Part 14

Next day Ilya felt like the quarry that finds the huntsman on its track. Petrusha met him in the bar room early; he answered Ilya's greeting with a nod, and looked at him strangely, searchingly. Terenti looked hard at him, sighed and said nothing, Jakov met him in Masha's room, and said with a terrified face:

"Last night the Ward Superintendent was here; he asked father all about you. Why did he do that?"

"What did he ask about?" said Ilya quietly.

"Everything--how you live, if you drink brandy, if you go with women,--he mentioned some Olympiada; didn't you know her, he asked. Why did he want to know all this?"

"Heaven knows;" answered Ilya, and left him.

That evening came another letter from Olympiada.

"They've questioned me about you. I have said everything exactly; there's nothing in all that, and it isn't risky. Don't be anxious. I kiss you dearest."

He threw the letter at once in the fire. In Filimonov's house as well as in the bar, the talk was all of the murder. Ilya listened with a distinct sense of pleasure. He liked to pass near men who were discussing his deed, asking for details, which were invented freely, and thought with pleasure what profound amazement he could bring on them if he said:

"I did it--I!"

Some praised the cleverness of the criminal, some pointed out that he had failed to get all the money, some seemed to fear, lest he should yet be arrested, but not one single voice was heard to lament the victim, no one uttered on his account so much as a friendly word. Ilya despised them that they had no pity for the merchant, though he himself had none. He thought no more of Poluektov, only realising that he had taken a burden of guilt on himself and would be punished at some future time. This thought, in the present, disturbed him not at all; he bound it into his conscience and it became a part of his soul. It was like a bruise from a blow, it did not hurt if it were not disturbed.

He was deeply convinced that the hour must come when the vengeance of God would overtake him. God knows everything, and would not forgive the transgressor of His law: but this calm steady readiness to meet the punishment, any day, any hour, enabled Ilya to feel and behave as he did before the murder. Only he watched men more closely, and traced their weaknesses more zealously. This pleased him, though he realised that he was in no way exonerated thereby.

He was gloomier, more reserved, but from morning to night, as usual, he carried his wares about the town, visited alehouses, observed men, and listened to their talk. One day he thought of the money he had hidden and wondered if he would conceal it elsewhere. But at once he said to himself: "It's no good. Let it be. If they look and find it, I'll confess."

There was as yet no search after the money, and it was the sixth day before Ilya was summoned before the magistrate. Before he went, he changed his linen, put on his best jacket, and brushed his boots till they shone. He went in a sleigh. It jolted over the uneven streets till he had difficulty in holding himself upright and motionless. He felt his body so tensely strung that he feared to break something in him by a sudden movement. He mounted the steps of the Court House slowly and carefully, as though he were wearing clothes of glass.

The magistrate was a young man, with curly hair and a hooked nose, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. When he saw Ilya, he first rubbed his thin white hands, then removed his spectacles and polished the lenses with his handkerchief, looking the while at Ilya with his big dark eyes. Ilya bowed silently.

"Good-day! Sit down there."

He indicated a chair at a big table covered with a dull red cloth. Ilya sat down, carefully pushing away with his elbow a pile of legal documents lying at the edge of the table. The magistrate noticed the movement, politely moved the papers, and sat down opposite Ilya. Without speaking, he began to turn the leaves of a book, and measured Ilya with sidelong glances. Ilya disliked the silence. He turned away and looked round the room. It was the first time he had seen a place so orderly and so richly furnished. All round the walls hung framed portraits and pictures. In one Christ was represented, walking, lost in thought, His head bowed, alone and sad, among ruins. Corpses of men and scattered weapons lay at his feet, and in the background, a dense black smoke rose up into the sky. Something was burning. Ilya looked long at this picture, and tried to understand what it represented. So much so that he was on the point of asking when suddenly the magistrate shut his book with a bang. Ilya started and looked at him. The magistrate's face wore a weary, dull expression, his lips were depressed oddly at the corners, as though some one had hurt his feelings.

"Well," he said, and tapped the table with his finger, "you are Ilya Jakovlevitch Lunev, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"You can guess why I have summoned you?"

