III
Svetlogoúb had lived through a great deal during the three months of his solitary confinement. From his very childhood he had unconsciously felt the injustice of the exceptional position he held as a rich man; and though he tried to stifle this feeling, often when he came in contact with the poverty of the common people—or sometimes even when he was particularly happy and comfortable himself—he felt rather ashamed of his relation to the people: to peasants, old men, women, and children, who were born, grew up and died, not only without knowing the pleasures he enjoyed, but without even understanding them, and never free from toil and hardship. When he had finished his studies at the University—in order to liberate himself from the consciousness of this injustice—he organized a school in the village on his estate: a model school, a Cooperative Store, and a Home for the aged poor. Yet, strange to say, when occupied with all this, he felt even more ashamed than when he was at supper with his comrades or when he purchased an expensive riding horse. He felt that it was not the right thing, and, even worse than that: there seemed to be something bad about it, something morally impure.
In one of these fits of disillusionment about his village activities he went to Kiev, where he met a fellow-University student. Three years later that fellow-student was shot in the moat of Kiev fortress.
That comrade, an ardent and extremely gifted young man, drew Svetlogoúb into a society the object of which was to enlighten the people, to awaken them to a consciousness of their rights, and to form them into federated groups aiming at freeing the people from the landlords and the Government. His conversation with this man and this man’s friends, seemed to ripen into a clear perception all that Svetlogoúb had been vaguely feeling. He understood now what he had to do. Without breaking off his intercourse with his new comrades, he returned to the country, and there began quite a fresh line of activity. He himself took the place of schoolmaster, arranged adult classes, read books and pamphlets to the peasants, and explained to them their true position. Besides all this, he published illegal books and pamphlets for the people, and gave all that, without taking anything from his mother, he could give for the formation of similar centres in other villages.
From the first, Svetlogoúb was faced in this activity by two unexpected obstacles: the first was the fact that the majority of the people treated his preaching with indifference, or even with a certain contempt. Only exceptional men (often men of doubtful morality) listened and sympathized with him. The other obstacle came from the side of the Government. They closed his school; and the police searched his house and the dwellings of all who were connected with him, and confiscated books and papers.
Svetlogoúb was too indignant with the second obstacle—the senseless and humiliating oppression of the Government—to pay much attention to the first. The same was felt by his comrades who were active in other centres, and the feeling of irritation they fomented in one another reached such a pitch of intensity that the great majority of their Group decided to fight the Government by force. The head of that Group was a certain Mezhenétsky, regarded by everybody as a man of indomitable power, incontestable logic, and entirely devoted to the cause of Revolution.
Svetlogoúb submitted to this man’s influence, and with the same energy with which he had worked among the people, now gave himself up to terrorist activity. That activity was dangerous, but the danger more than anything else attracted Svetlogoúb.
He said to himself: “Victory or martyrdom … and if it is to be martyrdom it will still be victory in the future!” And the fire that had been kindled within him, remained not only unextinguished during the seven years of his revolutionary activity, but fanned by the affection and esteem of those among whom he moved, burned more and more fiercely.
He attached no importance to the fact that he had given away for the cause almost all his fortune (inherited from his father), nor to the hardships and privations which he often had to encounter in the course of his activity. The only thing that grieved him was the sorrow he was causing to his mother and her ward—a girl who lived with her and loved him.
At last one of his comrades—a terrorist whom he did not much like, a disagreeable man—when tracked by the police, asked Svetlogoúb to hide some dynamite in his house. Just because he did not like that comrade, Svetlogoúb agreed; and the next day the police searched the house and found the dynamite. When asked how the dynamite had come into his possession, Svetlogoúb refused to answer.
And now the martyrdom he expected began. At that time, after so many of his friends had been executed, imprisoned, or exiled, and so many women had suffered, Svetlogoúb almost desired martyrdom. During the first moments after his arrest and examination he felt a peculiar exultation and almost joy.
He felt this while he was being undressed and searched, and while he was being led to prison, and when the iron doors were locked upon him. But when one day passed, and another, and a third, a week, two weeks, three weeks, in the dirty, damp, vermin-infested cell, in loneliness and enforced idleness, varied only by cheerless or bad news, which his comrades and fellow-prisoners communicated by tapping on the walls of their cells; and by occasional examinations by cold, hostile men who tried to torment him into incriminating his comrades, his moral—and with it his physical—strength gradually began to give way. He became despondent and, as he said to himself, longed for this insufferable position to end one way or another. His despondency was aggravated by doubts of his own endurance. In the second month of his incarceration he detected himself thinking of revealing the whole truth: anything to be free! He was appalled at this weakness, but could no longer find in himself his former strength; and, hating and despising himself, became more despondent than ever. But what was most terrible was the fact that, in prison, he began to regret the youthful powers and pleasures he had sacrificed so lightly when he was free, and which now appeared so enchanting that he almost repented of doing what he had once considered right, and sometimes even of the whole of his activity. Thoughts came to him of how happy he would be if he had liberty, living in the country or abroad, free, among loving and beloved friends; how he might marry her, or perhaps another, and with her might live a simple, joyous, bright life.