I offered to show it to her, and she at once volunteered to call on me next day for that purpose.
She turned over the pages greedily for an hour or more, and then handed me the book with a faint sigh. While moving about Russia, she had seen Razumov too. He lived, not “in the centre,” but “in the south.” She described to me a little two-roomed wooden house, in the suburb of some very small town, hiding within the high plank-fence of a yard overgrown with nettles. He was crippled, ill, getting weaker every day, and Tekla the Samaritan tended him unweariedly with the pure joy of unselfish devotion. There was nothing in that task to become disillusioned about.
I did not hide from Sophia Antonovna my surprise that she should have visited Mr. Razumov. I did not even understand the motive. But she informed me that she was not the only one.
“Some of us always go to see him when passing through. He is intelligent. He has ideas. … He talks well, too.”
Presently I heard for the first time of Razumov’s public confession in Laspara’s house. Sophia Antonovna gave me a detailed relation of what had occurred there. Razumov himself had told her all about it, most minutely.
Then, looking hard at me with her brilliant black eyes—
“There are evil moments in every life. A false suggestion enters one’s brain, and then fear is born—fear of oneself, fear for oneself. Or else a false courage—who knows? Well, call it what you like; but tell me, how many of them would deliver themselves up deliberately to perdition (as he himself says in that book) rather than go on living, secretly debased in their own eyes? How many? … And please mark this—he was safe when he did it. It was just when he believed himself safe and more—infinitely more—when the possibility of being loved by that admirable girl first dawned upon him, that he discovered that his bitterest railings, the worst wickedness, the devil work of his hate and pride, could never cover up the ignominy of the existence before him. There’s character in such a discovery.”
I accepted her conclusion in silence. Who would care to question the grounds of forgiveness or compassion? However, it appeared later on, that there was some compunction, too, in the charity extended by the revolutionary world to Razumov the betrayer. Sophia Antonovna continued uneasily—
“And then, you know, he was the victim of an outrage. It was not authorized. Nothing was decided as to what was to be done with him. He had confessed voluntarily. And that Nikita who burst the drums of his ears purposely, out on the landing, you know, as if carried away by indignation—well, he has turned out to be a scoundrel of the worst kind—a traitor himself, a betrayer—a spy! Razumov told me he had charged him with it by a sort of inspiration. …”
“I had a glimpse of that brute,” I said. “How any of you could have been deceived for half a day passes my comprehension!”
She interrupted me.
“There! There! Don’t talk of it. The first time I saw him, I, too, was appalled. They cried me down. We were always telling each other, ‘Oh! you mustn’t mind his appearance.’ And then he was always ready to kill. There was no doubt of it. He killed—yes! in both camps. The fiend. …”
Then Sophia Antonovna, after mastering the angry trembling of her lips, told me a very queer tale. It went that Councillor Mikulin, travelling in Germany (shortly after Razumov’s disappearance from Geneva), happened to meet Peter Ivanovitch in a railway carriage. Being alone in the compartment, these two talked together half the night, and it was then that Mikulin the Police Chief gave a hint to the Arch-Revolutionist as to the true character of the arch-slayer of gendarmes. It looks as though Mikulin had wanted to get rid of that particular agent of his own! He might have grown tired of him, or frightened of him. It must also be said that Mikulin had inherited the sinister Nikita from his predecessor in office.
And this story, too, I received without comment in my character of a mute witness of things Russian, unrolling their Eastern logic under my Western eyes. But I permitted myself a question—
“Tell me, please, Sophia Antonovna, did Madame de S⸺ leave all her fortune to Peter Ivanovitch?”
“Not a bit of it.” The woman revolutionist shrugged her shoulders in disgust. “She died without making a will. A lot of nephews and nieces came down from St. Petersburg, like a flock of vultures, and fought for her money amongst themselves. All beastly Kammerherrs and Maids of Honour—abominable court flunkeys. Tfui!”
“One does not hear much of Peter Ivanovitch now,” I remarked, after a pause.
“Peter Ivanovitch,” said Sophia Antonovna gravely, “has united himself to a peasant girl.”
I was truly astonished.
“What! On the Riviera?”
“What nonsense! Of course not.”
Sophia Antonovna’s tone was slightly tart.
“Is he, then, living actually in Russia? It’s a tremendous risk—isn’t it?” I cried. “And all for the sake of a peasant girl. Don’t you think it’s very wrong of him?”
Sophia Antonovna preserved a mysterious silence for a while, then made a statement. “He just simply adores her.”
“Does he? Well, then, I hope that she won’t hesitate to beat him.”
Sophia Antonovna got up and wished me goodbye, as though she had not heard a word of my impious hope; but, in the very doorway, where I attended her, she turned round for an instant, and declared in a firm voice—
“Peter Ivanovitch is an inspired man.”
Colophon
Under Western Eyes
was published in 1911 by
Joseph Conrad.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
David Reimer,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2006 by
An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from
