joy, but my attention was especially caught by a middle-aged man who came up to me with the others. I knew him by name already, but had never made his acquaintance nor exchanged a word with him till that evening.
(d) The Mysterious Visitor.
He had long been an official in the town; he was in a prominent position, respected by all, rich and had a reputation for benevolence. He subscribed considerable sums to the almshouse and the orphan asylum; he was very charitable, too, in secret, a fact which only became known after his death. He was a man of about fifty, almost stern in appearance and not much given to conversation. He had been married about ten years and his wife, who was still young, had borne him three children. Well, I was sitting alone in my room the following evening, when my door suddenly opened and this gentleman walked in.
I must mention, by the way, that I was no longer living in my former quarters. As soon as I resigned my commission, I took rooms with an old lady, the widow of a government clerk. My landlady's servant waited upon me, for I had moved into her rooms simply because on my return from the duel I had sent Afanasy back to the regiment, as I felt ashamed to look him in the face after my last interview with him. So prone is the man of the world to be ashamed of any righteous action.
'I have,' said my visitor, 'with great interest listened to you speaking in different houses the last few days and I wanted at last to make your personal acquaintance, so as to talk to you more intimately. Can you, dear sir, grant me this favour?'
'I can, with the greatest pleasure, and I shall look upon it as an honour.' I said this, though I felt almost dismayed, so greatly was I impressed from the first moment by the appearance of this man. For though other people had listened to me with interest and attention, no one had come to me before with such a serious, stern, and concentrated expression. And now he had come to see me in my own rooms. He sat down.
'You are, I see, a man of great strength of character' he said; 'as you have dared to serve the truth, even when by doing so you risked incurring the contempt of all.'
'Your praise is, perhaps, excessive,' I replied.
'No, it's not excessive,' he answered; 'believe me, such a course of action is far more difficult than you think. It is that which has impressed me, and it is only on that account that I have come to you,' he continued. 'Tell me, please, that is if you are not annoyed by my perhaps unseemly curiosity, what were your exact sensations, if you can recall them, at the moment when you made up your mind to ask forgiveness at the duel. Do not think my question frivolous; on the contrary, I have in asking the question a secret motive of my own, which I will perhaps explain to you later on, if it is God's will that we should become more intimately acquainted.'
All the while he was speaking, I was looking at him straight into the face and I felt all at once a complete trust in him and great curiosity on my side also, for I felt that there was some strange secret in his soul.
'You ask what were my exact sensations at the moment when I asked my opponent's forgiveness,' I answered; 'but I had better tell you from the beginning what I have not yet told anyone else.' And I described all that had passed between Afanasy and me, and how I had bowed down to the ground at his feet. 'From that you can see for yourself,' I concluded, 'that at the time of the duel it was easier for me, for I had made a beginning already at home, and when once I had started on that road, to go farther along it was far from being difficult, but became a source of joy and happiness.'
I liked the way he looked at me as he listened. 'All that,' he said, 'is exceedingly interesting. I will come to see you again and again.'
And from that time forth he came to see me nearly every evening. And we should have become greater friends, if only he had ever talked of himself. But about himself he scarcely ever said a word, yet continually asked me about myself. In spite of that I became very fond of him and spoke with perfect frankness to him about all my feelings; 'for,' thought I, 'what need have I to know his secrets, since I can see without that that is a good man? Moreover, though he is such a serious man and my senior, he comes to see a youngster like me and treats me as his equal.' And I learned a great deal that was profitable from him, for he was a man of lofty mind.
'That life is heaven,' he said to me suddenly, 'that I have long been thinking about'; and all at once he added, 'I think of nothing else indeed.' He looked at me and smiled. 'I am more convinced of it than you are, I will tell you later why.'
I listened to him and thought that he evidently wanted to tell me something.
'Heaven,' he went on, 'lies hidden within all of us--here it lies hidden in me now, and if I will it, it will be revealed to me to-morrow and for all time.'
I looked at him; he was speaking with great emotion and gazing mysteriously at me, as if he were questioning me.
'And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in very truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality.'
'And when,' I cried out to him bitterly, 'when will that come to pass? and will it ever come to pass? Is not it simply a dream of ours?'
'What then, you don't believe it,' he said. 'You preach it and don't believe it yourself. Believe me, this dream, as you call it, will come to pass without doubt; it will come, but not now, for every process has its law. It's a spiritual, psychological process. To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Everyone will think his share too small and they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go though the period of isolation.'
'What do you mean by isolation?' I asked him.
'Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age-- it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For everyone strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realisation he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light. And then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens.... But, until then, we must keep the banner flying. Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men's souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die.'
Our evenings, one after another, were spent in such stirring and fervent talk. I gave up society and visited my neighbours much less frequently. Besides, my vogue was somewhat over. I say this, not as blame, for they still loved me and treated me good-humouredly, but there's no denying that fashion is a great power in society. I began to regard my mysterious visitor with admiration, for besides enjoying his intelligence, I began to perceive that he was brooding over some plan in his heart, and was preparing himself perhaps for a great deed. Perhaps he liked my not showing curiosity about his secret, not seeking to discover it by direct question nor by insinuation. But I noticed at last, that he seemed to show signs of wanting to tell me something. This had become quite evident, indeed, about a month after he first began to visit me.
'Do you know,' he said to me once, 'that people are very inquisitive about us in the town and wonder why I come to see you so often. But let them wonder, for soon all will be explained.'
Sometimes an extraordinary agitation would come over him, and almost always on such occasions he would get up and go away. Sometimes he would fix a long piercing look upon me, and I thought, 'He will say something directly now.' But he would suddenly begin talking of something ordinary and familiar. He often complained of headache too.
