With a quick inclination of the head for us both, and an earnest,
friendly glance at the young man, Miss Haldin left us covering our heads
and looking after her straight, supple figure receding rapidly. Her walk
was not that hybrid and uncertain gliding affected by some women, but
a frank, strong, healthy movement forward. Rapidly she increased the
distance--disappeared with suddenness at last. I discovered only then
that Mr. Razumov, after ramming his hat well over his brow, was looking
me over from head to foot. I dare say I was a very unexpected fact for
that young Russian to stumble upon. I caught in his physiognomy, in his
whole bearing, an expression compounded of curiosity and scorn, tempered
by alarm--as though he had been holding his breath while I was not
looking. But his eyes met mine with a gaze direct enough. I saw then for
the first time that they were of a clear brown colour and fringed with
thick black eyelashes. They were the youngest feature of his face. Not
at all unpleasant eyes. He swayed slightly, leaning on his stick and
generally hung in the wind. It flashed upon me that in leaving us
together Miss Haldin had an intention--that something was entrusted to
me, since, by a mere accident I had been found at hand. On this assumed
ground I put all possible friendliness into my manner. I cast about
for some right thing to say, and suddenly in Miss Haldin's last words I
perceived the clue to the nature of my mission.
"No," I said gravely, if with a smile, "you cannot be expected to
understand."
His clean-shaven lip quivered ever so little before he said, as if
wickedly amused--
"But haven't you heard just now? I was thanked by that young lady for
understanding so well."
I looked at him rather hard. Was there a hidden and inexplicable sneer
in this retort? No. It was not that. It might have been resentment. Yes.
But what had he to resent? He looked as though he had not slept very
well of late. I could almost feel on me the weight of his unrefreshed,
motionless stare, the stare of a man who lies unwinking in the dark,
angrily passive in the toils of disastrous thoughts. Now, when I know
how true it was, I can honestly affirm that this was the effect he
produced on me. It was painful in a curiously indefinite way--for,
of course, the definition comes to me now while I sit writing in the
fullness of my knowledge. But this is what the effect was at that time
of absolute ignorance. This new sort of uneasiness which he seemed to
be forcing upon me I attempted to put down by assuming a conversational,
easy familiarity.
"That extremely charming and essentially admirable young girl (I am--as
you see--old enough to be frank in my expressions) was referring to her
own feelings. Surely you must have understood that much?"
He made such a brusque movement that he even tottered a little.
"Must understand this! Not expected to understand that! I may have other
things to do. And the girl is charming and admirable. Well--and if she
is! I suppose I can see that for myself."
This sally would have been insulting if his voice had not been
practically extinct, dried up in his throat; and the rustling effort of
his speech too painful to give real offence.
I remained silent, checked between the obvious fact and the subtle
impression. It was open to me to leave him there and then; but the sense
of having been entrusted with a mission, the suggestion of Miss Haldin's
last glance, was strong upon me. After a moment of reflection I said--
"Shall we walk together a little?"
He shrugged his shoulders so violently that he tottered again. I saw it
out of the corner of my eye as I moved on, with him at my elbow. He
had fallen back a little and was practically out of my sight, unless
I turned my head to look at him. I did not wish to indispose him
still further by an appearance of marked curiosity. It might have
been distasteful to such a young and secret refugee from under the
pestilential shadow hiding the true, kindly face of his land. And the
shadow, the attendant of his countrymen, stretching across the middle of
Europe, was lying on him too, darkening his figure to my mental vision.
"Without doubt," I said to myself, "he seems a sombre, even a desperate
revolutionist; but he is young, he may be unselfish and humane, capable
of compassion, of...."
I heard him clear gratingly his parched throat, and became all
attention.
"This is beyond everything," were his first words. "It is beyond
everything! I find you here, for no reason that I can understand, in
possession of something I cannot be expected to understand! A confidant!
A foreigner! Talking about an admirable Russian girl. Is the admirable
girl a fool, I begin to wonder? What are you at? What is your object?"
He was barely audible, as if his throat had no more resonance than a dry
rag, a piece of tinder. It was so pitiful that I found it extremely easy
to control my indignation.
