch of grace upon his forehead.

  "Haldin means disruption," he thought to himself, beginning to walkagain. "What is he with his indignation, with his talk of bondage--withhis talk of God's justice? All that means disruption. Better thatthousands should suffer than that a people should become a disintegratedmass, helpless like dust in the wind. Obscurantism is better than thelight of incendiary torches. The seed germinates in the night. Out ofthe dark soil springs the perfect plant. But a volcanic eruptionis sterile, the ruin of the fertile ground. And am I, who love mycountry--who have nothing but that to love and put my faith in--am Ito have my future, perhaps my usefulness, ruined by this sanguinaryfanatic?"

  The grace entered into Razumov. He believed now in the man who wouldcome at the appointed time.

  What is a throne? A few pieces of wood upholstered in velvet. But athrone is a seat of power too. The form of government is the shape ofa tool--an instrument. But twenty thousand bladders inflated by thenoblest sentiments and jostling against each other in the air are amiserable incumbrance of space, holding no power, possessing no will,having nothing to give.

  He went on thus, heedless of the way, holding a discourse with himselfwith extraordinary abundance and facility. Generally his phrases cameto him slowly, after a conscious and painstaking wooing. Some superiorpower had inspired him with a flow of masterly argument as certainconverted sinners become overwhelmingly loquacious.

  He felt an austere exultation.

  "What are the luridly smoky lucubrations of that fellow to the cleargrasp of my intellect?" he thought. "Is not this my country? Have I notgot forty million brothers?" he asked himself, unanswerably victoriousin the silence of his breast. And the fearful thrashing he had giventhe inanimate Ziemianitch seemed to him a sign of intimate union, apathetically severe necessity of brotherly love. "No! If I must sufferlet me at least suffer for my convictions, not for a crime my reason--mycool superior reason--rejects."

  He ceased to think for a moment. The silence in his breast was complete.But he felt a suspicious uneasiness, such as we may experience when weenter an unlighted strange place--the irrational feeling that somethingmay jump upon us in the dark--the absurd dread of the unseen.

  Of course he was far from being a moss-grown reactionary. Everything wasnot for the best. Despotic bureaucracy... abuses... corruption...and so on. Capable men were wanted. Enlightened intelligences. Devotedhearts. But absolute power should be preserved--the tool ready for theman--for the great autocrat of the future. Razumov believed in him. Thelogic of history made him unavoidable. The state of the people demandedhim, "What else?" he asked himself ardently, "could move all that massin one direction? Nothing could. Nothing but a single will."

  He was persuaded that he was sacrificing his personal longings ofliberalism--rejecting the attractive error for the stern Russian truth."That's patriotism," he observed mentally, and added, "There's nostopping midway on that road," and then remarked to himself, "I am not acoward."

  And again there was a dead silence in Razumov's breast. He walked withlowered head, making room for no one. He walked slowly and his thoughtsreturning spoke within him with solemn slowness.

  "What is this Haldin? And what am I? Only two grains of sand. But agreat mountain is made up of just such insignificant grains. And thedeath of a man or of many men is an insignificant thing. Yet we combata contagious pestilence. Do I want his death? No! I would save him if Icould--but no one can do that--he is the withered member which must becut off. If I must perish through him, let me at least not perishwith him, and associated against my will with his sombre folly thatunderstands nothing either of men or things. Why should I leave a falsememory?"

  It passed through his mind that there was no one in the world whocared what sort of memory he left behind him. He exclaimed to himselfinstantly, "Perish vainly for a falsehood!... What a miserable fate!"

  He was now in a more animated part of the town. He did not remark thecrash of two colliding sledges close to the curb. The driver of onebellowed tearfully at his fellow--

  "Oh, thou vile wretch!"

  This hoarse yell, let out nearly in his ear, disturbed Razumov. He shookhis head impatiently and went on looking straight before him. Suddenlyon the snow, stretched on his back right across his path, he saw Haldin,solid, distinct, real, with his inverted hands over his eyes, clad in abrown close-fitting coat and long boots. He was lying out of the way alittle, as though he had selected that place on purpose. The snow roundhim was untrodden.

  This hallucination had such a solidity of aspect that the first movementof Razumov was to reach for his pocket to assure himself that the key ofhis rooms was there. But he checked the impulse with a disdainful curveof his lips. He understood. His thought, concentrated intensely onthe figure left lying on his bed, had culminated in this extraordinaryillusion of the sight. Razumov tackled the phenomenon calmly. With astern face, without a check and gazing far beyond the vision, he walkedon, experiencing nothing but a slight tightening of the chest. Afterpassing he turned his head for a glance, and saw only the unbroken trackof his footsteps over the place where the breast of the phantom had beenlying.

  Razumov walked on and after a little time whispered his wonder tohimself.

  "Exactly as if alive! Seemed to breathe! And right in my way too! I havehad an extraordinary experience."

  He made a few steps and muttered through his set teeth--

  "I shall give him up."

  Then for some twenty yards or more all was blank. He wrapped his cloakcloser round him. He pulled his cap well forward over his eyes.

  "Betray. A great word. What is betrayal? They talk of a man betrayinghis country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bondfirst. All a man can betray is his conscience. And how is my conscienceengaged here; by what bond of common faith, of common conviction, amI obliged to let that fanatical idiot drag me down with him? On thecontrary--every obligation of true courage is the other way."

  Razumov looked round from under his cap.

  "What can the prejudice of the world reproach me with? Have I provokedhis confidence? No! Ha
ve I by a single word, look, or gesture given himreason to suppose that I accepted his trust in me? No! It is true thatI consented to go and see his Ziemianitch. Well, I have been to see him.And I broke a stick on his back too--the brute."

  Something seemed to turn over in his head bringing uppermost asingularly hard, clear facet of his brain.

  "It would be better, however," he reflected with a quite differentmental accent, "to keep that circumstance altogether to myself."

  He had passed beyond the turn leading to his lodgings, and had reacheda wide and fashionable street. Some shops were still open, and all therestaurants. Lights fell on the pavement where men in expensive furcoats, with here and there the elegant figure of a woman, walked with anair of leisure. Razumov looked at them with the contempt of an austerebeliever for the frivolous crowd. It was the world--those officers,dignitaries, men of fashion, officials, members of the Yacht Club. Theevent of the morning affected them all. What would they say if they knewwhat this student in a cloak was going to do?

  "Not one of them is capable of feeling and thinking as deeply as I can.How many of them could accomplish an act of conscience?"

  Razumov lingered in the well-lighted street. He was firmly decided.Indeed, it could hardly be called a decision. He had simply discoveredwhat he had meant to do all along. And yet he felt the need of someother mind's sanction.

  With something resembling anguish he said to himself--

  "I want to be understood." The universal aspiration with all itsprofound and melancholy meaning assailed heavily Razumov, who, amongsteighty millions of his kith and kin, had no heart to which he could openhimself.

  The attorney was not to be thought of. He despised the little agent ofchicane too much. One could not go and lay one's conscience before thepoliceman at the corner. Neither was Razumov anxious to go to the chiefof his district's police--a common-looking person whom he used to seesometimes in the street in a shabby uniform and with a smoulderingcigarette stuck to his lower lip. "He would begin by locking me up mostprobably. At any rate, he is certain to get excited and create an awfulcommotion," thought Razumov practically.

  An act of conscience must be done with outward dignity.

  Razumov longed desperately for a word of advice, for moral support. Whoknows what true loneliness is--not the conventional word, but the nakedterror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserableoutcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatalconjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instantonly. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude withoutgoing mad.

  Razumov had reached that point of vision. To escape from it he embracedfor a whole minute the delirious purpose of rushing to his lodgingsand flinging himself on his knees by the side of the bed with the darkfigure stretched on it; to pour out a full confession in passionatewords that would stir the whole being of that man to its innermostdepths; that would end in embraces and tears; in an incrediblefellowship of souls--such as the world had never seen. It was sublime!

  Inwardly he wept and trembled already. But to the casual eyes that werecast upon him he was aware that he appeared as a tranquil student ina cloak, out for a leisurely stroll. He noted, too, the sidelong,brilliant glance of a pretty woman--with a delicate head, and coveredin the hairy skins of wild beasts down to her feet, like a frail andbeautiful savage--which rested for a moment with a sort of mockingtenderness on the deep abstraction of that good-looking young man.

  Suddenly Razumov stood still. The glimpse of a passing grey whisker,caught and lost in the same instant, had evoked the complete image ofPrince K---, the man who once had pressed his hand as no other man hadpressed it--a faint but lingering pressure like a secret sign, like ahalf-unwilling caress.

  And Razumov marvelled at himself. Why did he not think of him before!

  "A senator, a dignitary, a great personage, the very man--He!"

  A strange softening emotion came over Razumov--made his knees shake alittle. He repressed it with a new-born austerity. All that sentimentwas pernicious nonsense. He couldn't be quick enough; and when he gotinto a sledge he shouted to the driver--"to the K--- Palace. Geton--you! Fly!" The startled moujik, bearded up to the very whites ofhis eyes, answered obsequiously--

  "I hear, your high Nobility."

  It was lucky for Razumov that Prince K--- was not a man of timidcharacter. On the day of Mr. de P---'s murder an extreme alarm anddespondency prevailed in the high official spheres.

  Prince K---, sitting sadly alone in his study, was told by his alarmedservants that a mysterious young man had forced his way into the hall,refused to tell his name and the nature of his business, and would notmove from there till he had seen his Excellency in private. Instead oflocking himself up and telephoning for the police, as nine out of tenhigh personages would have done that evening, the Prince gave way tocuriosity and came quietly to the door of his study.

  In the hall, the front door standing wide open, he recognised at onceRazumov, pale as death, his eyes blazing, and surrounded by perplexedlackeys.

  The Prince was vexed beyond measure, and even indignant. But his humaneinstincts and a subtle sense of self-respect could not allow him tolet this young man be thrown out into the street by base menials.He retreated unseen into his room, and after a little rang his bell.Razumov heard in the hall an ominously raised harsh voice sayingsomewhere far away--

  "Show the gentleman in here."

  Razumov walked in without a tremor. He felt himself invulnerable--raisedfar above the shallowness of common judgment. Though he saw the Princelooking at him with black displeasure, the lucidity of his mind, ofwhich he was very conscious, gave him an extraordinary assurance. He wasnot asked to sit down.

  Half an hour later they appeared in the hall together. The lackeys stoodup, and the Prince, moving with difficulty on his gouty feet, was helpedinto his furs. The carriage had been ordered before. When the greatdouble door was flung open with a crash, Razumov, who had been standingsilent with a lost gaze but with every faculty intensely on the alert,heard the Prince's voice--

  "Your arm, young man."

  The mobile, superficial mind of the ex-Guards officer, man of showymissions, experienced in nothing but the arts of gallant intrigueand worldly success, had been equally impressed by the more obviousdifficulties of such a situation and by Razumov's quiet dignity instating them.

  He had said, "No. Upon the whole I can't condemn the step you venturedto take by coming to me with your story. It is not an affair for policeunderstrappers. The greatest importance is attached to.... Setyour mind at rest. I shall see you through this most extraordinary anddifficult situation."

