“Yes, a comrade and an intimate. … Very well,” he said.
“I ventured to speak to you on that assumption. And I cannot be mistaken. I was present when Peter Ivanovitch announced your arrival here to Miss Haldin, and I saw her relief and thankfulness when your name was mentioned. Afterwards she showed me her brother’s letter, and read out the few words in which he alludes to you. What else but a friend could you have been?”
“Obviously. That’s perfectly well known. A friend. Quite correct. … Go on. You were talking of some effect.”
I said to myself: “He puts on the callousness of a stern revolutionist, the insensibility to common emotions of a man devoted to a destructive idea. He is young, and his sincerity assumes a pose before a stranger, a foreigner, an old man. Youth must assert itself. …” As concisely as possible I exposed to him the state of mind poor Mrs. Haldin had been thrown into by the news of her son’s untimely end.
He listened—I felt it—with profound attention. His level stare deflected gradually downwards, left my face, and rested at last on the ground at his feet.
“You can enter into the sister’s feelings. As you said, I have only read a little English poetry with her, and I won’t make myself ridiculous in your eyes by trying to speak of her. But you have seen her. She is one of these rare human beings that do not want explaining. At least I think so. They had only that son, that brother, for a link with the wider world, with the future. The very groundwork of active existence for Nathalie Haldin is gone with him. Can you wonder then that she turns with eagerness to the only man her brother mentions in his letters. Your name is a sort of legacy.”
“What could he have written of me?” he cried, in a low, exasperated tone.
“Only a few words. It is not for me to repeat them to you, Mr. Razumov; but you may believe my assertion that these words are forcible enough to make both his mother and his sister believe implicitly in the worth of your judgment and in the truth of anything you may have to say to them. It’s impossible for you now to pass them by like strangers.”
I paused, and for a moment sat listening to the footsteps of the few people passing up and down the broad central walk. While I was speaking his head had sunk upon his breast above his folded arms. He raised it sharply.
“Must I go then and lie to that old woman!”
It was not anger; it was something else, something more poignant, and not so simple. I was aware of it sympathetically, while I was profoundly concerned at the nature of that exclamation.
“Dear me! Won’t the truth do, then? I hoped you could have told them something consoling. I am thinking of the poor mother now. Your Russia is a cruel country.”
He moved a little in his chair.
“Yes,” I repeated. “I thought you would have had something authentic to tell.”
The twitching of his lips before he spoke was curious.
“What if it is not worth telling?”
“Not worth—from what point of view? I don’t understand.”
“From every point of view.”
I spoke with some asperity.
“I should think that anything which could explain the circumstances of that midnight arrest. …”
“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 fingertips.) “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 Château Borel, the sister of Victor Haldin had appeared before him. The perplexities and the complex terrors—I may say—of this sleeplessness are recorded
