Part 26

So Pavel wrote. Lunev read the verse and before his eyes he seemed to see the lively face of his comrade; now restless, with bright bold eyes, now sad and darkened, concentrated on one thought. In his verses Pavel told again how he wandered poor and alone in a foreign town, receiving no greeting or friendly word. But when he was at the point of death from longing and want, then he found kind people, who bade him welcome to their hearth, where he drank new life: "Drank from their words that were radiant with love," words that fell upon his heart like sparks of fire:

"Hope flamed again in the heart of the hopeless, Songs of rejoicing resound through his soul."

Lunev read to the end, and then pushed the paper impatiently aside.

"Always rhyming, always with some crank in your head! Wait a little! these kind people of yours will handle you presently! kind people!" A scornful smile drew his mouth awry. Then suddenly he thought as though with a new soul. "Suppose I went there? Just went and said: 'Here I am, forgive me?'"

"Why?" he asked himself the next moment, and he ended with the gloomy words: "They'll turn me out."

He read the verses again with sorrow and envy, and fell into a new meditation on the girl. "She's proud. She'll just look at me, and well; I should go away the way I'd come."

In the same newspaper among the official information, he found that the case against Vyera Kapitanovna for robbery would be tried in court on September 23rd.

A malicious feeling flared up in him, and in his thought he addressed Pavel: "Make verses do you? and she--she's in prison!"

"Lord be merciful to me a sinner," murmured Terenti with a sigh, and shook his head sadly. Then he looked at his nephew who was turning over his paper and called to him: "Ilya!"

"Well?"

"Petrusha----" the hunchback smiled sadly and stopped.

"Well--what?"

"He has robbed me!" Terenti explained in a slow, conscience-stricken voice, and smiled again in a melancholy way.

"Serves you right!"

"He's done me fairly!"

"How much did you steal altogether?" asked Ilya quietly. His uncle pushed his chair back from the table, and with his hands on his knees began to twist his fingers.

"Say, ten thousand?" asked Lunev again.

The hunchback turned his head quickly, and said in a long-drawn tone of astonishment.

"T--e--n?"

Then he waved his hand and added:

"Whatever's got into your head? good Lord! Altogether it was three thousand seven hundred and a little over, and you think ten thousand--ten; you've fine ideas!"

"Jeremy had more than ten thousand," said Ilya, laughing mockingly.

"That's a lie!"

"Not a bit; he told me himself."

"Why, could he reckon money?"

"As well as you and Petrusha."

Terenti fell into deep thought, and his head sank again on his breast.

"How much has Petrusha to pay you still?"

"About seven hundred," answered Terenti, with a sigh. "Well, well, more than ten."

Lunev was silent; he hated the sight of his uncle's troubled, disappointed face.

"Where on earth did he hide it all?" asked the hunchback thoughtfully and wonderingly. "I thought we had taken the lot; but perhaps Petrusha had been there already, eh?"

"I wish you'd stop talking of it!" said Lunev harshly.

"Yes, it's no good now; what's the good of talking?" agreed Terenti with another deep sigh.

Lunev could not keep his mind off the greed of mankind, and the evil and miserable meanness practised for money. Then he began to think; if he possessed all this money, ten thousand, a hundred thousand then he'd show the world! How they should creep on all fours before him! Carried away with revengeful feelings, he smashed on the table with his fist; at the blow he started, glanced at his uncle, and saw that he was staring with terrified eyes and mouth half open.

"I was thinking of something," he said moodily, and stood up.

"Yes, of course," said his uncle suspiciously, as Ilya passed into the shop he looked searchingly at Terenti, and saw his lips moving silently; he felt the suspicious look behind his back, though he could not see; he had noticed for some time that his uncle followed his every movement and seemed anxious to find out something, or to ask something. But this only made Lunev anxious to avoid all conversation; every day he felt more plainly that his hunchbacked guest troubled the course of his life, and more and more often he asked himself:

"Will it go on much longer?"

It was as though a cancer were gnawing at his soul; life became daily more wearisome, and worst of all was the sense that he had no longer any desire to do anything. Days passed aimlessly, and often his feeling was that he sank slowly, but every hour deeper, into a bottomless abyss. Convinced that mankind had deeply injured him, he concentrated all the strength of his soul on one point--the bitter sense of injury; he stirred the flames by constant brooding and found therein the exculpation for every fault he had himself committed.