  Then the Prince rose to ring the bell, and Razumov, making a short bow,had said with deference--

  "I have trusted my instinct. A young man having no claim upon anybodyin the world has in an hour of trial involving his deepest politicalconvictions turned to an illustrious Russian--that's all."

  The Prince had exclaimed hastily--

  "You have done well."

  In the carriage--it was a small brougham on sleigh runners--Razumovbroke the silence in a voice that trembled slightly.

  "My gratitude surpasses the greatness of my presumption."

  He gasped, feeling unexpectedly in the dark a momentary pressure on hisarm.

  "You have done well," repeated the Prince.

  When the carriage stopped the Prince murmured to Razumov, who had neverventured a single question--

  "The house of General T---."

  In the middle of the snow-covered roadway blazed a great bonfire.Some Cossacks, the bridles of their horses over the arm, were warmingthemselves around. Two sentries stood at the door, several gendarmeslounged under the great carriage gateway, and on the first-floorlanding two orderlies rose and stood at attention. Razumov walked at thePrince's elbow.

  A surprising quantity of hot-house plants in pots cumbered the floor ofthe ante-room. Servants came forward. A young man in civilian clothesarrived hurriedly, was whi
spered to, bowed low, and exclaimingzealously, "Certainly--this minute," fled within somewhere. The Princesigned to Razumov.

  They passed through a suite of reception-rooms all barely lit and oneof them prepared for dancing. The wife of the General had put offher party. An atmosphere of consternation pervaded the place. But theGeneral's own room, with heavy sombre hangings, two massive desks, anddeep armchairs, had all the lights turned on. The footman shut the doorbehind them and they waited.

  There was a coal fire in an English grate; Razumov had never before seensuch a fire; and the silence of the room was like the silence of thegrave; perfect, measureless, for even the clock on the mantelpiecemade no sound. Filling a corner, on a black pedestal, stood aquarter-life-size smooth-limbed bronze of an adolescent figure, running.The Prince observed in an undertone--

  "Spontini's. 'Flight of Youth.' Exquisite."

  "Admirable," assented Razumov faintly.

  They said nothing more after this, the Prince silent with his grand air,Razumov staring at the statue. He was worried by a sensation resemblingthe gnawing of hunger.

  He did not turn when he heard an inner door fly open, and a quickfootstep, muffled on the carpet.

  The Prince's voice immediately exclaimed, thick with excitement--

  "We have got him--_ce miserable_. A worthy young man came to me--No!It's incredible...."

  Razumov held his breath before the bronze as if expecting a crash.Behind his back a voice he had never heard before insisted politely--

  "_Asseyez-vous donc_."

  The Prince almost shrieked, "_Mais comprenez-vous, mon cher!L'assassin_! the murderer--we have got him...."

  Razumov spun round. The General's smooth big cheeks rested on the stiffcollar of his uniform. He must have been already looking at Razumov,because that last saw the pale blue eyes fastened on him coldly.

  The Prince from a chair waved an impressive hand.

  "This is a most honourable young man whom Providence itself... Mr.Razumov."

  The General acknowledged the introduction by frowning at Razumov, whodid not make the slightest movement.

  Sitting down before his desk the General listened with compressed lips.It was impossible to detect any sign of emotion on his face.

  Razumov watched the immobility of the fleshy profile. But it lasted onlya moment, till the Prince had finished; and when the General turned tothe providential young man, his florid complexion, the blue, unbelievingeyes and the bright white flash of an automatic smile had an air ofjovial, careless cruelty. He expressed no wonder at the extraordinarystory--no pleasure or excitement--no incredulity either. He betrayed nosentiment whatever. Only with a politeness almost deferential suggestedthat "the bird might have flown while Mr.--Mr. Razumov was running aboutthe streets."

  Razumov advanced to the middle of the room and said, "The door is lockedand I have the key in my pocket."

  His loathing for the man was intense. It had come upon him so unawaresthat he felt he had not kept it out of his voice. The General looked upat him thoughtfully, and Razumov grinned.

  All this went over the head of Prince K--- seated in a deep armchair,very tired and impatient.

  "A student called Haldin," said the General thoughtfully.

  Razumov ceased to grin.

  "That is his name," he said unnecessarily loud. "Victor VictorovitchHaldin--a student."

  The General shifted his position a little.

  "How is he dressed? Would you have the goodness to tell me?"

  Razumov angrily described Haldin's clothing in a few jerky words. TheGeneral stared all the time, then addressing the Prince--

  "We were not without some indications," he said in French. "A good womanwho was in the street described to us somebody wearing a dress of thesort as the thrower of the second bomb. We have detained her at theSecretariat, and every one in a Tcherkess coat we could lay our handson has been brought to her to look at. She kept on crossing herselfand shaking her head at them. It was exasperating...." He turned toRazumov, and in Russian, with friendly reproach--

  "Take a chair, Mr. Razumov--do. Why are you standing?"

  Razumov sat down carelessly and looked at the General.

  "This goggle-eyed imbecile understands nothing," he thought.

  The Prince began to speak loftily.

  "Mr. Razumov is a young man of conspicuous abilities. I have it at heartthat his future should not...."

  "Certainly," interrupted the General, with a movement of the hand. "Hashe any weapons on him, do you think, Mr. Razumov?"

  The General employed a gentle musical voice. Razumov answered withsuppressed irritation--

  "No. But my razors are lying about--you understand."

  The General lowered his head approvingly.

  "Precisely."

  Then to the Prince, explaining courteously--

  "We want that bird alive. It will be the devil if we can't make him singa little before we are done with him."

  The grave-like silence of the room with its mute clock fell upon thepolite modulations of this terrible phrase. The Prince, hidden in thechair, made no sound.

  The General unexpectedly developed a thought.

  "Fidelity to menaced institutions on which depend the safety of athrone and of a people is no child's play. We know that, _mon Prince,_and--_tenez_--" he went on with a sort of flattering harshness, "Mr.Razumov here begins to understand that too."

  His eyes which he turned upon Razumov seemed to be starting out of hishead. This grotesqueness of aspect no longer shocked Razumov. He saidwith gloomy conviction--

  "Haldin will never speak."

  "That remains to be seen," muttered the General.

  "I am certain," insisted Razumov. "A man like this never speaks....Do you imagine that I am here from fear?" he added violently. He feltready to stand by his opinion of Haldin to the last extremity.

  "Certainly not," protested the General, with great simplicity of tone."And I don't mind telling you, Mr. Razumov, that if he had not comewith his tale to such a staunch and loyal Russian as you, he wouldhave disappeared like a stone in the water... which would have had adetestable effect," he added, with a bright, cruel smile under his stonystare. "So you see, there can be no suspicion of any fear here."

  The Prince intervened, looking at Razumov round the back of thearmchair.

  "Nobody doubts the moral soundness of your action. Be at ease in thatrespect, pray."

  He turned to the General uneasily.

  "That's why I am here. You may be surprised why I should...."

  The General hastened to interrupt.

  "Not at all. Extremely natural. You saw the importance...."

  "Yes," broke in the Prince. "And I venture to ask insistently that mineand Mr. Razumov's intervention should not become public. He is a youngman of promise--of remarkable aptitudes."

  "I haven't a doubt of it," murmured the General. "He inspiresconfidence."

  "All sorts of pernicious views are so widespread nowadays--they taintsuch unexpected quarters--that, monstrous as it seems, he might suffer...his studies...his..."

  The General, with his elbows on the desk, took his head between hishands.

  "Yes. Yes. I am thinking it out.... How long is it since you left himat your rooms, Mr. Razumov?"

  Razumov mentioned the hour which nearly corresponded with the time ofhis distracted flight from the big slum house. He had made up his mindto keep Ziemianitch out of the affair completely. To mention him at allwould mean imprisonment for the "bright soul," perhaps cruel floggings,and in the end a journey to Siberia in chains. Razumov, who had beatenZiemianitch, felt for him now a vague, remorseful tenderness.

  The General, giving way for the first time to his secret sentiments,exclaimed contemptuously--

  "And you say he came in to make you this confidence like this--fornothing--_a propos des bottes_."

  Razumov felt danger in the air. The merciless suspicion of despotism hadspoken openly at last. Sudden fear sealed Razumov's lips. The silenceof the ro
om resembled now the silence of a deep dungeon, where time doesnot count, and a suspect person is sometimes forgotten for ever. But thePrince came to the rescue.

  "Providence itself has led the wretch in a moment of mental aberrationto seek Mr. Razumov on the strength of some old, utterly misinterpretedexchange of ideas--some sort of idle speculative conversation--monthsago--I am told--and completely forgotten till now by Mr. Razumov."

  "Mr. Razumov," queried the General meditatively, after a short silence,"do you often indulge in speculative conversation?"

  "No, Excellency," answered Razumov, coolly, in a sudden access ofself-confidence. "I am a man of deep convictions. Crude opinions arein the air. They are not always worth combating. But even the silentcontempt of a serious mind may be misinterpreted by headlong utopists."

  The General stared from between his hands. Prince K--- murmured--

  "A serious young man. _Un esprit superieur_."

  "I see that, _mon cher Prince_," said the General. "Mr. Razumov is quitesafe with me. I am interested in him. He has, it seems, the great anduseful quality of inspiring confidence. What I was wondering at is whythe other should mention anything at all--I mean even the bare factalone--if his object was only to obtain temporary shelter for a fewhours. For, after all, nothing was easier than to say nothing about itunless, indeed, he were trying, under a crazy misapprehension of yourtrue sentiments, to enlist your assistance--eh, Mr. Razumov?"

  It seemed to Razumov that the floor was moving slightly. This grotesqueman in a tight uniform was terrible. It was right that he should beterrible.

  "I can see what your Excellency has in your mind. But I can only answerthat I don't know why."

  "I have nothing in my mind," murmured the General, with gentle surprise.

  "I am his prey--his helpless prey," thought Razumov. The fatigues andthe disgusts of that afternoon, the need to forget, the fear which hecould not keep off, reawakened his hate for Haldin.

  "Then I can't help your Excellency. I don't know what he meant. I onlyknow there was a moment when I wished to kill him. There was also amoment when I wished myself dead. I said nothing. I was overcome. Iprovoked no confidence--I asked for no explanations--"

  Razumov seemed beside himself; but his mind was lucid. It was really acalculated outburst.

  "It is rather a pity," the General said, "that you did not. Don't youknow at all what he means to do?" Razumov calmed down and saw an openingthere.

  "He told me he was in hopes that a sledge would meet him about half anhour after midnight at the seventh lamp-post on the left from the upperend of Karabelnaya. At any rate, he meant to be there at that time. Hedid not even ask me for a change of clothes."

  "_Ah voila_!" said the General, turning to Prince K with an air ofsatisfaction. "There is a way to keep your _protege_, Mr. Razumov, quiteclear of any connexion with the actual arrest. We shall be ready forthat gentleman in Karabelnaya."

  The Prince expressed his gratitude. There was real emotion in his voice.Razumov, motionless, silent, sat staring at the carpet. The Generalturned to him.

  "Half an hour after midnight. Till then we have to depend on you, Mr.Razumov. You don't think he is likely to change his purpose?"

  "How can I tell?" said Razumov. "Those men are not of the sort that everchanges its purpose."

  "What men do you mean?"

  "Fanatical lovers of liberty in general. Liberty with a capital L,Excellency. Liberty that means nothing precise. Liberty in whose namecrimes are committed."