"When you have lived a little longer, Mr. Razumov, you will discover
that no woman is an absolute fool. I am not a feminist, like that
illustrious author, Peter Ivanovitch, who, to say the truth, is not a
little suspect to me...."
He interrupted me, in a surprising note of whispering astonishment.
"Suspect to you! Peter Ivanovitch suspect to you! To you!..."
"Yes, in a certain aspect he is," I said, dismissing my remark lightly.
"As I was saying, Mr. Razumov, when you have lived long enough, you will
learn to discriminate between the noble trustfulness of a nature foreign
to every meanness and the flattered credulity of some women; though even
the credulous, silly as they may be, unhappy as they are sure to be, are
never absolute fools. It is my belief that no woman is ever completely
deceived. Those that are lost leap into the abyss with their eyes open,
if all the truth were known."
"Upon my word," he cried at my elbow, "what is it to me whether women
are fools or lunatics? I really don't care what you think of them. I--I
am not interested in them. I let them be. I am not a young man in a
novel. How do you know that I want to learn anything about women?...
What is the meaning of all this?"
"The object, you mean, of this conversation, which I admit I have forced
upon you in a measure."
"Forced! Object!" he repeated, still keeping half a pace or so behind
me. "You wanted to talk about women, apparently. That's a subject. But
I don't care for it. I have never.... In fact, I have had other
subjects to think about."
"I am concerned here with one woman only--a young girl--the sister of
your dead friend--Miss Haldin. Surely you can think a little of her.
What I meant from the first was that there is a situation which you
cannot be expected to understand."
I listened to his unsteady footfalls by my side for the space of several
strides.
"I think that it may prepare the ground for your next interview with
Miss Haldin if I tell you of it. I imagine that she might have had
something of the kind in her mind when she left us together. I believe
myself authorized to speak. The peculiar situation I have alluded to
has arisen in the first grief and distress of Victor Haldin's execution.
There was something peculiar in the circumstances of his arrest. You no
doubt know the whole truth...."
I felt my arm seized above the elbow, and next instant found myself
swung so as to face Mr. Razumov.
"You spring up from the ground before me with this talk. Who the devil
are you? This is not to be borne! Why! What for? What do you know
what is or is not peculiar? What have you to do with any confounded
circumstances, or with anything that happens in Russia, anyway?"
He leaned on his stick with his other hand, heavily; and when he let go
my arm, I was certain in my mind that he was hardly able to keep on his
feet.
"Let us sit down at one of these vacant tables," I proposed,
disregarding this display of unexpectedly profound emotion. It was not
without its effect on me, I confess. I was sorry for him.
"What tables? What are you talking about? Oh--the empty tables? The
tables there. Certainly. I will sit at one of the empty tables."
I led him away from the path to the very centre of the raft of deals
before the _chalet_. The Swiss couple were gone by that time. We were
alone on the raft, so to speak. Mr. Razumov dropped into a chair, let
fall his stick, and propped on his elbows, his head between his hands,
stared at me persistently, openly, and continuously, while I signalled
the waiter and ordered some beer. I could not quarrel with this silent
inspection very well, because, truth to tell, I felt somewhat guilty of
having been sprung on him with some abruptness--of having "sprung from
the ground," as he expressed it.
While waiting to be served I mentioned that, born from parents settled
in St. Petersburg, I had acquired the language as a child. The town I
did not remember, having left it for good as a boy of nine, but in later
years I had renewed my acquaintance with the language. He listened,
without as much as moving his eyes the least little bit. He had to
change his position when the beer came, and the instant draining of his
glass revived him. He leaned back in his chair and, folding his arms
across his chest, continued to stare at me squarely. It occurred to me
that his clean-shaven, almost swarthy face was really of the very mobile
sort, and that the absolute stillness of it was the acquired habit of
a revolutionist, of a conspirator everlastingly on his guard against
self-betrayal in a world of secret spies.
"But you are an Englishman--a teacher of English literature," he
murmured, in a voice that was no longer issuing from a parched throat.
"I have heard of you. People told me you have lived here for years."
"Quite true. More than twenty years. And I have been assisting Miss
Haldin with her English studies."
"You have been reading English poetry with her," he said, immovable now,
like another man altogether, a complete stranger to the man of the heavy
and uncertain footfalls a little while ago--at my elbow.