Shortly after Terenti's arrival, Tatiana Vlassyevna appeared, after a holiday spent some distance from the town. When she saw the hunchbacked peasant in brown fustian, she pinched her lips together in disgust and asked Ilya:

"Is that your uncle?"

"Yes"

"Is he going to live with you?"

"Naturally."

Tatiana perceived dislike and challenge in her partner's answers and ceased to take any notice of Terenti. But he, who had Gavrik's old place by the door, twisted his yellow beard and followed the small, slender woman in grey clothes with eager curious eyes.

Lunev noticed how she hopped about the shop like a sparrow, and waited silently for further questions, fully prepared to hurl at her rough ill-tempered words. But she spoke no more, after stealing a glance at his grim, cold face, standing at the desk, turning over the leaves of the book of daily sales. She remarked how pleasant it was to spend a couple of weeks in the country, and live in a village; how cheap it was, and how good for the health.

"There was a little stream, so quiet and still, and pleasant company, a telegraph official, for instance, who played the violin beautifully. I learned to row, but the peasant children! a perfect plague! like flies, they worry, and beg and whine--give--give! they learn it from their parents; it's disgusting!"

"No one teaches them anything!" replied Ilya coldly. "Their parents work, and the children live as they can--it's not true what you say."

Tatiana looked at him in astonishment and opened her mouth to speak; but at that moment Terenti smiled propitiatingly and remarked:

"When ladies come to the villages nowadays, that's quite a wonder to the people. Formerly the owner used to live there all his life, and now they only come for a holiday."

Madame Avtonomov looked at him, then at Ilya, and without saying anything fixed her eyes on the book. Terenti was confused, and began to pull at his shirt. For a minute no one spoke in the shop, only the rustling leaves of the book and a kind of purring as Terenti rubbed his hump against the door posts.

"But you," said Ilya's calm, cold voice suddenly, "before you address a lady, say, 'Excuse me, or allow me, and bow.'"

The book fell from Tatiana's hand and slipped over the desk; but she caught it, slapped her hand on it and began to laugh. Terenti went out, hanging his head. Tatiana looked up smiling into Ilya's gloomy face, and asked softly: "You're cross, is it with me? Why?"

Her face was roguish, tender; her eyes shone teasingly. Lunev stretched out his arm and caught her by the shoulder.

All at once his hate against her flared up, a wild tigerish desire to embrace her, to hug her till he heard her bones crack. He drew her towards him, showing his teeth; she caught his hand, tried to loosen his grasp, and whispered:

"Let go, you hurt me, are you mad? you can't kiss me here. And listen: I don't like your uncle being here, he's a hunchback, and people will be afraid of him; let go, I say. We must get rid of him somehow, d'you hear?"

But he held her in his arms and bent his head down to her, with wide-open eyes.

"What are you doing, it's impossible here. Let go!"

Suddenly she let herself sink to the ground and slipped out of his hands like a fish. Through a hot mist he saw her standing in the street door, straightening her jacket with trembling hands: she said:

"Oh, you're brutal! can't you wait, then?"

In his head was a noise of running waters; standing motionless, with fingers intertwined, he looked at her from behind the counter as if in her alone he saw all the evil and sorrow of his life.

"I like you to be passionate, but, my dear, you must be able to control yourself."

"Go!" said Ilya.

"I'm going. I can't see you to-day, but the day after to-morrow, the twenty-third, it's my birthday, will you come?"

As she spoke she fingered her brooch without looking at Ilya.

"Go away!" he repeated, trembling with desire to clutch and torture her.

She went. Almost immediately, Terenti reappeared and asked politely:

"Is that your partner?"

Ilya sighed with relief and nodded.

"A fine lady! isn't she? Small but----"

"She's a beast!" said Ilya.

"H'm--h'm," growled Terenti suspiciously. Ilya felt the searching look on his face, and asked angrily, "Well what are you looking at?"

"I? good Lord! nothing."

"I know what I'm saying. I said a beast, and that's all about it. And if I said worse things it'd be just as true!"

