“You tired! What a confession! Well, there has been tea up there. I had some. If you hurry on after Yakovlitch, instead of wasting your time with such an unsatisfactory sceptical person as myself, you may find the ghost of it—the cold ghost of it—still lingering in the temple. But as to you being tired I can hardly believe it. We are not supposed to be. We mustn’t, We can’t. The other day I read in some paper or other an alarmist article on the tireless activity of the revolutionary parties. It impresses the world. It’s our prestige.”
“He flings out continually these flouts and sneers;” the woman in the crimson blouse spoke as if appealing quietly to a third person, but her black eyes never left Razumov’s face. “And what for, pray? Simply because some of his conventional notions are shocked, some of his petty masculine standards. You might think he was one of these nervous sensitives that come to a bad end. And yet,” she went on, after a short, reflective pause and changing the mode of her address, “and yet I have just learned something which makes me think that you are a man of character, Kirylo Sidorovitch. Yes! indeed—you are.”
The mysterious positiveness of this assertion startled Razumov. Their eyes met. He looked away and, through the bars of the rusty gate, stared at the clean, wide road shaded by the leafy trees. An electric tramcar, quite empty, ran along the avenue with a metallic rustle. It seemed to him he would have given anything to be sitting inside all alone. He was inexpressibly weary, weary in every fibre of his body, but he had a reason for not being the first to break off the conversation. At any instant, in the visionary and criminal babble of revolutionists, some momentous words might fall on his ear; from her lips, from anybody’s lips. As long as he managed to preserve a clear mind and to keep down his irritability there was nothing to fear. The only condition of success and safety was indomitable willpower, he reminded himself.
He longed to be on the other side of the bars, as though he were actually a prisoner within the grounds of this centre of revolutionary plots, of this house of folly, of blindness, of villainy and crime. Silently he indulged his wounded spirit in a feeling of immense moral and mental remoteness. He did not even smile when he heard her repeat the words—
“Yes! A strong character.”
He continued to gaze through the bars like a moody prisoner, not thinking of escape, but merely pondering upon the faded memories of freedom.
“If you don’t look out,” he mumbled, still looking away, “you shall certainly miss seeing as much as the mere ghost of that tea.”
She was not to be shaken off in such a way. As a matter of fact he had not expected to succeed.
“Never mind, it will be no great loss. I mean the missing of her tea and only the ghost of it at that. As to the lady, you must understand that she has her positive uses. See that, Razumov.”
He turned his head at this imperative appeal and saw the woman revolutionist making the motions of counting money into the palm of her hand.
“That’s what it is. You see?”
Razumov uttered a slow “I see,” and returned to his prisoner-like gazing upon the neat and shady road.
“Material means must be obtained in some way, and this is easier than breaking into banks. More certain too. There! I am joking. … What is he muttering to himself now?” she cried under her breath.
“My admiration of Peter Ivanovitch’s devoted self-sacrifice, that’s all. It’s enough to make one sick.”
“Oh, you squeamish, masculine creature. Sick! Makes him sick! And what do you know of the truth of it? There’s no looking into the secrets of the heart. Peter Ivanovitch knew her years ago, in his worldly days, when he was a young officer in the Guards. It is not for us to judge an inspired person. That’s where you men have an advantage. You are inspired sometimes both in thought and action. I have always admitted that when you are inspired, when you manage to throw off your masculine cowardice and prudishness you are not to be equalled by us. Only, how seldom. … Whereas the silliest woman can always be made of use. And why? Because we have passion, unappeasable passion. … I should like to know what he is smiling at?”
“I am not smiling,” protested Razumov gloomily.
“Well! How is one to call it? You made some sort of face. Yes, I know! You men can love here and hate there and desire something or other—and you make a great to-do about it, and you call it passion! Yes! While it lasts. But we women are in love with love, and with hate, with these very things I tell you, and with desire itself. That’s why we can’t be bribed off so easily as you men. In life, you see, there is not much choice. You have either to rot or to burn. And there is not one of us, painted or unpainted, that would not rather burn than rot.”
She spoke with energy, but in a matter-of-fact tone. Razumov’s attention had wandered away on a track of its own—outside the bars of the gate—but not out of earshot. He stuck his hands into the pockets of his coat.
“Rot or burn! Powerfully stated. Painted or unpainted. Very vigorous. Painted or … Do tell me—she would be infernally jealous of him, wouldn’t she?”
“Who? What? The Baroness? Eleanor Maximovna? Jealous of Peter Ivanovitch? Heavens! Are these the questions the man’s mind is running on? Such a thing is not to be thought of.”
“Why? Can’t a wealthy old woman be jealous? Or, are they all pure spirits together?”
“But what put it into your head to ask such a question?” she wondered.
“Nothing. I just asked. Masculine frivolity, if you like.”
“I don’t
