hand, it is obvious that most of them are fools.' He moved aside a couple of paces and, folding his arms on his breast, leaned back against the stone pillar of the gate.
'As to what remains obscure in the fate of that poor Haldin,' Sophia Antonovna dropped into a slowness of utterance which was to Razumov like the falling of molten lead drop by drop; 'as to that—though no one ever hinted that either from fear or neglect your conduct has not been what it should have been—well, I have a bit of intelligence....'
Razumov could not prevent himself from raising his head, and Sophia Antonovna nodded slightly.
'I have. You remember that letter from St. Petersburg I mentioned to you a moment ago?'
'The letter? Perfectly. Some busybody has been reporting my conduct on a certain day. It's rather sickening. I suppose our police are greatly edified when they open these interesting and—and—superfluous letters.'
'Oh dear no! The police do not get hold of our letters as easily as you imagine. The letter in question did not leave St. Petersburg till the ice broke up. It went by the first English steamer which left the Neva this spring. They have a fireman on board—one of us, in fact. It has reached me from Hull....'
She paused as if she were surprised at the sullen fixity of Razumov's gaze, but went on at once, and much faster.
'We have some of our people there who...but never mind. The writer of the letter relates an incident which he thinks may possibly be connected with Haldin's arrest. I was just going to tell you when those two men came along.'
'That also was an incident,' muttered Razumov, 'of a very charming kind—for me.'
'Leave off that!' cried Sophia Antonovna. 'Nobody cares for Nikita's barking. There's no malice in him. Listen to what I have to say. You may be able to throw a light. There was in St. Petersburg a sort of town peasant—a man who owned horses. He came to town years ago to work for some relation as a driver and ended by owning a cab or two.'
She might well have spared herself the slight effort of the gesture: 'Wait!' Razumov did not mean to speak; he could not have interrupted her now, not to save his life. The contraction of his facial muscles had been involuntary, a mere surface stir, leaving him sullenly attentive as before.
'He was not a quite ordinary man of his class—it seems,' she went on. 'The people of the house—my informant talked with many of them—you know, one of those enormous houses of shame and misery....'
Sophia Antonovna need not have enlarged on the character of the house. Razumov saw clearly, towering at her back, a dark mass of masonry veiled in snowflakes, with the long row of windows of the eating-shop shining greasily very near the ground. The ghost of that night pursued him. He stood up to it with rage and with weariness.
'Did the late Haldin ever by chance speak to you of that house?' Sophia Antonovna was anxious to know.
'Yes.' Razumov, making that answer, wondered whether he were falling into a trap. It was so humiliating to lie to these people that he probably could not have said no. 'He mentioned to me once,' he added, as if making an effort of memory, 'a house of that sort. He used to visit some workmen there.'
'Exactly.'
Sophia Antonovna triumphed. Her correspondent had discovered that fact quite accidentally from the talk of the people of the house, having made friends with a workman who occupied a room there. They described Haldin's appearance perfectly. He brought comforting words of hope into their misery. He came irregularly, but he came very often, and—her correspondent wrote—sometimes he spent a night in the house, sleeping, they thought, in a stable which opened upon the inner yard.
'Note that, Razumov! In a stable.'
Razumov had listened with a sort of ferocious but amused acquiescence.
'Yes. In the straw. It was probably the cleanest spot in the whole house.'
'No doubt,' assented the woman with that deep frown which seemed to draw closer together her black eyes in a sinister fashion. No four-footed beast could stand the filth and wretchedness so many human beings were condemned to suffer from in Russia. The point of this discovery was that it proved Haldin to have been familiar with that horse-owning peasant—a reckless, independent, free-living fellow not much liked by the other inhabitants of the house. He was believed to have been the associate of a band of housebreakers. Some of these got captured. Not while he was driving them, however; but still there was a suspicion against the fellow of having given a hint to the police and...
The woman revolutionist checked herself suddenly.
'And you? Have you ever heard your friend refer to a certain Ziemianitch?'
Razumov was ready for the name. He had been looking out for the question. 'When it comes I shall own up,' he had said to himself. But he took his time.
'To be sure!' he began slowly. 'Ziemianitch, a peasant owning a team of horses. Yes. On one occasion. Ziemianitch! Certainly! Ziemianitch of the horses.... How could it have slipped my memory like this? One of the last conversations we had together.'
'That means,'—Sophia Antonovna looked very grave,—'that means, Razumov, it was very shortly before— eh?'
'Before what?' shouted Razumov, advancing at the woman, who looked astonished but stood her ground. 'Before.... Oh! Of course, it was before! How could it have been after? Only a few hours before.'
'And he spoke of him favourably?'
'With enthusiasm! The horses of Ziemianitch! The free soul of Ziemianitch!'
Razumov took a savage delight in the loud utterance of that name, which had never before crossed his lips audibly. He fixed his blazing eyes on the woman till at last her fascinated expression recalled him to himself.
'The late Haldin,' he said, holding himself in, with downcast eyes, 'was inclined to take sudden fancies to people, on—on—what shall I say—insufficient grounds.'