"No," answered Ilya, and took another fleeting look at the picture. Then his eyes travelled over the solid, fine furniture, and he was conscious of the perfume the magistrate had been using. It distracted his thoughts and calmed him to observe his surroundings, and envy rose in his heart.

"This is how distinguished people live." The thought went through his head. "It must be very profitable to catch thieves and murderers. I wonder what he gets."

"You can't guess?" repeated the magistrate. "Has Olympiada said nothing to you?"

"No. It's some time since I saw her."

The magistrate threw himself back in his chair, and the corners of his lips went down.

"How long?" he asked.

"I don't know, eight or nine days perhaps."

"Ah! is that so? tell me, did you often meet old Poluektov at her house?"

"The old man who was murdered a little while ago?" asked Ilya, and looked his questioner in the eyes.

"Yes, that's the man."

"I never met him."

"Never?"

"Never."

The magistrate fired off his questions quickly with a certain nonchalance, and when Ilya, who answered very cautiously, was slow to reply, he drummed impatiently on the table with his fingers.

"You knew that Olympiada Petrovna was kept by Poluektov?" he asked suddenly, and looked sharply through his spectacles.

Ilya reddened at the glance, which seemed in some way to wound him.

"No," he said in a dull tone.

"Oh! yes, she was kept by him," repeated the magistrate, angrily,--"to my thinking that is not good," he added, as he saw Ilya about to answer.

"How should there be anything good in it?" said Ilya softly, at length.

"True."

But Ilya said no more.

"And you--you've known her a long time?"

"More than a year."

"You were intimate with her before her acquaintance with Poluektov?"

"You're a cunning fox," thought Ilya, and said quietly:

"How can I say, when I didn't know that she lived with the man that's dead."

The magistrate drew his lips together and whistled, and began to finger the pile of documents. Ilya looked again at the picture; he felt that his interest in it helped him to keep calm. From somewhere, the clear, gay laugh of a child came to his ear. Then a happy, gentle, woman's voice sang tenderly: "My Annie, my little one, my darling, my dear."

"That picture appears to interest you greatly."

"Where is Christ supposed to be going?" asked Ilya.

The magistrate looked in his face with a weary, disillusioned expression, and said after a pause:

"You can see. He's come down to earth to see how men fulfil His commands. He's going over a battle-field--round about are dead men, houses destroyed, fire plundering."

"Can't He see that from Heaven?"

"H'm, it's rather an allegory, it's represented like that, so as to be plainer, to show how little real life agrees with the teaching of Christ, that is----But come, I must ask you a question or two yet."

Ilya turned from the picture and looked in the magistrate's face; a number of little unimportant questions followed, annoying Ilya like autumn flies. He grew tired and felt his attention growing slack and his carefulness wither under the monotonous dull sound. He grew angry with the magistrate, who set these questions, as he well understood, on purpose to weary him.

"Can you tell me perhaps," said the magistrate quickly, apparently without any particular intent, "where you were on Thursday between two o'clock and three."

"In the ale-house; I was having tea."

"Ah! in which inn then? Where?"

"In the Plevna."

"How is it you are so certain that you were there just at that time?"

The magistrate's face looked tense, he leaned over the table and stared into Ilya's face with flaming eyes. Ilya did not reply at once. After a second or two he sighed and said with composure:

"Just before I went in, I asked the time of a policeman."

The magistrate leaned back again, and began to tap his finger-nails with a blue pencil.

"The policeman told me it was twenty minutes to two, or something like that."

"He knows you?"

"Yes."

"Have you no watch?"

"No."

"Have you ever before asked him the time?"

"Yes, it has happened."

"The town hall is near, there's a clock."

"One forgets to look, and then it was snowing."

"Were you long in the Plevna?"

"Till the news came of the murder."

"Where did you go then?"

"I went to look."

"Did any one see you there, in front of the shop?"

"That policeman saw me, he sent me off--pushed me."

"Very good, very important for you," said the magistrate approvingly, then asked at once without looking at Ilya:

"Did you ask the time before the murder or after?"