"Yes, English poetry," I said. "But the trouble of which I speak was
caused by an English newspaper."
He continued to stare at me. I don't think he was aware that the story
of the midnight arrest had been ferreted out by an English journalist
and given to the world. When I explained this to him he muttered
contemptuously, "It may have been altogether a lie."
"I should think you are the best judge of that," I retorted, a little
disconcerted. "I must confess that to me it looks to be true in the
main."
"How can you tell truth from lies?" he queried in his new, immovable
manner.
"I don't know how you do it in Russia," I began, rather nettled by his
attitude. He interrupted me.
"In Russia, and in general everywhere--in a newspaper, for instance. The
colour of the ink and the shapes of the letters are the same."
"Well, there are other trifles one can go by. The character of the
publication, the general verisimilitude of the news, the consideration
of the motive, and so on. I don't trust blindly the accuracy of special
correspondents--but why should this one have gone to the trouble of
concocting a circumstantial falsehood on a matter of no importance to
the world?"
"That's what it is," he grumbled. "What's going on with us is of
no importance--a mere sensational story to amuse the readers of the
papers--the superior contemptuous Europe. It is hateful to think of. But
let them wait a bit!"
He broke off on this sort of threat addressed to the western world.
Disregarding the anger in his stare, I pointed out that whether the
journalist was well- or ill-informed, the concern of the friends of
these ladies was with the effect the few lines of print in question had
produced--the effect alone. And surely he must be counted as one of
the friends--if only for the sake of his late comrade and intimate
fellow-revolutionist. At that point I thought he was going to speak
vehemently; but he only astounded me by the convulsive start of his
whole body. He restrained himself, folded his loosened arms tighter
across his chest, and sat back with a smile in which there was a twitch
of scorn and malice.
"Yes, a comrade and an intimate.... Very well," he said.
"I ventured to speak to you on that assumption. And I cannot be
mistaken. I was present when Peter Ivanovitch announced your arrival
here to Miss Haldin, and I saw her relief and thankfulness when your
name was mentioned. Afterwards she showed me her brother's letter,
and read out the few words in which he alludes to you. What else but a
friend could you have been?"
"Obviously. That's perfectly well known. A friend. Quite correct....
Go on. You were talking of some effect."
I said to myself: "He puts on the callousness of a stern revolutionist,
the insensibility to common emotions of a man devoted to a destructive
idea. He is young, and his sincerity assumes a pose before a stranger,
a foreigner, an old man. Youth must assert itself...." As concisely
as possible I exposed to him the state of mind poor Mrs. Haldin had been
thrown into by the news of her son's untimely end.
He listened--I felt it--with profound attention. His level stare
deflected gradually downwards, left my face, and rested at last on the
ground at his feet.
"You can enter into the sister's feelings. As you said, I have only read
a little English poetry with her, and I won't make myself ridiculous in
your eyes by trying to speak of her. But you have seen her. She is one
of these rare human beings that do not want explaining. At least I think
so. They had only that son, that brother, for a link with the wider
world, with the future. The very groundwork of active existence for
Nathalie Haldin is gone with him. Can you wonder then that she turns
with eagerness to the only man her brother mentions in his letters. Your
name is a sort of legacy."
"What could he have written of me?" he cried, in a low, exasperated
tone.
"Only a few words. It is not for me to repeat them to you, Mr. Razumov;
but you may believe my assertion that these words are forcible enough to
make both his mother and his sister believe implicitly in the worth of
your judgment and in the truth of anything you may have to say to them.
It's impossible for you now to pass them by like strangers."
I paused, and for a moment sat listening to the footsteps of the few
people passing up and down the broad central walk. While I was speaking
his head had sunk upon his breast above his folded arms. He raised it
sharply.
"Must I go then and lie to that old woman!"
It was not anger; it was something else, something more poignant, and
not so simple. I was aware of it sympathetically, while I was profoundly
concerned at the nature of that exclamation.
"Dear me! Won't the truth do, then? I hoped you could have told them
something consoling. I am thinking of the poor mother now. Your Russia
_is_ a cruel country."
He moved a little in his chair.
"Yes," I repeated. "I thought you would have had something authentic to
tell."
The twitching of his lips before he spoke was curious.
"What if it is not worth telling?"
