III
Laughter and song and merry games—for tomorrow Peter Iljitch’s son, the officer, returned to St. Petersburg, and friends had gathered to say goodbye. Uniforms and gay frocks were scattered about in the open glades and meadows, under the purple and gold of the autumn foliage, and in the sapphire clearness of the woodland ways. As the red wintry sunset faded and the stars moved by in the heavens, they set off fireworks—rockets that burst with a loud report, star-mines and pinwheels. A stifling smoke crept under the great old trees that stood there, so earnestly watching; and when they started the Bengal lights, hurrying figures were changed to ghosts—to fluttering, flitting shadows!
Commissioner “Pike,” who had pretty freely quenched his thirst at dinner, gazed indulgently at the gay throng, strutted comically about among the ladies, and enjoyed himself. And when presently he heard the Governor’s voice close beside him in the smoky darkness, he was taken with a wild desire to kiss him on the shoulder, to hug him carefully—or any little thing of that kind—as an expression of his devotion. Instead of this, however, he laid his hand on the left breast of his uniform, threw away a cigarette he had just lighted, and said: “Ah! your Excellency, what a charming fête!” …
“Listen, Illawion Wassiljevitch,” interrupted the Governor, with a suppressed growl. “Why do you always set these spies here? What does it mean?”
“Some rascal might plan an attack on your Excellency’s sacred person,” said the Pike, with deep emotion, and laying both hands on his heart. “And then, besides, … it is my duty!”
Popping of firecrackers, shrieks of terror, and loud laughter drowned his words. Then a sudden rain fell, extinguishing the red and green fires which had illuminated the smoky darkness, and made the Governor’s buttons and epaulets shine out.
“I know the reason, Illawion Wassiljevitch—that is, I think I can guess it. But I think it can hardly be serious.”
“It is most exceedingly serious, your Excellency! The whole town is talking of it. Astonishing how busily they talk about it! I have already arrested three men—but they were the wrong ones.”
A fresh outburst of firing and gay shouts interrupted him, and when the noise had subsided the Governor had gone.
After supper they all drove off, marshalled by the young Assistant Commissioner. Everything: the fireworks which he had seen from behind the trees, the carriages and the people, seemed to him extraordinarily lovely, and his own fresh voice astonished him with its beauty and its power. The Pike was horribly drunk, cracked jokes, laughed, and even sang the first few bars of the Marseillaise:
“Allons, enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!” …
At last they had all gone. “What are you worrying about so, father?” said the lieutenant, laying his hand on Peter Iljitch’s shoulder with patronising kindliness. The Governor was very much loved by his family, and the Governor’s lady even feared him a trifle; but they all felt that he had aged sadly in these last few weeks, and their fondness was not without a tinge of contempt.
“Nonsense! Nothing but nonsense!” answered Peter Iljitch hesitatingly. For some reasons he would gladly have unburdened himself to his son, but then again their views differed so radically that he had feared this explanation. Yet now this very difference of opinion might be of use. “The thing is this, you see,” he continued, with some embarrassment, “this trouble with the workmen makes me somewhat uneasy.”
Their eyes met square—but the son’s face was blank with astonishment as he dropped his hand from his father’s shoulder, saying: “But I thought you had your ‘Honourable Mention’ from St. Petersburg!”
“Certainly—and it pleased me very much. And yet … Aljosha!” He gazed into his son’s fine eyes with the clumsy tenderness of a stern old man. “They aren’t Turks after all, are they? They’re as much Russians as we—their names are Ivan and Peter, like ours.—And yet I treated them like Turks! ’Hm? How does the thing strike you now?”
“It strikes me that you are a Revolutionist!”
“But they wear the cross upon their breasts, Aljosha! And I”—he raised his finger—“I ordered them to fire at those crosses!”