  The General murmured--

  "I detest rebels of every kind. I can't help it. It's my nature!"

  He clenched a fist and shook it, drawing back his arm. "They shall bedestroyed, then."

  "They have made a sacrifice of their lives beforehand," said Razumovwith malicious pleasure and looking the General straight in the face."If Haldin does change his purpose to-night, you may depend on it thatit will not be to save his life by flight in some other way. He wouldhave thought then of something else to attempt. But that is not likely."

  The General repeated as if to himself, "They shall be destroyed."

  Razumov assumed an impenetrable expression.

  The Prince exclaimed--

  "What a terrible necessity!"

  The General's arm was lowered slowly.

  "One comfort there is. That brood leaves no posterity. I've always saidit, one effort, pitiless, persistent, steady--and we are done with themfor ever."

  Razumov thought to himself that this man entrusted with so mucharbitrary power must have believed what he said or else he could nothave gone on bearing the responsibility.

  "I detest rebels. These subversive minds! These intellectual_debauches_! My existence has been built on fidelity. It's a feeling.To defend it I am ready to lay down my life--and even my honour--ifthat were needed. But pray tell me what honour can there be as againstrebels--against people that deny God Himself--perfect unbelievers!Brutes. It is horrible to think of."

  During this tirade Razumov, facing the General, had nodded slightlytwice. Prince K---, standing on one side with his grand air, murmured,casting up his eyes--

  "_Helas!_"

  Then lowering his glance and with great decision declared--

  "This young man, General, is perfectly fit to apprehend the bearing ofyour memorable words."

  The General's whole expression changed from dull resentment to perfecturbanity.

  "I would ask now, Mr. Razumov," he said, "to return to his home. Notethat I don't ask Mr. Razumov whether he has justified his absence to hisguest. No doubt he did this sufficiently. But I don't ask. Mr. Razumovinspires confidence. It is a great gift. I only suggest that a moreprolonged absence might awaken the criminal's suspicions and induce himperhaps to change his plans."

  He rose and with a scrupulous courtesy escorted his visitors to theante-room encumbered with flower-pots.

  Razumov parted with the Prince at the corner of a street. In thecarriage he had listened to speeches where natural sentiment struggledwith caution. Evidently the Prince was afraid of encouraging any hopesof future intercourse. But there was a touch of tenderness in the voiceuttering in the dark the guarded general phrases of goodwill. And thePrince too said--

  "I have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Razumov."

  "They all, it seems, have confidence in me," thought Razumov dully. Hehad an indulgent contempt for the man sitting shoulder to shoulder withhim in the confined space. Probably he was afraid of scenes with hiswife. She was said to be proud and violent.

  It seemed to him bizarre that secrecy should play such a large part inthe comfort and safety of lives. But he wanted to put the Prince'smind at ease; and with a proper amount of emphasis he said that, beingconscious of some small abilities and confident in his power of work, hetrusted his future to his own exertions. He expressed his gratitude forthe helping hand. Such dangerous situations did not occur twice in thecourse of one life--he added.

  "And you have met this one with a firmness of mind and correctnessof feeling which give me a high idea of your worth," the Prince saidsolemnly. "You have now only to persevere--to persevere."

  On getting out on the pavement Razumov saw an ungloved hand extended tohim through the lowered window of the brougham. It detained his own inits grasp for a moment, while the light of a street lamp fell upon thePrince's long face and old-fashioned grey whiskers.

  "I hope you are perfectly reassured now as to the consequences..."

  "After what your Excellency has condescended to do for me, I can onlyrely on my conscience."

  "_Adieu_," said the whiskered head with feeling.

  Razumov bowed. The brougham glided away with a slight swish in thesnow--he was alone on the edge of the pavement.

  He said to himself that there was nothing to think about, and beganwalking towards his home.

  He walked quietly. It was a common experience to walk thus home to bedafter an evening spent somewhere with his fellows or in the cheaperseats of a theatre. After he had gone a little way
the familiarity ofthings got hold of him. Nothing was changed. There was the familiarcorner; and when he turned it he saw the familiar dim light of theprovision shop kept by a German woman. There were loaves of stale bread,bunches of onions and strings of sausages behind the small window-panes.They were closing it. The sickly lame fellow whom he knew so well bysight staggered out into the snow embracing a large shutter.

  Nothing would change. There was the familiar gateway yawning black withfeeble glimmers marking the arches of the different staircases.

  The sense of life's continuity depended on trifling bodily impressions.The trivialities of daily existence were an armour for the soul. Andthis thought reinforced the inward quietness of Razumov as he began toclimb the stairs familiar to his feet in the dark, with his hand on thefamiliar clammy banister. The exceptional could not prevail against thematerial contacts which make one day resemble another. To-morrow wouldbe like yesterday.

  It was only on the stage that the unusual was outwardly acknowledged.

  "I suppose," thought Razumov, "that if I had made up my mind to blow outmy brains on the landing I would be going up these stairs as quietlyas I am doing it now. What's a man to do? What must be must be.Extraordinary things do happen. But when they have happened they aredone with. Thus, too, when the mind is made up. That question is donewith. And the daily concerns, the familiarities of our thought swallowit up--and the life goes on as before with its mysterious and secretsides quite out of sight, as they should be. Life is a public thing."

  Razumov unlocked his door and took the key out; entered very quietly andbolted the door behind him carefully.

  He thought, "He hears me," and after bolting the door he stood stillholding his breath. There was not a sound. He crossed the bare outerroom, stepping deliberately in the darkness. Entering the other, he feltall over his table for the matchbox. The silence, but for the groping ofhis hand, was profound. Could the fellow be sleeping so soundly?

  He struck a light and looked at the bed. Haldin was lying on his back asbefore, only both his hands were under his head. His eyes were open. Hestared at the ceiling.

  Razumov held the match up. He saw the clear-cut features, the firmchin, the white forehead and the topknot of fair hair against the whitepillow. There he was, lying flat on his back. Razumov thought suddenly,"I have walked over his chest."

  He continued to stare till the match burnt itself out; then struckanother and lit the lamp in silence without looking towards the bed anymore. He had turned his back on it and was hanging his coat on a pegwhen he heard Haldin sigh profoundly, then ask in a tired voice--

  "Well! And what have you arranged?"

  The emotion was so great that Razumov was glad to put his hands againstthe wall. A diabolical impulse to say, "I have given you up to thepolice," frightened him exceedingly. But he did not say that. He said,without turning round, in a muffled voice--

  "It's done."

  Again he heard Haldin sigh. He walked to the table, sat down with thelamp before him, and only then looked towards the bed.

  In the distant corner of the large room far away from the lamp, whichwas small and provided with a very thick china shade, Haldin appearedlike a dark and elongated shape--rigid with the immobility of death.This body seemed to have less substance than its own phantom walked overby Razumov in the street white with snow. It was more alarming in itsshadowy, persistent reality than the distinct but vanishing illusion.

  Haldin was heard again.

  "You must have had a walk--such a walk,..." he murmureddeprecatingly. "This weather...."

  Razumov answered with energy--

  "Horrible walk.... A nightmare of a walk."

  He shuddered audibly. Haldin sighed once more, then--

  "And so you have seen Ziemianitch--brother?"

  "I've seen him."

  Razumov, remembering the time he had spent with the Prince, thought itprudent to add, "I had to wait some time."

  "A character--eh? It's extraordinary what a sense of the necessity offreedom there is in that man. And he has sayings too--simple, to thepoint, such as only the people can invent in their rough sagacity. Acharacter that...."

  "I, you understand, haven't had much opportunity...." Razumovmuttered through his teeth.

  Haldin continued to stare at the ceiling.

  "You see, brother, I have been a good deal in that house of late. I usedto take there books--leaflets. Not a few of the poor people who livethere can read. And, you see, the guests for the feast of freedom mustbe sought for in byways and hedges. The truth is, I have almost lived inthat house of late. I slept sometimes in the stable. There is astable...."

  "That's where I had my interview with Ziemianitch," interruptedRazumov gently. A mocking spirit entered into him and he added, "It wassatisfactory in a sense. I came away from it much relieved."

  "Ah! he's a fellow," went on Haldin, talking slowly at the ceiling. "Icame to know him in that way, you see. For some weeks now, ever since Iresigned myself to do what had to be done, I tried to isolate myself. Igave up my rooms. What was the good of exposing a decent widow womanto the risk of being worried out of her mind by the police? I gave upseeing any of our comrades...."

  Razumov drew to himself a half-sheet of paper and began to trace lineson it with a pencil.

  "Upon my word," he thought angrily, "he seems to have thought ofeverybody's safety but mine."

  Haldin was talking on.

  "This morning--ah! this morning--that was different. How can I explainto you? Before the deed was done I wandered at night and lay hid in theday, thinking it out, and I felt restful. Sleepless but restful. Whatwas there for me to torment myself about? But this morning--after! Thenit was that I became restless. I could not have stopped in that bighouse full of misery. The miserable of this world can't give you peace.Then when that silly caretaker began to shout, I said to myself,'There is a young man in this town head and shoulders above commonprejudices.'"

  "Is he laughing at me?" Razumov asked himself, going on with hisaimless drawing of triangles and squares. And suddenly he thought: "Mybehaviour must appear to him strange. Should he take fright at my mannerand rush off somewhere I shall be undone completely. That infernalGeneral...."

  He dropped the pencil and turned abruptly towards the bed with theshadowy figure extended full length on it--so much more indistinct thanthe one over whose breast he had walked without faltering. Was this,too, a phantom?

  The silence had lasted a long time. "He is no longer here," was thethought against which Razumov struggled desperately, quite frightened atits absurdity. "He is already gone and this...only..."

  He could resist no longer. He sprang to his feet, saying aloud, "I amintolerably anxious," and in a few headlong strides stood by the sideof the bed. His hand fell lightly on Haldin's shoulder, and directlyhe felt its reality he was beset by an insane temptation to grip thatexposed throat and squeeze the breath out of that body, lest it shouldescape his custody, leaving only a phantom behind.

  Haldin did not stir a limb, but his overshadowed eyes moving a littlegazed upwards at Razumov with wistful gratitude for this manifestationof feeling.

  Razumov turned away and strode up and down the room. "It would have beenpossibly a kindness," he muttered to himself, and was appalled by thenature of that apology for a murderous intention his mind had foundsomewhere within him. And all the same he could not give it up. Hebecame lucid about it. "What can he expect?" he thought. "The halter--inthe end. And I...."

  This argument was interrupted by Haldin's voice.

  "Why be anxious for me? They can kill my body, but they cannot exile mysoul from this world. I tell you what--I believe in this world so muchthat I cannot conceive eternity otherwise than as a very long life. Thatis perhaps the reason I am so ready to die."

  "H'm," muttered Razumov, and biting his lower lip he continued to walkup and down and to carry on his strange argument.

  Yes, to a man in such a situation--of course it would be an act ofkindness. The question, howev
er, was not how to be kind, but how to befirm. He was a slippery customer.

  "I too, Victor Victorovitch, believe in this world of ours," he saidwith force. "I too, while I live.... But you seem determined to hauntit. You can't seriously...mean..."