Ilya saw the drift of the question. He turned sharp round in his chair full of rage against this man with the shining white linen, the thin fingers, well-tended nails, and gold spectacles in front of piercing dark eyes.

Instead of answering, he asked:

"How can I tell?"

The magistrate coughed drily, and rubbed his hands till the fingers cracked.

"Well done," he said in a tone of displeasure. "Splendid!--yes."

And he shifted his chair as though tired.

"Very good; one or two questions now and I'll let you go. Do you know, by any chance, that policeman's name?"

"Jeremin, Matvey Ivanovitch."

The magistrate's tone was bored and indifferent; obviously he did not expect now to hear anything interesting.

Ilya answered, always on the look out for another question like the one as to the time of the murder. Every word echoed in his breast again as though it plucked a tense string in an empty space. But no more cunning questions came.

"As you went down the street that day, did you not meet a tall man in a short fur jacket and black lambs-wool cap? Do you remember?"

"No," said Ilya harshly.

"Now, listen. I'll read over your statement to you, and you will sign it."

He held a sheet of paper covered with writing before his face, and began to read quickly and monotonously. When he had finished, he put a pen in Ilya's hand. Ilya bent down, signed, rose slowly from his chair, and said in a loud, assured voice, looking at the magistrate: "Good-day!"

A short, condescending nod was his answer, and the magistrate bent over his desk, and began to write. Ilya stood thinking. He would gladly have said something more to this man who had held him so long on the rack. In the quiet, only the scratch of the pen was heard, then the woman's voice, singing, "Dance away, dance away, dolly."

"What do you want now?" asked the magistrate, and raised his head.

"Nothing," said Ilya gloomily.

"I told you, you can go."

"I'm going."

"All right, then."

They looked angrily at one another, and Ilya felt something heavy, terrifying, grow in his breast. He turned sharp round and went out into the street. A cold wind greeted him, and for the first time he noticed that he was sweating profusely. Half-an-hour later he was sitting with Olympiada. She opened the door to him herself, having seen him from the window. She met him with almost a mother's joy. Her face was pale, and she gazed restlessly about with wide-open eyes.

"My clever boy!" she cried, when Ilya told her that he had just come from the magistrate. "Tell me, tell me, how did you get on?"

"The brute," said Ilya, in wrath. "He set traps for me."

"He can't help it," remarked Olympiada, in a tone of common sense. "Let him be; it's his infernal duty."

"Why didn't he say straight out--'So-and-so, this is what people think of you.'"

"Did you tell him everything straight out?" she asked, smiling.

"I!" cried Ilya in astonishment. "Why, yes--as a matter of fact--ah, devil take him!"

He seemed quite abashed and said after a while:

"And as I sat there, I thought, by God, I was right!"

"Now, thank heaven, it's all passed over all right."

Ilya looked at her with a smile. "I didn't need to lie much. I'm lucky, after all, Lipa!"

He laughed again in a strange way.

"The secret police are always at my heels," said Olympiada, in a low voice, "and after you too."

"Of course," said Ilya, full of scorn and anger. "They go sniffing around, and want to hem me in, like the beaters do to the wolf in the forest. But they won't do it; they're not the men for that; and I'm not a wolf, but an unlucky man. I didn't mean to strangle any one. Fate strangles me--as Pashka says in his poem--and it strangles Pashka too, and Jakov, and all of us."

"Never mind, Ilushka. Everything will go right now."

Ilya got up, walked to the window, and said, with a despairing voice, as he looked at the street:

"All my life I've had to wallow in the mud. I've always been pushed into things I disliked--hated. I've never met a soul I could look at really happily. Is there nothing pure in life, nothing noble? Now, I've strangled this--this man of yours,--why? I've only smirched myself, and damned myself. I took money. I ought not."

"Don't be sorry!" She tried to console him. "He isn't worth it."

"I'm not sorry for him; only I want to get myself straight. Every one tries, else he can't live. That magistrate, he lives like a sugar-plum in its box. No one will strangle him. He can be good and upright in his pretty nest."

"Never mind, we'll go away together from this place."

"No. I'll go nowhere," cried Ilya fiercely, and wheeled round to her, and added, seeming to threaten some unknown person.

