II
The Governor’s audience has long been ended, and he is about to drive out to his villa, waiting on for his aide-de-camp Kosloff, who is shopping for her Excellency. He sits in his study, his papers before him, and yet he can not work—he broods. Then, rising, he thrusts his hands deeper into the pockets of his red-striped trousers, throws back his great grey head, and paces the room with heavy, soldierly tread. He pauses at the window, spreads the strong, thick fingers of his hand, and says, in strident tones: “But what is it all about?” And he fancies that as long as he sat and thought he was an ordinary man like any other; simply Peter Iljitch—but with the first sound of his own voice, that gesture—he has suddenly become the Governor, the Major-General! An uneasy feeling creeps over him, his thoughts whirl and tangle; and with a curt official shrug of his left shoulder-strap he turns from the window and paces the floor again.
“This is the way the Gov-er-nors walk!” The rhythm jerks through his brain, keeping time with his heavy footfall until he seats himself again, carefully avoiding all movement that shall recall his official capacity.
The sound of a bell.
“Has he come yet?”
“If you please, no, your Excellency.”
And while the lackey speaks the title softly and respectfully, he suddenly recollects: “Ah yes! They broke the windows there that day, and I have not seen them yet.” …
“Call me when he comes. I shall be in the drawing-room.”
The high old-fashioned windows had eight small panes, which gave the room the gloomy look of an office: the appearance of a Court of Chancery, or of a jail. The three windows nearest the balcony had new panes, which still showed the marks of putty-daubed fingers; apparently it had never entered into the idle brains of any of the countless servants that all traces of that disturbance must be wiped away. It was the same old story—if you ordered them they would do it; if not they’d never lift a finger of their own accord. …
“Let this be cleaned directly! I can’t stand this disorder!”
“Yes, your Excellency!”
He would have liked to step out onto the balcony, yet it seemed unwise to draw the attention of the passersby, so he stared through the glass at the Square, where the mob had surged that day, where the rifles had crashed—and forty-seven restless people had been turned to dumb, still corpses!—row on row—shoulder to shoulder—feet to feet—like a parade seen from below.
Now all was still out there. Close by the window stands a poplar with ragged bark, already in autumn colouring, and behind it lies the Square, peaceful and sleepy in the sun. Hardly a stone stirring, and the cobblestones lying in even rows like beads, with here and there a bit of grass between, greener in the hollows and along the gutters. Empty and deserted the Square was—but rather smiling; yet, perhaps because he saw it through the dingy panes, it appeared dismal and squalid, brooding in sullen apathy over its hopeless grey misery. And although it was broad daylight, yet all these things—the poplar with its ragged bark, the vacant, even rows of cobblestones—seemed craving for the night to come and wrap their useless being in its darkness.
“Has he not come yet?”
“No, your Excellency.”
“When he comes bring him here.”
The drawing-room had been furnished in the time of the previous Governor, or possibly earlier still, judging from the soiled and faded condition of its costly hangings. About the brassbound chimney hole were traced dark yellow stains, like lines about the drooling mouth of age. These were masked by hangings, and in winter when the rooms were lighted, one hardly noticed these defects; but now they crowded into view in all their shabby elegance, making a most painful impression. For instance, that landscape—a moonlight scene in Italy: it hangs crooked, yet no one gives it a straightening touch, and it seems to have hung so throughout the rule of successive Governors. The furniture, too, is costly, but worn and moth-eaten: like an apartment in a luxurious villa whose owner has suddenly died of a stroke, and whose estate has long lain in litigation, cared for by quarrelling heirs.
And nothing in the room was the property of its occupants; not even the photographs. Either they were official belongings or had been forgotten by some predecessor. Instead of portraits of friends and relatives, there was an album with views of the city: the seminary, the district court; then four unknown officials, two seated and two standing behind them; a weather-beaten bishop, and finally a round hole that ended at the cover.
“Hideous!” said the Governor aloud, and threw the album aside, with a gesture of loathing. He had been standing to look at the pictures, and now he turned again with a shrug and started his customary pacing. “This-is-the-way-the-Gov-er-nors-walk,-the-Gov-er-nors-walk! the-Gov-er-nors-walk!”
—So trod the former Governor, and his predecessor, and his, and all the other unknown Governors. They rose from somewhere, paced these halls with firm, square steps; while over them hung the crooked Italian landscape—held receptions, even gave balls—and then vanished again somewhere. Perhaps they too had ordered the people shot—at least something similar had occurred under his third predecessor.
A workman was crossing the deserted square, splashed with paint, and carrying his paint and brushes—then all was empty again. Down from the ragged poplar fell a shrivelled leaf, floating aimlessly to the ground—and instantly the thought whirled through his head: that signal with the white handkerchief—the shots—the blood!
Trivial detail occurred to him now; how he had prepared to give the signal. He had pulled his handkerchief from his pocket beforehand and held it tightly clutched in a ball in his right hand; then he unfolded it carefully and waved it hastily, not up and down, but forward and out, as though he were tossing something—as though he were flinging bullets! Then it came to him that he had taken a stride—had crossed an invisible threshold—the iron door had clanged behind him with a loud grating of its iron hinges, and there was no return.
“Ah, you at last, Leo Andrejevitch. I’ve waited—the Lord knows how long!”
“I’m sorry, Peter Iljitch, but you never can find anything in this beastly hole.”