"A--ha! Is that it? O--Oh!" said the hunchback slowly, with an air of condolence.

"What? cried Ilya roughly.

"Only that."

"Only what?"

Terenti stood shifting from one foot to the other, frightened and hurt at being shouted at; his face was sorrowful and he blinked his eyes rapidly.

"Only, you know best, of course," he said at last.

"And that's enough," cried Ilya. "I know them; these people that are so clean and tidy outside!"

"I talked with the boot boy once," said the hunchback gently, as he sat down, "about his brother, the magistrate sentenced him to seven days, think! The lad said he was such a peaceable fellow, never drunk, and yet all at once he broke out as if he were mad. He got drunk and smashed up everything; hit his master on the nose, and the shopman, and before, think! his master had often struck him and he kept quite quiet, never did anything."

Lunev listened and thought.

"I'll have to drop all this and get away. This beautiful life can go to the devil! There's no life left for me! I'll give it all up and go. I'll get away--here, I'm just going to pieces."

"He bore it, bore everything and then at last bang, like a bombshell!" Terenti went on.

"Who?"

"Why, the boy's brother. He got seven days for assault."

"Ah!"

"Seven days! I say, the fellow had borne it, stood everything, but it had all piled up in his soul like the soot in the chimney, and then all of a sudden it catches fire, and the flames flare up."

"Uncle, look after the shop for a bit! I'm going out," answered Lunev.

His uncle's monotonous, well-meant words rang in his ears as mournfully as the sound of bells in Lent, and it was cold in the shop and there seemed no room to move, but it was hardly more cheerful in the street. It had been raining now for several days steadily. The clean, grey pavement stones stared unwinkingly back at the grey sky, and seemed weary like the faces of men. The dirt in the spaces between the stones, showed up clearly against the cold, clean surface. The air was heavy with damp, and the houses seemed oppressed with it. The yellow leaves still left on the trees seemed to shudder with the knowledge of approaching death.

At the end of the street behind the roofs clouds, bluish-grey or white, rose up to the height of the sky. They shouldered over one another higher and higher, constantly changing their shapes, now like the reek of a bonfire, now like mountains, or waves of a turbid river. They seemed to mount to the summit only to fall the heavier on houses and trees and ground. Lunev grew weary of the moving wall and turned back to the shop, shivering from dreariness and cold.

"I must give it up, the shop and all, uncle can see to it with Tanyka, but I, I'll go away."

In his mind he had a vision of a wet, boundless plain, arched by grey clouds; there was a broad road set with birch-trees; he himself walked forward, his knapsack on his back; his feet stuck fast in the mud, a cold rain drove in his face, and on the plain and on the road no living soul, not even crows on the branches.

"I'll hang myself," he thought, without emotion, when he saw that he had no place to go to, nowhere in all the world.

XXV.

When he awoke on the morning of the next day but one, he saw on his calendar the black figure 23, and remembered that this was the day that Vyera would appear for trial. He rejoiced at the excuse to get away from the shop, and felt keen curiosity over the girl's fate. He dressed hastily, drank his tea, almost ran to the court, and reached it too early. No one was admitted yet--a little crowd of people pressed about the steps, waiting for the doors to open; Lunev took his place with the rest and leant his back against the wall. There was an open space before the court-house, with a big church in the middle of it. Shadows swept over the ground. The sun's disc, dim and pale, now appeared, now vanished behind the clouds. Almost every moment a shadow fell widely over the square, gliding over the stones, climbing the trees, so that the branches seemed to bend under its weight; then it wrapped the church from base to cross, covered it entirely, then noiselessly moved further to the court of justice and the waiting crowd.

The people all looked strangely grey, with hungry faces; they looked at one another with tired eyes and spoke slowly. One--a long-haired man in a light overcoat buttoned to his chin and a crushed hat, twisted his pointed red beard with cold red fingers, and stamped the ground impatiently with his worn out shoes. Another in a patched waistcoat, and cap pulled down over his brows, stood with bent head, one hand in his bosom, the other in his pocket. He seemed asleep. A little swarthy man in an overcoat and high boots looking like a cockchafer, moved about restlessly. He looked up to the sky showing a pale pointed little nose, whistled, wrinkled his brows, ran his tongue over the edge of his moustache and spoke more than all the others.