  The voice of the motionless Haldin began--

  "Haunt it! Truly, the oppressors of thought which quickens the world,the destroyers of souls which aspire to perfection of human dignity,they shall be haunted. As to the destroyers of my mere body, I haveforgiven them beforehand."

  Razumov had stopped apparently to listen, but at the same time he wasobserving his own sensations. He was vexed with himself for attaching somuch importance to what Haldin said.

  "The fellow's mad," he thought firmly, but this opinion did not mollifyhim towards Haldin. It was a particularly impudent form of lunacy--andwhen it got loose in the sphere of public life of a country, it wasobviously the duty of every good citizen....

  This train of thought broke off short there and was succeeded by aparoxysm of silent hatred towards Haldin, so intense that Razumovhastened to speak at random.

  "Yes. Eternity, of course. I, too, can't very well represent it tomyself.... I imagine it, however, as something quiet and dull. Therewould be nothing unexpected--don't you see? The element of time would bewanting."

  He pulled out his watch and gazed at it. Haldin turned over on his sideand looked on intently.

  Razumov got frightened at this movement. A slippery customer this fellowwith a phantom. It was not midnight yet. He hastened on--

  "And unfathomable mysteries! Can you conceive secret places in Eternity?Impossible. Whereas life is full of them. There are secrets of birth,for instance. One carries them on to the grave. There is somethingcomical...but never mind. And there are secret motives of conduct. Aman's most open actions have a secret side to them. That is interestingand so unfathomable! For instance, a man goes out of a room for a walk.Nothing more trivial in appearance. And yet it may be momentous. Hecomes back--he has seen perhaps a drunken brute, taken particular noticeof the snow on the ground--and behold he is no longer the same man. Themost unlikely things have a secret power over one's thoughts--the greywhiskers of a particular person--the goggle eyes of another."

  Razumov's forehead was moist. He took a turn or two in the room, hishead low and smiling to himself viciously.

  "Have you ever reflected on the power of goggle eyes and grey whiskers?Excuse me. You seem to think I must be crazy to talk in this vein atsuch a time. But I am not talking lightly. I have seen instances. It hashappened to me once to be talking to a man whose fate was affected byphysical facts of that kind. And the man did not know it. Of course, itwas a case of conscience, but the material facts such as these broughtabout the solution.... And you tell me, Victor Victorovitch, not tobe anxious! Why! I am responsible for you," Razumov almost shrieked.

  He avoided with difficulty a burst of Mephistophelian laughter. Haldin,very pale, raised himself on his elbow.

  "And the surprises of life," went on Razumov, after glancing at theother uneasily. "Just consider their astonishing nature. A mysteriousimpulse induces you to come here. I don't say you have done wrong.Indeed, from a certain point of view you could not have done better. Youmight have gone to a man with affections and family ties. You havesuch ties yourself. As to me, you know I have been brought up in aneducational institute where they did not give us enough to eat. To talkof affection in such a connexion--you perceive yourself.... Asto ties, the only ties I have in the world are social. I must getacknowledged in some way before I can act at all. I sit here working....And don't you think I am working for progress too? I've got to findmy own ideas of the true way.... Pardon me," continued Razumov, afterdrawing breath and with a short, throaty laugh, "but I haven't inheriteda revolutionary inspiration together with a resemblance from an uncle."

  He looked again at his watch and noticed with sickening disgust thatthere were yet a good many minutes to midnight. He tore watch and chainoff his waistcoat and laid them on the table well in the circle ofbright lamplight. Haldin, reclining on his elbow, did not stir. Razumovwas made uneasy by this attitude. "What move is he meditating over soquietly?" he thought. "He must be prevented. I must keep on talking tohim."

  He raised his voice.

  "You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin--I don't know what--to noend of people. I am just a man. Here I stand before you. A man with amind. Did it ever occur to you how a man who had never heard a word ofwarm affection or praise in his life would think on matters on whichyou would think first with or against your class, your domestictradition--your fireside prejudices?... Did you ever consider how aman like that would feel? I have no domestic tradition. I have nothingto think against. My tradition is historical. What have I to look backto but that national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench awayyour future? Am I to let my intelligence, my aspirations towards abetter lot, be robbed of the only thing it has to go upon at the will ofviolent enthusiasts? You come from your province, but all this land ismine--or I have nothing. No doubt you shall be looked upon as a martyrsome day--a sort of hero--a political saint. But I beg to be excused. Iam content in fitting myself to be a worker. And what can you people doby scattering a few drops of blood on the snow? On this Immensity. Onthis unhappy Immensity! I tell you," he cried, in a vibrating, subduedvoice, and advancing one step nearer the bed, "that what it needs is nota lot of haunting phantoms that I could walk through--but a man!"

  Haldin threw his arms forward as if to keep him off in horror.

  "I understand it all now," he exclaimed, with awestruck dismay. "Iunderstand--at last."

  Razumov staggered back against the table. His forehead broke out inperspiration while a cold shudder ran down his spine.

  "What have I been saying?" he asked himself. "Have I let him slipthrough my fingers after all?"

  "He felt his lips go stiff like buckram, and instead of a reassuringsmile only achieved an uncertain grimace.

  "What will you have?" he began in a conciliating voice which got steadyafter the first trembling word or two. "What will you have? Consider--aman of studious, retired habits--and suddenly like this.... I am notpractised in talking delicately. But..."

  He felt anger, a wicked anger, get hold of him again.

  "What were we to do together till midnight? Sit here opposite each otherand think of your--your--shambles?"

  Haldin had a subdued, heartbroken attitude. He bowed his head; his handshung between his knees. His voice was low and pained but calm.

  "I see now how it is, Razumov--brother. You are a magnanimous soul, butmy action is abhorrent to you--alas...."

  Razumov stared. From fright he had set his teeth so hard that his wholeface ached. It was impossible for him to make a sound.

  "And even my person, too, is loathsome to you perhaps," Haldin addedmournfully, after a short pause, looking up for a moment, then fixinghis gaze on the floor. "For indeed, unless one...."

  He broke off evidently waiting for a word. Razumov remained silent.Haldin nodded his head dejectedly twice.

  "Of course. Of course," he murmured.... "Ah! weary work!"

  He remained perfectly still for a moment, then made Razumov's leadenheart strike a ponderous blow by springing up briskly.

  "So be it," he cried sadly in a low, distinct tone. "Farewell then."

  Razumov started forward, but the sight of Haldin's raised hand checkedhim before he could get away from the table. He leaned on it heavily,listening to the faint sounds of some town clock tolling the hour.Haldin, already at the door, tall and straight as an arrow, with hispale face and a hand raised attentively, might have posed for the statueof a daring youth listening to an inner voice. Razumov mechanicallyglanced down at his watch. When he looked towards the door again Haldinhad vanished. There was a faint rustling in the outer room, the feebleclick of a bolt drawn back lightly. He was gone--almost as noiseless asa vision.

  Razumov ran forward unsteadily, with parted, voiceless lips. The outerdoor stood open
. Staggering out on the landing, he leaned far over thebanister. Gazing down into the deep black shaft with a tiny glimmeringflame at the bottom, he traced by ear the rapid spiral descent ofsomebody running down the stairs on tiptoe. It was a light, swift,pattering sound, which sank away from him into the depths: a fleetingshadow passed over the glimmer--a wink of the tiny flame. Thenstillness.

  Razumov hung over, breathing the cold raw air tainted by the evil smellsof the unclean staircase. All quiet.

  He went back into his room slowly, shutting the doors after him. Thepeaceful steady light of his reading-lamp shone on the watch. Razumovstood looking down at the little white dial. It wanted yet three minutesto midnight. He took the watch into his hand fumblingly.

  "Slow," he muttered, and a strange fit of nervelessness came over him.His knees shook, the watch and chain slipped through his fingers in aninstant and fell on the floor. He was so startled that he nearly fellhimself. When at last he regained enough confidence in his limbs tostoop for it he held it to his ear at once. After a while he growled--

  "Stopped," and paused for quite a long time before he muttered sourly--

  "It's done.... And now to work."

  He sat down, reached haphazard for a book, opened it in middle and beganto read; but after going conscientiously over two lines he lost his holdon the print completely and did not try to regain it. He thought--

  "There was to a certainty a police agent of some sort watching the houseacross the street."

  He imagined him lurking in a dark gateway, goggle-eyed, muffled up in acloak to the nose and with a General's plumed, cocked hat on his head.This absurdity made him start in the chair convulsively. He literallyhad to shake his head violently to get rid of it. The man would bedisguised perhaps as a peasant... a beggar.... Perhaps he wouldbe just buttoned up in a dark overcoat and carrying a loaded stick--ashifty-eyed rascal, smelling of raw onions and spirits.

  This evocation brought on positive nausea. "Why do I want to botherabout this?" thought Razumov with disgust. "Am I a gendarme? Moreover,it is done."

  He got up in great agitation. It was not done. Not yet. Not tillhalf-past twelve. And the watch had stopped. This reduced him todespair. Impossible to know the time! The landlady and all the peopleacross the landing were asleep. How could he go and... God knowswhat they would imagine, or how much they would guess. He dared notgo into the streets to find out. "I am a suspect now. There's no useshirking that fact," he said to himself bitterly. If Haldin fromsome cause or another gave them the slip and failed to turn up in theKarabelnaya the police would be invading his lodging. And if he were notin he could never clear himself. Never. Razumov looked wildly about asif for some means of seizing upon time which seemed to have escapedhim altogether. He had never, as far as he could remember, heard thestriking of that town clock in his rooms before this night. And he wasnot even sure now whether he had heard it really on this night.

  He went to the window and stood there with slightly bent head on thewatch for the faint sound. "I will stay here till I hear something,"he said to himself. He stood still, his ear turned to the panes. Anatrocious aching numbness with shooting pains in his back and legstortured him. He did not budge. His mind hovered on the borders ofdelirium. He heard himself suddenly saying, "I confess," as a personmight do on the rack. "I am on the rack," he thought. He felt ready toswoon. The faint deep boom of the distant clock seemed to explode in hishead--he heard it so clearly.... One!

  If Haldin had not turned up the police would have been already hereransacking the house. No sound reached him. This time it was done.

  He dragged himself painfully to the table and dropped into the chair.He flung the book away and took a square sheet of paper. It was like thepile of sheets covered with his neat minute handwriting, only blank. Hetook a pen brusquely and dipped it with a vague notion of going on withthe writing of his essay--but his pen remained poised over the sheet.It hung there for some time before it came down and formed long scrawlyletters.

  Still-faced and his lips set hard, Razumov began to write. When he wrotea large hand his neat writing lost its character altogether--becameunsteady, almost childish. He wrote five lines one under the other.History not Theory. Patriotism not Internationalism. Evolution notRevolution. Direction not Destruction. Unity not Disruption.

  He gazed at them dully. Then his eyes strayed to the bed and remainedfixed there for a good many minutes, while his right hand groped allover the table for the penknife.

  He rose at last, and walking up with measured steps stabbed the paperwith the penknife to the lath and plaster wall at the head of the bed.This done he stepped back a pace and flourished his hand with a glanceround the room.