"No--no--patience! I'll wait and see what will come; I'll fight it out still," and he strode up and down the room, and shook his head defiantly.

"Oh!" said Olympiada, in an injured tone. "You won't go with me, because you're afraid of me; you think I should always have a hold on you, you think I should use what I know--you're wrong, my dear. I'll never drag you with me by force."

She spoke quietly, but her lips twitched as though she were in pain.

"What did you say?" asked Ilya, quite surprised.

"I won't compel you, don't be frightened; go where you will!"

"Wait a moment," said Ilya, as he sat down near her, and took her hand.

"I didn't understand what you said."

"Don't pretend!" she cried, and drew away her hand. "I know you're proud, and passionate; you can't forgive the old man; you hate my life--you think that it's all come about through me."

"You're talking foolishly," said Ilya, quietly. "I don't blame you in the very least, I know that for men like me there are no women who are pretty and fine and pure as well. Such women are dear, they are only for the rich, and we must love the soiled and those who are spat upon and abused."

"Then leave me, the spat upon and abused!" cried Olympiada, springing up from her chair. "Go away--go away!"

But suddenly tears shone in her eyes and she covered Ilya with a flood of burning words, like hot coals.

"I myself, of my own will crept into this pit, because there's money in it. I meant to climb up the ladder again with the money, begin a decent life--and you helped me, I know, and I love you, and will love you though you strangle twenty men; it isn't your goodness I love, but your pride, and your youth, your curly head and your strong arms and your dark eyes, and your reproaches that pierce my heart. I shall be grateful for all this till I die.--I'll kiss your feet."

She threw herself at his feet, and embraced his knees.

"God is my witness, I sinned to save my soul. I must be dearer to Him if I don't end my life in this filth, but struggle through it and lead a clean life. Then I will entreat His forgiveness. I will not endure this torment all my life; they have soiled me with mud and filth; all my tears will never wash me clean."

At first Ilya tried to free himself and raise her from the ground, but she clung close to him, pressed her head against his knees and laid her cheek at his feet. And she spoke on with a low, passionate, gasping voice. Presently he caressed her with a trembling hand, raised her, embraced her, and laid her head on his shoulder, her hot cheek pressed close to his, and as she lay supported by his arms on her knees before him, she whispered:

"Does it do any one any good if a woman who has sinned once spends almost her whole life in humiliation? When I was a girl and my stepfather came near me to make me impure, I stuck a knife in him. I did it without a thought. Then they made me drunk with wine and ruined me. I was a girl, so tidy, so pretty and red-cheeked as an apple. I cried for myself. I hurt myself. I cried for my beauty. I didn't want it! I didn't want it! And then I said to myself: 'It's all the same now. There's no going back. Good,' I thought, 'at least I'll sell my shame as dear as I can.' I never kissed from my heart till I kissed you. I always just lived in filth and rioting."

Her words were lost in a soft whisper. Suddenly she tore herself from Ilya's embrace. "Let me go!" she cried, and thrust him away.

But he held her closer, and began to kiss her face, passionately, despairingly.

"Let me go! You hurt me!" she said.

"I can say nothing," said Ilya, feverishly. "Only one thing--no one has had pity on us, and we need have pity on no one. You spoke so beautifully! Come, let me kiss you. How else can I make it up to you? My dear! My dearest! I love you! Ah, I don't know how I love you. I've no words to tell you."

Her lamentation had really roused in him a burning feeling of affection for this woman. Her sorrow and his misfortune were molten together, and their hearts came nearer and nearer. They held one another in a close embrace, and softly told one another all the long sufferings they had endured from life. A courageous, fierce feeling rose in Ilya's heart.

"We were not born for fortune, we two," said the woman, and shook her head hopelessly.

"Good! Then we will celebrate out misfortune! Shall we go to the mines, to Siberia, together? Eh? Ah, there's time for that. As yet we will enjoy our pain and our love. Now they might burn me with red-hot irons, my heart is so light. I repent nothing!"

Outside the window, the sky was a monotonous grey. A cold mist enwrapped the earth and settled in white rime on the trees. In the little garden, a young birch-tree swayed its thin branches gently, and shook the snow away. The winter evening came on.

