The fool of whom Mr. Razumov had thought was the rich and festive student known as madcap Kostia. Feather-headed, loquacious, excitable, one could make certain of his utter and complete indiscretion. But that riotous youth, when reminded by Razumov of his offers of service some time ago, passed from his usual elation into boundless dismay.
'Oh, Kirylo Sidorovitch, my dearest friend—my saviour—what shall I do? I've blown last night every rouble I had from my dad the other day. Can't you give me till Thursday? I shall rush round to all the usurers I know.... No, of course, you can't! Don't look at me like that. What shall I do? No use asking the old man. I tell you he's given me a fistful of big notes three days ago. Miserable wretch that I am.'
He wrung his hands in despair. Impossible to confide in the old man. 'They' had given him a decoration, a cross on the neck only last year, and he had been cursing the modern tendencies ever since. Just then he would see all the intellectuals in Russia hanged in a row rather than part with a single rouble.
'Kirylo Sidorovitch, wait a moment. Don't despise me. I have it. I'll, yes—I'll do it—I'll break into his desk. There's no help for it. I know the drawer where he keeps his plunder, and I can buy a chisel on my way home. He will be terribly upset, but, you know, the dear old duffer really loves me. He'll have to get over it—and I, too. Kirylo, my dear soul, if you can only wait for a few hours-till this evening—I shall steal all the blessed lot I can lay my hands on! You doubt me! Why? You've only to say the word.'
'Steal, by all means,' said Razumov, fixing him stonily.
'To the devil with the ten commandments!' cried the other, with the greatest animation. 'It's the new future now.'
But when he entered Razumov's room late in the evening it was with an unaccustomed soberness of manner, almost solemnly.
'It's done,' he said.
Razumov sitting bowed, his clasped hands hanging between his knees, shuddered at the familiar sound of these words. Kostia deposited slowly in the circle of lamplight a small brown-paper parcel tied with a piece of string.
'As I've said—all I could lay my hands on. The old boy'll think the end of the world has come.' Razumov nodded from the couch, and contemplated the hare-brained fellow's gravity with a feeling of malicious pleasure.
'I've made my little sacrifice,' sighed mad Kostia. 'And I've to thank you, Kirylo Sidorovitch, for the opportunity.'
'It has cost you something?'
'Yes, it has. You see, the dear old duffer really loves me. He'll be hurt.'
'And you believe all they tell you of the new future and the sacred will of the people?'
'Implicitly. I would give my life.... Only, you see, I am like a pig at a trough. I am no good. It's my nature.'
Razumov, lost in thought, had forgotten his existence till the youth's voice, entreating him to fly without loss of time, roused him unpleasantly.
'All right. Well—good-bye.'
'I am not going to leave you till I've seen you out of St. Petersburg,' declared Kostia unexpectedly, with calm determination. 'You can't refuse me that now. For God's sake, Kirylo, my soul, the police may be here any moment, and when they get you they'll immure you somewhere for ages—till your hair turns grey. I have down there the best trotter of dad's stables and a light sledge. We shall do thirty miles before the moon sets, and find some roadside station....'
Razumov looked up amazed. The journey was decided—unavoidable. He had fixed the next day for his departure on the mission. And now he discovered suddenly that he had not believed in it. He had gone about listening, speaking, thinking, planning his simulated flight, with the growing conviction that all this was preposterous. As if anybody ever did such things! It was like a game of make-believe. And now he was amazed! Here was somebody who believed in it with desperate earnestness. 'If I don't go now, at once,' thought Razumov, with a start of fear, 'I shall never go.' He rose without a word, and the anxious Kostia thrust his cap on him, helped him into his cloak, or else he would have left the room bareheaded as he stood. He was walking out silently when a sharp cry arrested him.
'Kirylo!'
'What?' He turned reluctantly in the doorway. Upright, with a stiffly extended arm, Kostia, his face set and white, was pointing an eloquent forefinger at the brown little packet lying forgotten in the circle of bright light on the table. Razumov hesitated, came back for it under the severe eyes of his companion, at whom he tried to smile. But the boyish, mad youth was frowning. 'It's a dream,' thought Razumov, putting the little parcel into his pocket and descending the stairs; 'nobody does such things.' The other held him under the arm, whispering of dangers ahead, and of what he meant to do in certain contingencies. 'Preposterous,' murmured Razumov, as he was being tucked up in the sledge. He gave himself up to watching the development of the dream with extreme attention. It continued on foreseen lines, inexorably logical—the long drive, the wait at the small station sitting by a stove. They did not exchange half a dozen words altogether. Kostia, gloomy himself, did not care to break the silence. At parting they embraced twice—it had to be done; and then Kostia vanished out of the dream.
When dawn broke, Razumov, very still in a hot, stuffy railway-car full of bedding and of sleeping people in all its dimly lighted length, rose quietly, lowered the glass a few inches, and flung out on the great plain of snow a small brown-paper parcel. Then he sat down again muffled up and motionless. 'For the people,' he thought, staring out of the window. The great white desert of frozen, hard earth glided past his eyes without a sign of human habitation.
That had been a waking act; and then the dream had him again: Prussia, Saxony, Wurtemberg, faces, sights, words—all a dream, observed with an angry, compelled attention. Zurich, Geneva—still a dream, minutely followed, wearing one into harsh laughter, to fury, to death—with the fear of awakening at the end.
II
'Perhaps life is just that,' reflected Razumov, pacing to and fro under the trees of the little island, all alone with the bronze statue of Rousseau. 'A dream and a fear.' The dusk deepened. The pages written over and torn out of his notebook were the first-fruit of his 'mission.' No dream that. They contained the assurance that he was on the eve of real discoveries. 'I think there is no longer anything in the way of my being completely accepted.'