“As far as I’ve seen you, father, you’ve never shown any particular religious scruples before. What have the crosses to do with it? That might be a telling point if you were addressing your regiment in the Square, or for some such occasion, but—”
“To be sure! Of course!” agreed the Governor hastily; “the crosses are aside from the argument. The point I want to make is this—that they are fellow-beings. Do you understand, Aljosha; fellow-countrymen! Yes, if I were some German now, called August Karlovitch Schlippe-Detmold! … but my name is Peter—and Iljitch besides!”
The lieutenant’s voice was rather dry. “You have such distorted notions, father! What have the Germans to do with this affair? And then, for that matter, haven’t Germans shot down Germans, and Frenchmen the French—and so on? Why shouldn’t Russians fire on Russians? As a representative of the Government, you certainly know that law and order must be supported at all costs; and whoever it may be who disturbs them—the same rule applies. If I were the guilty one, it would be your duty to have me shot down like a Turk!”
“That’s true,” said the Governor, nodding thoughtfully, and beginning to pace the floor. “That’s quite true!” And then he stopped. “But they were driven by hunger, Aljosha. If you could have seen them!”
“There were the peasants in Sensivjejvo—they rose because they were famished too—but that didn’t keep you from giving them a good dose of the knout!”
“Flogging is a very different thing from—That fool laid them all out in a row! Like game at the end of a hunt! And I looked at their poor thin legs, and thought: ‘These legs will never walk again!’ You cannot understand, Alexey! Of course, as a matter of State, an executioner is a necessity—but to be the executioner!”
“What are you talking about, father?”
“I know—I feel it—they will kill me yet!—It’s not that I fear death”—the Governor raised his grey head and looked steadily at his son—“but I know … they will surely kill me! I never understood before. I only thought: ‘What is it all about?’ ”—he stretched his powerful fingers and then doubled them into a fist. “But now I understand: they mean to kill me! Don’t laugh; you are young yet. But I have felt death today—here, in my head. Yes, in my head!”
“Father, I beg of you, send for the Cossacks! Demand a bodyguard! They’ll grant you anything! I beg of you, as your son, and I ask it in the name of Russia, to whom your life is precious!”
“And who is to kill me but this same Russia? And why should I have the Cossacks? … To defend me from Russia—in the name of Russia! And after all, could Cossacks, spies or guards, save a man with death branded on his forehead? You’ve been drinking a good deal this evening, Alexey, but you are sober enough to understand this: I feel the hand of death! Even there in the storehouse, where they laid the bodies, I felt it; yet then I did not realise what it was. This I’ve just been telling you, about crosses and Russians, is nonsense, of course—has nothing to do with the thing. But do you see this handkerchief?” Eagerly he drew a handkerchief from his pocket, unfolded it, and held it up for inspection like a conjurer: “Alexey Petrovitch, now look here!” He waved it hastily and a subtle perfume was wafted to the lieutenant, who sat there looking anxious. “There, you doubting scientist! you fin de siècle thinker! You believe in nothing—but I believe in the old law: Blood for blood! You will see!”
“Father, send in your resignation, and travel.”
He seemed to have expected this advice, and was not at all surprised. “No—not for the world,” he answered firmly; “you can see for yourself that would be tantamount to flight. Nonsense! Not for the world!”
“Forgive me, father, but you seem so unreasonable!” The lieutenant cocked his head and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know really what to think. Mother groans and you talk of death—and what is it all about? I’m ashamed of you, father! I’ve always considered you a man of discernment and force, and now you’re like a child or a hysterical woman. Forgive me! But I cannot understand it at all!”