"Are they opening?" he called, listening with his head on one side.

"No--h'm. Time is cheap! Been to the library yet, my boy?"

"No--too early," answered the long-haired man briefly.

"The Devil! it _is_ cold!"

The other growled agreement and said thoughtfully:

"Where should we warm ourselves if it weren't for the law courts and the libraries?"

The dark man shrugged his shoulders. Ilya looked at them more carefully and listened. He saw they were loafers--people who passed their lives in various "shady" businesses either cheating the peasants, for whom they drew up petitions or papers of different kinds, or going from house to house with begging letters. Once he had feared them, now they roused his curiosity.

"What's the good of these people? Yet, they live."

A pair of pigeons settled on the pavement near the steps. The man with the bent head swayed from one foot to the other and began to circle round the birds, making a loud cooing noise.

"Pfui!" whistled the dark little man sharply. The man in the waistcoat started and looked up; his face was blue and swollen, and his eyes glassy.

"I can't stand pigeons," cried the little man watching them as they flew away. "Fat--as rich tradesmen--and their beastly cooing! Are you summoned?" he asked Ilya, unexpectedly.

"No."

"You're not called?"

"No."

The dark man looked Ilya up and down and growled: "That's strange."

"What is strange?" asked Ilya, laughing.

"You have the kind of face," answered the little man speaking quickly. "Ah, they're opening."

He was one of the first to enter the building. Struck by his remark Ilya followed him and in the doorway pushed the long-haired man with his shoulder.

"Don't shove so, you clown!" said the man half aloud, and giving Ilya a push in his turn passed in first. The push did not anger Ilya, but only astonished him.

"Odd!" he thought. "He pushes in as if he were a great lord and must go in first, and he's only just a poor wretch."

In the court of justice it was dark and quiet. The long table covered with a green cloth, the high-backed chairs, the gold frames round the big full-length portraits, the mulberry coloured chairs for the jury, the big wooden bench behind the railing--all this inspired respect and a sense of gravity. The windows were set deep in gray walls; curtains of canvas hung in heavy folds in front of them, and the window panes looked dim. The heavy doors opened without noise, and people in uniform walked here and there with rapid silent steps. Everything in the big room seemed to bid the spectators to remain quiet and still. Lunev looked round him, and a painful sensation caught at his heart; when an official announced--"The Court," he started and sprang up before any one else, though he did not know that he was expected to rise. One of the four men who entered was Gromov, who lived in the house opposite Ilya's shop. He took the middle chair, ran both his hands over his hair, rumpling it a little and settled the gold-trimmed collar of his uniform. The sight of his face had a calming effect on Ilya; it was just as jolly and red-cheeked as ever, only the ends of the moustache were turned up. On his right sat a good-natured looking old man with a little, grey beard, a blunt nose, and spectacles--on the left a bald-headed man with a divided foxy beard, and a yellow, expressionless face. Besides these a young judge stood at a desk, with a round head, smoothly plastered hair, and black prominent eyes. They were all silent for a few moments, looking through the papers on the table. Lunev looked at them full of respect and waited for one of them to rise and say something loudly and importantly. But suddenly, turning his head to the left Ilya saw the well-known fat face of Petrusha Filimonov shining as if it were lacquered. Petrusha sat in the front row of the jury, with his head against the back of the chair looking placidly at the public. Twice his glance passed over Ilya, and both times Ilya felt a wish to stand up and say something to Petrusha or to Gromov or to all the people.

"Thief, who killed his son!" flamed through his brain, and there was a feeling in his throat like heartburn.

"You are therefore accused," said Gromov in a friendly voice, but Ilya did not see who was addressed; he looked at Petrusha's face, oppressed with doubt and could not reconcile himself to the thought that Filimonov should be a dispenser of justice.

"Now, tell us," asked the president, rubbing his forehead. "You said to the tradesman Anissimov, you wait! I'll pay you for this!"

A ventilator squeaked somewhere, "ee--oo, ee--oo."