  After that he never looked again at the bed. He took his big cloak downfrom its peg and, wrapping himself up closely, went to lie down onthe hard horse-hair sofa at the other side of his room. A leadensleep closed his eyelids at once. Several times that night he woke upshivering from a dream of walking through drifts of snow in a Russiawhere he was as completely alone as any betrayed autocrat could be; animmense, wintry Russia which, somehow, his view could embrace in all itsenormous expanse as if it were a map. But after each shuddering starthis heavy eyelids fell over his glazed eyes and he slept again.

  III

  Approaching this part of Mr. Razumov's story, my mind, the decent mindof an old teacher of languages, feels more and more the difficulty ofthe task.

  The task is not in truth the writing in the narrative form a _precis_of a strange human document, but the rendering--I perceive it nowclearly--of the moral conditions ruling over a large portion of thisearth's surface; conditions not easily to be understood, much lessdiscovered in the limits of a story, till some key-word is found; a wordthat could stand at the back of all the words covering the pages; a wordwhich, if not truth itself, may perchance hold truth enough to help themoral discovery which should be the object of every tale.

  I turn over for the hundredth time the leaves of Mr. Razumov's record, Ilay it aside, I take up the pen--and the pen being ready for its officeof setting down black on white I hesitate. For the word that persists increeping under its point is no other word than "cynicism."

  For that is the mark of Russian autocracy and of Russian revolt. In itspride of numbers, in its strange pretensions of sanctity, and in thesecret readiness to abase itself in suffering, the spirit of Russia isthe spirit of cynicism. It informs the declarations of her statesmen,the theories of her revolutionists, and the mystic vaticinations ofprophets to the point of making freedom look like a form of debauch, andthe Christian virtues themselves appear actually indecent.... But Imust apologize for the digression. It proceeds from the considerationof the course taken by the story of Mr. Razumov after his conservativeconvictions, diluted in a vague liberalism natural to the ardour of hisage, had become crystallized by the shock of his contact with Haldin.

  Razumov woke up for the tenth time perhaps with a heavy shiver. Seeingthe light of day in his window, he resisted the inclination to layhimself down again. He did not remember anything, but he did not thinkit strange to find himself on the sofa in his cloak and chilled to thebone. The light coming through the window seemed strangely cheerless,containing no promise as the light of each new day should for a youngman. It was the awakening of a man mortally ill, or of a man ninetyyears old. He looked at the lamp which had burnt itself out. It stoodthere, the extinguished beacon of his labours, a cold object of brassand porcelain, amongst the scattered pages of his notes and smallpiles of books--a mere litter of blackened paper--dead matter--withoutsignificance or interest.

  He got on his feet, and divesting himself of his cloak hung it on thepeg, going through all the motions mechanically. An incredible dullness,a ditch-water stagnation was sensible to his perceptions as though lifehad withdrawn itself from all things and even from his own thoughts.There was not a sound in the house.

  Turning away from the peg, he thought in that same lifeless manner thatit must be very early yet; but when he looked at the w
atch on his tablehe saw both hands arrested at twelve o'clock.

  "Ah! yes," he mumbled to himself, and as if beginning to get rouseda little he took a survey of his room. The paper stabbed to the wallarrested his attention. He eyed it from the distance without approval orperplexity; but when he heard the servant-girl beginning to bustle aboutin the outer room with the _samovar_ for his morning tea, he walked upto it and took it down with an air of profound indifference.

  While doing this he glanced down at the bed on which he had not sleptthat night. The hollow in the pillow made by the weight of Haldin's headwas very noticeable.

  Even his anger at this sign of the man's passage was dull. He did nottry to nurse it into life. He did nothing all that day; he neglectedeven to brush his hair. The idea of going out never occurred to him--andif he did not start a connected train of thought it was not because hewas unable to think. It was because he was not interested enough.

  He yawned frequently. He drank large quantities of tea, he walked aboutaimlessly, and when he sat down he did not budge for a long time. Hespent some time drumming on the window with his finger-tips quietly. Inhis listless wanderings round about the table he caught sight of his ownface in the looking-glass and that arrested him. The eyes which returnedhis stare were the most unhappy eyes he had ever seen. And this was thefirst thing which disturbed the mental stagnation of that day.

  He was not affected personally. He merely thought that life withouthappiness is impossible. What was happiness? He yawned and went onshuffling about and about between the walls of his room. Lookingforward was happiness--that's all--nothing more. To look forward tothe gratification of some desire, to the gratification of some passion,love, ambition, hate--hate too indubitably. Love and hate. And to escapethe dangers of existence, to live without fear, was also happiness.There was nothing else. Absence of fear--looking forward. "Oh! themiserable lot of humanity!" he exclaimed mentally; and added at once inhis thought, "I ought to be happy enough as far as that goes." But hewas not excited by that assurance. On the contrary, he yawned again ashe had been yawning all day. He was mildly surprised to discover himselfbeing overtaken by night. The room grew dark swiftly though time hadseemed to stand still. How was it that he had not noticed the passing ofthat day? Of course, it was the watch being stopped....

  He did not light his lamp, but went over to the bed and threw himself onit without any hesitation. Lying on his back, he put his hands under hishead and stared upward. After a moment he thought, "I am lying here likethat man. I wonder if he slept while I was struggling with the blizzardin the streets. No, he did not sleep. But why should I not sleep?" andhe felt the silence of the night press upon all his limbs like a weight.

  In the calm of the hard frost outside, the clear-cut strokes of the townclock counting off midnight penetrated the quietness of his suspendedanimation.

  Again he began to think. It was twenty-four hours since that man lefthis room. Razumov had a distinct feeling that Haldin in the fortress wassleeping that night. It was a certitude which made him angry becausehe did not want to think of Haldin, but he justified it to himself byphysiological and psychological reasons. The fellow had hardly slept forweeks on his own confession, and now every incertitude was at an endfor him. No doubt he was looking forward to the consummation of hismartyrdom. A man who resigns himself to kill need not go very far forresignation to die. Haldin slept perhaps more soundly than General T---,whose task--weary work too--was not done, and over whose head hung thesword of revolutionary vengeance.

  Razumov, remembering the thick-set man with his heavy jowl resting onthe collar of his uniform, the champion of autocracy, who had let nosign of surprise, incredulity, or joy escape him, but whose goggle eyescould express a mortal hatred of all rebellion--Razumov moved uneasilyon the bed.

  "He suspected me," he thought. "I suppose he must suspect everybody. Hewould be capable of suspecting his own wife, if Haldin had gone to herboudoir with his confession."

  Razumov sat up in anguish. Was he to remain a political suspect all hisdays? Was he to go through life as a man not wholly to be trusted--witha bad secret police note tacked on to his record? What sort of futurecould he look forward to?

  "I am now a suspect," he thought again; but the habit of reflection andthat desire of safety, of an ordered life, which was so strong in himcame to his assistance as the night wore on. His quiet, steady, andlaborious existence would vouch at length for his loyalty. There weremany permitted ways to serve one's country. There was an activity thatmade for progress without being revolutionary. The field of influencewas great and infinitely varied--once one had conquered a name.

  His thought like a circling bird reverted after four-and-twenty hours tothe silver medal, and as it were poised itself there.

  When the day broke he had not slept, not for a moment, but he got upnot very tired and quite sufficiently self-possessed for all practicalpurposes.

  He went out and attended three lectures in the morning. But the work inthe library was a mere dumb show of research. He sat with many volumesopen before him trying to make notes and extracts. His new tranquillitywas like a flimsy garment, and seemed to float at the mercy of a casualword. Betrayal! Why! the fellow had done all that was necessary tobetray himself. Precious little had been needed to deceive him.

  "I have said no word to him that was not strictly true. Not one word,"Razumov argued with himself.

  Once engaged on this line of thought there could be no question of doinguseful work. The same ideas went on passing through his mind, and hepronounced mentally the same words over and over again. He shut up allthe books and rammed all his papers into his pocket with convulsivemovements, raging inwardly against Haldin.

  As he was leaving the library a long bony student in a threadbareovercoat joined him, stepping moodily by his side. Razumov answered hismumbled greeting without looking at him at all.

  "What does he want with me?" he thought with a strange dread of theunexpected which he tried to shake off lest it should fasten itselfupon his life for good and all. And the other, muttering cautiously withdowncast eyes, supposed that his comrade had seen the news of de P---'sexecutioner--that was the expression he used--having been arrested thenight before last....

  "I've been ill--shut up in my rooms," Razumov mumbled through his teeth.

  The tall student, raising his shoulders, shoved his hands deep into hispockets. He had a hairless, square, tallowy chin which trembled slightlyas he spoke, and his nose nipped bright red by the sharp air looked likea false nose of painted cardboard between the sallow cheeks. His wholeappearance was stamped with the mark of cold and hunger. He stalkeddeliberately at Razumov's elbow with his eyes on the ground.

  "It's an official statement," he continued in the same cautious mutter."It may be a lie. But there was somebody arrested between midnight andone in the morning on Tuesday. This is certain."

  And talking rapidly under the cover of his downcast air, he told Razumovthat this was known through an inferior Government clerk employed atthe Central Secretariat. That man belonged to one of the revolutionarycircles. "The same, in fact, I am affiliated to," remarked the student.

  They were crossing a wide quadrangle. An infinite distress possessedRazumov, annihilated his energy, and before his eyes everything appearedconfused and as if evanescent. He dared not leave the fellow there. "Hemay be affiliated to the police," was the thought that passed throughhis mind. "Who could tell?" But eyeing the miserable frost-nipped,famine-struck figure of his companion he perceived the absurdity of hissuspicion.

  "But I--you know--I don't belong to any circle. I...."

  He dared not say any more. Neither dared he mend his pace. Theother, raising and setting down his lamentably shod feet with exactdeliberation, protested in a low tone that it was not necessary foreverybody to belong to an organization. The most valuable personalitiesremained outside. Some of the best work was done outside theorganization. Then very fast, with whispering, feverish lips--

  "The man arrested in t
he street was Haldin."

  And accepting Razumov's dismayed silence as natural enough, he assuredhim that there was no mistake. That Government clerk was on night dutyat the Secretariat. Hearing a great noise of footsteps in the hall andaware that political prisoners were brought over sometimes at night fromthe fortress, he opened the door of the room in which he was working,suddenly. Before the gendarme on duty could push him back and slam thedoor in his face, he had seen a prisoner being partly carried, partlydragged along the hall by a lot of policemen. He was being used verybrutally. And the clerk had recognized Haldin perfectly. Less than halfan hour afterwards General T--- arrived at the Secretariat to examinethat prisoner personally.

  "Aren't you astonished?" concluded the gaunt student.

  "No," said Razumov roughly--and at once regretted his answer.

  "Everybody supposed Haldin was in the provinces--with his people. Didn'tyou?"

  The student turned his big hollow eyes upon Razumov, who saidunguardedly--

  "His people are abroad."

  He could have bitten his tongue out with vexation. The studentpronounced in a tone of profound meaning--

  "So! You alone were aware,..." and stopped.

  "They have sworn my ruin," thought Razumov. "Have you spoken of this toanyone else?" he asked with bitter curiosity.

  The other shook his head.

  "No, only to you. Our circle thought that as Haldin had been often heardexpressing a warm appreciation of your character...."

  Razumov could not restrain a gesture of angry despair which the othermust have misunderstood in some way, because he ceased speaking andturned away his black, lack-lustre eyes.