“Now, let’s be off! Come! Yes, but listen!” The Governor stood still and continued, pursing his lips: “Why are all our public offices so dirty? Take, for instance, our government office; or—I was in the police department the other day—I tell you it’s a pothouse, a stable—and decent men sit there in good, fresh uniform, with the dirt about in heaps!”
“But there’s no money!”
“Nonsense! Quibbles! And here”—the Governor waved his hand to indicate the walls—“look at that now—disgusting!”
“Yes, but, Peter Iljitch, what’s to hinder your doing it over to suit yourself? How often have I said that very thing to Maria Petrovna, and her Excellency agrees with me thoroughly.”
The Governor strode to the door, muttering: “It’s not worth while!”
His aide cast a pitying glance at the broad back, at his stringy, muscular neck like a double column supporting the head, and, striving to keep anxiety out of his voice, he remarked: “By the way, I’ve just seen ‘the Pike’; he tells me that the last of the wounded was dismissed from the hospital yesterday. He was the worst of the lot, and seemed to have very little chance. But these peasants have the most astonishing vitality!” In private the Chief of Police was known as “the Pike” because of his pale, bulgy eyes, and his long, lank body, with its narrow, fin-like back.
The Governor made no answer. He was enjoying the autumn sunshine and the keen autumn air—a mixture of languor and crispness, as though each could be enjoyed by itself; here freshness, and there a wave of heat:—and the heavens were so lovely—tender, distant, and such a wonderful, startling blue. How perfect it must be in the country now!
He had already seated himself in the carriage, and moved over to make room for the aide, when a man passed by with a peculiar stoop. As he pulled off his cap he shielded his face with his elbow, so that the Governor had only a glimpse of a shock of curly fair hair and a tanned young throat—he noticed that he trod carefully and noiselessly, as though he had been barefooted, and that he bent over as if looking backward. “What a singularly unpleasant person!” thought he. Evidently the two men following the Governor thought so too. They were stepping into a carriage close at hand. With the rapid glance of professional keenness, they turned simultaneously to note the fellow, but finding nothing questionable about him, hurried on to precede the Governor.
They were in a smart rubber-tired trap—the wheels leaped, the body swayed, and they sat leaning forward on account of the rapid motion, and had soon left the Governor far behind in order not to annoy him with their dust.
“Who are those two?” he asked his aide, looking at him suspiciously from the corner of his eye—and the other answered carelessly: “Secret Police.”
“What’s that for?” asked the Governor abruptly.
“I don’t know,” said Leo Andrejevitch evasively; “that’s the Pike’s affair.”
At the corner stood the beardless young Police Commissioner, strutting and admiring his shiny lacquered boots—the same one who had accompanied the Governor on his inspection of the bodies; and as they passed the police headquarters two mounted guards rode out from under the arch, their horses’ hoofs pounding behind in the dust. Their faces beamed with officious zeal, and they both gazed steadily at the Governor’s back. The aide pretended not to notice, but the Governor threw a lowering glance at the men, and then, with his white-gloved hands tightly clenched on his knees, he lost himself in gloomy thought.
The road to the villa circled the outskirts of the town, through a lane called Kanatnaja alley, where factory hands and their families lived, crowded by all sorts of miserable beings from the city—some in wretched tumbledown huts, and some in two-story brick tenements of barrack-like uniformity. The Governor would gladly have bowed if he had seen anyone; but the street was empty, as though it were late at night—not even the children about. Only one little lad appeared for a moment behind a fence, among the red leaves of a rowan-tree, but even he slid hastily from the trunk and hid in the gateway. Through the summer the alley had been crowded with chickens and lean, dirty pigs, but there were none left now—apparently they had all been eaten in the three weeks’ famine.
Nothing even indirectly recalled the catastrophe, but in the empty silence of the street, so indifferent to the Governor’s passing, lay something heavy, sullen, brooding—and a light cloud of incense seemed to hang in the transparent air.
“Listen!” cried the Governor suddenly, grasping his companion’s knee. “That man there—”
“What man?”
The Governor did not answer. Firmly clutching his knee, he gazed at the aide with a face like a barred and shuttered house whose doors and windows have suddenly been thrown open. Then he knit his heavy grey brows, deliberately turned his ponderous back, and gazed intently out of the carriage. The horses of the guard pounded down the road, and the dismal, lonely lane, dark on one side, bright sunlight on the other, was also sunk in dreary brooding. …
Like a stampeded herd the cottages huddled together; with their riddled roofs, their broken benches, and their overhanging windows—like greybeards’ chins thrust out. Then came a vacant lot, with a broken fence and an old well, sunk about the rim and boarded over; then a row of great lime-trees behind a high broken wall, and a stately old house that had drifted somehow to these wastes, but was now long since abandoned. Its shutters were closed, and on a sign could be read: “This House for Sale.” Then beyond came cottages again, and a row of brick houses—large, bleak and hideous, with deep-set narrow windows. They were quite new—you could still see the caked plaster lying about, and the holes where the scaffolding had been; but they were already squalid and neglected. They looked like prisons, and life in such a place must be fully as sad, as hopeless, and as narrow as a life in jail!
There is the gateway to the open fields, and the last little house—no trace of vegetation about it, no fence. It stands there leaning forward, walls and roof both, as though someone had shoved it violently from behind—and neither in the windows nor anywhere about a single person visible.
“After the fall rains you’ll have trouble, Peter Iljitch, getting the carriage through here. I should think you’d literally sink in the mud!”