Among the jury Ilya saw two other faces he knew. Behind Petrusha and above him sat a worker in stucco--Silatschev, a big peasant's figure with long arms and little ill-tempered face, a friend of Filimonov and his constant companion at cards. It was told of Silatschev, that once in a quarrel he had pushed his master from a scaffolding, with fatal result. And in the front row, two places from Petrusha sat Dodonov, the proprietor of a big fancy-ware shop. Ilya bought from him and knew him for hard and grasping and a man who had been twice bankrupt, and paid his creditors only ten per cent.

"Witness! when did you see that Anissimov's house was on fire?"

The ventilator lamented steadily, seeming to echo the sadness in Lunev's breast.

"Fool!" said the man next him in a whisper. Ilya looked round, it was the little dark man who now sat with his lips contemptuously drawn.

"A fool," he repeated, nodding to Ilya.

"Who?" whispered Ilya stupidly.

"The accused--he had a fine chance to upset the witness and lets it go. If I--ah."

Ilya looked at the prisoner. He was a tall, bony peasant with an angular head. His face was terrified and gloomy; he showed his teeth like a tired, beaten dog, crowded into a corner by its foes and without strength to defend itself. Stupid, animal fear was impressed on every feature; and Petrusha, Silatschev and Dodonov looked at him quietly with the eyes of the well fed. To Lunev it seemed as though they thought: "He's been caught--that is, he is guilty."

"Dull!" whispered his neighbour. "Nothing interesting. The accused--a fool, the Public Prosecutor a gaping idiot, the witnesses blockheads as usual. If I were Prosecutor I'd settle his job in ten minutes."

"Guilty?" asked Lunev in a whisper, shivering as if with cold.

"Probably not. But easy to condemn him. He doesn't know how to defend himself. These peasants never do. A poor lot! Bones and muscles--but intelligence, quickness--not a glimmer!"

"That is true. Ye--es."

"Have you by any chance twenty kopecks about you?" asked the little man suddenly.

"Oh, yes."

"Give it to me."

Ilya had taken out his purse and handed over the piece of money, before he could make up his mind whether to give it or no. When he had parted with it he thought with an involuntary respect as he looked sideways at his neighbour:

"He's quick, but that's the way to live; just take----"

"A stupid ass, that's all," whispered the dark man again, and indicated the accused with his eyes.

"Sh!--sh!" said the usher.

"Gentlemen of the jury," began the Prosecutor with a low but emphatic voice, "look at the face of this man--it is more eloquent than any testimony of the witnesses who have given their evidence without contradiction--er--er--it must be so--it must convince you that a typical criminal stands before you, an enemy of law and order, an enemy of society--stands before you."

The enemy of society was sitting down; but as it evidently troubled him to sit while he was being spoken of, he stood up slowly with bent head. His arms hung feebly by his sides, and the long gray figure bowed as though before the vengeance of justice.

Lunev let his head fall also. His heart was sick, almost to death; helpless thoughts circled slowly and heavily in his head--he could find no words for them, and they fought him and strangled him. Petrusha's red, uneasy face drifted through his thoughts, as the moon through clouds.

When Gromov announced the adjournment of the sitting Ilya went out into the corridor with the little man who took a damaged cigarette from his coat pocket, pressed it into shape and began:

"The silly fellow stands there and swears he has not kindled the fire. Oaths are no good here. It's a serious business--some shopkeeper's been injured--you have done it or another--that doesn't matter. What does matter is to have it punished--you walk into the net. Very well, you shall be punished."

"Do you think he's guilty, that fellow?" asked Ilya thoughtfully.

"Of course he's guilty, because he's stupid; clever people don't get condemned," said the little man calmly and quickly, and smoked his cigarette vigorously. He had little black eyes like a mouse, and his teeth were also small-pointed and mouse-like.

"In that jury," began Ilya slowly and with emphasis, "there are men."

"Not men, tradesmen," the dark-headed man improved the phrase. Ilya looked at him and repeated:

"Tradesmen. I know some of them."

"Aha!"

"A fine sort--not to put it too finely."

"Thieves--eh?" his companion helped him out. He spoke loudly, but in an ordinary way, then threw away his cigarette end, pinched up his lips in a loud whistle and looked at Ilya with eyes bold almost to insolence; all these movements followed one another in eager restlessness.