  They moved side by side in silence. Then the gaunt student began towhisper again, with averted gaze--

  "As we have at present no one affiliated inside the fortress so asto make it possible to furnish him with a packet of poison, we haveconsidered already some sort of retaliatory action--to follow verysoon...."

  Razumov trudging on interrupted--

  "Were you acquainted with Haldin? Did he know where you live?"

  "I had the happiness to hear him speak twice," his companion answered inthe feverish whisper contrasting with the gloomy apathy of his face andbearing. "He did not know where I live.... I am lodging poorly withan artisan family.... I have just a corner in a room. It is not verypracticable to see me there, but if you should need me for anything I amready...."

  Razumov trembled with rage and fear. He was beside himself, but kept hisvoice low.

  "You are not to come near me. You are not to speak to me. Never addressa single word to me. I forbid you."

  "Very well," said the other submissively, showing no surprise whateverat this abrupt prohibition. "You don't wish for secret reasons...perfectly... I understand."

  He edged away at once, not looking up even; and Razumov saw his gaunt,shabby, famine-stricken figure cross the street obliquely with loweredhead and that peculiar exact motion of the feet.

  He watched him as one would watch a vision out of a nightmare, then hecontinued on his way, trying not to think. On his landing the landladyseemed to be waiting for him. She was a short, thick, shapeless womanwith a large yellow face wrapped up everlastingly in a black woollenshawl. When she saw him come up the last flight of stairs she flung bothher arms up excitedly, then clasped her hands before her face.

  "Kirylo Sidorovitch--little father--what have you been doing? And sucha quiet young man, too! The police are just gone this moment aftersearching your rooms."

  Razumov gazed down at her with silent, scrutinizing attention. Her puffyyellow countenance was working with emotion. She screwed up her eyes athim entreatingly.

  "Such a sensible young man! Anybody can see you are sensible. Andnow--like this--all at once.... What is the good of mixing yourselfup with these Nihilists? Do give over, little father. They are unluckypeople."

  Razumov moved his shoulders slightly.

  "Or is it that some secret enemy has been calumniating you, KiryloSidorovitch? The world is full of black hearts and false denunciationsnowadays. There is much fear about."

  "Have you heard that I have been denounced by some one?" asked Razumov,without taking his eyes off her quivering face.

  But she had not heard anything. She had tried to find out by askingthe police captain while his men were turning the room upside down. Thepolice captain of the district had known her for the last eleven yearsand was a humane person. But he said to her on the landing, looking veryblack and vexed--

  "My good woman, do not ask questions. I don't know anything myself. Theorder comes from higher quarters."

  And indeed there had appeared, shortly after the arrival of thepolicemen of the district, a very superior gentleman in a fur coat anda shiny hat, who sat down in the room and looked through all the papershimself. He came alone and went away by himself, taking nothing withhim. She had been trying to put things straight a little since theyleft.

  Razumov turned away brusquely and entered his rooms.

  All his books had been shaken and thrown on the floor. His landladyfollowed him, and stooping painfully began to pick them up into herapron. His papers and notes which were kept always neatly sorted (theyall related to his studies) had been shuffled up and heaped togetherinto a ragged pile in the middle of the table.

  This disorder affected him profoundly, unreasonably. He sat downand stared. He had a distinct sensation of his very existence beingundermined in some mysterious manner, of his moral supports falling awayfrom him one by one. He even experienced a slight physical giddiness andmade a movement as if to reach for something to steady himself with.

  The old woman, rising to her feet with a low groan, shot all thebooks she had collected in her apron on to the sofa and left the roommuttering and sighing.

  It was only then that he noticed that the sheet of paper which for onenight had remained stabbed to the wall above his empty bed was lying ontop of the pile.

  When he had taken it down the day before he had folded it in four,absent-mindedly, before dropping it on the table. And now he saw itlying uppermost, spread out, smoothed out even and covering all theconfused pile of pages, the record of his intellectual life for thelast three years. It had not been flung there. It had been placedthere--smoothed out, too! He guessed in that an intention of profoundmeaning--or perhaps some inexplicable mockery.

  He sat staring at the piece of paper till his eyes began to smart. Hedid not attempt to put his papers in order, either that evening or thenext day--which he spent at home in a state of peculiar irresolution.This irresolution bore upon the question whether he should continue tolive--neither more nor less. But its nature was very far removed fromthe hesitation of a man contemplating suicide. The idea of layingviolent hands upon his body did not occur to Razumov. The unrelatedorganism bearing that label, walking, breathing, wearing these clothes,was of no importance to anyone, unless maybe to the landlady. The trueRazumov had his being in the willed, in the determined future--in thatfuture menaced by the lawlessness of autocracy--for autocracy knowsno law--and the lawlessness of revolution. The feeling that his moralpersonality was at the mercy of these lawless forces was so strong thathe asked himself seriously if it were worth while to go on accomplishingthe mental functions of that existence which seemed no longer his own.

  "What is the good of exerting my intelligence, of pursuing thesystematic development of my faculties and all my plans of work?" heasked himself. "I want to guide my conduct by reasonable convictions,but what security have I against something--some destructivehorror--walking in upon me as I sit here?..."

  Razumov looked apprehensively towards the door of the outer room as ifexpecting some shape of evil to turn the handle and appear before himsilently.

  "A common thief," he said to himself, "finds more guarantees in the lawhe is breaking, and even a brute like Ziemianitch has his consolation."Razumov envied the materialism of the thief and the passion of theincorrigible lover. The consequences of their actions were always cleara
nd their lives remained their own.

  But he slept as soundly that night as though he had been consolinghimself in the manner of Ziemianitch. He dropped off suddenly, lay likea log, remembered no dream on waking. But it was as if his soul had goneout in the night to gather the flowers of wrathful wisdom. He got up ina mood of grim determination and as if with a new knowledge of his ownnature. He looked mockingly on the heap of papers on his table; and lefthis room to attend the lectures, muttering to himself, "We shall see."

  He was in no humour to talk to anybody or hear himself questioned asto his absence from lectures the day before. But it was difficult torepulse rudely a very good comrade with a smooth pink face and fairhair, bearing the nickname amongst his fellow-students of "MadcapKostia." He was the idolized only son of a very wealthy and illiterateGovernment contractor, and attended the lectures only during theperiodical fits of contrition following upon tearful paternalremonstrances. Noisily blundering like a retriever puppy, his elatedvoice and great gestures filled the bare academy corridors with thejoy of thoughtless animal life, provoking indulgent smiles at a greatdistance. His usual discourses treated of trotting horses, wine-partiesin expensive restaurants, and the merits of persons of easy virtue,with a disarming artlessness of outlook. He pounced upon Razumov aboutmidday, somewhat less uproariously than his habit was, and led himaside.

  "Just a moment, Kirylo Sidorovitch. A few words here in this quietcorner."

  He felt Razumov's reluctance, and insinuated his hand under his armcaressingly.

  "No--pray do. I don't want to talk to you about any of my silly scrapes.What are my scrapes? Absolutely nothing. Mere childishness. The othernight I flung a fellow out of a certain place where I was having afairly good time. A tyrannical little beast of a quill-driver from theTreasury department. He was bullying the people of the house. I rebukedhim. 'You are not behaving humanely to God's creatures that are a jollysight more estimable than yourself,' I said. I can't bear to see anytyranny, Kirylo Sidorovitch. Upon my word I can't. He didn't take it ingood part at all. 'Who's that impudent puppy?' he begins to shout. Iwas in excellent form as it happened, and he went through the closedwindow very suddenly. He flew quite a long way into the yard. I ragedlike--like a--minotaur. The women clung to me and screamed, the fiddlersgot under the table.... Such fun! My dad had to put his hand prettydeep into his pocket, I can tell you." He chuckled.

  "My dad is a very useful man. Jolly good thing it is for me, too. I doget into unholy scrapes."

  His elation fell. That was just it. What was his life? Insignificant;no good to anyone; a mere festivity. It would end some fine day in hisgetting his skull split with a champagne bottle in a drunken brawl. Atsuch times, too, when men were sacrificing themselves to ideas. But hecould never get any ideas into his head. His head wasn't worth anythingbetter than to be split by a champagne bottle.

  Razumov, protesting that he had no time, made an attempt to get away.The other's tone changed to confidential earnestness.

  "For God's sake, Kirylo, my dear soul, let me make some sort ofsacrifice. It would not be a sacrifice really. I have my rich dad behindme. There's positively no getting to the bottom of his pocket."

  And rejecting indignantly Razumov's suggestion that this was drunkenraving, he offered to lend him some money to escape abroad with. Hecould always get money from his dad. He had only to say that he hadlost it at cards or something of that sort, and at the same time promisesolemnly not to miss a single lecture for three months on end. Thatwould fetch the old man; and he, Kostia, was quite equal to thesacrifice. Though he really did not see what was the good for him toattend the lectures. It was perfectly hopeless.

  "Won't you let me be of some use?" he pleaded to the silent Razumov,who with his eyes on the ground and utterly unable to penetrate the realdrift of the other's intention, felt a strange reluctance to clear upthe point.

  "What makes you think I want to go abroad?" he asked at last veryquietly.

  Kostia lowered his voice.

  "You had the police in your rooms yesterday. There are three or four ofus who have heard of that. Never mind how we know. It is sufficient thatwe do. So we have been consulting together."

  "Ah! You got to know that so soon," muttered Razumov negligently.

  "Yes. We did. And it struck us that a man like you..."

  "What sort of a man do you take me to be?" Razumov interrupted him.

  "A man of ideas--and a man of action too. But you are very deep, Kirylo.There's no getting to the bottom of your mind. Not for fellows like me.But we all agreed that you must be preserved for our country. Of that wehave no doubt whatever--I mean all of us who have heard Haldin speak ofyou on certain occasions. A man doesn't get the police ransacking hisrooms without there being some devilry hanging over his head.... Andso if you think that it would be better for you to bolt at once...."

  Razumov tore himself away and walked down the corridor, leaving theother motionless with his mouth open. But almost at once he returnedand stood before the amazed Kostia, who shut his mouth slowly. Razumovlooked him straight in the eyes, before saying with marked deliberationand separating his words--

  "I thank--you--very--much."

  He went away again rapidly. Kostia, recovering from his surprise atthese manoeuvres, ran up behind him pressingly.

  "No! Wait! Listen. I really mean it. It would be like giving yourcompassion to a starving fellow. Do you hear, Kirylo? And any disguiseyou may think of, that too I could procure from a costumier, a Jew Iknow. Let a fool be made serviceable according to his folly. Perhapsalso a false beard or something of that kind may be needed.

  "Razumov turned at bay.

  "There are no false beards needed in this business, Kostia--yougood-hearted lunatic, you. What do you know of my ideas? My ideas may bepoison to you." The other began to shake his head in energetic protest.

  "What have you got to do with ideas? Some of them would make an endof your dad's money-bags. Leave off meddling with what you don'tunderstand. Go back to your trotting horses and your girls, and thenyou'll be sure at least of doing no harm to anybody, and hardly any toyourself."

  The enthusiastic youth was overcome by this disdain.

  "You're sending me back to my pig's trough, Kirylo. That settles it. Iam an unlucky beast--and I shall die like a beast too. But mind--it'syour contempt that has done for me."

