IV
Urmánov had a slightly turned-up nose and prominent cheekbones. These features seemed to point to a strain of foreign blood. Otherwise, his face was rather handsome and interesting. He had fiery black eyes, glittering with animation, and long dark curls falling on his neck from under the broad-brimmed, high-crowned hat which he always wore, after the student fashion of the day. His figure was much too lithe for a Samoyéd’s; his movements were rapid, and I do not remember anyone whose personal appearance presented so perfect an example of that peculiar grace, and even in its way elegance, peculiar to students. His dress was far from being fashionable—indeed it was rather shabby—his coat was very threadbare, and showed plentiful traces of laboratory work in the form of acid-made stains. Nevertheless, whatever sort of garments Urmánov might wear, they always suited his slender figure to perfection, and everyone could recognize him as a student at the first glance.
His face, as also his figure, reflected faithfully and with extraordinary mobility the shifting moods of his expansive and impressionable nature. At our students’ meetings he would argue hotly, gesticulating frantically, sometimes raising his voice to a savage roar. It was, indeed, almost impossible to argue with Urmánov, and his antagonists generally found it expedient to leave him in possession of the battlefield, good-humoredly retreating before his attacks. For the rest, Urmánov always cooled down as quickly as he flared up, and in half-an-hour’s time would be ready to take up arms in defence of the very comrade whom he had just accused of being false to his principles and a traitor to his cause. Latterly, however, he had grown more self-restrained, and was less ready to express his extreme opinions at our meetings: he became sadder and more thoughtful. Somebody or other remarked that Urmánov was lowering his tone because he had reached his last term, and scented afar off the final examination and the coming degree. As a rule, we did not find it particularly difficult to justify these accusations; in fact, to speak the truth, they very often were justified. The jump from the unconditional rejection of all compromises to the acceptance of the most complex, was generally made but too often at the first step from the academy into the world. I did not know whether, or how, Urmánov would make that step; but I passionately denied so insulting a suggestion, feeling much more inclined to suppose that the consciousness of his approaching great mission to the Samoyédes had cast over Urmánov that shade of gravity and melancholy in which I contrived to see something grand and noble. What were our mutual help funds, our “students’ protests,” to him, when the “sorrow and anguish of centuries” were wafted to him from his “native tundra?”
It turned out, however, that both Urmánov’s antagonists and myself were equally at fault. The cause of his melancholy and his seriousness, as also of a certain indifference to our affairs and our differences, was both simpler and more emotional.
It was embodied in the small, slender and characteristic figure of a young woman, whom, though she was Russian born and bred, we had named “the American.” None of the students knew her personally; we were even ignorant of her name.