Trirodov asked again in astonishment:
“Not the right one, why not?”
The ragged one began to speak with awkward gestures, and he gave the impression that he was able to speak well and eloquently, and that he merely assumed his stupid, unpolished manner of speaking.
“I had been listening to you a long time. I was behind the bush there. I was asleep, I must confess—then you came—chattered away, and waked me. The young lady read well. Clearly and sympathetically. One could see at once that it was from the heart. Only I don’t like the contents, and all that’s in this book.”
“Why don’t you like it?” asked Elisaveta quietly.
“In my opinion,” said the ragged one, “it isn’t your style. It doesn’t fit you somehow.”
“What sort of book ought we to read?” asked Elisaveta.
She gave a light, forced smile. The ragged one sat down on a nearby stump, and answered in no undue haste:
“I am not thinking of you alone, honourable folk, but of all those who parade in fancy gaiters and in velvet dresses, and look scornfully at our brothers.”
“What book?” again asked Elisaveta.
“It’s the gospels that you ought to read,” he replied, as he looked attentively and austerely at Elisaveta, his glance taking in her entire figure from her flushed face down to her feet.
“Why the gospels?” asked Trirodov, who suddenly grew morose. He appeared to be pondering over something, and unable to decide; his indecision seemed to torment him.
The ragged one replied slowly:
“I will tell you why; you’ll find the true facts there. We will take it easy in paradise, while the devils will be pulling the veins out of you in hell. And we shall look on coolly, and applaud gaily with our hands. It ought to prove entertaining.”
He burst out into loud, hoarse laughter—but it seemed more assumed than joyous, and rather abject and hideous. Elisaveta shivered.
“What a wicked person you are! Why do you think that?” said Elisaveta reproachfully.
The ragged one glanced at her crossly, and looked fixedly into her deep blue eyes; then he said with a broad smile:
“Why am I wicked? And are you two good? Wicked or not, the thing is to be just. But I may tell you, sir, that I like you,” he said as he turned suddenly to Trirodov.
“Thank you for your good opinion,” said Trirodov with a slightly ironical smile, “but why should you like me?”
He looked attentively at the ragged one. Then suddenly he felt depressed and apprehensive, and he lowered his eyes. The other slowly lit his foul-smelling pipe, stretched himself, and began after a brief silence:
“Other gentlemen’s mugs are mostly gay, as if they had gorged themselves on a pancake with cream, or had successfully forged their uncle’s will. But you, sir, seem to have the same lean mug always. I have been observing you some time now. It’s evident that you have something on your soul. At least a capital crime.”
Trirodov was silent. He lifted himself on his elbow and looked straight into the man’s eyes with such a fixed, strange expression in his unblinking, commanding, wilful eyes.
The ragged one grew silent, as if he had been congealed for a moment. Then, as if frightened, he suddenly shook himself. He shrank and stooped, and as he took his cap off he revealed an unkempt, tousled head of hair; he mumbled something, slipped away among the bushes, and disappeared quietly—like a fairy of the wood.
Trirodov looked gloomily after him—and was silent. Elisaveta thought that he deliberately avoided looking at her. She was intensely embarrassed, but made an effort to control herself. She laughed, and said with assumed gaiety:
“What a strange creature!”
Trirodov turned upon her his melancholy glances and said quietly:
“He talks like one who knows. He talks like one who sees. But no one can know what happened.”
Oh, if one could only know! If one could only change that which once had happened!
Trirodov recalled again during these days the dark history of Piotr Matov’s father. Trirodov had carelessly entangled himself in this affair, and now it compelled him to have dealings with the blackmailer Ostrov.
Piotr’s father, Dmitry Matov, had fallen into a trap which he had set for others. He had joined a secret revolutionary circle. There they soon discovered his relations with the police, and they decided to detect him and kill him.
One of the members of the circle, the young physician Lunitsin, took the role of betrayer upon himself. He promised to obtain for Dmitry Matov important documents involving many of the members. They made a bargain at a moderate figure. The meeting at which the documents were to be exchanged for the money was designated to take place in a small borough close to the town in which Trirodov then lived.
At the appointed hour Dmitry Matov got out of his train at a little station. It was late in the evening. Matov wore blue spectacles and a false beard, as was agreed upon. Lunitsin waited for him a few yards from the station, and led him to a very solitary spot where was situated the house hired for the purpose.
A supper had been prepared there. Matov ate heartily and drank much wine. His companion began to invent stories about certain suspicious movements he had heard of lately. Little by little Matov grew candid, and began to boast of his connections with the police, and of the great number of people he had skilfully betrayed.
The door leading to the next room was hung with draperies. Three people were hiding in that room—Trirodov, Ostrov, and the young working man Krovlin. They were listening. Krovlin was intensely excited. He kept on repeating in indignant whispers:
“Oh, the scoundrel! The wretch!”
Ostrov and Trirodov managed to restrain him with great difficulty.
“Be silent. Let him babble out everything,” they said to him.
At last Matov’s impudent boastfulness was too much for Krovlin, who jumped out from his hiding-place, and shouted:
“So that’s how it is! You’ve betrayed our men to the police! And you have