"Not worth--from what point of view? I don't understand."
"From every point of view."
I spoke with some asperity.
"I should think that anything which could explain the circumstances of
that midnight arrest...."
"Reported by a journalist for the amusement of the civilized Europe," he
broke in scornfully.
"Yes, reported.... But aren't they true? I can't make out your
attitude in this? Either the man is a hero to you, or..."
He approached his face with fiercely distended nostrils close to mine so
suddenly that I had the greatest difficulty in not starting back.
"You ask me! I suppose it amuses you, all this. Look here! I am a
worker. I studied. Yes, I studied very hard. There is intelligence
here." (He tapped his forehead with his finger-tips.) "Don't you think a
Russian may have sane ambitions? Yes--I had even prospects. Certainly! I
had. And now you see me here, abroad, everything gone, lost, sacrificed.
You see me here--and you ask! You see me, don't you?--sitting before
you."
He threw himself back violently. I kept outwardly calm.
"Yes, I see you here; and I assume you are here on account of the Haldin
affair?"
His manner changed.
"You call it the Haldin affair--do you?" he observed indifferently.
"I have no right to ask you anything," I said. "I wouldn't presume. But
in that case the mother and the sister of him who must be a hero in
your eyes cannot be indifferent to you. The girl is a frank and generous
creature, having the noblest--well--illusions. You will tell her
nothing--or you will tell her everything. But speaking now of the object
with which I've approached you first, we have to deal with the morbid
state of the mother. Perhaps something could be invented under your
authority as a cure for a distracted and suffering soul filled with
maternal affection."
His air of weary indifference was accentuated, I could not help
thinking, wilfully.
"Oh yes. Something might," he mumbled carelessly.
He put his hand over his mouth to conceal a yawn. When he uncovered his
lips they were smiling faintly.
"Pardon me. This has been a long conversation, and I have not had much
sleep the last two nights."
This unexpected, somewhat insolent sort of apology had the merit of
being perfectly true. He had had no nightly rest to speak of since that
day when, in the grounds of the Chateau Borel, the sister of Victor
Haldin had appeared before him. The perplexities and the complex
terrors--I may say--of this sleeplessness are recorded in the document
I was to see later--the document which is the main source of this
narrative. At the moment he looked to me convincingly tired, gone slack
all over, like a man who has passed through some sort of crisis.
"I have had a lot of urgent writing to do," he added.
I rose from my chair at once, and he followed my example, without haste,
a little heavily.
"I must apologize for detaining you so long," I said.
"Why apologize? One can't very well go to bed before night. And you did
not detain me. I could have left you at any time."
I had not stayed with him to be offended.
"I am glad you have been sufficiently interested," I said calmly. "No
merit of mine, though--the commonest sort of regard for the mother of
your friend was enough.... As to Miss Haldin herself, she at one time
was disposed to think that her brother had been betrayed to the police
in some way."
To my great surprise Mr. Razumov sat down again suddenly. I stared at
him, and I must say that he returned my stare without winking for quite
a considerable time.
"In some way," he mumbled, as if he had not understood or could not
believe his ears.
"Some unforeseen event, a sheer accident might have done that," I went
on. "Or, as she characteristically put it to me, the folly or weakness
of some unhappy fellow-revolutionist."
"Folly or weakness," he repeated bitterly.
"She is a very generous creature," I observed after a time. The man
admired by Victor Haldin fixed his eyes on the ground. I turned away and
moved off, apparently unnoticed by him. I nourished no resentment of
the moody brusqueness with which he had treated me. The sentiment I was
carrying away from that conversation was that of hopelessness. Before
I had got fairly clear of the raft of chairs and tables he had rejoined
me.
"H'm, yes!" I heard him at my elbow again. "But what do you think?"
I did not look round even.
"I think that you people are under a curse."
He made no sound. It was only on the pavement outside the gate that I
heard him again.
"I should like to walk with you a little."
After all, I preferred this enigmatical young man to his celebrated
compatriot, the great Peter Ivanovitch. But I saw no reason for being
particularly gracious.
"I am going now to the railway station, by the shortest way from here,
to meet a friend from England," I said, for all answer to his unexpected
proposal. I hoped that something informing could come of it. As we stood
on the curbstone waiting for a tramcar to pass, he remarked gloomily--
"I like what you said just now."