XV.

Two days later Ilya learnt that a tall man in a lambs-wool cap was being sought for as the probable murderer of Poluektov. During the investigations made in the shop, two silver clasps from an eikon were found and it appeared that these were stolen goods. The errand boy who had been employed in the business, stated that these mounts had been bought from a tall man in a short fur jacket, called Andrei, that this Andrei had several times before sold gold and silver ornaments to Poluektov, and that the money-changer had advanced him money. Further it was known that on the evening before the murder and on the same day, a man corresponding to the description, had wasted much money in carousing in the public houses of the town.

Every day Ilya heard something new; the whole town took a keen interest in this crime, so ingeniously carried out, and in all the ale-houses and all the streets nothing else was spoken of. But all the talk had little attraction for Ilya. Fear had fallen from his heart, like the scab from a wound, and instead he only felt now a sense of awkwardness. He listened attentively to all that was said, but thought only--how would his life shape itself now, what had the future in store for him? And the conviction that the murderer would not be discovered, strengthened every day.

He felt like a recruit before the conscription summons, or like a man who is proceeding towards some unknown far-off goal. More than ever he felt the need to live for himself and take thought for himself, but life hissed and boiled round him like water in a kettle, and almost every day came something to distract his mind from its preoccupation. He grew pale and thin.

Of late Jakov had been more drawn to him again. Tousled and carelessly dressed, he wandered aimlessly about the tap room and the courtyard, looking vaguely at everything with wandering eyes and had the appearance of a man brought face to face with strange ideas. When he met Ilya he would ask him mysteriously, half aloud, or whispering, "Have you no time to talk?"

"Wait a bit; I can't now."

"It's something very important."

"What is it?"

"It's a book. I tell you, brother, the things in it----Oh! oh!" said Jakov, with a terrified air.

"Bother your books! I'd rather know why your father always scowls at me now."

But Jakov had no mind for realities.

At Ilya's question he looked astonished, as though he hardly understood, and said:

"Eh? I don't know. That is, once I heard him speaking to your uncle about it; something about your passing false money; but he only said it chaffing."

"How do you know he was only chaffing?"

"Why, what a thing to say--false money," he interrupted Ilya with a gesture as though to wave the subject away. "But won't you talk to me? No time?"

"About your book?"

"Yes, there's a bit in it I've just read. Oh! well!"

And the philosopher made a face as though something had scalded him. Ilya looked at his friend as at a person half idiotic. Sometimes Jakov seemed to him absolutely blind. He took him for an unlucky man, unfit to cope with life.

The gossip ran in the house, and it was all over the street already, that Petrusha was going to marry his mistress, who kept a public house in the town. But Jakov paid absolutely no attention. When Ilya asked him when the wedding was to be, he said:

"Whose wedding?"

"Why, your father's."

"Oh! who's to know? disgusting! A pretty witch he's chosen!"

"Do you know she has a son--a big boy, who goes to the High School?"

"No, I didn't know. Why?"

"He'll come in for your father's property."

"Oh!" said Jakov, indifferently, then with a sudden interest, "A son, you say?"

"Yes."

"A son--that'll just do, father can stick him behind the bar, and I can do what I like. That'll suit me."

And he smacked his lips as with a foretaste of his longed-for freedom. Ilya looked at him with pity, then said, mockingly:

"The proverb is right, 'Give the stupid child a piece of bread if he wants a carrot.' You! I can't imagine how you're going to live."

Jakov pricked up his ears, looked at Ilya with big eyes starting out of his head, then said in a hurried whisper:

"I know how I shall live! I've thought about it! Before everything, one must get one's soul in order; must understand what God wants one to do. Now I see one thing; the ways of men are all confused, like tangled threads, and they are drawn in different directions, and no one knows what to hold to or where to let himself be drawn. Now a man is born--no one knows why--and lives--I don't know why--and death comes and blows out the light. Before anything else I must know what I'm in the world for, mustn't I?"

"You--you've tied yourself up in your cobwebs," said. Ilya with some heat. "I'd like to know what's the sense of that?"