  Razumov went off with long strides. That this simple and grossly festivesoul should have fallen too under the revolutionary curse affected himas an ominous symptom of the time. He reproached himself for feelingtroubled. Personally he ought to have felt reassured. There was anobvious advantage in this conspiracy of mistaken judgment taking him forwhat he was not. But was it not strange?

  Again he experienced that sensation of his conduct being taken out ofhis hands by Haldin's revolutionary tyranny. His solitary and laboriousexistence had been destroyed--the only thing he could call his own onthis earth. By what right? he asked himself furiously. In what name?

  What infuriated him most was to feel that the "thinkers" of theUniversity were evidently connecting him with Haldin--as a sort ofconfidant in the background apparently. A mysterious connexion! Ha ha!...He had been made a personage without knowing anything about it. Howthat wretch Haldin must have talked about him! Yet it was likely thatHaldin had said very little. The fellow's casual utterances were caughtup and treasured and pondered over by all these imbeciles. And was notall secret revolutionary action based upon folly, self-deception, andlies?

  "Impossible to think of anything else," muttered Razumov to himself."I'll become an idiot if this goes on. The scoundrels and the fools aremurdering my intelligence."

  He lost all hope of saving his future, which depended on the free use ofhis intelligence.

  He reached the doorway of his house in a state of mental discouragementwhich enabled him to receive with apparent indifference anofficial-looking envelope from the dirty hand of the dvornik.

  "A gendarme brought it," said the man. "He asked if you wer
e at home.I told him 'No, he's not at home.' So he left it. 'Give it into his ownhands,' says he. Now you've got it--eh?"

  He went back to his sweeping, and Razumov climbed his stairs, envelopein hand. Once in his room he did not hasten to open it. Of coursethis official missive was from the superior direction of the police. Asuspect! A suspect!

  He stared in dreary astonishment at the absurdity of his position. Hethought with a sort of dry, unemotional melancholy; three years of goodwork gone, the course of forty more perhaps jeopardized--turned fromhope to terror, because events started by human folly link themselvesinto a sequence which no sagacity can foresee and no courage can breakthrough. Fatality enters your rooms while your landlady's back isturned; you come home and find it in possession bearing a man's name,clothed in flesh--wearing a brown cloth coat and long boots--loungingagainst the stove. It asks you, "Is the outer door closed?"--and youdon't know enough to take it by the throat and fling it downstairs. Youdon't know. You welcome the crazy fate. "Sit down," you say. And it isall over. You cannot shake it off any more. It will cling to you forever. Neither halter nor bullet can give you back the freedom of yourlife and the sanity of your thought.... It was enough to dash one'shead against a wall.

  Razumov looked slowly all round the walls as if to select a spot to dashhis head against. Then he opened the letter. It directed the studentKirylo Sidorovitch Razumov to present himself without delay at theGeneral Secretariat.

  Razumov had a vision of General T---'s goggle eyes waiting for him--theembodied power of autocracy, grotesque and terrible. He embodiedthe whole power of autocracy because he was its guardian. He was theincarnate suspicion, the incarnate anger, the incarnate ruthlessness ofa political and social regime on its defence. He loathed rebellionby instinct. And Razumov reflected that the man was simply unable tounderstand a reasonable adherence to the doctrine of absolutism.

  "What can he want with me precisely--I wonder?" he asked himself.

  As if that mental question had evoked the familiar phantom, Haldin stoodsuddenly before him in the room with an extraordinary completeness ofdetail. Though the short winter day had passed already into the sinistertwilight of a land buried in snow, Razumov saw plainly the narrowleather strap round the Tcherkess coat. The illusion of that hatefulpresence was so perfect that he half expected it to ask, "Is the outerdoor closed?" He looked at it with hatred and contempt. Souls do nottake a shape of clothing. Moreover, Haldin could not be dead yet.Razumov stepped forward menacingly; the vision vanished--and turningshort on his heel he walked out of his room with infinite disdain.

  But after going down the first flight of stairs it occurred to him thatperhaps the superior authorities of police meant to confront him withHaldin in the flesh. This thought struck him like a bullet, and had henot clung with both hands to the banister he would have rolled down tothe next landing most likely. His legs were of no use for a considerabletime.... But why? For what conceivable reason? To what end?

  There could be no rational answer to these questions; but Razumovremembered the promise made by the General to Prince K---. His actionwas to remain unknown.

  He got down to the bottom of the stairs, lowering himself as it werefrom step to step, by the banister. Under the gate he regained much ofhis firmness of thought and limb. He went out into the street withoutstaggering visibly. Every moment he felt steadier mentally. And yethe was saying to himself that General T--- was perfectly capable ofshutting him up in the fortress for an indefinite time. His temperamentfitted his remorseless task, and his omnipotence made him inaccessibleto reasonable argument.

  But when Razumov arrived at the Secretariat he discovered that he wouldhave nothing to do with General T---. It is evident from Mr. Razumov'sdiary that this dreaded personality was to remain in the background. Acivilian of superior rank received him in a private room after a periodof waiting in outer offices where a lot of scribbling went on at manytables in a heated and stuffy atmosphere.

  The clerk in uniform who conducted him said in the corridor--

  "You are going before Gregor Matvieitch Mikulin."

  There was nothing formidable about the man bearing that name. His mild,expectant glance was turned on the door already when Razumov entered.At once, with the penholder he was holding in his hand, he pointed to adeep sofa between two windows. He followed Razumov with his eyes whilethat last crossed the room and sat down. The mild gaze rested on him,not curious, not inquisitive--certainly not suspicious--almostwithout expression. In its passionless persistence there was somethingresembling sympathy.

  Razumov, who had prepared his will and his intelligence to encounterGeneral T--- himself, was profoundly troubled. All the moral bracingup against the possible excesses of power and passion went for nothingbefore this sallow man, who wore a full unclipped beard. It wasfair, thin, and very fine. The light fell in coppery gleams on theprotuberances of a high, rugged forehead. And the aspect of the broad,soft physiognomy was so homely and rustic that the careful middleparting of the hair seemed a pretentious affectation.

  The diary of Mr. Razumov testifies to some irritation on his part. I mayremark here that the diary proper consisting of the more or less dailyentries seems to have been begun on that very evening after Mr. Razumovhad returned home.

  Mr. Razumov, then, was irritated. His strung-up individuality had goneto pieces within him very suddenly.

  "I must be very prudent with him," he warned himself in the silenceduring which they sat gazing at each other. It lasted some little time,and was characterized (for silences have their character) by a sort ofsadness imparted to it perhaps by the mild and thoughtful manner ofthe bearded official. Razumov learned later that he was the chief of adepartment in the General Secretariat, with a rank in the civil serviceequivalent to that of a colonel in the army.

  Razumov's mistrust became acute. The main point was, not to be drawninto saying too much. He had been called there for some reason. Whatreason? To be given to understand that he was a suspect--and also nodoubt to be pumped. As to what precisely? There was nothing. Or perhapsHaldin had been telling lies.... Every alarming uncertainty besetRazumov. He could bear the silence no longer, and cursing himself forhis weakness spoke first, though he had promised himself not to do so onany account.

  "I haven't lost a moment's time," he began in a hoarse, provoking tone;and then the faculty of speech seemed to leave him and enter the body ofCouncillor Mikulin, who chimed in approvingly--

  "Very proper. Very proper. Though as a matter of fact...."

  But the spell was broken, and Razumov interrupted him boldly, undera sudden conviction that this was the safest attitude to take. With agreat flow of words he complained of being totally misunderstood. Evenas he talked with a perception of his own audacity he thought thatthe word "misunderstood" was better than the word "mistrusted," and herepeated it again with insistence. Suddenly he ceased, being seizedwith fright before the attentive immobility of the official. "What amI talking about?" he thought, eyeing him with a vague gaze.Mistrusted--not misunderstood--was the right symbol for these people.Misunderstood was the other kind of curse. Both had been brought on hishead by that fellow Haldin. And his head ached terribly. He passed hishand over his brow--an involuntary gesture of suffering, which he wastoo careless to restrain. At that moment Razumov beheld his own brainsuffering on the rack--a long, pale figure drawn asunder horizontallywith terrific force in the darkness of a vault, whose face he failed tosee. It was as though he had dreamed for an infinitesimal fraction oftime of some dark print of the Inquisition.

  It is not to be seriously supposed that Razumov had actually dozed offand had dreamed in the presence of Councillor Mikulin, of an old printof the Inquisition. He was indeed extremely exhausted, and he recordsa remarkably dream-like experience of anguish at the circumstancethat there was no one whatever near the pale and extended figure. Thesolitude of the racked victim was particularly horrible to behold. Themysterious impossibility to see the face, he also notes, inspired a sortof terror. All these charact
eristics of an ugly dream were present. Yethe is certain that he never lost the consciousness of himself on thesofa, leaning forward with his hands between his knees and turning hiscap round and round in his fingers. But everything vanished at the voiceof Councillor Mikulin. Razumov felt profoundly grateful for the evensimplicity of its tone.

  "Yes. I have listened with interest. I comprehend in a measure your...But, indeed, you are mistaken in what you...." Councillor Mikulinuttered a series of broken sentences. Instead of finishing them heglanced down his beard. It was a deliberate curtailment which somehowmade the phrases more impressive. But he could talk fluently enough, asbecame apparent when changing his tone to persuasiveness he went on: "Bylistening to you as I did, I think I have proved that I do not regardour intercourse as strictly official. In fact, I don't want it to havethat character at all.... Oh yes! I admit that the request for yourpresence here had an official form. But I put it to you whether it was aform which would have been used to secure the attendance of a...."

  "Suspect," exclaimed Razumov, looking straight into the official'seyes. They were big with heavy eyelids, and met his boldness with a dim,steadfast gaze. "A suspect." The open repetition of that word whichhad been haunting all his waking hours gave Razumov a strange sort ofsatisfaction. Councillor Mikulin shook his head slightly. "Surely you doknow that I've had my rooms searched by the police?"

  "I was about to say a 'misunderstood person,' when you interrupted me,"insinuated quietly Councillor Mikulin.

  Razumov smiled without bitterness. The renewed sense of his intellectualsuperiority sustained him in the hour of danger. He said a littledisdainfully--

  "I know I am but a reed. But I beg you to allow me the superiority ofthe thinking reed over the unthinking forces that are about to crushhim out of existence. Practical thinking in the last instance is butcriticism. I may perhaps be allowed to express my wonder at this actionof the police being delayed for two full days during which, of course,I could have annihilated everything compromising by burning it--let ussay--and getting rid of the very ashes, for that matter."

  "You are angry," remarked the official, with an unutterable simplicityof 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 tobe sure, this name nowadays seems to be the monopoly of hawkers ofrevolutionary wares, the slaves of some French or German thought--devilknows what foreign notions. But I am not an intellectual mongrel. Ithink like a Russian. I think faithfully--and I take the liberty to callmyself a thinker. It is not a forbidden word, as far as I know."

  "No. Why should it be a forbidden word?" Councillor Mikulin turned inhis seat with crossed legs and resting his elbow on the table proppedhis head on the knuckles of a half-closed hand. Razumov noticed a thickforefinger clasped by a massive gold band set with a blood-red stone--asignet ring that, looking as if it could weigh half a pound, wasan appropriate ornament for that ponderous man with the accuratemiddle-parting of glossy hair above a rugged Socratic forehead.

