'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.'
