"H'm, yes! Thatno doubtin a certain sense" He raised his voice. "There is a deal of pride about you"
The intonation of Peter Ivanovitch took on a homely, familiar ring, acknowledging, in a way, Razumov's claim to peasant descent.
"A great deal of pride, brother Kirylo. And I don't say that you have no justification for it. I have admitted you had. I have ventured to allude to the facts of your birth simply because I attach no mean importance to it. You are one of usun des notres. I reflect on that with satisfaction."
"I attach some importance to it also," said Razumov quietly. "I won't even deny that it may have some importance for you too," he continued, after a slight pause and with a touch of grimness of which he was himself aware, with some annoyance. He hoped it had escaped the perception of Peter Ivanovitch. "But suppose we talk no more about it?"
"Well, we shall notnot after this one time, Kirylo Sidorovitch," persisted the noble archpriest of Revolution. "This shall be the last occasion. You cannot believe for a moment that I had the slightest idea of wounding your feelings. You are clearly a superior naturethat's how I read you. Quite above the commonh'msusceptibilities. But the fact is, Kirylo Sidorovitch, I don't know your susceptibilities. Nobody, out of Russia, knows much of youas yet!"
"You have been watching me?" suggested Razumov.
"Yes."
The great man had spoken in a tone of perfect frankness, but as they turned their faces to each other Razumov felt baffled by the dark spectacles. Under their cover, Peter Ivanovitch hinted that he had felt for some time the need of meeting a man of energy and character, in view of a certain project. He said nothing more precise, however; and after some critical remarks upon the personalities of the various members of the committee of revolutionary action in Stuttgart, he let the conversation lapse for quite a long while. They paced the alley from end to end. Razumov, silent too, raised his eyes from time to time to cast a glance at the back of the house. It offered no sign of being inhabited. With its grimy, weatherstained walls and all the windows shuttered from top to bottom, it looked damp and gloomy and deserted. It might very well have been haunted in traditional style by some doleful, groaning, futile ghost of a middleclass order. The shades evoked, as worldly rumour had it, by Madame de S to meet statesmen, diplomatists, deputies of various European Parliaments, must have been of another sort. Razumov had never seen Madame de S but in the carriage.
Peter Ivanovitch came out of his abstraction.
"Two things I may say to you at once. I believe, first, that neither a leader nor any decisive action can come out of the dregs of a people. Now, if you ask me what are the dregs of a peopleh'mit would take too long to tell. You would be surprised at the variety of ingredients that for me go to the making up of these dregsof that which ought, must remain at the bottom. Moreover, such a statement might be subject to discussion. But I can tell you what is not the dregs. On that it is impossible for us to disagree. The peasantry of a people is not the dregs; neither is its highest classwellthe nobility. Reflect on that, Kirylo Sidorovitch! I believe you are well fitted for reflection. Everything in a people that is not genuine, not its own by origin or development, iswelldirt! Intelligence in the wrong place is that. Foreignbred doctrines are that. Dirt! Dregs! The second thing I would offer to your meditation is this: that for us at this moment there yawns a chasm between the past and the future. It can never be bridged by foreign liberalism. All attempts at it are either folly or cheating. Bridged it can never be! It has to be filled up."
A sort of sinister jocularity had crept into the tones of the burly feminist. He seized Razumov's arm above the elbow, and gave it a slight shake.
"Do you understand, enigmatical young man? It has got to be just filled up."
A sort of sinister jocularity had crept into the tones of the burly feminist. He seized Razumov's arm above the elbow, and gave it a slight shake.
"Do you understand, enigmatical young man? It has got to be just filled up."
Razumov kept an unmoved countenance.
"Don't you think that I have already gone beyond meditation on that subject?" he said, freeing his arm by a quiet movement which increased the distance a little between himself and Peter Ivanovitch, as they went on strolling abreast. And he added that surely whole cartloads of words and theories could never fill that chasm. No meditation was necessary. A sacrifice of many lives could aloneHe fell silent without finishing the phrase.
Peter Ivanovitch inclined his big hairy head slowly. After a moment he proposed that they should go and see if Madame de S was now visible.
"We shall get some tea," he said, turning out of the shaded gloomy walk with a brisker step.
The lady companion had been on the look out. Her dark skirt whisked into the doorway as the two men came in sight round the corner. She ran off somewhere altogether, and had disappeared when they entered the hall. In the crude light falling from the dusty glass skylight upon the black and white tessellated floor, covered with muddy tracks, their footsteps echoed faintly. The great feminist led the way up the stairs. On the balustrade of the firstfloor landing a shiny tall hat reposed, rim upwards, opposite the double door of the drawingroom, haunted, it was said, by evoked ghosts, and frequented, it was to be supposed, by fugitive revolutionists. The cracked white paint of the panels, the tarnished gilt of the mouldings, permitted one to imagine nothing but dust and emptiness within. Before turning the massive brass handle, Peter Ivanovitch gave his young companion a sharp, partly critical, partly preparatory glance.