  "Could it be a wig?" Razumov detected himself wondering with anunexpected detachment. His self-confidence was much shaken. He resolvedto chatter no more. Reserve! Reserve! All he had to do was to keepthe Ziemianitch episode secret with absolute determination, when thequestions came. Keep Ziemianitch strictly out of all the answers.

  Councillor Mikulin looked at him dimly. Razumov's self-confidenceabandoned him completely. It seemed impossible to keep Ziemianitch out.Every question would lead to that, because, of course, there was nothingelse. He made an effort to brace himself up. It was a failure. ButCouncillor Mikulin was surprisingly detached too.

  "Why should it be forbidden?" he repeated. "I too consider myselfa thinking man, I assure you. The principal condition is to thinkcorrectly. I admit it is difficult sometimes at first for a young manabandoned to himself--with his generous impulses undisciplined, so tospeak--at the mercy of every wild wind that blows. Religious belief, ofcourse, is a great...."

  Councillor Mikulin glanced down his beard, and Razumov, whose tensionwas relaxed by that unexpected and discursive turn, murmured with gloomydiscontent--

  "That man, Haldin, believed in God."

  "Ah! You are aware," breathed out Councillor Mikulin, making the pointsoftly, as if with discretion, but making it nevertheless plainlyenough, as if he too were put off his guard by Razumov's remark.The young man preserved an impassive, moody countenance, though hereproached himself bitterly for a pernicious fool, to have given thus anutterly false impression of intimacy. He kept his eyes on the floor."I must positively hold my tongue unless I am obliged to speak," headmonished himself. And at once against his will the question, "Hadn'tI better tell him everything?" presented itself with such force that hehad to bite his lower lip. Councillor Mikulin could not, however, havenourished any hope of confession. He went on--

  "You tell me more than his judges were able to get out of him. He wasjudged by a commission of three. He would tell them absolutely nothing.I have the report of the interrogatories here, by me. After everyquestion there stands 'Refuses to answer--refuses to answer.' It's likethat page after page. You see, I have been entrusted with some furtherinvestigations around and about this affair. He has left me nothing tobegin my investigations on. A hardened miscreant. And so, you say, hebelieved 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 thatblasphemers also had that sort of belief, he concluded by supposing thatMr. Razumov had conversed frequently with Haldin on the subject.

  "No," said Razumov loudly, without looking up. "He talked and Ilistened. 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. Nothingcould induce him to talk. He was brought four times before the delegatedjudges. Four secret interrogatories--and even during the last, when yourpersonality was put forward...."

  "My personality put forward?" repeated Razumov, raising his headbrusquely. "I don't understand." Councillor Mikulin turned squarely tothe table, and taking up some sheets of grey foolscap dropped them oneafter another, retaining only the last in his hand. He held it beforehis eyes while speaking.

  "It was--you see--judged necessary. In a case of that gravity no meansof action upon the culprit should be neglected. You understand thatyourself, I am certain.

  "Razumov stared with enormous wide eyes at the side view of CouncillorMikulin, who now was not looking at him at all.

  "So it was decided (I was consulted by General T---) that a certainquestion should be put to the accused. But in deference to the earnestwishes of Prince K--- your name has been kept out of the documentsand even from the very knowledge of the judges themselves. Prince K---recognized the propriety, the necessity of what we proposed to do, buthe was concerned for your safety. Things do leak out--that we can'tdeny. One cannot always answer for the discretion of inferior officials.There was, of course, the secretary of the special tribunal--one or twogendarmes in the room. Moreover, as I have said, in deference to PrinceK--- even the judges themselves were to be left in ignorance. Thequestion ready framed was sent to them by General T--- (I wrote it outwith my own hand) with instructions to put it to the prisoner the verylast of all. Here it is.

  "Councillor Mikulin threw back his head into proper focus and went onreading monotonously: 'Question--Has the man well known to you, in whoserooms you remained for several hours on Monday and on whose informationyou have been arrested--has he had any previous knowledge of yourintention 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 andexhorting the prisoner to repen
tance, entreating him also to atone forhis crime by an unreserved and full confession which should help toliberate from the sin of rebellion against the Divine laws and thesacred Majesty of the Ruler, our Christ-loving land--the prisoner openshis lips for the first time during this morning's audience and in aloud, clear voice rejects the venerable Chaplain's ministrations.

  "At eleven o'clock the Court pronounces in summary form the deathsentence.

  "The execution is fixed for four o'clock in the afternoon, subject tofurther 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 thesentence 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 ofgeneral 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 upwith an effort. There was nothing now to stay for in that room. Haldinhad been hanged at four o'clock. There could be no doubt of that. Hehad, it seemed, entered upon his future existence, long boots, Astrakhanfur cap and all, down to the very leather strap round his waist. Aflickering, vanishing sort of existence. It was not his soul, it was hismere phantom he had left behind on this earth--thought Razumov, smilingcaustically to himself while he crossed the room, utterly forgetful ofwhere he was and of Councillor Mikulin's existence. The official couldhave set a lot of bells ringing all over the building without leavinghis 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 theleast disconcerted. Councillor Mikulin's arms were stretched out on thetable before him and his body leaned forward a little with an effort ofhis dim gaze.

  "Was I actually going to clear out like this?" Razumov wonderedat himself with an impassive countenance. And he was aware of thisimpassiveness concealing a lucid astonishment.

  "Evidently I was going out if he had not spoken," he thought. "Whatwould he have done then? I must end this affair one way or another. Imust make him show his hand."

  For a moment longer he reflected behind the mask as it were, then let gothe door-handle and came back to the middle of the room.

  "I'll tell you what you think," he said explosively, but not raising hisvoice. "You think that you are dealing with a secret accomplice of thatunhappy 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 falseidea is a greater crime than to kill a man. I suppose you will not denythat? I hated him! Visionaries work everlasting evil on earth. TheirUtopias inspire in the mass of mediocre minds a disgust of reality and acontempt 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. Thebearded bureaucrat sat at his post, mysteriously self-possessed like anidol with dim, unreadable eyes. Razumov's voice changed involuntarily.

  "If you were to ask me where is the necessity of my hate for such asHaldin, I would answer you--there is nothing sentimental in it. I didnot hate him because he had committed the crime of murder. Abhorrence isnot hate. I hated him simply because I am sane. It is in that characterthat he outraged me. His death..."

  Razumov felt his voice growing thick in his throat. The dimness ofCouncillor Mikulin's eyes seemed to spread all over his face and made itindistinct to Razumov's sight. He tried to disregard these phenomena.

  "Indeed," he pursued, pronouncing each word carefully, "what is hisdeath to me? If he were lying here on the floor I could walk over hisbreast.... The fellow is a mere phantom...."

  Razumov's voice died out very much against his will. Mikulin behind thetable did not allow himself the slightest movement. The silence lastedfor some little time before Razumov could go on again.

  "He went about talking of me. Those intellectual fellows sit in eachother's rooms and get drunk on foreign ideas in the same way youngGuards' officers treat each other with foreign wines. Merest debauchery....Upon my Word,"--Razumov, enraged by a sudden recollection ofZiemianitch, lowered his voice forcibly,--"upon my word, we Russians area drunken lot. Intoxication of some sort we must have: to get ourselveswild with sorrow or maudlin with resignation; to lie inert like a log orset 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 ina desert one must be a saint. But if a drunken man runs out of thegrog-shop, falls on your neck and kisses you on both cheeks becausesomething about your appearance has taken his fancy, what then--kindlytell me? You may break, perhaps, a cudgel on his back and yet notsucceed in beating him off...."

  Councillor Mikulin raised his hand and passed it down his facedeliberately.

  "That's... of course," he said in an undertone.

  The quiet gravity of that gesture made Razumov pause. It was sounexpected, too. What did it mean? It had an alarming aloofness. Razumovremembered his intention of making him show his hand.

  "I have said all this to Prince K---," he began with assumedindifference, but lost it on seeing Councillor Mikulin's slow nod ofassent. "You know it? You've heard.... Then why should I be calledhere to be told of Haldin's execution? Did you want to confront me withhis silence now that the man is dead? What is his silence to me! This isincomprehensible. You want in some way to shake my moral balance."

  "No. Not that," murmured Councillor Mikulin, just audibly. "The serviceyou have rendered is appreciated...."

  "Is it?" interrupted Razumov ironically.

  "...and your position too." Councillor Mikulin did not raise hisvoice. "But only think! You fall into Prince K---'s study as if fromthe sky with your startling information.... You are studying yet,Mr. Razumov, but we are serving already--don't forget that.... Andnaturally 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. "Iadmit 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 profounddistaste. "Naturally you have the right--I mean the power. It allamounts to the same thing. But it is perfectly useless, if you wereto look at me and listen to me for a year. I begin to think thereis something about me which people don't seem able to make out. It'sunfortunate. I imagine, however, that Prince K--- understands. He seemedto."

  Councillor Mikulin moved slightly and spoke.

  "Prince K--- is aware of everything that is being done, and I don'tmind informing you that he approved my intention of becoming personallyacquainted with you."

  Razumov concealed an immense disappointment under the accents of railingsurprise.

  "So he is curious too!... Well--after all, Prince K--- knows me verylittle. It is really very unfortunate for me, but--it is not exactly myfault."

  Councillor Mikulin raised a hasty deprecatory hand and inclined his headslightly over his shoulder.

  "Now, Mr. Razumov--is it necessary to take it in that way? Everybody Iam sure can...."

  He glanced rapidly down his beard, and when he looked up again therewas for a moment an interested expression in his misty gaze. Razumovdiscouraged it with a cold, repellent smile.

  "No. That's of no importance to be sure--except that in respect of allthis curiosity being aroused by a very simple matter.... What is tobe done with it? It is unappeasable. I mean to say there is nothing toappease it with. I happen to have been born a Russian with patrioticinstincts--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 independentthinking--of detached thinking. In that respect I am more free than anysocial democratic revolution could make me. It is more than probablethat 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 lyingto cover up the track of my repentance."

  Razumov stopped. His heart had grown too big for his breast. CouncillorMikulin did not flinch.

  "Why so?" he said simply. "I assisted personally at the search of yourrooms. I looked through all the papers myself. I have been greatlyimpressed by a sort of political confession of faith. A very remarkabledocument. Now may I ask for what purpose...."

  "To deceive the police naturally," said Razumov savagely.... "What isall this mockery? Of course you can send me straight from this roomto Siberia. That would be intelligible. To what is intelligible I cansubmit. But I protest against this comedy of persecution. The wholeaffair is becoming too comical altogether for my taste. A comedy oferrors, phantoms, and suspicions. It's positively indecent...."

  Councillor Mikulin turned an attentive ear. "Did you say phantoms?" hemurmured.

  "I could walk over dozens of them." Razumov, with an impatient wave ofhis hand, went on headlong, "But, really, I must claim the right to bedone once for all with that man. And in order to accomplish this I shalltake the liberty...."

  Razumov on his side of the table bowed slightly to the seatedbureaucrat.

  "... To retire--simply to retire," he finished with great resolution.

  He walked to the door, thinking, "Now he must show his hand. He mustring and have me arrested before I am out of the building, or he mustlet 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