He himself was not in the least hysterical, nor in the slightest degree womanish—this handsome young fellow, with his fresh, smooth-shaven face and the calm, finished manner of a man who not only respects himself but reveres himself! He always seemed to be the sole individual in a crowd; and you must be a most distinguished person (a general at the very least) to have him aware of you and to make him overcome that slight constraint and reserve that the average public inspired in him. He was a good swimmer and loved the sport, and when he went to the baths on the Neva in the summertime he noted his own perfect symmetry as coolly and complacently as though he were quite alone. … One day a Chinaman appeared at the baths, and everyone stared at him—some with a sneaking curiosity and some quite openly and unabashed. He alone did not vouchsafe him a glance—considering himself far more interesting and more important than any Chinaman. …
Everything in the world was clear and simple to him; everything could be reduced to a formula—and he knew that with the Cossacks things would certainly go better than without the Cossacks.
His reproaches had a ring of righteous indignation, only tempered by politeness and the fear of wounding the old man’s vanity. All this that his father had told him was not entirely unexpected. He had always known him to be a dreamer. But it struck him as something coarse, barbarous, atavistic. “Crosses! Blood for blood! Ivan and Peter!” How absurd it all was!
“You’re a poor stick of a Governor, even if they have given you an ‘Honourable Mention,’ ” thought he slowly, as he followed his father’s retreating figure with his handsome eyes. …
“Well, what is it, father—are you vexed with me?”
“No,” answered the Governor simply. “I am grateful for your sympathy, and you’ll do well to quiet your mother. As to myself I am perfectly convinced! I’ve explained my impressions to you now. This is my view of it, and yours is different. We shall see which is correct!—But now, be off to bed. It’s time you went to sleep.”
“I’m not tired yet. Shan’t we take a turn in the garden?”
“That suits me.”
They went out into the darkness and disappeared from each other’s view—only their voices and an occasional hasty touch disturbing their sense of a strange, all-embracing loneliness. The stars, on the other hand, were numberless, and sparkled in bright companionship, and when they reached the open, out from under the close-set trees, Alexey Petrovitch could distinguish at his side the tall, heavy silhouette of his father. The night, the air and the stars had called up a tenderer feeling for this dark shadowy presence, and he repeated his reassuring explanations.
“Yes, yes,” answered Peter Iljitch from time to time—though it was not quite clear whether he agreed or not.
“But how dark it is!” said Alexey Petrovitch, and stood still. They had come to a shady walk where the darkness was complete. “You should have lanterns put here, father!”
“What for? Tell me.”
They both stood still, and now that the sound of their steps was hushed, the loneliness reigned unbroken—unbounded!
“Well, what is it?” asked Alexey Petrovitch impatiently.
“Does this darkness mean anything to you?”
“Dreaming again!” thought the lieutenant, and observed, with jaunty gaiety: “It means that you are not to wander about here alone! Anywhere in these woods they might have laid an ambush.”
“An ambush! Yes, that’s what the darkness tells me too. Imagine! Behind each one of these trees sits a man—an invisible man—watching! So many men—forty-seven—as many as we killed that day! And they sit there and hear what I say—and spy!”
The lieutenant had grown nervous. He searched the darkness round about and took a step forward. “How unnecessary to excite yourself so!” he exclaimed involuntarily.
“No—but wait a moment!” The son started as he felt a light touch of the hand. “Picture to yourself that everywhere—there in the town even, and wherever I go—they are lying in wait. If I walk—he walks too; and watches me! Or I get into the carriage, and a man passes and pulls off his cap—he is spying on me!”
The darkness grew sinister, and the invisible speaker’s voice sounded strange and distant.
“That will do, father, let’s go!” said the lieutenant, striding hastily off without waiting for his father.
“You see now, my dear boy!” came in Peter Iljitch’s deep voice, with a startling ring of mockery. “You wouldn’t believe me when I told you! There he sits in your own head!”
The lights in the house seem so far and dim that the lieutenant feels a mad impulse to run. If he might only reach them! … He almost doubts his own courage, and at the same time develops a feeling of respect for his father, who strides so calmly along through the darkness.
But fear and respect both vanish as soon as he enters the well-lighted rooms; and nothing remains but the impression of rage against his father, who will not listen to the voice of Reason, and refuses the Cossack guard with the stubbornness of senility!