"No one is perfect," he murmured discreetly. Thus, the possessor of a rare jewel might, before opening the casket, warn the profane that no gem perhaps is flawless.
He remained with his hand on the doorhandle so long that Razumov assented by a moody "No."
"Perfection itself would not produce that effect," pursued Peter Ivanovitch, "in a world not meant for it. But you shall find there a mindno!the quintessence of feminine intuition which will understand any perplexity you may be suffering from by the irresistible, enlightening force of sympathy. Nothing can remain obscure before thatthatinspired, yes, inspired penetration, this true light of femininity."
The gaze of the dark spectacles in its glossy steadfastness gave his face an air of absolute conviction. Razumov felt a momentary shrinking before that closed door.
"Penetration? Light," he stammered out. "Do you mean some sort of thoughtreading?"
Peter Ivanovitch seemed shocked.
"I mean something utterly different," he retorted, with a faint, pitying smile.
Razumov began to feel angry, very much against his wish.
"This is very mysterious," he muttered through his teeth.
"You don't object to being understood, to being guided?" queried the great feminist. Razumov exploded in a fierce whisper.
"In what sense? Be pleased to understand that I am a serious person. Who do you take me for?"
They looked at each other very closely. Razumov's temper was cooled by the impenetrable earnestness of the blue glasses meeting his stare. Peter Ivanovitch turned the handle at last.
"You shall know directly," he said, pushing the door open.
A lowpitched grating voice was heard within the room.
"Enfin."
In the doorway, his blackcoated bulk blocking the view, Peter Ivanovitch boomed in a hearty tone with something boastful in it.
"Yes. Here I am!"
He glanced over his shoulder at Razumov, who waited for him to move on.
"And I am bringing you a proved conspiratora real one this time. Un vrai celui la."
This pause in the doorway gave the "proved conspirator" time to make sure that his face did not betray his angry curiosity and his mental disgust.
These sentiments stand confessed in Mr. Razumov's memorandum of his first interview with Madame de S. The very words I use in my narrative are written where their sincerity cannot be suspected. The record, which could not have been meant for anyone's eyes but his own, was not, I think, the outcome of that strange impulse of indiscretion common to men who lead secret lives, and accounting for the invariable existence of "compromising documents" in all the plots and conspiracies of history. Mr. Razumov looked at it, I suppose, as a man looks at himself in a mirror, with wonder, perhaps with anguish, with anger or despair. Yes, as a threatened man may look fearfully at his own face in the glass, formulating to himself reassuring excuses for his appearance marked by the taint of some insidious hereditary disease.
II
The Egeria of the "Russian Mazzini" produced, at first view, a strong effect by the deathlike immobility of an obviously painted face. The eyes appeared extraordinarily brilliant. The figure, in a closefitting dress, admirably made, but by no means fresh, had an elegant stiffness. The rasping voice inviting him to sit down; the rigidity of the upright attitude with one arm extended along the back of the sofa, the white gleam of the big eyeballs setting off the black, fathomless stare of the enlarged pupils, impressed Razumov more than anything he had seen since his hasty and secret departure from St. Petersburg. A witch in Parisian clothes, he thought. A portent! He actually hesitated in his advance, and did not even comprehend, at first, what the rasping voice was saying.
"Sit down. Draw your chair nearer me. There"
He sat down. At close quarters the rouged cheekbones, the wrinkles, the fine lines on each side of the vivid lips, astounded him. He was being received graciously, with a smile which made him think of a grinning skull.
"We have been hearing about you for some time."
He did not know what to say, and murmured some disconnected words. The grinning skull effect vanished.
"And do you know that the general complaint is that you have shown yourself very reserved everywhere?"
Razumov remained silent for a time, thinking of his answer.
"I, don't you see, am a man of action," he said huskily, glancing upwards.
Peter Ivanovitch stood in portentous expectant silence by the side of his chair. A slight feeling of nausea came over Razumov. What could be the relations of these two people to each other? She like a galvanized corpse out of some Hoffman's Talehe the preacher of feminist gospel for all the world, and a superrevolutionist besides! This ancient, painted mummy with unfathomable eyes, and this burly, bullnecked, deferentialwhat was it? Witchcraft, fascination "It's for her money," he thought. "She has millions!"
The walls, the floor of the room were bare like a barn. The few pieces of furniture had been discovered in the garrets and dragged down into service without having been properly dusted, even. It was the refuse the banker's widow had left behind her. The windows without curtains had an indigent, sleepless look. In two of them the dirty yellowywhite blinds had been pulled down. All this spoke, not of poverty, but of sordid penuriousness.