"Do you?"
We stepped off the pavement together.
"The great problem," he went on, "is to understand thoroughly the nature
of the curse."
"That's not very difficult, I think."
"I think so too," he agreed with me, and his readiness, strangely
enough, did not make him less enigmatical in the least.
"A curse is an evil spell," I tried him again. "And the important, the
great problem, is to find the means to break it."
"Yes. To find the means."
That was also an assent, but he seemed to be thinking of something else.
We had crossed diagonally the open space before the theatre, and began
to descend a broad, sparely frequented street in the direction of one of
the smaller bridges. He kept on by my side without speaking for a long
time.
"You are not thinking of leaving Geneva soon?" I asked.
He was silent for so long that I began to think I had been indiscreet,
and should get no answer at all. Yet on looking at him I almost believed
that my question had caused him something in the nature of positive
anguish. I detected it mainly in the clasping of his hands, in which he
put a great force stealthily. Once, however, he had overcome that sort
of agonizing hesitation sufficiently to tell me that he had no such
intention, he became rather communicative--at least relatively to
the former off-hand curtness of his speeches. The tone, too, was more
amiable. He informed me that he intended to study and also to write. He
went even so far as to tell me he had been to Stuttgart. Stuttgart, I
was aware, was one of the revolutionary centres. The directing committee
of one of the Russian parties (I can't tell now which) was located in
that town. It was there that he got into touch with the active work of
the revolutionists outside Russia.
"I have never been abroad before," he explained, in a rather inanimate
voice now. Then, after a slight hesitation, altogether different from
the agonizing irresolution my first simple question "whether he meant to
stay in Geneva" had aroused, he made me an unexpected confidence--
"The fact is, I have received a sort of mission from them."
"Which will keep you here in Geneva?"
"Yes. Here. In this odious...."
I was satisfied with my faculty for putting two and two together when I
drew the inference that the mission had something to do with the
person of the great Peter Ivanovitch. But I kept that surmise to myself
naturally, and Mr. Razumov said nothing more for some considerable time.
It was only when we were nearly on the bridge we had been making for
that he opened his lips again, abruptly--
"Could I see that precious article anywhere?"
I had to think for a moment before I saw what he was referring to.
"It has been reproduced in parts by the Press here. There are files to
be seen in various places. My copy of the English newspaper I have left
with Miss Haldin, I remember, on the day after it reached me. I was
sufficiently worried by seeing it lying on a table by the side of the
poor mother's chair for weeks. Then it disappeared. It was a relief, I
assure you."
He had stopped short.
"I trust," I continued, "that you will find time to see these ladies
fairly often--that you will make time."
He stared at me so queerly that I hardly know how to define his aspect.
I could not understand it in this connexion at all. What ailed him? I
asked myself. What strange thought had come into his head? What vision
of all the horrors that can be seen in his hopeless country had come
suddenly to haunt his brain? If it were anything connected with the fate
of Victor Haldin, then I hoped earnestly he would keep it to himself
for ever. I was, to speak plainly, so shocked that I tried to conceal my
impression by--Heaven forgive me--a smile and the assumption of a light
manner.
"Surely," I exclaimed, "that needn't cost you a great effort."
He turned away from me and leaned over the parapet of the bridge. For a
moment I waited, looking at his back. And yet, I assure you, I was not
anxious just then to look at his face again. He did not move at all. He
did not mean to move. I walked on slowly on my way towards the station,
and at the end of the bridge I glanced over my shoulder. No, he had not
moved. He hung well over the parapet, as if captivated by the smooth
rush of the blue water under the arch. The current there is swift,
extremely swift; it makes some people dizzy; I myself can never look at
it for any length of time without experiencing a dread of being suddenly
snatched away by its destructive force. Some brains cannot resist the
suggestion of irresistible power and of headlong motion.
It apparently had a charm for Mr. Razumov. I left him hanging far over
the parapet of the bridge. The way he had behaved to me could not be put
down to mere boorishness. There was something else under his scorn and
impatience. Perhaps, I thought, with sudden approach to hidden truth,
it was the same thing which had kept him over a week, nearly ten days
indeed, from coming near Miss Haldin. But what it was I could not tell.